While searching through his belongings, Richard Kilroy recently discovered a folder of original production sketches from Blade Runner. I asked Richard who had drawn them and where they had come from. Here Richard tells us a bit about these fascinating drawings . . .
"Blade Runner's assistant art director, Stephen Dane did the drawings. Stephen Dane also worked on GhostBusters, Brainstorm and Buckeroo Banzai. His specialty was vehicle design. He was a Russian helicopter consultant for John Millius on Red Dawn. All of the drawings that I own are for vehicles that populate the street scenes. The tanker drawing is featured when Brion James punches into it, just missing Harrison Ford. Another drawing depicts a double tanker that drives by when Pris arrives in L.A..
"The story about how I ended up with this folder is not even clear to me. I work in the visual effects industry as a matte artist. I've had this folder of drawings and notes for over ten years and never knew what film they were for until now. To be honest, I thought they were from Megaforce because I worked for a company that did those effects. There are no titles written on any of these pages and the notes are standard art department jottings. I know Blade Runner very well but like most people, have paid most attention to the cars and not the bigger vehicles. I finally got curious about these sketches and recently decided to look up some of the names mentioned in the notes and discovered that they all belonged to the crew from Blade Runner. There was a moment when I thought they were Escape from New York as well. I verified these drawings against the film and these designs are in the film.
"Now I was really baffled as to how I had these drawings. I wasn't working in effects when these were made. I don't remember any one giving them to me. I must have found them being thrown out. I never worked for EEG and don't know this artist personally. Ironically, I was neighbor to Hy Pike (Taffey Lewis) at the time he was shooting Blade Runner, but don't recall him handing me any sketches. Sorry this doesn't really answer your question but as you can see, I really don't know how I got them. I'm just glad I did."--Richard Kilroy
