![]() ![]() These asides mirror the discursive course of Fancher’s overall life, full of fits and starts that saw him constantly escaping any path - whether professional or personal - that might create stability.Įscapes ends with the work that would cement Fancher’s legacy as a Hollywood icon: his screenplay for Blade Runner. Fancher often stops himself in the middle of a story to change direction at one point, he discusses cruising for women with Flipper actor Brian Kelly but halts his reminiscence by saying, “Actually, this story is so terrible, I’m not going to tell it.” Our narrator also gets the film back on track when his attention wanders, commenting, “Oh, that’s another story,” as he finds himself straying. His storytelling is laced with meta-commentary that allows the film to delve deeper into his biography than a straightforward telling would allow. The audio of his narration suffices at first, but visual takes of the protagonist as raconteur lengthen as the film progresses. Hampton Fancher as seen in Michael Almereyda’s Escapesįancher’s own words tie together the majority of this pop-culture ephemera. The fact that Almereyda could find so much material appropriate for illustrating Fancher’s experiences might make one question the authenticity of the footage, if the vast expanse of the actor’s pursuits wasn’t so well-documented. ![]() While some of Fancher’s famous friends (Teri Garr, Barbara Hershey, David Carradine) are represented with footage from their own roles, others are represented by avatars, like the old man with glasses conversing with our hero represents a boss at his job as a ditch digger. Sometimes they are merely thematic, as when a shot of Fancher mopping accompanies a discussion of his job as a ditch digger, uniting the image and narration only in their common focus on manual labor. These pairings are not always perfect matches. The footage often matches the points the actor makes in narration for example, an anecdote about confronting a girlfriend’s ex-lover is paired with a shot from a Western of the actor walking out of a building, getting a shotgun, and pumping it. Whether dressed as a cowboy or a common criminal, the various characters Fancher played are paired with his stories about work and romantic dalliances. While Brett Morgen and Nanette Burstein’s 2002 Robert Evans documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture similarly paired archival footage with narration, Escapes is a stand-out due to the fact that Fancher - who boasts 51 actor credits on IMDB - appeared in front of the camera significantly more than Evans, who has 14 Almereyda simply has more source material to use. Escapes shows how one man’s personal journey can unexpectedly shape a medium’s future.”Įscapes opens in in theaters this August.Although the story of Fancher’s life is a fairly straightforward example of Hollywood hustling eventually yielding success, Almereyda’s use of images from Fancher’s decades of work makes Escapes unique among film industry documentaries. (Fancher also penned the story for its sequel, Blade Runner 2049.) A consummate raconteur, Fancher recounts episodes from his remarkable life - romantic misadventures with silver-screen stars, wayward acts of chivalry, jealousy, and friendship - matched with a parallel world of film and TV footage wherein Fancher plays cowboys, killers, fops, cads, and the occasional hero. “Directed by Michael Almereyda (Experimenter) and executive produced by Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Escapes blazes a wild path through mid-20th-century Hollywood via the experiences of Hampton Fancher – flamenco dancer, actor, and the unlikely producer and screenwriter of the landmark sci-fi classic Blade Runner. Here’s the official synopsis for Escapes: He also penned the story for the upcoming sequel Blade Runner 2049. ![]() The documentary is directed by Michael Almereyda and it's a fascinating look at Fancher's career and the road that led him to write and produce 1982's Blade Runner. It follows the strange and eventful life of Blade Runner screenwriter, Hampton Fancher. A new trailer from the Wes Anderson-produced documentary Escapes has been released.
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