Blade Runner with Wine at The Mockingbird, Digbeth
Thank you to everyone that joined us for our Blade Runner special event at The Mockingbird. Movie watched, wines drunk and skin jobs retired, job done.
As promised read on for our Tyrell Corporation Cellar Selection Wines, check out our Nexus 6 Evidence Archive, you could call it a photo gallery of sorts, and our Blade Runner movie trivia.
Tyrell Corporation Cellar Selection
This was something of a relic from the dying planet, Earth. This grape has been used to make wine since the 13th century and this wine is from the Veneto, in the foothills of the Dolomites in Italy. Fermented in stainless steel tanks but aged on lees for three months. Floral on the nose and honeyed on the palate with a creamy finish. Reminiscent of simpler times, before the world went crazy.
This is a real Frankenstein grape, a Tyrell special - Müller-Thurgau, Ortega and Bacchus – Müller-Thurgau is made by crossing Riesling with Madeline Royale. Bacchus is bascially Silvaner and Riesling crossed with Müller-Thurgau. They choose parent vines, before the flowers open remove the pollen producing parts from flowers on the mother vine, collect pollen from flower of the second vine, the father. Apply pollen to flowers of the mother. If fertilization works, the flowers develop into grapes. They take seeds from the grapes and plant them. 100 seeds - 100 versions, whereas a cutting is a clone. Lemon and elderflower in the nose, fruit and spice on the palate.
So, the kast wine was a blend of two man-made grapes, blended with Ortega, this is made from just one of those grapes on its own, Muller Thurgau.
This wine is from Czech Republic, known for wine? Not so well, but Moravia, is just one hour from Kamptal, a top Austrian wine region. Vines are grown on outskirts of Podyji National Park, and the River Thaya running through helps keen grapes and wine fresh.
Aromatic on the nose, apple and mineral freshness on the palate.
No genetically produced grapes, this one made from clones, cuttings from something perfect. This is Pinor Noir from New Zealand made using famous Dijon 667 and 777 clones. Not crosses or hybrids but vines with exceptional qualities from Burgundy. Neither were influenced by the hand of man, nature created these mutations.
On the nose, black cherry, violet and savoury spice. On the palate plum and spice with silky tannins. Aged for 11 months in French oak. 14% alcohol barely detectable thanks to good acidity.
Just like Blade Runner, this a cult hit, but with Majestic customers, made by Bertis Fourie, known as Starbucks for managing to create coffee like aromas from SA’s signature grape. Created by combining Pinot Noir and Cinsault vines, another replicant. Chocolate and Cherry on the palate.
I've Seen Things You People Wouldn't Believe…
Nexus-6: Evidence Archive -
The Blade Runner Case Files - our movie trivia
🦄 Is Deckard a replicant? Ridley Scott's answer is essentially yes. Harrison Ford, however, long argued that Deckard should be human. Their disagreement over the character became one of the great debates in science-fiction cinema.
🐑 The film isn't called the same thing as the book. Blade Runner is loosely based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — a title that doesn't exactly roll off a cinema marquee.
📖 Philip K. Dick initially hated the screenplay. He reportedly dismissed an early Hampton Fancher script as essentially Philip Marlowe meeting The Stepford Wives. His attitude changed dramatically after seeing footage from the film.
😲 Dick was blown away by Ridley Scott's Los Angeles. After being shown around 20 minutes of effects footage before the film was finished, he said the opening cityscape was extraordinarily close to the world he'd imagined. Sadly, Dick died in March 1982 and never saw the completed film.
📅 The future was 2019. Blade Runner, released in 1982, is set in Los Angeles in November 2019. Flying cars weren't quite ready when we eventually got there.
💸 It wasn't originally a hit. Despite now being regarded as a landmark of science-fiction cinema, Blade Runner struggled commercially on its original release against a budget of roughly $28 million. Its reputation grew enormously through re-releases and home video.
👽 Its summer competition didn't help. Blade Runner opened in the US on 25 June 1982, just two weeks after E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Audiences apparently preferred their visitors from another world cute, friendly and fond of Reese's Pieces.
🎙️ The original version explained everything for you. The 1982 theatrical release featured Harrison Ford narrating Deckard's thoughts in classic film-noir style. The narration was later removed from the Director's Cut and Final Cut.
🌄 It originally had a happy ending too. Nervous about audience reactions, the producers added a more optimistic ending showing Deckard and Rachael escaping the city. Scott's later versions remove it, ending instead with the much more ambiguous origami unicorn.
✂️ There are seven recognised versions of Blade Runner. Workprint, theatrical and international versions were followed by various revised cuts. The 2007 Final Cut is the version over which Ridley Scott finally had full creative control.
🎬 Scott effectively lost control of his own movie. His initial version had run over budget and running time badly enough that producers could technically remove him and impose their own cut. It took decades before he finally got the version he wanted.
🦄 That unicorn changes everything. Deckard dreams about a unicorn; later Gaff leaves an origami unicorn outside Deckard's apartment. If Gaff knows about something apparently private inside Deckard's mind, perhaps Deckard's memories aren't private—or even his own.
🧠 Which mirrors Rachael's story. Rachael initially believes herself human because she possesses memories of a childhood. Deckard reveals that those memories actually belonged to Tyrell's niece and were implanted in her.
👁️ Eyes are everywhere. The film repeatedly uses eyes as a motif: the opening eye reflecting Los Angeles, the Voight-Kampff machine examining eyes, Chew manufacturing replicant eyes and Roy ultimately killing Tyrell through his eyes. They're a recurring visual shorthand for identity and perception.
🏢 Sebastian's building is real. The extraordinary building containing J.F. Sebastian's apartment is the Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles, completed in 1893. Blade Runner transformed an already remarkable piece of architecture into one of cinema's great sci-fi locations.
🏠 Deckard's home is another architectural celebrity. Elements of Deckard's apartment/building used Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House, whose distinctive Mayan-inspired textile blocks contribute enormously to the film's strange mixture of past and future.
🚗 Syd Mead wasn't originally supposed to design the whole world. The legendary futurist was brought aboard principally to design vehicles. Ridley Scott and production designer Lawrence G. Paull became so interested in the environments Mead drew around them that his influence expanded across the film's visual world.
💰 The sets alone were serious business. AFI records around $1.5 million being spent on set design — an enormous amount in the early 1980s — helping create that dense, grimy, lived-in future.
🌧️ Harrison Ford really wasn't enjoying all that rain. Much of the film involved arduous night shoots, often soaked in artificial rain. Ford later remembered the experience rather colourfully as working "every night, all night long, often in the rain."
⚡ The visual effects were overwhelmingly analogue. Miniatures, matte paintings, optical compositing, practical lighting and model photography created the city. Douglas Trumbull's effects team helped produce imagery that still looks astonishing decades later.
🎹 That extraordinary soundtrack is Vangelis. The Greek electronic composer wrote, arranged, performed and produced the score, combining futuristic synthesisers with jazz, blues and haunting ambient sounds.
🕊️ Roy Batty saves the man who's trying to kill him. Having spent the film being hunted by Deckard, Roy's final significant act is to save Deckard from falling to his death. The supposedly artificial human demonstrates compassion towards the human employed to kill him — one of the film's central reversals.
🔩 Roy drives a nail through his own hand. As his four-year lifespan reaches its end and his body begins shutting down, Roy uses pain and physical trauma to keep himself functioning for a few more precious moments. The imagery also gives his final scenes an unmistakable Christ-like quality.
📝 Rutger Hauer helped create the film's most famous moment. Hauer reshaped Roy's final speech, cutting down the scripted dialogue and adding the devastating final imagery about memories disappearing "like tears in rain." Scott allowed him to make the scene his own, and it became one of cinema's most celebrated death speeches.
🕯️ And Roy's death turns the entire film on its head. Deckard is supposedly the human; Roy is supposedly the artificial killing machine. Yet by the end Roy grieves, loves, fears death, values his memories, shows mercy and saves another life. Blade Runner ultimately leaves us asking not simply "Is Deckard a replicant?" but the much more interesting question: what actually makes somebody human?
🕊️ Roy Batty monologue. The idea for Roy Batty to release a dove after he dies was Rutger Hauer's. The dove was supposed to release itself and fly away just after Batty's death. However, while filming the scene, the large amount of water used for the rain soaked the dove, rendering it unable to fly. Instead, it simply hopped out of Batty's hand and walked away.
Thank you once again for joining us this evening
Detective Tony Deckard, Blade Runner, LAPD
and the Wine Events Crew
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