I personally feel that the bizarre, the odd, the eerie should be played up, the pataphysical quiddities of this world in which they live. One finds this, for example, of the whole element about fake live animals, and the new animal dealers who have replaced the new car dealers of our own time. The strange, the dreamlike (as in the time-lapse and space-lapse camerawork in The Graduate). It is a sort of pretend world. . . up to a point. And then the murders of the androids begin, and suddenly it is all real, all for keeps, and very much grim and unfunny.
One additional oddity: the fact that there are two Rachaels, the one whom Rick meets, and then the one Isidore meets. These are the same android, and some kind of imaginative camerawork — superimpositions or few-frame blinks back and forth between the two androids — is much needed, and could be a major attraction of the film. What must be made clear to the audience, however, [is] that these two Rachaels, each with its human colleague, are functioning at the same time; these are not a flashback but a simultaneous double life. For example, the android talking to Rick Deckard could say a phrase, and then when we pick the other Rachael up with Isidore, she could repeat the exact words — an audiotrack superimposition, with the voice echoing itself as in a sort of electronic echo chamber, much improved on our own. I think that (1) it is going to be hard to get across the desired effect, but (2) it will be worth the effort. The small plot-element of the Other Police Station could be eliminated entirely.
I am not sure that the Mood Organ material should, as in the novel, begin the piece. Perhaps instead we could have Jack Isidore driving his electric-animal-repair truck setting out at dawn. Technically, I think there should be a weapon, used in particular by the bounty hunters, that isn’t merely another laser tube, such as one sees in Star Trek and The Invaders. Here again, something of imagination rather than cliche is needed. This includes the sound made by the weapon; it must be new and unusual, too. A sound, for example, that a champagne bottle makes when it pops its cork.
It seems to me that one strong point of the novel is the fact that it provides space for many moods and tones: There is the dramatic search and destruction of the androids, the tenderness felt toward live animals, the weird, deserted apartment building in which Jack Isidore lives — opportunities for humor, the peculiar, the very frightening, and, of course, the awe felt when Mercer is encountered. We can have a many-sided film. . . or, I would think, some of the moods (and plot, etc.) can be eliminated entirely, however important they are to the novel. . . and then remaining elements, such as Isidore and the Mercer theme, can be retained and built up more. But I do think that both the search and destroy androids theme must be retained (because of its connection — contrast — to Isidore’s view), and because it all throughout the novel adds the quality of violence, of the chase. . . although, in regarding this, I wonder if the empathy test that Deckard gives prospective androids is adequate in the visual medium. Perhaps an entirely new type of test should be made up for this, or perhaps no test that is a question-and-answer test, but perhaps a measuring of brain-wave rhythms. This, too, is a vital area to be there with imagination, as with the kind of weapons used.
There could be room for more sex. E.g. Rick Deckard making love to Rachael and then dissolve to Isidore, trying same on his Rachael android, and fouling it all up, a la Peter Sellers. The possibilities here are enormous. . . to cite one reason, there is the exact duplication of sentences uttered by the two identical androids. Sentences to which Rick Deckard gives one kind of reply. Jack Isidore another. The Isidore romance could be a chilling travesty of the successful Rick Deckard makeout with the girl.
And this brings up the whole underlying subject: sexual relations between humans and androids. What is it like? What does it mean? Is it, for instance, like going to bed with a real woman? Or is it an awful, nighmarish, bad trip, where what is dead and inert seems alive and warm and capable of the most acute intimacy known to living creatures? Isn’t this, this sexual union between Rick Deckard and Rachael Rosen — isn’t it the summa of falsity and mechanical motions carried out minus any real feeling, as we understand the word? Feeling on each of their parts. Does in fact her mental — and physical — coldness numb the male, the human man, into an echo of it?
In the novel it is treated on page 165 [of the 1968 Doubleday first edition] in its most acute form, when, as Rachael and Rick prepare to go to bed, Rachael says to him, “Androids can’t bear children. . . is that a loss? I really don’t know; I have no way to tell. How does it feel to have a child? How does it feel to be born, for that matter? We’re not born; we don’t grow up; instead of dying from illness or old age, we wear out like ants. Ants again; that’s what we are. . . chitinous reflex machines who aren’t really alive. I’m not really alive! You’re not going to bed with a woman.
And then a bit later Rachael says,
“I understand — they tell me — it’s convincing if you don’t think too much about it. But if you think too much, if you reflect on what you’re doing — then you can’t go on. For, ahem, physiological reasons.”
Rick then bends and kisses her bare shoulder.
Now, this is about the extent of this subject as handled in the novel, but there are more possibilities, which might come out vividly in a film version. For example (to name the first that comes to my mind): Is this a way he can cheat vis-a-vis his wife Iran — in other words, is it all right to sleep with an android? It doesn’t count, etc. In any case, the key question comes up on page 168, where Rachael asks, “Would you ever go to bed with an android again?” His answer to this is gracious, very politic, and yet somehow evasive. “If it was a girl,” Rick says. “If she resembled you.” But Rachael has already made the point that she is not a person; she is a type, a subform of androids in general. His relationship, by having intercourse with her, has melded him to — not an individual, human or android — but to a whole type or model, of which, theoretically, there could be tens of thousands. To whom, then, has he really given his erotic libido to? An army of rachael rosens, a horde of them, all identical? This undermines the meaning of love — at least sexual, erotic love — because the basic parity is undermined, one man for one woman (or at least one at a time). But he has, in effect, made love to them all!
Here, I think, the crucial questions of What is reality? and What is illusion? come up strongly. The whole sexual scene with Rachael (and, if used, the one between Isidore and Pris) could be dreamlike, but not in the usual sense, not the wishful, daydreaming contemplations of infinite women, infinite prowess, and so forth. This could be — not a vague dream — but a horrifyingly mechanical episode of half dream, half reality, with Rachael melting superficially — but by doing so, exposing a steel-and-solid-state electronic gear beneath. The more Rick strives to force her to become a woman — or, more accurately, to play the role of a woman — the more he encounters the core of unlife within her. In subtle ways (certainly not in gross ways) it should be shown that his attempt to make love to her as a woman for him is defeated by the tireless core of her electronic being. I don’t mean that he opens a door in her chest, thus swinging her right breast away and exposing a maze of sensationally advanced selenoids and servo-assists and transistors. This is not the discovery he — and the audience — is making; this is already known. What is shown is just how far both the android woman and the human male can manage to force back the artificial and mechanical and smother it in their mutual yearnings. They are both pretending. . . but a good deal of ordinary, today and now sex is handled this way; during sex the faculty of judgment in many ways is suspended, by both partners. The question here is: How far can this go? Will that which both of them desire be successfully maintained, or will it, because of her makeup, recede farther and farther the deeper he goes — much to the bitter disappointment of both of them?