At the Santa Fe International Film Festival, where he received a lifetime achievement award, Edward James Olmos revealed his belief that he played the only true Blade Runner in Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic.
The actor, best known for Blade Runner, Stand and Deliver (1988), and American Me (1992), said he only accepts roles that allow him to shape his characters. Using Blade Runner as an example, Olmos explained how he influenced the creation of Gaff — a mysterious LAPD investigator who guides Harrison Ford’s Deckard in hunting replicants, genetically engineered beings who often believe they’re human.
Olmos developed Gaff’s signature traits himself: his mixed-language “Cityspeak” dialogue, crafted through Berlitz lessons, and his symbolic origami figures that reflect Deckard’s thoughts.
The film’s multiple versions have fueled debate over whether Deckard is human or replicant. For Olmos and director Ridley Scott, one moment stands as proof the origami unicorn Gaff leaves behind.
“That’s how we found out that Decker was a damn replicant — and I’m the only Blade Runner in the movie!” Olmos said, noting that a replicant hunting others can’t be a true Blade Runner. By his reasoning, Gaff, a confirmed human, is the only real one.
Scott reinforced this theory in the 1992 Director’s Cut, which added a unicorn dream sequence suggesting Deckard’s memories were implanted something Gaff could know only if Deckard were a replicant.
Ford and Scott famously disagreed for years about Deckard’s nature, but Ford eventually conceded in a 2013 Esquire interview: “I always knew that I was a replicant. I just wanted to push back against it, though. I think a replicant would want to believe they’re human. At least this one did.”
Olmos also revealed that he contributed one of the film’s most famous lines. “I created my own dialogue,” he said, referring to, “You know that line, ‘Too bad she won’t live, but then again who does?’ At the very end?” He recalled hoping Scott wouldn’t cut the line — “and he used it.”
The origin of that line remains debated. The July 1980 script draft by Hampton Fancher doesn’t include it, while the February 1981 rewrite by David Peoples has Gaff say, “It’s too bad, she don’t last, eh! … But who does.” Actor M. Emmet Walsh later noted in Future Noir that the line “got changed during production.”
However it evolved, Olmos’ version became iconic — a fitting close to the film’s mystery.
Olmos also revisited the franchise in Blade Runner 2049, appearing alongside Ryan Gosling’s K in a care facility scene where he presents an origami sheep. “They used me perfectly in that movie,” he said. “I’m a nurse. I take care of the elderly, and I make these little organic pieces… it’s a little sheep lamb being led to the slaughter.”
That origami sheep connects symbolically to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the inspiration for Blade Runner.
As for how the movie got its title, author Paul M. Sammon explained in Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner that Scott asked screenwriter Hampton Fancher for a new name for Deckard’s profession. Fancher found William S. Burroughs’ little-known book Blade Runner: (a movie) and bought the title rights — though the story itself was unrelated.
Source: Movie Maker