WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Time to Die: Blade Runner star Rutger Hauer dies at 75
byVanderleunonJuly 24, 2019
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears…in…rain. Time to die.”
We give an of course nod to the satisfying power of your testimonial to those you love and have loved, Gerard, those who have not died . . . period, but who have died . . . comma, and who await your eventual arrival in their midst, above and beyond. Thank you for sharing them with us.
Donald SensingJuly 25, 2019, 7:54 AM
I have read elsewhere that Hauer ad-libbed those lines at that moment; they were not in the screenplay.
That said, I think an equally compelling role of his was as the Soviet Army officer Alexander ‘Sasha’ Pechersky in Escape From Sobibor, the true story of the only Nazi concentration/death camp to have a mass escape. The Youtube trailer is here.
I was always impressed that at the very end, with the clock rapidly winding down to zero but time and strength enough still left, Hauer’s character could still easily have taken Deckard with him, but let him live. A fine piece of writing indeed.
SpudnikJuly 27, 2019, 8:30 AM
One of the greatest scenes ever filmed. In one of the greatest movies.
Our SciFi fan club (NESFA) all went to see that film together. When Rutger finished those lines, my wife wept.
Christopher L HuntJuly 28, 2019, 8:57 AM
My brother was in the film Past Midnight with Rutger Hauer. During filming at night, in the Northwest, my brother had to lie on the hood of a car in the background of the scene. There were so many takes that he started to shiver uncontrollably. Rutger Hauer gave him his wetsuit to wear under his costume.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
NEW Real World Address for Complaints, Brickbats, and Donations
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
Gerard Van der Leun
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
Comments on this entry are closed.
Sad day.
I’ll see your Blade Runner, and raise you one: The Mill and the Cross.
https://youtu.be/8EyqGK2blDw
May he rest in peace.
Rest in Peace.
The irony is that those words, and that performance will live on like a diamond glittering in the sun.
We give an of course nod to the satisfying power of your testimonial to those you love and have loved, Gerard, those who have not died . . . period, but who have died . . . comma, and who await your eventual arrival in their midst, above and beyond. Thank you for sharing them with us.
I have read elsewhere that Hauer ad-libbed those lines at that moment; they were not in the screenplay.
OK, here is how Hauer changed his closing lines.
That said, I think an equally compelling role of his was as the Soviet Army officer Alexander ‘Sasha’ Pechersky in Escape From Sobibor, the true story of the only Nazi concentration/death camp to have a mass escape. The Youtube trailer is here.
The movie is on Amazon Prime, but is also online at Daily Motion in excellent quality.
I was always impressed that at the very end, with the clock rapidly winding down to zero but time and strength enough still left, Hauer’s character could still easily have taken Deckard with him, but let him live. A fine piece of writing indeed.
One of the greatest scenes ever filmed. In one of the greatest movies.
Our SciFi fan club (NESFA) all went to see that film together. When Rutger finished those lines, my wife wept.
My brother was in the film Past Midnight with Rutger Hauer. During filming at night, in the Northwest, my brother had to lie on the hood of a car in the background of the scene. There were so many takes that he started to shiver uncontrollably. Rutger Hauer gave him his wetsuit to wear under his costume.