Letters of Note: “Blade Runner Will Prove Invincible”

Today I came across a fascinating new blog, and clicking through its archive distracted me from work I should have been attending to. So, in honour of its ability to divert my course without making me feel like I was wasting my time, I thought I’d give a shout out to the excellent Letters of Note, which reproduces scans of interesting, controversial or otherwise important correspondence from the last few centuries. It’s not a film blog, but there are several entries relating to movies, including the letter from Morgan Creek Productions warning a partied-out Lindsay Lohan to sort herself out, Quentin Tarantino’s handwritten letter (on upside down hotel paper) of congratulations to Brillante Mendoza on his Best Director victory at Cannes for Kinatay, Mario Puzo’s scribble to Marlon Brando asking him to be in The Godfather, and this touching letter to a fan from Stan Laurel a year after the death of Mr Hardy:

It’s well worth browsing through the site’s archives, which will be supplemented with a new entry most days. You can see transcripts of the full texts in case they’re tricky to read in places, but I’ll leave you with this letter from author Phillip K. DickBlade Runner (adapted from Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) to one of its producers. Dick would die less than 6 months after writing this letter, so the final comment, as well as being what every film-maker would like to hear from a writer, is a poignant one: expressing his approval of

I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and completed by BLADE RUNNER. Thank you..and it is going to be one hell of a commercial success. It will prove invincible.