Arjowiggins Creative Papers presents international creative ambassadors in conversation with The Blank Sheet Project

The Blank Sheet Project visits Hollywood to interview acting giant Rutger Hauer for the fourth in a series of international super-creative features. Arjowiggins Creative Papers’ inspiration platform, www.TheBlankSheetProject.com, explores the creative passion that has driven a successful career spanning four decades and more than 120 movies. The two-part video profile is timely, as Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” the film that launched Hauer’s career, celebrates its 30th birthday.

A video link to the interview can be found here.

Most creatives will recognize their own motivations in Hauer’s. He tells D&AD‘s Tim O’Kennedy that there is an irresistible force in the creative process that has ultimately become a part of his DNA:

“The bit that fascinates me is about energy. A script has an energy, you have an energy, there’s an energy in the room. If you feel your way where the energy wants to go and follow it, it takes you somewhere you wouldn’t even think of going. All these energies, when they come together, are very contagious and drive you forward.”
It compares with the design moment when the brief, the art direction and all the different design elements come together to create something more than their individual parts.

Hauer describes “Blade Runner” as his “first true dance,” and marks the “shock” of a moment when the natural conservatism that his Dutch heritage taught became an irrelevance. For him, “Blade Runner” was “the most extreme and ultimate experience, with everything falling into place, every moment, and me dancing through the movie and the mind of Ridley [Scott] without any effort and with a really strong connection.”

For Hauer the process of imagination and invention is evolutionary. The creative process of architect Frank Gehry inspired him. In Sydney Pollack’s television documentary, “The Sketches of Frank Gehry” (2005), the architect starts with a scrunched piece of paper, which he throws away, then revisits again and again.

Like Gehry, Hauer relishes the process of taking a blank sheet, choosing to “crumple it,” “discard it” and come back to it, day after day with a new perspective. In this way, he believes that there will be an outcome that transcends the individual elements in the creative process. “Everything in the frame tells something,” Hauer says. “And everything the actor does tells something, but the movie is what you can’t see. That’s the part that I like…You want to pull [the audience’s] brains out, help them complete the story, interact with them.”

Hauer’s feature with The Blank Sheet Project follows Renzo Rosso, founder of Diesel; Sir John Hegarty, chairman of advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty; and Neville Brody, graphic designer and dean of communications at the Royal College of Art. Together, their interviews provide a record to inspire the next generation of creatives.

Jonathan Mitchell, managing director of Arjowiggins Creative Papers says: “Rutger Hauer elucidates how creative thinking transcends the boundaries of specific disciplines. His insights are as relevant to actors and film directors as they are to graphic designers, photographers and artists that populate The Blank Sheet Project. As we take this initiative into different realms, we begin to appreciate how important, how powerful the cross fertilization of ideas really is.”

Appleton Coated amplifies The Blank Sheet Project’s message as the exclusive North American distributor for The Curious Collection of fine papers and Conqueror premium identity paper brand, both manufactured by Arjowiggins.

Click here to read and download a copy of the entire news release.

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