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A Scanner Darkly Film Preview
Jason K writes "Hi, webmaster of PhilipKDick.com here. Thought that the Slashdot community might like to see this exclusive report that was just added to the official Philip K. Dick web site by his daughters about the 'A Scanner Darkly' film production. The film production of A Scanner Darkly is based on the classic PKD drug novel of the same name. It is directed by Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, School of Rock) and stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson. Linklater is using a more sophisticated version of the 'rotoscoping' animation technique that he debuted in 'Waking Life'. This is shaping up to be the most faithful adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel or story to date." Waking Life was a little odd.
I hope this will be a good movie because we still have to forget he even did Matrix 2 and 3...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
A drug novel adaptation... staring Keanu Reaves... directed by the same man who did Dazed and Confused...
Am I the only who thinks that this is overkill for the desired effect?
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Yes "Waking Life" was a little odd- but so is the novel "A scanner darkly". I really hope this movie will NOT look like the Matrix but instead a little weirder. I think i can count on Linklater in this regard.
as the burnout in the rehab camp, so Woody must play the agent in the earlier scenes, and they use some some computer effects to make them look alike.
and stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson.
This is going to be the most untintelligible movie ever. No doubt. No question. Nobody's going to know what the hell is going on in the movie, especially not the cast.
Robert, I hope you don't take another stab at rehab. You'll just get disgruntled...
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
I actually became more impressed with Blade Runner after reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - because as much as I liked the latter, it's not terribly filmable as written. Roger Ebert's said a number of times that all a movies adapted from a book owes is to be a good movie; whether or not it's line-for-line identical is irrelevant.
"Why can't everyone just be straight with me?"
"Because we live in a bendy world, dear."
In that it was thoughtful and interesting and totally willing to have scenes as simple as an interesting person saying interesting things. Hardly the typical crapfest that slashdotters seem all too willing to gush over.
The next advertising system.
/. community and quite frankly, it's beginning to become insulting.
Haven't we figured it out, yet? Posting ads to slashdot, under the quise of "News for people with big brains," has got to stop. They're pandering to the
Once a software developer stood in slashdot all day picking bugs out of his code.
I suspect that this will be more like Burroughs Naked Lunch than like any Animatrix feature.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
How can this not be good?
The huge movie, UBIK, is coming out next weekend. Hello? Directed by Sam Raimi? Starring Tobey Maguire? And what about the epic trilogy finale coming out next year directed by George Lucas? As the final in the VALIS trilogy, I just hope Lucas doesn't screw it up with all his digital effects. The last two have been amazing, but I'm not sure how PKD would've taken to all the effects Lucas is throwing in there.
It all started when Steven Spielberg launched his own career by filming The Man in the High Castle back in the early 80s. Of course, Ridley's Scott *strict* adherence to PKD's book for the movie, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep helped make PKD the ideal movie source.
PKD is so respected that no one in the film industry would even dare making a subpar movie. Haha - imagine if John Woo got a hold of one of his stories! Geez! I mean, we're running OUT of PKD stuff to make movies out of! You have to be bigtime to be able to film what's left of the "modern kafka" that hasn't already been filmed! Are you guys cra..
Oh, wait. Wait a minute. IMDB only shows a few crappy renditions of PKD movies! WTF!?! WTF is "BLADE RUNNER"?!?? What the hell kind of parallel universe am I in that doesn't make brilliant movies out of PKD writings!!?! And who are these men - CmdrTaco!?! Arresting me for saying too much!? Slashdot controls everything? I don't understand!?.////don't listen to the...
Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson
They actually agreed to be in a movie about drugs together? Hollywood never ceases to make me laugh. Hopefully this won't be as bad as a Tom Cruise movie.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
Waking Life (the five minutes of it I could tolerate) didn't seem to have animation any more inovative than the Lord of the Rings cartoon which had tons of action and non-rigid character movement. Sure computers make it easier, but better?
Can someone give us a concise background?
Nice post. Had to read it 4 or 5 times to pick it all up.
I'm changing my sig...
A Scanner Darkly is an incredibly sad tale about drug addiction, but it is a fictional drug. Think Requiem for a Dream, but a little more subtle.
This is most likely going to be a great movie, but it will be hard to rationalize going to see such a film. The book was hard enough (emotionally) to handle. After all, I could only see Requiem for a Dream once, and that had me really low for a couple days.
Anyway, after the talk, I asked him about releasing it open source. He wasn't against it, but he wasn't interested in it, either. He mentioned that the open source development method 'worked somehow', but he just wasn't interested in becoming a project manager.
Now I see on the website they are planning some kind of release in June 2k6. Interesting!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Blade Runner (1982) based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" - A rather decent movie with not much to do with the book.
Total Recall (1990) based on "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" - A fun movie vaguely based on the short story.
Drug-Taking and the Arts (1994) based on "A Scanner Darkly" - Alas I've not seen.
Screamers (1995) based on "Second Variety" - An enjoyable movie but nothing special.
Impostor (2002) based on short story of the same name (at last). Okay, enjoyable and starting to get near to the fiction...
Minority Report (2002) - Again, enjoyable but deviating from the book in several critical respects.
Paycheck (2003) - My favourite short story ruined by the "joe scientist" suddenly being some sort of stick wielding stunt biker.
When are Hollywood going to realise the appeal of PKD is that these are ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances?
Instead we keep getting movies aimed a dumb audience with a simple plot and an action hero.
Sigh.
[)amien
Think that is a good thing? The Minority Report and Total Recall books were ridiculously antiquated and would have made terrible movies if they hadn't been changed. In Minority Report punch cards were a major plot point.
A Scanner Darkly was the first PKD book I ever read.
It's great to hear that this is going to be adapted to film, I thought the premis was so engaging (being sent to spy on ones self) and being from Orange County originally, it held a certain personal sentiment as well.
It is rather sad though that it was not until after PKD's death that his work has such mainstream appeal and revenue associated.
But that is typically the case of the eccentric genius who lies a bit ahead of the curve (Van Gogh, Tesla et al)
Obviously the budget for the movie wasn't too large based on the selection of actors...
I am a big fan of PKD I just hope that they do a good job of bringing it to the big screen without turning people away from his writings.
...as long as Linklater doesn't cast his favorite moon-faced hack of an "actor", Wiley Wiggins in the film.
for getting modded up on /. inspite of calling the LOTR a cartoon, which it definitely is.
is almost exactly how i pictured Barris.
i usually like winona ryder (don't ask me why) but i don't see her as donna... maybe courtney love would have been better, cause she can look like a drug fuckup. all the time, heh.
keanu... hmmm....
"if i'd known it was harmless, i'd have killed it myself"
And that travesty of one of the canons of science fiction, "I, Robot," does not count! Heh.
What about "Foundation," or the Dragonrider series, "Rama," Larry Niven, or Phillip Jose Farmer? So much rich variety is being ignored.
Fear and Loathing in Keanu and Woody's Excellant Adventure.
The Matrix trilogy would've been much better had Brandon Lee not died and he was cast as Neo.
welcome our philip k. dick overlords.
i really do. though one can only read his storys in short bursts... for to take on the collection would drive anyone into madness.
for a minute there, i lost myself...
Rama Kandra "You believe in karma ?" is insane
/.
/.
There's no rule that everyone should believe in karma and keep whoring on
Down with karma and
The m4tr1x has you
(Karma be damned; I am no better than an AC anyway)
I ended up buying two copies of Richard Linklater's film "Waking Life" (one also for my step-son David). An awesome movie - I could not tell you how many times I that watched it.
-Mark
in other worlds, people actually read books.
for a minute there, i lost myself...
Can anyone give a quick synopsis of the book? It's not one I'm familiar with.
maybe courtney love is a little extreme, heh. i just hope keanu doesn't do his "walking around spaced out like" acting that he seems to usually fall into.
he was pretty good in that film with cate blanchet though... what was that called...
"if i'd known it was harmless, i'd have killed it myself"
Particularly Minority Report. His short short was so much better at covering the issues of knowing the future, which the movie did not even try to show.
But I guess that's what happens when Hollywood rapes the work of a really great writer.
Has there EVER been a good movie made from a brilliant Dick novel? I don't think so. More fond memories of literature destroyed by greed.
it still amazes me that you can type with your head rammed so far up your asshole.
_Barefoot in the Head_ by Brian Aldiss. That
would make a good related movie.
- The picture is being co-financed by Warner Independent, a new division of WB devoted to serious films with modest budgets.
Warner Independent? Isn't that a bit like Kraft Foods creating a new division called Mom & Pop?I have nothing against a studio deciding to do "serious films with modest budgets", but this blatant abuse of the word independent is moronic and, of course, deceiving.
Can the rumor be true that _no one_ in Hollywood truly gets Dick?
I wasn't familiar with all of PKD's work when I first read A Scanner Darkly (think I'd only read MITHC, Do Androids...) and was frankly amazed by it. It's what led me to the rest of his books. Dick was intimately familiar with drugs and refused to romanticize them. Somewhat oddly, his lacerating rationality gives ASD a large emotional heft. I doubt Partnership for a Drug-Free America will ever approve of it, but it's still a great anti-drug book (even if, like me, you believe drug use is not a "moral" issue).
I really, really hope that Philip Dick's family and the producers give this project the respect it deserves (the article suggests they might). This novel is in some ways very different from the rest of his work. For all the signature Dick themes present (layered realities, oppressive/unassailable authoritarian regime, pitch-black humor) this also reads as a painful, personal memoir. In his poignant but clear-eyed afterword, he lists friends who died or were otherwise affected by drug use. Dick himself called A Scanner Darkly his "masterpiece." It deserves more consideration than other movie translations of his novels have offered.
Anyway, there are some scenes that are more beautifully rendered than others, but there are certainly moments of this movie that are so stunningly beautiful that you could literally print an enlargement and hang it on the wall at the MOMA without blushing. That carries the film through the difficult, immature pedagogy.
Also, be sure to remember what Richard Linklater said in the post-screening Q&A session at the NYFF: "This movie is much better on pot brownies."
I just got done reading Kerberos, the Definitive Guide by Jason Garman. It's a compelling look behind the scenes of this fascinating protocol. Definitely a nail biter.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather see what the writer of Adaptation does with the material.
people take drugs, weird shit happens, nothing gets resolved.
Barjo is a French film based on Confessions of a Crap Artist.
Man Facing Southeast is Argentinian. It's not PKD, but is very PKD-esque. It was remade as K-PAX although the "authors" of the re-make claim it is a coincidental original.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
Getting Keanu Reeves to play Arctor does not bode well. I mean, in the novel Arctor goes through a whole range of emotions, degrading from a fairly normal human being to, basically, a plant in the end. Reeves will only be able to play the last stage.
The only good Dickian movie I have ever seen is "Gattaca", and that one isn't even based on his work. O, and perhaps "The Truman Show" too, which doesn't give Dick credit but is obviously based on "Time out of Joint" (and perhaps has a bit too happy an ending to be really called Dickian).
Can you imagine "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" faithfully converted to a movie? I was so looking forward to seeing the concept of Mercer and Deckard's final transformation on the screen (without special FX, please), that at first viewing I thought "Blade Runner" sucked. It does not, actually, but the movie has almost nothing to do with the book.
Why is it so fucking hard for people to understand that the protagonist of PKD stories is just some working class stiff who's trying to get from one day to the next. I actually think Arnold did a half-decent job of portraying that, despite his grotesque physical appearance. Based on his performance in the Fifth Element, Bruce Willis is also a worthy PKD "hero". Personally, I would cast Ed O'Neill or William Macy or Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the lead in a PKD story. FUCK KEANU! That asshole deserves multiple lifetimes of punishment for sucking even more life out of big budget Hollywood.
Anyone remember that David Cronenberg was one of the 'interim' directors attatched to this movie? He left after a dispute about creative conrtol, or some such. He wanted to do a much more faithful adaptaion with Peter Weller as Qauil (Arnie made them change it to Quaid later).
I'm pretty sure this in in the special features on the Special Edition Dvd.
Steven Soderburgh and George Clooney's company Section 8 were looking at doing this awhile back. My friends at Rustmonkey did an awesome pitch trailer to try and get the gig.
You can check it out here: Scanner Pitch I haven't seen Waking Life, so I can't comment on the rotoshop technique, but the Rustmonkey pitch was extremely cool.
What were you expecting?
White text on a lilac background? I gave up trying to read the damned thing because it was giving me eyestrain! What were they thinking?
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Waking Life wasn't so odd. I think the phrase you want is obnoxiously trite.
jack's bicycle is music to my ears
As for punchcards being left out--it didn't seem to bother them that the precog results were delivered on balls through pneumatic tubing...LOL.
...appears to be a typical fansite.
Ever seen "Much Ado About Nothing"? I've seen cat hairball act more villainous o.0
"I drank what?" -Socrates
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -Mark Twain
If this movie does well, I hope the PKD estate allows someone to do The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
That book was quite the head-trip, and with the right director would make an awesome film.
RPM
Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair. The doctor told him there were no bugs in his hair. After he had taken a shower for eight hours, standing under hot water hour after hour suffering the pain of the bugs, he got out and dried himself, and he still had bugs in his hair; in fact, he had bugs all over him. A month later he had bugs in his lungs.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Big studios have small divsions that are able to do what they like for the most part. Pulp Fiction was a Miramax flick. Miramax belongs to Disney and do you think Disney would put their name and money into a movie by Tarintino?
At the high level, yeah, it's not that independant. But I would bet that no one in the WB management is allowed to have any amount of control over what WB Independant does. If they fuck up and lose millions of dollars they all will be fired but at least some VP can't come down and make script changes.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Personally, I thought it was a fine trilogy, even if 2 and 3 could probably have been combined into 1 fine 3-4 hour single movie. Much better than the Star Wars wreck of episodes I-III. (And III's not even come out yet, but when it does, it'll suck worse than the first two from all accounts). If you were expecting as great a revelation in 2/3 as in 1, that just wasn't a real expectation. The really cool thing in my mind was that the entire thing was staged as part of a "war" between 2 powerful AI entities.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"You said 'Mr. Dick'."
--
What would Bill Clinton do?
Not to mention Waking Life has one of the coolest soundtracks ever. Good tunes and creative orchestrations. I mean, string quintet plus accordion :-) . No, really, the music works.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
When are we going to get a movie adaptation of UBIK that is actually faithful? Whoever makes it better keep the original ending intact, it just isn't the same without that twist.
You, sir, a real dickhead! And I mean that in the good way.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
This was on AICN at least a week ago. Let's stay on top of things, guys.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Don't worry if you're "deep enough". You're no doubt of above average intelligence, despite this being /. and all. Please excuse the folowing dissertation.
Probably, it's just that Dick doesn't float your boat. If we all liked tha same thing, what a boring world we'd have.
But I think you've hit on one of Dick's ironies. That people need a box to experience empathy. Remind you of anything?
Anyway, it's not so simple, where one can clear things up by saying whether Dick favored or disapproved Mercerism. In fact, this ambiguity is a major part of the book at the end. Is Mercerism a hoax? Or is it true, i.e., is there an underlying truth to Mercerism that will never be perceivable by the androids?
The love of animals is a central tenet of Mercerism. Yet, as happens in all religions, the expression becomes perverted. Animal ownership becomes a signifier of status, prestige, and even corporate power.
Also, I think that Dick was saying that the values behind Mercerism are central to being human, not whether or not it would be good for humanity.
Anyway, I think that Dick just isn't your cup of tea. Maybe you haven't really suffered, or maybe you've suffered, but haven't suffered enough. If this is the case, I hope you never have to, but if it happens, there are authors like PKD that are great to turn to.
PKD is definitely for the wounded and those that have been crushed. Most of his characters are damaged and flawed, and perhaps they are hard to like if you're not damaged and flawed. Mercer knows I'm plenty of both. I should start a blog or something. =)
Not all his novels are this deep, however. Some of his others, while dealing with interesting issues, are lighter and more fun.
Anyway, sorry if I was a dickhead, but, after all, I am a Dickhead.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Pardon! I've never seen it, but now that you reminded me . . .oh yeah. =)
You probably already know that Dick was huge in France before he really became popular in the U.S. I think this was because the French, especially the French intelectuals, really enjoyed the thrust of Dick. Well, whatever the reason, those French just really love Dick.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
It's a shame this means Charlie Kaufman's A Scanner Darkly script won't ever be turned into a film now, as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were all great. Hopefully this will be good in its own right though.
The doctor would never tell him "there are no bugs in your code", because there is always one more bug.
... I read this book six months ago and thought to myself "Damn, this would make a great movie". :) to make a good screenplay.
PKD writes books that are easily adapted to film; the dialogue is of amazing quality, and the storyline is often short and sufficiently non-convoluted (well, except in the psychedelic sense
Yet, that special sort of mood that are in PKD novels never really get through on the screen; all that's left is the sci-fi backstory.
Read the book and stay away from substance D:
FRECK: "Why do you say it's ten speeds when it's only got seven gears?"
BARRIS: "What?"
FRECK: "Look, five gears here, two gears here at the other end of the chain. Five and two..."
Well, hell, I'm just psyched they didn't give it a assinine hollywood name (like "Rob and Keanu's totally excellent drug adventure") and stuck with the grammatically challenged "A SCANNER DARKLY".
Phew.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Not becouse i wouldn't like to see a movie made of PK dicks best novel but now with a movie all my lame ass freinds will read the book....They wouldn't read it becouse for years i have been telling them "READ THIS BOOK. IT ROCKS". Now they will think they are all hip and shit for reading a book adopted to screen by the "slacker" director when in fact they are lame becouse dispite years of my nagging it took a hollywood movie for them to read the god damn thing.
I should get less lame friends.
stendec@gmail.com
waking life was a serious (and fun) mindfuck. nobody i know who has seen it thought it 'a little' anything. maybe i hang out with too many . everyone i saw it with had a _different_ favourite part, which seems a rare thing in filmmaking.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
As I recently wrote, SF movies are 30 years behind SF literature. Hollywood has barely been able to capture the feel of cyberpunk. I doubt that Hollywood could even start to do pre/post Singularity science fiction (which all of the above writers excel in).
I can only assume that was some kind of joke.
Also, if I was a real 'movie star' I wouldn't be working tech support right now.
Simmer down, gang.
Everybody is over-dramatic when they first become aware of the veils.
There was a time when you also cried, "I am not a Number!" and really, really meant it. (Come on. You know it's true!)
Ahhh. Childhood.
It only seems pretentious when people wake up during university because their psych/philosophy course told them to do so. (Within the pre-determined safe and acceptable boundaries, of course!)
In any case, I found it hard to follow, 'Waking Life'. I think if you're going to make that kind of film, it should be appealling to the viewer, make a lot of sense, and leave you both changed and thinking. 'Northern Exposure,' did a much better job in communicating those sorts of ideas. As did the first 'Matrix' film, in a pop-star kind of way. Heck, Yoda did a better job, (in 'Empire', anyhow.) 'Waking Life' just confused and annoyed me, and half the time had me wanting to argue with the screen because I thought numerous of the ideas it was presenting were actually broken.
I liked the guy with the ukulele, though.
I'd like to see Carlos Castaneda brought to the screen. Or Hermann Hesse. Now there's a couple of projects which won't ever happen!
Phillip K. Dick just strikes me as weird and clever without any real purpose.
-FL
all the way up to here:
"and stars Keanu Reeves, "
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Be excellent to each other... and party on dudes!
...would you like a couch to lie on?
Seriously though, and at the risk of sounding like a pretentious Gen X hipster, you should rewatch B+T, because if you think it's a bad movie then I would suggest you aren't getting it.
I would say it's Keanu Reeves' finest hour (not that that's saying much).
For example:
Ted: Our first speaker was born in the year 470 BC, a time when much of the world looked like the cover of the Led Zepplin album Houses of the Holy.
or
Cop: I want to know why you claim to be Sigmund Freud.
Freud: Why do you claim I'm not Sigmund Freud?
Cop [frustrated]: Why do you keep asking me these questions?
Freud: (pause) Tell me about your mother. (the cop gets up in disgust)
Cop [angry]: No, I don't want a couch to lie on!
Read Pynchon.
Dick's books aren't really science fiction. At least, they're not really about science. They're about being fucked up on drugs, or by mental illness. They're about paranoia, altered consciousness and the nature of reality. That they're often set in the future, or have robots, is almost incidental.
I'll be going to see it, however bad it mnight end up being, just because it gives me a chance to sit in the dark and look at Winona for an hour or two. I really should have grown out of that by now...