Slashdot Mirror
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.
Yes, and yes : I mean, I liked these.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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
indeed quite possibly...
b _dp_pt/104-7187177-8661569#reader-page
America in the near future has lost the war against drugs. Though the government tries to protect the upper class, the system is infested with undercover cops like Fred, who regularly ingests the popular Substance D as part of his ruse. The drug has caused Fred to develop a split personality, of which he is not aware; his alter ego is Bob, a drug dealer. Fred's superiors then set up a hidden holographic camera in his home as part of a sting operation against Bob. Though he appears on camera as Bob, none of Fred's co-workers catch on: since Fred, like all undercover police, wears a scramble suit that constantly changes his appearance, his colleagues don't know what he looks like. The camera in Fred/Bob's apartment reveals that Bob's intimates regularly betray one another for the chance to score more drugs....
throw in the fact as the storyline progresses fred increasingly speaks in german and you've got a pretty nutty film.
read it online at http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0679736654/ref=si
I'd like to see how any film can be more faithful than that one, because it pretty much reproduces the story word for word.
Games Workshop Petition
I'd like to see more of Dick's novels get made into movies
So far, Dick's NOVELS aren't getting much into movies - the movies are actually based on his short stories and novelettes, like "Minority Report" or "We'll Remeber It For You Wholesale" ("Total Recall"). In early 1950's Dick was writing short stories like frenzy and actually each and every one of them gives an outline for a great movie. With his novels, however, we have a completely different case. Especially his novels that are more realistic than sci-fi, and this is the case of "A Scanner Darkly" (apart of some gadgets, there's not much SF in it). I'm a die hard PKD fan, so I wish this project all the best, but they are entering an (almost) uncharted territory.
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.
Have you ever actually read a Phillip Dick book? That's just how most of his books go. Say your main character gets knocked out during a chase scene. You'd expect that he is captured by his enemies, or escapes and is running from his enemies, or his enemy just escaped from him. In a Dick book, that character is just as likely to wake up, lose at a VR game, or have been in a mental state experimenting with different realities. Oh, he doesn't give you or the character any sense of which reality is the real one either. Was that chase scene real, or was it just a very real VR game? Is this life real or is it a simulation? His books are really confusing.
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."
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.
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
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.