Philip K. Dick's "Flow My Tears" To Be Filmed

bowman9991 writes "Philip K. Dick's 1974 novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is being adapted for the big screen. A tale of altered reality, drug use, and the meaning of identity, the novel tells the story of TV celebrity Jason Taverner, who wakes up one morning to find that his very existence has been wiped from everyone's memories. Halcyon, the company behind the upcoming Terminator Salvation movie, decided the novel would be the first adaptation under a rights agreement with Philip K. Dick's estate. Hollywood has certainly taken a shine to Dick's work: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Impostor, Screamers and Next have all been based on his short stories or novels. Ubik is in development too. In some cases, as with Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Blade Runner, the adaptations are loose to say the least."

Comments

It's probably for the best.

[gnarlyhotep]

In some cases, as with Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Blade Runner, the adaptations are loose to say the least.

Given the nature of most of Dick's work, a direct 1:1 film adaptation of his writing would be at best nonsensical. Adapting the theme of the work, and leaving leeway with the details is generally the best approach.

Hell, even with other author's works it's the best approach. They are completely different media after all, and require completely different approaches to storytelling.

Re:It's probably for the best.

[goombah99]

Blade runner I suspect was really a merger of the plot line of "do androids dream of electic sheep" with the thematic asian dominated backdrop of the man in the high castle.

I regard blade runner as one of the few movies that is substantially better than the book ("androids dream" ) it is based on.

Most of Philip Dicks' work seems to me to be wonderfully inspired plots and concepts that get at the nature of perception but executed with cardboard characters and loads of quirky descriptive artifacts. I note that for it's period, sci-fi in general tended to lack real characterization and larded in lots of gee-whiz artifcats. PKD endures because of those timeless themes and questions. Hence they make great sources for movies cause after you distill all the dated parts of his work, the stories really are pretty short and snappy.

Also one other comment: could there be a better production company name than Halcyon given that the drug names that promotes the dream state.

Great, call me when it's done

[orkybash]

Adaptations of Philip K Dick books are notorious for being put in development hell. Scanner Darkly, IIRC, went through several attempted treatments before we got the rotoscoped version. And there's been attempts off and on to bring us Ubik on the big screen, though the last I heard of that was a few years ago and it was just being written.

...not to say that I'm not still cautiously excited!