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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."
I remember reading "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" after having seen Total Recall and ... well, I love PKD, and Total Recall is way more entertaining than WCRIFYW. "Flow My Tears..." is amongst my favourites, and probably among the more cinematic, but like Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, there's are all the druggy psychedelic passages that may not translate well.
Of his classics, probably only Man In The High Castle and Radio Free Albemuth [the coherent Ubik] would be filmable. Lots of the schlock would be filmable, crap like Vulcan's Hammer would be pure B-movie).
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
You probably saw the theatrical version of Blade Runner. Give one of the director's cuts a look. The lack of studio-mandated voice-over certainly makes the film more moody and atmospheric.
Minority Report was a decent movie, but wasn't based on the short-story beyond the kernel of the idea.
Next and Paycheck were both pretty craptastic.
-Peter
When will this author's works make it to the big
screen? The Demolished Man was a masterpiece.
Heinlein's, Stranger in a Strange Land ,would also rock.
Slow down cowboy? WTF? It took me 60 seconds to write
this post without using the word 'nigger'.
What do you want?!?!?! Waits 2 minutes before submitting.
Do you really think Neal Stephenson's books would do well on the big screen? Part of me would expect the movie to be about six hours long, with the entire plot wrapped up in a hasty, four-minute expository lump at the end. I can almost hear the cameraman whispering to the director "I've only got 100 feet of film left, can you get this done?"
Another part of me thinks it would be completely awesome to see Snow Crash on the big screen. But my brain has already filled in what I think the metaverse looks like, what the rat-things look like, smart spokes, all those ultra-cool ideas; and then I think of what other filmmakers have shat out trying to portray cool sci-fi toys. The wrong director could easily destroy a great story.
John
Well, the main difference between Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is the theme: one is mainly about man (or android) revolting against God (or death) in a godless universe, the other is about the authenticity of emotions and empathy in a modern society of drugs & media. The story is basically the same, though (apart from the film's more spectacular ending, of course).
Personally, I'd like to see The Moon is a Harsh Mistress done up as a film.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true.
I just find it amusing how odd beliefs can line up with the latest scientific theories.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Most fiction and certainly most Sci-Fi can be considered about "altered reality" where something or someone that is not true/doesn't exist in our reality is described in a book. That is what makes it fiction.
As for drug use and meaning of identity, I'd say most of his books DON'T have drug use as a major theme. Meaning of identity is fairly common though. Still, you come off as a hater. The idea of someone being tricked into helping a war effort he doesn't know exists is a pretty cool plot idea and he has many others.
I want to see a "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" movie. You could make one with most of the mainstream audience not even realizing it had anything to do with Blade Runner.
And if you take PKD books literally, you don't end up with something "paced very slowly" - in most cases you'd end up with something that to most viewers would be impossible to follow because of the often non-linear story lines and large number of inter-vowen ideas. If anything, "sheep" is one of the simple ones.
I'd have to agree with you about Bladerunner. I don't know how many times I've seen it, saw the super deluxe director's cut last year. The thing that grabs me about the movie, though, is the visuals. Scott did such an amazing job with the visuals that I'm blown away every time that I see it, and since he was able to show some of the early footage to Dick before he passed, that's double-plus good.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
How about one of the PKD shorts that are in the public domain. Project Gutenberg has four of them.
That's what I use to justify people not liking 2001: A Space Odyssey. "Oh, well, I guess he's just too immature to get it. Maybe in a few years..." I'll never accept that someone can simply dislike the film, damnit.
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The movie "Impostor" really never even gets mentioned, and it was pretty damned faithful to the original story. Dunno why certain movies, that are no less bad than the rest of Hollywood's ... um... output... get passed over in the Public Attention Lottery.
(i.e. the film version of Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions"... all-star cast, fun performances, pretty close to original novel, and no press / attention whatsoever)
crappy triceratops