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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."
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.
Don't forget Paycheck and Confessions d'un Barjo ("Confessions of a Crap Artist"). As a longtime Dick fan it humors me to see his works start to explode into movies post-2000. Adding to the truth that an artist is never appreciated until he/she is dead.
... never going to rewatch that again though. I didn't even find Blade Runner that great and honestly haven't bothered to watch Minority Report, Next or Paycheck. I got Scanner Darkly but just because it was more independent than the others. I just have an opposite opinion from the get-all-excited-it's-gonna-be-great folks I guess.
The same producer (John Alan Simon) that made the purchase of "Flow My Tears" also purchased the rights to "VALIS" & "Radio Free Albemuth." These last two books are strangely related to The Man in the High Castle (kinda sequel-ish) and he may be thinking of merging the two stories into one movie?
It's also worth mentioning that "Time Out of Joint" rights have been purchased by Warner Bros.
Unfortunately for me, these movies are not really my cup of tea. Total Recall was pretty good when I was 12
My work here is dung.
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.
Roog
How about "Nowhere Man - The Motion Picture"
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
I'm just waiting for the average moviegoer to start complaining about how these upcoming Dick movies ripped off ideas from films like the Matrix, Truman Show, The Net, etc.
I think it's important to note why the adaptations are loose: PK Dick wrote short stories. Very, very good stories, but short. The main idea in the story is told in few words, but well.
A movie also has an obligation to fill 90 minutes of screen time, at least. Some of the actual concepts can be described in under a minute. The rest of the time in the short story or movie is spent exploring the concept.
PK Dick is definitely one of my top 5 favorite authors.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
...ever since he died.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
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!
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
re:"A tale of altered reality, drug use, and the meaning of identity"
Which book of his WASN'T a tale of "altered reality, drug use, and the meaning of identity"? Seriously? Guy had as much variety as Mexican food.
What's a burrito? A tortilla, meat, beans, cheese. What's a taco? A tortilla, meat, beans, cheese. What's an enchilada? A tortilla, meat, beans, cheese. What's a tostada? A tortilla, meat, beans, cheese.
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!
And if you want to see Banks' Culture on the big screen, just imagine the Star Wars prequels without Yoda-- it's space opera, and to Hollywood that means nothing but CGI spectacle.
PKD lover says: screw you. But seriously, have you read more than one of his books or few short stories? Your description of "drivel" seems a very limited view of his works. So many common themes that are beyond just "which reality is real" (which he does very well). Pervasive surveillance/advertising. The meaning of living an authentic life. Effects of modern societies/cultures on lower "cog in the machine" type individuals. Ordinary people fighting struggling whether to accept or fight against large organizations/systems. Mental illness. Alternate history. War. Love/Obsession. Religion.
Belittling his whole body of work as "stoner ramblings" is pretty indefensible in my opinion.
I *love* Banks, but his ideas are nowhere as revolutionary as PKD's were when he wrote them. I'd love to see them turned into movies, too, and they'd overall be far easier to turn into successful movies - the problem with Banks' stories is that they'd be expensive (the scale), while with PKD's it's that his stories are too complex. I mean, with adaptations of PKD's short stories they've still consistently stripped away layers to simplify.
Snow Crash would make a great movie. The Diamond Age? Nope. Cryptonomicon? Hell no. Even Snow Crash would need some narration. Otherwise you'd miss on the greatest parts of the book, like the rant about how, "Every guy thinks that they can be a bad ass, if their family was killed, and they went to live in a monastary..."
I don't really care for John Barne's or Ian Banks' books, but they might translate well to film. Vernor Vinge and Neil Stephenson (if they pick the write stories) could make some really good movies. None of Robert Forward's books ever interested me enough to try and read them.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
How about one of the PKD shorts that are in the public domain. Project Gutenberg has four of them.
This sounds more like Twilight Zone episode material than a complete movie.
My deepest regret is that PKD never got the benefit of this fame -- or that his estate simply sold out when he had held out.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I quit reading Stephenson because the operative word in "Snow crash" is "Crash" - the book is speeding along then WHAM hits a brick wall. All the important ends are wrapped up in a 2 page epilogue. It really reads like "Oh good I hit the pagecount they paid me for, I'm done now."
Gibson has his faults as well. His imagery is amazing, and the Decking of Neuromancer fame is firmly enshrined in conciousness - but when he starts writing AI poetry towards the end the whole thing just falls apart. Or maybe I didn't do enough drugs to really enjoy the ending...
Personally, I'd love to see someone do a decent adaptation of Foundation, or an I, Robot that wasn't just a name drop. Asimov wrote so many amazing works, and they're sorely underrepresented in film.
Stephenson would need major rewrites to simplify as well as write actual endings, Vinge usually has too much backstory on the space opera stuff (although something like Rainbow's End might be doable) and you'd need a degree in Physics to really understand most of Forward's stuff.
One that I'd like to see tried is Mieville's stuff. You'd need some serious simplification/rewrites/backstory fill to understand New Crobuzon, but the scale is a little more human than some of the others.
The other I'd *love* to see are Stross' Laundry series. That's totally doable today- they're basically Bond films with added monsters, although the humor is so geeky I'm not sure 95% of the population would get it.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
actually, everything he has written. As I said, he's an entertaining author much like Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, Larry Niven, and other small-minded buffoons. And there were far too few of those when I was growing up for me to pass them by. I used to hunt down old analogue magazines just to read the good old stuff. Speaking of authors of whom I've read every word, Rodger Zelazny needs a hell of a lot more movie time. 9 princes in amber, jack of shadows, changeling trilogy, and damn near all of his scifi stories (man, This Immortal! Lord of Light!) ... wow, if there is a more unexploited scifi moneymaker than him I'd be shocked.
I'm not a big Robert Forward fan, but try Dragon's Egg and the sequel (Dragon's Egg first) and you might see what I see in him.
They should use Stings version of John Dowlands "Flow My Tears" for the soundtrack theme song
We substituted the coffee Slashdot normally drinks with "Sandoz Crystals", Lets see if they notice the difference
> In some cases, as with Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Blade Runner, the adaptations are loose to say the least.
You want loose? 'Next' was loose!
EP
If Snow Crash ever gets done by Hollywood it will end up being directed by Michael Bay and resemble a "reboot" of the movie Hackers. With Megan Fox as YT and the Rock as Raven and yes of course Keanu Reeves as Hiro (with bad makeup asianification).
The Metaverse will be recast as "Web 3.0".
Sometimes my arms bend back.
That idiot ruined "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" so badly he should be banned from ever doing broadcast TV or movie science fiction ever again.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
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
With all due respect - I have to say that this plows what has become some very familiar ground.
Things always can be worse. Heroes's Hiro could be Snow Crash's Hiro in a trip to the future in a crossover/remix/reboot between both. Considering the alternatives, is almost as bad as anything else they could do to it.
Have you ever read any PK Dick novels?
My suggestion is that if you ever meet any of those authors you admire, you ask them what they think of PK Dick's work.
No movie has even remotely done justice to his work, even Bladerunner, and no one has attempted to film any of his truly great novels. (Ubik, Martian Timeslip, The Three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Man in the High Castle, etc.) With the exception of A Scanner Darkly and, to a lesser extent, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the PK Dick works that have been filmed are the forgettable ones, usually the pulp short stories he did in the fifties, and not even remotely his best work.
The cake is a pie
I like some of the movie adaptations of his work, but to me, his real life outshadows all the ideas presented in his work.
Check out Robert Crumb's The Religious Experience of Phillip K. Dick . Basically Dick began to have visions of a past life in ancient Rome as a crypto-Christian. These visions literally saved his son's life when he rushed him to the hospital. Turned out the boy had a hernia and would have been dead in hours. Other most interesting events, too.
I heard a few years ago there was supposed to be such a film with Paul Giamatti as Dick, but you know how these things go. I think it might be merged with V.A.L.I.S.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I know, he's an entertaining writer. But his ideas are about as interesting as the ramblings of a stoned college freshman-philosophy major.
Is the sort of drunken, glassy-eyed speculation presented to us in his movies, the Matrix, Gattica, etc really the best that can sold in a movie? What about some of John Barne's work, or Ian M Banks, or Robert Forward, or Vernor Vinge, or Neil Stephenson... where thoughtful authors weave fantastic tales?
Really? Have you considered that you may be simply too stupid to get it. Have you actually read any of his books?
I can agree that Matrix and Gattaca are kind of simplified and dumbed down sci-fi, but none of these were written by PKD and they only borrow some of the most superficial of his ideas.
PKD is one of the very very few truly brilliant writers to emerge in the twentieth century, so sorry I have to flame you for calling his writing drivel. He has the most rare ability to see society and human nature clearly and to describe it and show it in a compelling manner. In don't see much of this in the movies, as the movies mostly borrow his more superficial sci-fi plot devices than the main themes of his books, but you will see it in his books.
Of the writers you mentioned I have only read Stevenson, and while he does offer a good read, he cannot be compared to PKD. Stephenson merely makes up interesting fantastic tales as you mentioned, but his writing does not have a ring of truth to it. You do not learn more about yourself, human nature, etc., after reading a Stephenson book. So yeah, PKD is in a whole other category.
So please do not talk shit, you can say you do not understand it, but by calling it drivel you only reveal your own ignorance.
Oh, and btw I did not major in phillosophy, I graduated almost 10 years ago and I do not do any drugs.
Consider Phlebas would probably make a good action film, and Use of Weapons has the potential to be made into a terrific film, or an absolute stinker.
heh, thanks for the flame. Saying you have not read much at all makes it mean very little and supports my point. Too stupid to get it, lol. It's infintile, like the essay of a student (perhaps like yourself?) who has had a basic philosophy class and thinks they know the secrets of the universe.
Damm you may have a point there about unexploited sci fi writer/moneymaker waiting to be 'ploited.
What do we have now? Seems they're only browsing comic books for ideas, mostly. Please, look further and read more, Hollywood!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
for either Keanu or Will Smith to be busy that week.