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A Scanner Darkly Film Preview 318

Posted by michael from the purple-haze dept.
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.
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A Scanner Darkly Film Preview

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  • Keanu Reeves ? (Score:2, Funny)

    by mirko ( 198274 )
    I hope this will be a good movie because we still have to forget he even did Matrix 2 and 3...

    • Yea, because all his other sci-fi appearance in , Johnny Mnemonic was great

      Of course you can't blame him for Matrix 2 and 3, it would have been impossible to rescue those plots.

      Then again, aside from Blade Runner, and even that's debatable, have any PKD conversions been anything other than pulp sci-fi?

      • Re:Keanu Reeves ? (Score:2, Informative)

        by mirko ( 198274 )
        Yes [imdb.com], and yes [imdb.com] : I mean, I liked these.

        • Re:Keanu Reeves ? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Atrahasis ( 556602 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:17AM (#9452149) Homepage
          Impostor [imdb.com] was very cool too.

          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.

        • Confessions of a Crap Artist (Confessions d'un Barjo) is the only one that's decidedly outside the Hollywood mold.

          Screamers, despite the title, is a faithful, low-budget, low-key adaptation of "Second Variety." Unfortunately it's also a bit of a bore.

            • Screamers
            • , despite the title, is a faithful, low-budget, low-key adaptation of "Second Variety." Unfortunately it's also a bit of a bore.

            Actually, Screamers isn't faithful to the original short story at all. The short story doesn't have any "screamers". It doesn't have any Shakespeare-quoting villains. Or peace negotiations.

            Damn you, Dan O'Bannon, for leaving your talent behind in Alien. And curse you, Christian Duguay, for not sticking to Scanners sequels.

          • Re:Keanu Reeves ? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Ohreally_factor ( 593551 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @12:02PM (#9453777) Journal
            Confessions of a Crap Artist (Confessions d'un Barjo) is the only one that's decidedly outside the Hollywood mold.


            How about The Transmigration of Timothy Archer? Not a shred of Sci Fi there; I doubt Hollywood will take the chance.

            VALIS would be a huge challenge. Maybe Linkletter could do VALIS, I dunno. I think I'd rather see Iñarritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) direct it.

            What's most troubling to me about this Scanner Darkly project is that Keanu Reeves is playing the Bob Artor character. Since they're using the rotoscoping tecnique that Linkletter used in Waking Life, why couldn't they just use the Walmart Happy Face or a sock puppet? It's chit like that that makes me wonder if Linkletter hasn't just become a whore. The only reason you put Keanu in a movie is for boxoffice returns.
        • 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.

    • Re:Keanu Reeves ? (Score:4, Funny)

      by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:48AM (#9451844) Homepage Journal
      Yeah that scares me. Reeves would have made a good replicant in Blade Runner; not too smart, wooden, jerky.. but as a lead role? PKD must be spinning in his grave.

      • Re:Keanu Reeves ? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by beq ( 458372 )
        Actually, I think Keanu is perfect. As much as I love PKD, a lot of his characters have very little affect, and seem detached from their surroundings. This is especially true of Bob Arctor, who spends most of the book taking high doses of Substance D, which has disassociative side efects. Arctors increasing detachment from the world (and from himself) drives most of the story, in fact. Keanu's wooden style seems perfect for the character.
    • To play a character with multiple personalities, don't you need at least one to start with? :)

  • Drug novel... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Apocalypse111 ( 597674 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:38AM (#9451721) Journal
    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?
    • I dunno if overkill can be done in this respect, it was one of the most depressingly dark novels I have read from Mr Dick... especially the dedications at the end of the book (to those casualties of the acid culture of the early to mid sixties).

    • Re:Drug novel... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hal2814 ( 725639 )
      If this movie IS faithful to the novel and you're expecting something like Dazed and Confused, then you'll be very disappointed. A Scanner Darkly is really more of a descent into insanity novel. The drugs are merely the means of descent. It's a very good book. I'd like to see more of Dick's novels get made into movies. I am much more familiar with them than his short stories which typically get made into movies.
      • 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 th
        • That was my point. Sorry for not being clearer. So far, Do Androids Dream... and Scanner Darly are the only novels I am aware of that have movie adaptations.

          Thinking of "not much SF in it," one of my favorite parts of Man in the High Castle (which would be my #1 choice for movie adaptation) was when they debated if Grasshopper Lies Heavy was indeed SF.

    • Re:Drug novel... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Basehart ( 633304 )
      Reeves will be perfect in this. I just hope they get the scene with the discussion about how to stop the car from fishtailing just right. Without doubt one of the funniest things I've ever read. I think the quick fix was to put a bunch of gold in the trunk and have 12 of their buddies sit in the back seat. Killer stuff.
    • If you want to see overkill, watch Adaptation, where the movie is about the writer of the movie, writing himself into a movie about an adaptation of the a book. If you don't understand, don't worry, I'ved tried to come up with a good way of describing this movie, and it's just impossible.

  • A little Odd (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Noizemonger ( 665926 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:39AM (#9451732)
    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.

    • Re:A little Odd (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mysticwhiskey ( 569750 ) <mystic_whiskey@ho t m a i l .com> on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:57AM (#9451942)
      I really liked Waking Life, so I recommended it to a few friends. The response was generally "It was a bit weird". And this is a *bad* thing in movies? I mean, a movie doesn't HAVE to have tits, guns and one liners, does it?

      Oh yeah, tits, guns and one-liners sell. Sorry, my bad. :^)

      • I like my movies a little (or sometimes a lot) weird. Now I'm going to have to go look for this one. (thanks for the recommendation ;)
        • One thing I really liked about waking life was the way the character makes transition from one dream sequence to another. It was perfectly wierd, and that's why so very true.

          The conversations were initially interesting, but towards the end it sounded like some good ol' preaching wrapped with some psuedo phscology. Not very convincing.

          The only tip is , don't watch the movie when you have had 2-3 long islands. Boy that was spinning going on in my head.

      • Re:A little Odd (Score:2, Interesting)

        by mystereys ( 673518 )
        I had the opposite reaction: I really did NOT like Waking Life.

        The animation is beautiful. However, the dialogue sounded like the cheesy ramblings of a 14-15 year old who thinks he's being really deep: "If we're dreaming now, and I'm awake, maybe that means what we call real life is actually a dream..."

        The best way to watch that movie is with the sound turned off

        Since this new movie is not written by Linklater (although he did adapt the screenplay), I'm sure it will be better, especially if he's applyi

      • Waking life was *awful*. It was pretentious, and had no substance at all. It was all kinds of conversation-snippets that might seem deep and meaningful if you were either a) dumb, or b) stoned, with only vaguely interesting animation thrown on top.

        Really, when a typical Disney movie is more imaginative than an adult-aimed movie, that's pretty sad.

        C'mon people. The emperor has no clothes.

      • 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.
    • Steven Soderburgh and George Clooney's company Section 8 were looking at doing this awhile back. My friends at Rustmonkey [rustmonkey.com] did an awesome pitch trailer to try and get the gig.

      You can check it out here: Scanner Pitch [rustmonkey.com] I haven't seen Waking Life, so I can't comment on the rotoshop technique, but the Rustmonkey pitch was extremely cool.

    • Best First Paragraph in a Novel (Score:5, Informative)

      by invid ( 163714 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @11:23AM (#9453408)
      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.

  • Hmmmm? (Score:5, Funny)

    by illuminata ( 668963 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:40AM (#9451746) Journal
    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...
    • It's a Phillip K. Dick novel. Nobody'd know what the hell was going on anyway. Unless maybe they were on some bad drugs at the time they were watching it, in which case you can debate if they're seeing the movie or something else.

    • Re:Hmmmm? (Score:5, Informative)

      by kabocox ( 199019 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:57AM (#9452608)
      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.

    • Re:Hmmmm? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mr. Neutron ( 3115 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @10:03AM (#9452670) Homepage Journal
      I can envision the following scene:
      KEANU: No WAY!
      WINONA: Totally.
      WOODY: Wow, man.
      WINONA: No WAY!
      KEANU: Yes way!
      WOODY: Huh?
      ROBERT: *silly grin*
      KEANU: Totally.

      (Repeat ad nauseum.)

  • 'Most faithful adaptation' is subjective... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by brainstyle ( 752879 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:41AM (#9451756)
    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.
    • it's not terribly filmable as written.

      But the idea of Rachael and Pris being the same model (in the book) was brilliant.

      all a movies adapted from a book owes is to be a good movie;

      No, it that were the case there would be no reason to adapt the book at all. If you're going to trade on the good name of a book to draw an audience you have some duty to repay that by giving them something based on what they came to see.

      TWW

    • I'd rather it been interpreted, rather than translated. While I'll be the first to bitch about big, bizarre, unnecessary changes (Jurassic Park), I also can't stand a total lack of creativity (Harry Potter [1 and 2, at least]) with the material.

      I love the HP books, but the first two movies (haven't seen the third yet) felt flat and uninteresting. It was like a moving illustrated companion for the book.

  • Waking life WAS a little odd (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:43AM (#9451781)
    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.
  • 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.

  • Of course this will be amazing! (Score:5, Funny)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:46AM (#9451819) Homepage
    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.

  • Don't know if I can see this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:56AM (#9451936)
    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.
    • Agreed about Requiem for a Dream.

      I remember being slightly hungry before I started watching the movie.. I figured I'd watch some of it, then go get a snack half way through.

      That plan fell apart very quickly. By half way through the movie, I was so hooked not only could I not move to get a snack, but I was no longer hungry, and could not move my eyes off the screen or my jaw from the floor.. the movie literally blew me away.

      A Scanner Darkly is the first PKD book I ever read. I first heard about it here o

  • rotoshop (Score:5, Informative)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:58AM (#9451957) Homepage Journal
    About 2-3 years ago I went to a talk given by the author of Rotoshop, Bob. In the talk, he explained that he didn't want to release the software because launching it in any way would cause him to have to do things (lawyers, phone calls, etc.) that would take him away from programming, which is what he wants to do. Sounds like a classic geek ;)

    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 [flatblackfilms.com] they are planning some kind of release in June 2k6. Interesting!

  • The PKD story so far... (Score:5, Informative)

    by damieng ( 230610 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:58AM (#9451960) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • Paycheck (2003) - My favourite short story ruined by the "joe scientist" suddenly being some sort of stick wielding stunt biker.

      I finally saw this the other day and enjoyed it. talking to a colleague about it the next morning we decided that it could have a fairly decent spin-off tv series. Each week a scientist gets an envelope in the mail containing items he needs to get through that week's adventures.

      Makes a lot more sense than "Tru Calling" with a hell of a lot less plot holes. So if that can get a

    • According to the Total Recall commentary (I haven't read the books so can't say for sure), Minority Report is a follow-up/sequel to Total Recall in some way, as the psychics in the tub are meant to be from Mars.

      Also, A Scanner Darkly is the best non-HS Thompson book about drugs screwing wid' ya.

    • Thank you!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SPYvSPY ( 166790 )
      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 mu

  • "most faithful adaptation"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bookemdano63 ( 261600 ) <bookemdano@gmaTOKYOil.com minus city> on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:58AM (#9451961)
    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.

    • Re:"most faithful adaptation"? (Score:5, Funny)

      by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:10AM (#9452071)
      I agree. Also, Ubik had to be a lot more action-oriented to be made into the Matrix (especially so that the filemakers would have plenty of opportunity to use their new camera tricks) and Time Out of Joint had to come off the Cold War undertones to make a viable Truman Show.

    • Re:"most faithful adaptation"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Trurl's Machine ( 651488 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:44AM (#9452468) Journal
      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.

      You seem to confuse Philip Dick with Arthur C. Clarke. Dick never wrote science-fiction to anticipate the future. He was more interested in exploring the inner space of human mind. And he was great doing that. You can't credit him as "the guy who predicted satellite TV relays", but you can credit him as "the guy who predicted the atmosphere of corporate paranoia of the late twentieth and early twenty first century". Take a contemporary realistic novel about the corporate world, like Joseph Finder's "Paranoia" [paranoianovel.com]. It's so phildickian you could mistake it for a lost PKD manuscript. Dick was one of the rare SF writers of 1950's and 1960's who understood that human race will enter the world of powerful future technologies keeping their minds as fragile as ever, and was quite accurate in predicting the outcome (paranoia, drug addiction, escapism, the rise of omnipotent corporate moguls - both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are like characters from PKD novels!). So yes, he thought that punch cards will survive. But he also predicted Microsoft. His books will be antiquated only after a succesful antitrust action against MS, which means when hell freezes over.
    • Huh? Punch cards were not a major plot point, they were just an irrelevent form of media. Any form of media would have worked just as well and no-one complained that the movie didn't use punch cards. What they complained about was the fact that the underlying philosophical dilemas were not accurately preserved. Those dilemas are timeless and are the entire point of the story.

      That is what makes a good movie adaptation. Since you have a different medium you must change the details of the plot to have good pa

    • YOU are the problem! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SPYvSPY ( 166790 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @10:47AM (#9453083) Homepage
      It's nonsense like your comment that causes Hollywood to ruin PKD stories. Have you read Minority Report? Was it necessary for them to create that fucking nonsense about child abusers? How about dulling down the KEY dynamic of Anderton as victim of his own ambitions? What about the dull rendition of Witwer as an ass-kissing punk who is playing Anderton in order ot get his job? What about the military character? How about the fact that precogs, who have been floating in jelly since childhood, can't get up and run around? Oh yeah, and let's completely fucking forget about how precogs work and what "minority report" means, because that's too boring for a film. We'd prefer jet packs and guys who look like they got lost on their way to the set for the Matrix. And God knows Tom Cruise is the kind of "everyman" character that PKD writes about.


      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.

  • Alright!!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:03AM (#9452008) Homepage Journal
    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)

  • Overexposure? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ishmalius ( 153450 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:12AM (#9452088)
    Hollywood seems to have latched onto Mr Dick's style of science fiction with a death grip. Is this at the expense of all of the other authors? Once Hollywood finds something popular, it leaches the revenue source of every bit of value, until it is blanched and tasteless, like an old teabag. I love his stories, but to be truthful, I am starting to bore of this constant stream of Future Angst.

    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.

    • Foundation would be an excellent movie. If done correctly.

    • Re:Overexposure? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Damn straight, dude!

      Hollywood hasn't butche^H^H^H^H^H^Hused enough material from the greatest SF authors of our time.

      I hope they get around to mutil^H^H^H^H^Hmaking movies from all the best works of my favorite SF authors. It would be so much better than what my imagination (coupled with a great book) can envision.
    • The overexposure was probably caused by the Dick estate being in probate for so many years. The only reason Total Recall got made when it did was because the rights were acquired before Dick died. There are probably just a lot of producers and directors who wanted to do Philip K Dick movie adaptations who can now actually do so. It also helps that the estate is willing to sell off movie rights to anything and everything instead of being too picky about it.
    • Morgan Freeman's production company has been trying to make Rendezvous with Rama for some time now. I'm not sure how much progress has been made though.
      • That I find truly interesting. In our culture's current enthusiasm for stuff like "The Passion" and equating "Muslim" with "Arab terrorist", I'd be surprised to see such a book faithfully made into film. Arthur C. Clarke represents such an agnostic image of God in Rama that for most of the series it appears completely atheist, even actively promoting that idea at times.

        It's not the type of theme I'd expect a studio to gamble with in these times, but I would love to see that story told in images.

  • Actual Title (Score:4, Funny)

    by cynic10508 ( 785816 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:13AM (#9452110) Journal
    Fear and Loathing in Keanu and Woody's Excellant Adventure.
  • 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

  • "Independent" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Earlybird ( 56426 ) <{slashdot} {at} {purefiction.net}> on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:56AM (#9452592) Homepage
    From the article:
    • 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.

    • Nope, not at all. (Score:3, Informative)

      by sideshow ( 99249 )
      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

  • Can it be true? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17, 2004 @10:04AM (#9452680)
    Can the rumor be true that _no one_ in Hollywood truly gets Dick?

  • My Favorite PKD book - please do this one right! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by efudddd ( 312615 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @10:06AM (#9452708)
    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.

  • Charlie Kaufman's take (Score:3, Interesting)

    by skryche ( 26871 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @10:14AM (#9452789) Homepage
    Charlie Kaufman [imdb.com]'s film script for this story can be found at his website [beingcharliekaufman.com].

    I don't know about you, but I'd rather see what the writer of Adaptation does with the material.

  • Previously Terry Gilliam spent quite a long time on getting A Scanner Darkly to the silver screen, but he dropped it. A terrible loss. IMHO Gilliam is one of the few directors who would have been able to really bring Phil Dick's vision to life.

    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

  • 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?

  • Waking Life (Score:3, Funny)

    by xmutex ( 191032 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @10:47AM (#9453079) Homepage
    Waking Life wasn't so odd. I think the phrase you want is obnoxiously trite.

  • PKD Rocks. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wackysootroom ( 243310 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @10:58AM (#9453199) Homepage
    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.

  • Charlie Kaufman (Score:4, Informative)

    by zoeblade ( 600058 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @01:47PM (#9455134) Homepage

    It's a shame this means Charlie Kaufman's A Scanner Darkly script [beingcharliekaufman.com] 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.

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