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I just found some interesting news today talking about the big screen adaptation of "A Scanner Darkly" by Phillip K. Dick. I just read this for the first time about a year ago and I'd say it's my favorite PKD out of what i've read so far.
I had read somewhere a little bit ago that Richard Linklater(Before Sunrise, Dazed and Confused, Waking Life) was interested in making it into a movie, which i thought was pretty exciting cause Linklater could do an awesome job with it.
Well, I just found this today. Seems filming is under way. Linklater IS the director. He also wrote the script. And Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., and Woody Harrelson are staring in it.
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Though i must say. As psyched as I am about the cast, I don't think i ever saw Keanu in that role.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Well, alot of it is drawn from PKDs personal experiences with drug abuse, and experiences of friends. Here, I found the Amazon synopsis:
quote:Mind- and reality-bending drugs factor again and again in Philip K. Dick's hugely influential SF stories. A Scanner Darkly cuts closest to the bone, drawing on Dick's own experience with illicit chemicals and on his many friends who died from drug abuse. Nevertheless, it's blackly farcical, full of comic-surreal conversations between people whose synapses are partly fried, sudden flights of paranoid logic, and bad trips like the one whose victim spends a subjective eternity having all his sins read to him, in shifts, by compound-eyed aliens. (It takes 11,000 years of this to reach the time when as a boy he discovered masturbation.) The antihero Bob Arctor is forced by his double life into warring double personalities: as futuristic narcotics agent "Fred," face blurred by a high-tech scrambler, he must spy on and entrap suspected drug dealer Bob Arctor. His disintegration under the influence of the insidious Substance D is genuine tragicomedy. For Arctor there's no way off the addict's downward escalator, but what awaits at the bottom is a kind of redemption--there are more wheels within wheels than we suspected, and his life is not entirely wasted
posted
Sounds very cool. I've been trying to catch up on reading PKD's shorts, and this sounds like it's gonna be a nice project - hopefully better than Paycheck, which I heard turned out poorly.
Posts: 753 | Registered: Mar 2001
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Aside from Tokien, Philip K. Dick is my all-time favorite author, and he might beat out even Tolkien if it weren't for for sentimental attachments.
Anyway, Dick is my favorite. And of all the Dick novels I've read (which is most of them), A Scanner Darkly is my favorite, hands down. Some of his short stories are better, but this is the best novel.
If they screw this one up, I might have to have somebody assassinated. Or at least seriously maimed.
But I'm confused. I thought I had read somewhere that this movie was, bizarrely, going to be animated. Personally, I can't imagine that, but now I want to get the straight story.
Edit: Ah, I've just found the answer. "Like a graphic novel come to life, A Scanner Darkly will utilize live action photography overlaid with an advanced animation process to create a haunting, highly stylized vision of the future."
I quote:"Keanu Reeves as Arctor, Winona Ryder as Donna, Robert Downey Jr. as Barris, Woody Harrelson as Luckman, and Rory Cochrane as Freck."
Keanu Reeves is Bob Arctor??? That thought is going to take some getting used to.
I don't see Ryder as Donna, either. Donna is much too hard. Ryder has always seemed kind of soft, dainty and fragile to me.
I think Harrelson can pull off the Luckman part. Luckman is a nice guy, though seriously messed up by drugs as are all the main characters. He's good-natured, kind of a peacemaker. This could work.
As for Downey, Jr. as Barris, that may be one of the genius moves of all time. Downey is NOTHING like I imagine Barris to be, but the more I think about it the more I think he might be perfect after all. Barris is a complete psycho - in fact, I get the feeling he would be a psycho even if he weren't a druggie. He's seriously paranoid and heavily into conspiracy theories. He's also a master of the bull-crap story, a total con man. At the same time, he isn't really evil, except maybe when he **SPOILERS** almost lets Luckman choke to death **SPOILERS**.
One thing I wonder: this book, although set in the 1990's (IIRC, but I could be wrong), was written just after the hippie/drug era, which Dick was deeply involved in. The whole book has that feel. All the characters seem not just like stoned people, but specifically stoned hippies. I wonder if the filmmakers are going to go with this feel, or update it. My guess would be the latter.
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Yeah, I said above i thought Keanu was a weird choice. It's just such a different role from what Keanu has done.
The one i was most psyched about was Robert Downey Jr., I think he's crazy enough to be perfect at this role.
I never saw Donna as being "hard". but I do agree Ryder seems a bit too soft for the part.
All in all though, I'm really excited. Mostly because of Linklater. But I'm not necessarily displeased with any of the choices.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I read Donna as being one tough chick, if I may use the rather uncouth term. Even harder, once you learn her real story.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
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well, there's one obvious thing fight club has in common with this book. But it goes about it much differently.
*Spoilers(for fight club and Scanner)*
. . . They both have a split personality disorder. But in Fight Club he's never aware of it till the end, and it occurs naturaly. In Scanner Darkly it doesn't start as a split personality, it starts as his undercover persona, which he eventually gets so seperated from through drug use that he develops the split personality.
And in terms of appreciation for the female character. With Marla it changes after learning the narrator's secret. With Donna it changes after learning hers.
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But either way you should read Fight Club. It's one of my favorite movies and the book is infinitely better.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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This is one of my favorite novels! PKD's extrapolation was so close to actual reality, there won't be much needed in the way of special effects. The blur suit should be cool.
Three main characters: Bob Arcturus, Fred (the narotics officer), and finally the character that becomes in the end. All should be played by the same actor. Who should it be?
Posts: 2506 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Linklater should do a good job. He's obviously a PKD fan. In fact, some of the best dialogue in Waking Life inspired me to read Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. An interesting novel...
On a related topic, can you believe that I bought the Waking Life dvd, brand spankin' new, for something like $7.00? What a freakin' deal!
Posts: 1855 | Registered: Mar 2003
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The dog excrement on the engine part would be hard to film, since it is **SPOILERS** entirely a hallucination on the part of Arctor **SPOILERS**. There's probably still some good way to do it, but I think you would have to do it without making Arctor look TOO insane, because at that point we still don't know what's going on in his mind.
And why would they say that Substance D is heroin? That would be a stupid change. Actual heroin already plays a pretty big part in the story, and is clearly distinguished from Substance D.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
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**SPOILERS** I don't think those were poppies. I'll have to look at my copy again, but I'm pretty sure about that. Poppies are big, gaudy and bright, aren't they? And red, if I remember correctly. The Substance D flowers were tiny and blue. Arctor hid one in his shoe, for pete's sake.
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