In a sudden and exciting twist, John Alan Simon announced last night on the PKD litserv, that production had wrapped on a new cinematic adaptation of Dick's novel Radio Free Albemuth. WOW!From John:
"Radio Free Albemuth completed production early Sunday morning in Los Angeles.
It was a labor of love by all involved. everyone worked for little or no money. privately financed, the entire budget of the picture was less than the majors spend on catering but this way we were able to make an adaptation that I think is very close in spirit to the original. It was a 24 day shoot on the same Viper digital system that David Fincher used for Zodiac and the upcoming Benjamin Button.
An interview about the film with Alanis Morissette, who plays Sylvia will be on:
E! The Daily 10
Air dates/times:
Tuesday, October 30th @ 7:30pm and midnight (ET/PT)
Wednesday, October 31st @ 3:30am, 8:30am, 12:30pm (ET/PT)
There will also be an announcement in the Hollywood Reporter tomorrow.
Our website www.radiofreealbemuth.com will be up and running shortly.
I'm equal parts exhausted and exhilarated from my first stint at directing, but I look forward to telling you more about the cast/crew and sharing our plans for the film in the near future."
I knew that John had arranged a reading of his script for the movie, but had no idea that the movie had gone this far. Alanis Morrisette was absolutely fantastic as a Canadian principal on Degrassi: The Next Generation. Anybody who works on the set of Degrassi rates high in my book. This will be Philip K Dick's 10th movie adaptation. I'm really excited John was able to produce a low-budget, independent PKD adaptation - for some reason that feels right when adapting this novel.
The Hollywood Reporter has more here.
John and I are arranging an interview to appear soon here at the TDH. I have a good feeling about this one.
11 comments:
The Curious case of Benjamin Button is about a guy who is growing younger...sounds familiar doesn't it?
Unfortunately...Leadership fell to the paranoids in the movie making microcosm
Dick- head indeed!
Odd, I just re-read Radio Free Albemuth a couple of weeks ago. It struck me again that in many ways it's a much better work than VALIS. I hope the humor of the piece translates well to the big screen.
This was one of my favorite PKD books, and I'm extremely excited to see it as a movie.
I suspect thought that the book was significantly worked on posthumously by Phil's friend Tim Powers. Anyone know more about that?
Well if it was, then well done Tim! It's a great novel and I'm not surprised someone has used it to make a film at the present time. I can only hope that it's along the lines of A Scanner Darkly and Blade Runner, as opposed to Next and Paycheck (retires to wash out keyboard).
I am looking forward to this one. Surely I could not be like "Next"?
I played a prisoner in this movie, had a fantastic time on location in LA and can hardly wait till the June 11 2008 release date. To all my fellow prisoner I say "Thank You"
Hardly a labor of love for the crew that still have not been paid...PKD will not be proud!
The crew on Radio Free Albemuth has been paid. And they were paid on a timely basis throughout the shoot. The movie wrapped on 10/27 - note the date of the previous comment. There was a delay in getting final week paychecks out, because of cash flow and out-of-town commitments on the part of our production manager, who was the only one left on staff to deal with a flood of invoices. Something I regret, but not uncommon on a low-budget indie. So as far as I know, everyone has now been issued their final stipends. Please contact me directly if this is not the case for you, "anonymous." And it was indeed a labor of love for many. None of the producers, including myself, took any salary at all. And as I work in the edit room, yes, I do think PKD would be proud of this little film.
Looking forward to seeing this, John. It's been a marathon, hasn't it?
I am going to risk sharing something here. Paul Williams re-wrote RFA in the mid 80's at his house in Glen Ellen. I was hanging around with Williams at the time. I learned that Williams did not like the direction Dick was going in philosophically, and he engineered the book to shy away from Dick's new direction, post Exegesis. I believe Dick had found some kind of faith in God. Williams did not care for this idea, as he was teaching classes in talking to rocks at that time. I clashed with Williams over this later when I wrote an article about Dick for the Bay Area Guardian. It was not pretty.
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