A Little Adaptation For Us Dick-Heads

 

News broke last week of another Phil Dick adaptation in the pipeline. This time it's a version of Phil's awesome time-travel story, "A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" being adapted by actor Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society production company in conjunction with Isa Dick Hackett's Electric Sheep Productions, natch. 

From Deadline: "Outlier Society is developing the Amazon MGM Studios action thriller movie, T-Minus, which is being co-scripted by Fall Guy‘s Drew Pearce and Watchmen and Station Eleven scribe Nick Cuse."

"The project was initially developed by Pearce’s banner Point of No Return Films. Outlier Society’s Elizabeth Raposo heard the pitch—said to be an action-thriller along the lines of “Top Gun meets Back to the Future, with a Philip K. Dick twist”—and saw the potential for it to be the perfect Outlier project: an elevated piece with major tentpole potential."

"MAJOR tentpole potential" -- now that's what you want from a Dick movie! 

Radio Free Albemuth Needs Your Help!

I don't ask you for much, dear readers. But I'm asking today. As you already know, John Alan Simon's Radio Free Albemuth is raising funds through Kickstarter right now. In fact they are more than 90% funded. But they're still a little over $5k from their goal and Kickstarter is all or nothing.

Let me take a moment to talk about how much I hate the mercantile nature of this exchange. I hate that in the 21st century we're constantly being hit up for money or attention - by our friends! It's a tragic state of affairs really. I mean if you're on Facebook, your newsfeed is an endless parade of hands out - all for very worthy projects mind you. But I go to numb to it.

On the other hand, this new business model which allows artists to get their product to very small target audiences is a really cool new development and the first legitimate antidote I've yet seen to the homogenizing forces of Big Capitalism.

And this project really is a perfect candidate for Kickstarter.

I've seen RFA in a theater with a a bunch of PKD fans, and it was a special experience - and I think more people should have that opportunity. We're so close to making it happen.

There are some really cool incentives and prizes, check 'em out. I went for the DVD package. But I want you to consider even a small donation. Like I said, we're really close to making this happen.

Lastly, the producers have released a tie-in role playing game called Left Coast where one player pretends to be a SF writer and other players invent weird shit that happens to him - it seems really cool. Be sure to read the updates to the Kickstarter to find the download codes for that.

Go here now.

Alternate A Scanner Darkly Animation Pitch Unearthed

Scanner Darkly Pitch from Brian White on Vimeo. Note: You should watch this on Vimeo, Blogger has cropped it.

io9 has posted animator Brian White's vision for A Scanner Darkly - and it's dark. White created this after hearing Linklater had secured the rights, but couldn't get anyone to look at his work. I like it quite a bit, and think it's true to the spirit of the project. But, I also think this vision would have displaced a lot of the text's humanity. After all, this is a story about people, and if you can't relate or if you see them as fundamentally different, most of the book's power will be lost on you. I wish we lived in a world where any artist could realize their vision and these visions could compete in the marketplace of ideas.

Total Recall, Recalled For You

Unless you're maintaining Unabomber levels of media isolation, you've probably heard that yesterday marked the opening of the newly remade Total Recall. That the movie is getting panned should go without saying. Also unworthy of mention are the pools of ink being spent on Shallow Articles About Philip K Dick which I'm too busy to chronicle.

The good news is that I saw the newly re-imagined Total Recall last night with Mr Hand from the PKD and Religion blog. I totally expected to hate the movie, and so I was surprised when I found myself enjoying it. You want schlock? This movie has schlock out the wazoo!

Now if you're poor and the price of admission will be missed, do not go see Total Recall in the theaters - while the set design and production values look great on the big screen, you can enjoy this one at home. But if you're flushed with cash and like movies, Total Recall is a good time.

A couple of observations:
This movie takes Dick's "bitch-wife" motif over the shark, and it's great fun to watch. You will groan out loud at some of the dialog and soundtrack cues - unbearable. But the whole thing takes itself just lightly enough to get a little Dickian. There is schlock, and there are claustrophobic entropic future settings, and together effect is far more Dickian than anything in Adjustment Bureau. There are also technological innovations (like an elevator through the earth) that make no sense. Don't get hung up on it, folks. Read it as metaphor.

Because that's the thing, I liked this movie on a metaphorical level. I thought it worked pretty nicely to literalize the figurative, and drive home the increased deprivations of Late Capitalism headed our way. Grab some pop-corn, leave your Heidegger at home, and have a blast!

Also, be forewarned, there are A LOT of dodgy chairs in the movie.

Wow, That's Stupid!

A short article in The LA Times advises readers on how to tackle Dick's prolific output. They share two suggestions, the first, not terminally stupid:

Where to start: "The Man in the High Castle" (1962) is an alternative history in which the Axis powers have won World War II and includes a book, banned in America, that posits an alternative history in which Hitler lost. The novel won a Hugo Award and, like much of Dick's work, plays with perception and competing realities.
Where to start, alternative version: "Ubik" (1969) is a mystery wrapped in a horror story told by a (probably) dead man. It has psychic intrigue, government interference, half-alive cryonically frozen characters and a crumbling reality. See also: competing realities, untrustworthy perception.

But then quickly move deep into the stupid with this recommendation:

What to skip: "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (1968). Although it served as the inspiration for the film "Blade Runner," the novel is not the same, nor nearly as good.

Told ya...Let 'em know in the comments...

RFA To Premiere in London and Links!

Radio Free Albemuth is set to premiere in London this week at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival. London is, like, a big city. Perhaps your town is next... The Festival's website is here.

Also, there's a fantastic new issue of PKD Otaku out now with tons of great content. Download the huge .pdf here.

Longtime Dick-heads Lord RC and Henri Winz are collaborating on a new PKD bibliography titled "Precious Artifacts." Lord RC's Pink Beam is already an indispensable resource, and Henri, who has run the PKD Bookshelf for years has an amazing collection of PKD stuff. Learn more about the project and contribute to a Kickstarter for the book project here.

The legal eagles among you already know the court room drama regarding the adaptation of Adjustment Team is once again heating up. The plaintiff's complaint makes for some very Dickian reading. Check it out here.

Finally, big Blade Runner fan? Check out this special issue of Journey Planet dedicated to our favorite android termination film. Download here.

Now Wait For The Next Adaptation

Word leaked in Variety today that Now Wait For Last Year has been called up out of cold-pack to become the next hot PKD-product in Hollywood (Here's the Cinemablend story). On the one hand, cool! Wait For Last Year is a good novel with lots of neat stuff to recommend it as a Hollywood blockbuster: it's got war, action sequences (I remember someone almost gets thrown out of a helicopter), it's got a love story, and the most substantive moral statement ever made by an autonomic cab in any Dick work (and that's saying something!). On the other hand, I mean, wow! Is there anything they're not going to make into a PKD vehicle? Is there an option on the story of Dick's typewriter yet? Is this just Autofac-style commodification for commodity's sake?

One thing's for sure; the lawyers have, no doubt, double checked that the novel is still under copyright.

How Can It Be Copywrong When It Feels So Copyright?

From Oct 2, New York Times:

Philip K. Dick Estate Files Suit

"In a lawsuit filed here Thursday, Mr. Dick’s estate charged Media Rights Capital and others involved with “The Adjustment Bureau,” which starred Matt Damon, with trying to avoid at least $500,000 in bonus payments by declaring Mr. Dick’s original story, “Adjustment Team,” to have been in the public domain. But, the suit says, they did so only after having repeatedly paid fees under purchase agreements for the story, and after tapping the Dick estate for promotional help."

Semi-Weekly Amalgamation of PKD Links

It's been too long, dear readers. This blog has been at the back of my mind, while I've been busy with the first weeks of the Fall semester, getting the band's album done, and working on my own fiction. I dare say, I was feeling a little burned out on PKD, friends! That is, until this morning when I picked up Rickman's To The High Castle, a biography of PKD I haven't read in awhile, and I was struck by all the great info in there. It's a much rawer bio than Sutin's, and it leaves you with a distinct impression of PKD that somehow the Sutin bio flattens a bit. Like any totalizing lens, the stuff about molestation gets old, but again, the interviews, particularly with Vince Lusby, impart a fuller sense of PKD. We really must do something to recognize all of Rickman's many contributions - hopefully at the PKD Conference next year.

So, without further ado (if, in fact, that is ado above which I have already written) let's get to the link round up. Radio Free Albemuth continues to be the big PKD subject the Internetz are tubing about these days, as the film continues to blow minds at festival showings here and abroad.

The Australian Arts Portal tosses another shrimp on the barbie, writing, "What finally distinguishes Radio Free Albemuth from all previous adaptations is that this film has soul, and I am pretty sure that Philip K. Dick would agree. You don’t have to be a fan of Philip K. Dick or science fiction to enjoy this film. Radio Free Albemuth should be mandatory viewing for anyone who is interested in vital, independent cinema. If you get the chance to see it, don’t miss it."

Former Los Angeles Weekly film critic Michael Dare writes: "The lack of chase scenes and pumped-up CGI lunacy is actually one of the charms of the film. It's low budget because this is all it takes to tell the story, which is intellectual, political, musical, and scientific, in fact, everything good science fiction should be. The fact the SyFy channel has degenerated into one cheesy monster flick after another, as though nothing has changed in the science fiction world since Creature from the Black Lagoon, instead of featuring films like this that stretch the human imagination, is just appalling. No wonder they changed their name. They're to science fiction what Sunny Delight is to Orange Juice."

The other big news is RFA won the Best Feature Film at the Renovation Film Fest, following the Hugos a few weeks ago. I talked a big game about going, but, of course, wussed out at the last minute, opting instead to stay home and slave over a short story. Regular reader Mr Hand went, however, and wrote up some short impressions of the film - all of which I agree with.

With all this hoopla we should be seeing RFA in wider circulation soon.

You may have noticed the old Palm Tree Garden website has left the internet realm. While this is a loss, one of the principals has started PKDTV.net - which makes this blog look like a clunky old webpage from the 1990s with all its fancy links and so forth.

There's also this really cool PKD aggregator site. Sorry to keep you in the stone age over here on the Dick-Head folks.

Archives of the old PhilipKDickFans.com site are now available for perusal. Just one glance and it will become clear how much we lost (or almost lost). There's a treasure trove of old stuff waiting to be rediscovered there.

Also, Norman Spinrad has made his essay "The Transmogrification of Philip K Dick" available at scribd.com.

Like I said, I've been hard at work on my band's new album, which you can check out online here.

Just a bit of fair warning. I am still working on the same short story, preparing it for submission (while I have tried to mimic many of PKD's writing strategies, I cannot match his pace), so posting will be a bit light here until I send the story off.

Ridley Scott to Re-Visit Blade Runner

Pictured above: biting visual mockery from io9 commenter.

Just got back from vacation, this was on io9.com. If you haven't read it, I guess you have a life or something, but go read it now, we'll wait...

Can you believe that? Pointing out that Hollywood isn't doing anything original is only slightly less original than all the remakes, but, c'mon. Really?! I vote for a sequel where Deckard is in an old folks home being cared for androids, like an old Daryl Hannah model?! And he's all weirded out because he has PTSD from fighting them, but humans and andys have made peace.... OR HAVE THEY?! And also Clint Eastwood, old android, Oscar ROLE! Don't talk about four-year lifespans, we can write around that. They see an egg in a pool and feel young again, like Cocoon! Note to Ridley Scott: I'm available.

Radio Free, on the other hand is kicking some serious ass. I'm off on a gnostic journey to the Reno screening this Saturday night. If you're at the Worldcon or the Hugos or whatever hit me up. I got bluetooth in my Yoda ears!

RFA to Show at Renovation Film Fest Aug 20

In another blow against the Empire, Radio Free Albemuth will be screened at Renovation Film Festival on August 20 right after the Hugo Awards, and there will even be a Q&A with director John Simon! Read more about it here. I'm just wrapping up my vacation in Hawaii and so I'll keep this brief. But I am thinking about making the drive to Reno myself for this. If you're in the area, well first of all I'm sorry, but second, make sure you get to the screening.

RFA Reviewed by Variety

The Logos cannot express how good it is to see this film starting to get some momentum! Hollywood Bible, Variety's got the write up and they say good things, among them, Simon's screenplay is "consistently absorbing," and "Gritty HD lensing and imaginative, old-fashioned-in-a-good-way effects showing the alternate world surrounding Nick and Sylvia. A terrific score by Canadian composer Ralph Grierson and British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock is the jewel in a first-class tech package."

Here's what else they're saying:

"Engrossing adaptation"

"Should connect strongly with Dick's fanbase and attract upscale auds seeking sci-fi with political and philosophical substance"

"Delivers satisfying intrigue and suspense"

"Pic operates successfully as a study of enlightenment and a straight-ahead conspiracy thriller."

This is Variety folks, not Harvey Stolkes of the Des Moines Wheatseeder, ferVALIS'sake! Or some Dick-head blogger for that matter. What they say carries a fair amount of weight in Tinseltown.

It's making me think the empire may have ended. But then it's pure Black Iron Prison out there. Maybe RFA is the redeeming entity we need at exactly this moment - or at least until we see what Gondry can do with Ubik.

Remember, like the movie's Facebook page, put it in your queue on Netflix (site search engine is down, sorry, no linky). The signal has arrived. Now we must broadcast it.

Radio Free Albemuth Wins Special Jury Award!

I got word a few days ago that Radio Free Albemuth won the Grand Prize - Special Jury Award for Science Fiction at The WorldFest Houston International Film Festival (boy, that's a lot of nouns!). Congratulations to John Alan Simon (pictured above doing director stuff) who has been working tirelessly for years on this project! It really is a great film with a hell of a script and a ton of heart.

Those of you in the Dallas area will have the opportunity to see RFA next Friday April 29 at the Angelika Film Center. Have you 'liked' the film on Facebook? Have you ever seen Swimming with Sharks? Hollywood strikes me as a brutal place, and here's John Simon carrying this movie, this great piece of art, like a flickering flame in the wind. It's a Dickian, not to mention Herculean, struggle. Nice to see the film get some recognition. I really hope it gets a broader release soon.

My Future Has Been Adjusted

I would like to start this post (which will ultimately be a review of Adjustment Bureau) with a small confession. Even before I started this blog almost four years ago, my dream was to find work in Hollywood as a Dickian dramaturge, a PKD expert who helps movie producers keep their adaptations of his work true to the source material. It's a fairly common job among scholars of Shakespeare.

It was 2007 - a heady time. I was still riding high on the release of A Scanner Darkly (which my buddy Erik Davis consulted on) and as I started my job as an English teacher with my newly acquired Master's Degree, the idea of flying off to Cannes and hobnobbing with Brad Pitt as I explained the importance off looking defeated when he played the role of Jason Taverner was a nice fantasy. Admittedly, this was more than a bit naive, but, if we're being honest here, it was a dream I was trying to achieve with this blog.

And it was a dream that died about 18 minutes into The Adjustment Bureau on Friday night. The death of my dream was no surprise, as it had been on life support for a long time. And it wasn't a bummer or anything. I simply realized the dream job of keeping big-money PKD adaptations faithful to his source material is like warm ice or dry water, an oxymoronic impossibility. So, don't be sad. As Kris Kristofferson once wrote, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" and now I'm free.

First things first. The Adjustment Bureau is not a PKD adaptation. As I noted before, the central premise of a secret organization dedicated to keeping mankind on a preferred timeline is at the crux of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series, which were pretty much the first SF books I ever read. After reading PKD's short story (which as previously noted appeared a year or so after the first book in the Foundation series) I feel like PKD lifted the concept from Asimov and employed it brilliantly to create on of his greatest 'gubble' moments, when reality appears to dissolve before a character's very eyes - they suffer the symptoms of schizophrenia, the withdrawal and subsequent 'tomb world' imagery, while in full control of their mental faculties.

As was done in Next, Dick's original short story was strip-mined for its science fictional idea and then discarded. Producers took that nice little idea and transplanted it into a feature length film, but the end result is about as Dickian as a spring wedding (a prize will be awarded if anybody can find me a marriage scene in Dick's irv). The fact is, no big-money Hollywood adaptation can ever be truly faithful to the source material, mostly because Hollywood is a place where illusions are constructed, a place that is itself an illusion, a place that frankly wouldn't know 'reality' if it were to bite it in the ass -a place so hopelessly dedicated to creating high-priced and profit-driven fantasies that it has no ability to tell us what is real. Hollywood, by its very makeup, is too inauthentic to capture the great humanism that marks authenticity in Dick's books.

Matt Damon's character, David Norris, is running for a senate seat when we first meet him. In Dick's story Ed Fletcher is a real estate agent. The protagonist's elevation in stature is important - at least to me. You see if he were just an everyday guy, then the story's paranoiac elements become more pronounced. Paranoia involves an exaggerated sense of self-importance. If they're all out to get you, it is logical to assume that you are very powerful and important. If the main character is already a famous, super-scientist or running for senate with presidential aspirations, then he's already self-important. To make Damon's character a big shot, is to tweak the fundamental formula at the core of Dick's work. His characters are always everyday people, put upon by the world. Any two paragraph summary of Dick's significance in Science Fiction should include his use of average Joes and Joans. So while I understand the change, the filmmakers should have been warned they were meddling with the forces of nature.

Oh man, this is getting too long. Nobody's gonna read it and if they do they'll think I'm ranting.

I kind of liked watching the movie and imagining the action was entirely internal to Norris' psyche. Regular reader, Mr Hand, who saw the film with me, thinks this is what Rickels means by endopsychic allegory, but who the hell knows what Rickels means. Anyway, I liked the idea that the bureau was Norris' super-ego and his love for whatshername was his id. Then you have this nice internal struggle. And actually, this interpretation is plausible for like three seconds near the end of the movie, but then they go in a different direction (I'm going to write up a separate post with spoilers to talk more specifically about the ending).

I liked my idea; that the story should have been entirely solipsistic, existing in Norris' mind. And here's where my really important realization arrived. My desire to work as a dramaturge was, at its heart, an artistic aspiration. I'm realizing I should be writing my own stuff, which I have been doing, a bit. It's one of the reasons my posts here are have tapered off. I need to do more of that. Not that I'd turn him down if Gondry offered me a gig advising on the upcoming Ubik adaptation. And this blog isn't going anywhere either. I'm even more dedicated to studying Dick's life and work as he's my biggest influence.

Before you go, here's some chart-based evidence supporting the assertion that no good PKD adaption will be liked and no well-liked adaptation will be good:

The Adjustment Bureau: The Reviews Are In!

I should have anticipated the PKD media frenzy that accompanies a major cinematic adaptation of his work. I've written about the short story the film is based on, "The Adjustment Team," previously here. After all, this blog weathered the Next typhoon, but I was younger and hungrier, and somehow withstood the withering onslaught. The combination of film reviews and articles summarizing Philip K Dick's life and work, as well as 'Hollywood's Obsession with Philip K Dick' are arriving fast and furious, too fast, in fact, to keep up with. Any serious Dick-head knows about these 'Philip K Dick Article Machine' articles, specifically that these articles barely scratch the surface of PKD's strange life and career. Rather than ponder the paper-thin commentary that is the stock and trade of American journalism today, let's get into the reviews.

The first review of The Adjustment Bureau I read was from io9.com who did not inspire great confidence:

"'That Philip K. Dick guy is pretty good. But what would really make his work awesome is if it was turned into a romantic dramedy.'

If you've ever said those words, or something along those lines, then you — and only you — are the target audience for The Adjustment Bureau, the new movie opening today."

Beware, this review contains spoilers.

I found my spirits buoyed, however, by this review at The Palm Tree Garden:

"It’s not easy adapting Philip K. Dick, but George Nolfi, who wrote and directed, pulled it off. This is no mere matter of having serendipitous casting and competent post-production help. Not with Philip K. Dick. With Philip K. Dick, it is the story that counts, not the special effects, the excellent Blade Runner notwithstanding. But The Adjustment Bureau is no Paycheck, which starred Mr. Damon’s friend, Ben Affleck, and co-starred Uma Thurman as his love interest. Again, I’m disqualified. I’m one of the few people who actually thought Paycheck wasn’t all that bad. But Paycheck is a two and a half star where Bureau is, oh, at least four and a half."

Regular reader Jon, wrote this short review on my Facebook page:

"So Adjustment Bureau wasn't bad, but it was given the same "action/love story" treatment that was done to Paycheck. They actually added more vague religious suggestions, which is nice and Dickian. It's worth a watch, with no real surprises."

Things are looking up!

The bottom line seems to be that if you can handle the fore-fronting of a love story in a PKD movie you may like this. My local reviewer in the SF Gate had this to say:

""The Adjustment Bureau" can be praised as an action movie and as an imaginative fantasy, but the main thing that keeps audiences glued throughout its running time is that it's a love story, easily one of the best American love stories of the past year.

In retrospect, it almost feels like a miracle: "The Adjustment Bureau" gets an audience caring intently and personally whether two people will get together, and it does this with a single five-minute conversation. A failed senatorial candidate, rehearsing his concession speech, meets a woman and they talk. Their ease, their immediate interest, their amusement and instantaneous delight in each other's company are so apparent that we know we're witnessing one of those things. That is, the kind of connection that feels so natural that you think it should happen every day but instead happens just once or twice in a lifetime."

So, until I see this movie sometime in the next couple days I can only speculate, but this sounds like a pretty good date movie.

The release of The Adjustment Bureau also spawned several articles that survey the PKD adaptations that have already hit the market.

Quiet Earth grades every adaptation here with this caveat:

"I've put the films in order of my own personal preference. Obviously many of you will probably disagree with my order, but I think because I tend to enjoy Dick's earlier writing which tends to lean towards high concept, fast paced scifi weirdness I tend to go for the more hard scifi, or action oriented films."

As I try to explain to my students, grading is very often a subjective enterprise, and obviously there is room for debate here.

I really liked this article on io0.com, The Ten Greatest Philip K Dick Stories Hollywood Hasn't Filmed Yet, primarily because it suggests some fairly obscure short stories and under-appreciated novels (The Crack in Space!).

I'll leave you here on that upbeat note. As I say, I hope to see it in the next couple of days and will post a review.

Oh, I almost forgot this review - which I also really like. Money paragraph:

"So, despite the dark and visionary sci-fi pedigree behind the source material and a $50 million budget, is this just a glorified update of It's a Wonderful Life? After all, wasn’t Clarence the Angel a sort of a benevolent “adjustor”, a case worker assigned by the “boss” to nudge Jimmy Stewart back onto his Pre-Ordained Path? Although the “G” word is never mentioned in Nolfi’s film, it’s pretty clear that the “Chairman” represents You-Know-Who (although every time the Chairman was mentioned, I kept visualizing Ralph Richardson’s marvelously droll Supreme Being in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits)."

Please post links to additional reviews in the comments section. I can't keep up!

Gondry To Direct Ubik Adaptation

It's all over the Internetz folks. I've been scooped by freakin' third-rate movie blogs.

Tell us about it:

"Director Michel Gondry, whose Green Hornet movie is currently in theaters, is developing a screen adaptation of the acclaimed Philip K. Dick sci-fi novel Ubik as a future project.

According to The Playlist and Deadline, Gondry is attached to adapt and direct Ubik for Film Rites (run by Oscar winner Steven Zaillian) and Anonymous Content. The project isn't set-up at a studio yet."

I delved a bit into my archives and located this post from three years ago:

""Celluloid Dreams has optioned the rights to Philip K. Dick's 1969 novel Ubik.

A metaphysical comic nightmare on death and salvation, Ubik was heralded as one of the 100 greatest English-language novels by Time magazine.

The film will be produced by Hengameh Panahi of Celluloid Dreams and Isa Dick Hackett, the author's daughter, of Electric Shepherd Prods. It is skedded to go into production in early 2009."

So there is something of a long, strange trip with this film. And perhaps this is not the last word. I honestly feel a little ambivalent about Gondry. I would have been incredibly enthusiastic if he had just finished Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, but he's made two movies in the interim I was lukewarm about (to put it kindly). I am a little concerned about the cutesy-poo element in his work. Write in caps at me in the comments if you must.

Perhaps most annoying is the fact that none of these articles about Ubik mention Radio Free Albemuth, further convincing me that Hollywood really is just a cliquey grade school playground.

Radio Free Cairo

Well gentle readers, Life is happening again, and I am once more struggling to find the time to keep the blog updated. I finished We Can Build You and need to post some thoughts on that, but I wanted to write a bit this morning about John Simon's awesome adaptation of Radio Free Albemuth - as you know I saw a final cut of it recently. What you may not know is that you can now add the film to your Netflix queue. Not that the the movie's available now; it won't actually be out until after it gets some kind of theatrical release later this year, but adding the film to your Netflix queue lets potential distributors know there is interest and may help in finding a deal for theatrical release. So, obviously, add the film to your queue.


But I really wanted to talk about the movie in relation to the recent protests in Egypt. Readers of Radio Free Albemuth already know the novels deals with the autocratic and oppressive regime of Ferris F Fremont (renamed Richard Fremont in the film). When the Egyptian government started rounding up journalists last week, in my mind I kept going back to the movie, which does an amazing job of capturing the maddening injustice of a government working against its people. I think it's Rickman (correct me in the comments section if I'm wrong) who talked about seeing wounds on PKD's arms, and that PKD had told him he'd cut himself with a crushed soda can after learning of Anwar Sadat's assassination - of course Sadat was Mubarak's predecessor so this is not so totally removed from the Dickian Universe.

What I'm trying to get at is that Dick felt - in a physical sense - the injustice of the world; it abraded him, and saddened him in a way that's easy to underestimate given our own all-too-common detachment. At its best, Radio Free Albemuth evokes this physical, gut reaction to the ease and efficiency with which oppressive bureaucracies make the immoral moral, simply by substituting the inhuman needs of The State above the needs of the people. A day after some of the worst violence in Cairo, the government called the attacks on innocent protesters a mistake. They promised they would look into it. I got the same feeling in the pit of my stomach as I did at the climax of John Simon's cinematic adaptation.

One of the reasons the film evokes this feeling is the painstaking work Simon undertakes in building up Nick and Phil as characters. There's a scene in the movie where the two friends are shooting hoops in the gym. At first it struck me as an utterly un-Dickian scene. I can't, off the top of my head, think of any sports-related scene in PKD's irv (except of course isn't there a Dodger game near the end of Radio Free Albemuth, the novel?). As un-PKD as this scene first appears, it actually works, because it helps round out the characters. And this is a movie about characters. This is a movie about what happens to a friendship when one friend starts talking about crazy experiences. What happens to a marriage when one partner becomes convinced he's in communication with extra-terrestrials? How do loyalty and compassion work when it looks as if your friend has become un-moored from reality? These are important questions, and our answers to them tell us something about our own nature.

While VALIS is touted as the better novel - RFA is often just seen as a rough-draft of VALIS - RFA succeeds in focusing on the human elements of Dick's 2-3-74 experiences. While the human elements in VALIS are sometimes subsumed by the endless ontological riffing, Simon is able to forefront the human drama in RFA by building the narrative around Nick and Phil's friendship. As a result, the plot develops out of the characters rather than a science-fictional idea. This is one of the most interesting things that separates RFA from other adaptations of PKD's work: while Hollywood most often simply lifts one of PKD's SF concepts and grafts it into Keanu-Cruise computer-generated green-screen action flick with car chases, RFA eschews all of that in favor of the rich interpersonal drama of this friendship.

Amid all the high-stakes drama of the Egyptian protests and their foreign policy ramifications, it's easy to forget that what you are seeing on TV is a human drama, that the protests are made up not of demands but of people who want justice. Those aren't actors on your screen, and it isn't fake blood. It's an important thing to remember and Simon's adaptation of RFA in both form and content reminds us that this overarching concern with the human element in any situation is often at the core of Dick's fiction. I'm excited that one way or another, Dick-heads are going to get a chance to see this movie.

Isn't One Remembering Enough?

Word arrived today that production for the remake of Total Recall (which I've mentioned before) is kicking into high gear, in Canada! From Joblo.com:

"In an article over at The Toronto Star [they must mean this one, the one they didn't link to], it's revealed that Columbia Pictures' TOTAL RECALL remake is moving forward in earnest now, with production set to begin in March 2011. Shooting will take place at Pinewood Toronto Studios, a massive facility which was recently home to SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD and THE THING.

Len Wiseman is signed to direct, while the screenplay was penned by SALT scribe Kurt Wimmer. According to the article, the production will cost somewhere in the $200 million range. We still don't know if Colin Farrell will tackle the lead role; he's reportedly been offered the part, but we haven't heard much on that front since.

Also no word on whether or not the producers are going back to TOTAL RECALL's inspiration, Philip K. Dick's book "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", or if will more or less take its cue from Paul Verhoeven's film. Usually in a situation like this the studio always tries to con us with a "We're referencing the original source material more so than the movie" line; that's usually horseshit."

So, for me, the faithfulness of this adaptation boils down to whom they cast in the leading role. The Governator (though I'm glad to have his signature on my Masters Degree) was a terrible choice for the original role since it's written for a nebbish, pocket calculator operator like Richard Drefus, Dustin Hoffman, or the kid who played Screech on Saved By The Bell. Hey, maybe they could get one of the Degrassi kids to play Douglas Quail!

My guts says this film's going to be no truer to PKD's short story than the original film. That's my two cents, and I'm prepared to be spectacularly wrong. Electric Shepard Productions has nothing to do with this remake, so don't bother complaining about them in the comments section. Please reserve your wrath for Hollywood's current zero-risk strategy for making vapid crap that nobody likes, but lots of people still flock to see. No Tron disses - I haven't seen it yet!

I won't waste your time with an all-too-ubiquitous 'Why are there so many remakes" rants, but one does wonder - why are there so many remakes? I can only imagine that the film's producers are glued to this blog, so - please - suggest your leading actor in the comments section...

New and Improved Philip K Dick Article Machine?

Picture: From Radio Free Albemuth

The Guardian has a surprisingly good article on adapting science fiction to the silver screen, and focuses closely on 2001 and Blade Runner. Go read the article. We'll wait....

I guess it's not precisely a PKD article, hence the machine is still probably in mothballs somewhere. But it is remarkably insightful and on target i'n'it? I love the first line:

"If science fiction is a genre of ideas, is there any wonder Hollywood doesn't get it?"

Beyond that, if there is a kind of universal element of parody in science fiction, the people being ridiculed are the ones who favor looks over substance, surface over depth, cover over book, in other words, Hollywood types in all their siliconed shallowness. Science Fiction, especially PKD's, is counter-cultural. I suppose that's not true of Asimov, but he'll be my exception that proves the rule until you all school me in the comments section. Anyway, this counter-culture is antithetical to and incompatible with Hollywood's desire to package culture for mass consumption.

Another reason Science Fiction and Hollywood mix like Vulcans and Romulans has to do with another issue repeatedly addressed in PKD's fiction: the various meanings of success. In the article, Damien Walter claims that the two best sci-fi movies are 2001 and Blade Runner. I won't argue unduly with the assertion, but certainly these are not the most financially successful science fiction movies. According to this hastily located chart, neither of these films is even in the top ten in terms of biggest grossing SF movies. Christ, Avatar is number three! Hollywood judges success in very different terms than the average movie goer. And as movies get more expensive to produce, directors and producers will naturally take fewer risks.

Maybe when we can produce big budget Hollywood effects at home on our desktop computers, our tastes will change. Maybe people will begin to make movies in their basements and they will judge success in terms of whether people like the film, rather than how much money it makes.

Walter writes:

"Many of the Philip K Dick adaptions to hit our screens following Blade Runner have dragged those hopes lower still. A slew of star vehicles and forgettable summer blockbusters including Total Recall, Impostor, Minority Report, Paycheck and Next replaced PKD's dark and complex vision of the future with formulaic Hollywood action movie plots."

Amen! But he lists all the crummy PKD adaptations, and leaves out the good one. I wonder if he had a paragraph about A Scanner Darkly that maybe an editor cut out. I think that it's a great movie and one of my favorite PKD adaptations, and certainly it keeps the important ideas from the book, in fact it's very faithful. Interestingly, when I talk to people who don't like it, they almost always mention the roto-scoping. If that aesthetic decision turned people off is that a case of favoring aesthetics over the story's ideas?

Walter also notes that the BBC's history with SF adaptations is a little dodgy. Let's hope Ridley has an incredibly hands-on role with this project.

Lastly, what this article makes me think about is Radio Free Albemuth. From what I saw this was a good movie that retained all of the ideas from the novel. The film avoids all the big-budget action like the plague, and actually, as a result, develops quite a bit of tension from the simple drama of human interaction - kinda like PKD's books.

Sedona Film Festival to Screen Radio Free Albemuth

Photo: Shea Whigham as Phil

Exciting news from director John Simon:

"We are having a sneak preview of Radio Free Albemuth at the Sedona Film Festival in Arizona this upcoming week.

There will be two screenings - a small one on Thursday, Feb. 25 at the Studio Live Theatre at 7:30 pm.

and a larger one in the main Festival screening theatre on Saturday night, February 27th at, the Harkins Theatre 2 at 9:55 pm

My personal suggestion would be to go to the Saturday screening - bigger screen, better sound.

It's being billed as a "sneak preview" "work-in-progress" screening. The film is for all intents and purposes complete - really just the end titles need to be finished.

It's not inconceivable that reactions to the screening might cause us to reconsider the length - which right now is 114 minutes without credits.

So there is some possibility, this will be the only chance to see the movie in this version --- which represents my sole cut and vision of the film.

Obviously, we're hoping/anticipating a good reaction - as we've had so far to those we've screened the movie for, including yourself.

Here's a link to the Festival website. Tickets are $10 for the screenings.

If any PKD fans or listers show up, I'd love to have them introduce themselves to me. I'll be there for Q&A at the end of both screenings.

We could use your support and that of PKD readers."

Here are some more production stills from the movie:


Jonathan Scarfe as Nick Brady with FAP Guards


Scott Wilson as President Fremont


Shea Whigham as Phil, science fiction writer.

Photos courtesy of Radio Free LLC; all rights reserved....