Estate Settles Adjustment Bureau Lawsuit

 In legal news, there was a settlement in the dueling lawsuits concerning Adjustment Bureau. There is very little news as the settlement is secret. You'll remember the estate said the producers owed the estate money, but then the producers discovered that the short story, Adjustment Team, was, in fact, in the public domain. There were all sorts of complicating factors like international (rather than domestic) copyright law and all that jazz. Bottom line: Perhaps the Adjustment Bureau TV show is back on...

Read about the settlement here.

Amalgamated Links Brought To You By Autoblogger

Pictured, Radio Free Albemuth, Where are you?

While we wait for that big-time review of The Exegesis (New York Review of Books, please) we must content ourselves with the banal traffic of Dickian ephemera.

Here's an LA Times article about The Adjustment Bureau lawsuit. Since Philip K Dick really did write Adjustment Team I think there's no real question but that the estate is owed money. Furthermore it is my understanding that many big studios try to get of big post-production payments like this, either through legal wrangling or creative bookkeeping. It's obvious to me that Hollywood is nothing more than a sausage-making factory with lips and assholes in control. There's also this io9 article about a possible TV show. Here's my plot summary of the first episode: "Mr Chairwoman, we've re-arranged the ordering of events in reality again to result in several unwatched TVs being tuned to our show. That should give us the ratings we need!"

Here's Barnes and Noble's review of The Exegesis as written by Paul Di Filippo. Believe it or not the review is pretty positive and even encourages people to go out and buy the book, but there may be a conflict of interest there. I like this paragraph:

Beside all the multiplex, circuitous philosophizing, the book is full of mini-narratives pertaining to Dick's own life; insightful, critical examinations of what his oeuvre is all about; stoner aphorisms ("It is just as easy to think of the future pushing the present into the past as to think of the past generating the present and moving toward the future…"); Jungian dream adventures like Lovecraft's The Quest of Unknown Kadath; and plaintive cries from the heart, a voice echoing in the spiritual wilderness, longing for one true companion and guide. Arriving, exhausted and drenched in cosmological flop sweat, on page 827, written not long before Dick's premature death from stroke in 1982, we encounter his temporary elation, and it cuts like a knife. "Why am I so joyful? I am celebrating a victory and can now stop work -- finally -- and relax. Why? Because I did my job and I know it." But of course more hard work followed, and only death stopped him.

Lastly the PhilipKDickFans website is really firing on all cylinders. Good to know that if I wink out of reality like a distant supernova, there will still be quality Dickian web-content!

You Can Read The Lawsuit

This article from The Hollywood Reporter has some new details about the lawsuit filed by PKD's Estate. You can even read the lawsuit here. Aside from some bad "adjustment" puns, the real news I found digging around in there involves the possibility of an Adjustment Bureau TV show. I still can't figure out why nobody is suing Isaac Asimov's Foundation series where this whole planning-the-future trope comes from. Or more to the point, I can't figure out why Isaac Asimov's trust isn't suing everybody. But I suppose that's neither here nor there.

Anyhoo, did I tell you PhilipkDickfans.com is back up and running? It is!

And the Exegesis is coming out soon! Holy Mackeral I've kind of been putting it out of my mind, but it's really going to happen.

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."

Required Reading

Gary Wesfahl's review of The Adjustment Bureau, "Philip K, Diminished" over at Locus.com is the review to read. I couldn't have said it better myself -and I've been trying for years. Go now and read it. Oh, you want some evidence it's a good article? Here:

"Indeed, if professors of film studies want to enlighten their students about what Hollywood wants to be, and what Hollywood really is, I can imagine no better lesson than to have them read stories and novels by Philip K. Dick, then having them watch the films that they inspired. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) / Blade Runner (1982), “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966) / Total Recall (1990), and “The Minority Report” (1956) / Minority Report (2002) would all be obvious items for the syllabus, but “Adjustment Team” / The Adjustment Bureau might actually be the most illuminating assignment. This would be the theme of the class: today, everyone in Hollywood wants to be different, to be innovative, even to be strange; hence, they are inexorably drawn to the works of Philip K. Dick, because perhaps more so than any other science fiction writer in the business, Dick is consistently different, consistently innovative, consistently strange."

Stories From All Over

A couple links for you today as you start your weekend.

First off, looks like the Library of America is offering all three PKD volumes in an attractive case (actually, strike that, it's not that attractive, and it's kinda weird that the case looks so different from the individual covers). But whatever, if you have 70$ (and who does these days?) buy it here, so I can get a cut:



Second, io9.com has posted a pair of articles about Adjustment Team, now being filmed as 'The Adjustment Bureau' - which I actually think is a slightly better title. I can't remember the short story well enough, so I'll reread it today and maybe post a little about the adaptation. I have to say, this looks like it'll probably have a dodgy chair in it.

The first article features an interview with the movie's female lead, Emily Blunt, talking about the film's love story. She says:

"The term soulmates is used so casually, but in this case, in this film, it is true. They are sort of destined to be together and they fight fate to be together."

The second io9 article covers some casting news, namely that LOST's Daniel Dae Kim "will play a "mysterious staffer" at the Bureau of Adjustments"