In many ways, Hollywood’s many adaptations of Philip K. Dick point to his genius, the strength of his storytelling, and his high regard held by the writers and other creatives there. But jeesh - it’s difficult to imagine a more difficult “sci-fi” writer to adapt, just because the worlds he creates and the conflicts in his characters are so singularly strange and often baffling. I’ve read quite a few of his works and find that they are often really compelling and really weird and disturbing. They aren’t usually light reading, I guess. But as they go, I think this book is one of the more straightforward of his stories and one of the most easy to imagine, even if his worlds are both really striking and at the same time hard kind-of hard to imagine? I haven’t seen them all, particularly the recent series based on the Man in the High Tower, but I consider this film to be the most faithful imagining of one of his stories. In many ways, I found the movie to be more effective as a story even while the book is more compelling - and “wins,” as it were. I wonder if you’ve read other works by Dick? I think seeing this film first would be helpful, in a way, because you can use it to set the scene for all the other heavy stuff that goes along with his writing. It’s actually been a while since I’ve read him, partly because I’m often left kind-of disturbed, and I wonder if I’d be better now at envisioning his worlds that can feel truly alien (and at the same time gripping). But yeah, as an example, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is very different than Blade Runner in many ways. I’m not sure what sort of film a faithful retelling would even make, honestly. Dick is so often concerned with strange ideas about society, the mind, or consciousness or whatever and writes in that sort of mid-century head-trip style that would similarly make The Catcher in the Rye difficult to convey in film. Anyway, this was great and I appreciate the scope of the works you feature. A book/film that I believe you may enjoy and might consider doing here would be Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. There’s a Soviet film that’s highly thought of (though I found it difficult when I was younger) and a more recent effort starring George Clooney. If nothing else, I’m confident you’d enjoy the book a great deal. Thanks again for your work - enjoyed this a lot!
Thanks for commenting! I've only read this and Electric Sheep by him and agreed, Scanner was a bit more straight forward. I want to re-read Electric Sheep nevada out was five years ago now that I read it and I'll compare it with Blade Runner, even though the two are so different. But yeah, his work seems tough to adapt. And I'll add Solaris to my list! Thanks for the recommendation!
They've adapted sooo much of his stuff, much of it not terribly difficult to adapt as far as making a fun, watchable film. Total Recall, for example (based on a short story with a different title). One I wish they would adapt, although it likely would be difficult, is Ubik. Probably my fav of PKDs output and I've read all of it.
I interpreted some of the open questions from the book as an even darker plan from Donna and the rest of the police force. "Cephscope" to me pretty directly implies a Cephaloscope; so a tool to analyse brain function. I think this was used by Arctor to keep an eye on his own condition - and I think it might have been destroyed by Donna as part of the plan to fry his brain; keeping him from realizing his detereoration until it's too late. There was a passage in the book, around the middle if I remember correctly, where Arctor thinks about his worst fear: That someone could spike his drugs with something worse, poisoning him and destroying his brain. I interpreted this as a direct hint that the police did just that. That it's not just Substance-D but a Special poison to make him detereorate faster. He does seem to fall pretty quickly once it truly starts and everyone around him remains lucid much longer. When in the end Donna and Mike are talking about their plan I interpreted this as confirmation. In turn this made the book even darker for me and shifts the focus more on the "the totalitarian government is as bad or even worse than the dealers", especially in light of the implication that the New Path in some way might be sanctioned, as (at least in the Film) was brought up as a theory.
This book was weirdly beautiful to me. It's so scattered and meandering, but I loved every damn sentence. It felt like it fit right in with my ADHD and I had the best time reading it.
Watching the movie for the first time I thought it was inferior to the book. But I've learned movies are invariably onto a loser when viewed in the context of a book you enjoyed reading. Watching it again recently with something of a faded familiarity with the text I was far more satisfied. I should add that after reading maybe a third of Dick's works I've become increasingly frustrated with his prose style. You can tell he churned this stuff out quickly and somewhat mechanically. There are exceptions, such as Ubik, Martian Time Slip and the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch where he seemed to invest just a bit more effort. But SD was right on the cusp of his prose going completely sideways. I compare it to Nolan's "The Prestige" - another adaptation which came out at the same time. Once again I preferred Christopher Priest's source text. But Priest was a beautiful writer whereas Dick is just hard bloody work.
Dick is very difficult to adapt to cinema. What makes Dick stand out is that the majority of his writings all take place in the mind. He's not an action writer. His writings have to do with human psychology and the story is based around that. Read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. For the screenplay, the writers stripped away so much out of the Dick's original story and made it so much more simplistic that, in my view, it sucked. But it also was more action oriented. With Scanner, there's not a lot of action to the story. So the challenge is how do you make what's going on on the minds of these drug addicts entertaining and captivating to the audience? Very difficult and while I have not liked all of Linklater's work, he does an amiable job in trying to bring this story to life (and I think in the right way) by using rotoscoping as a way of showing you just how f-up the lives of these addicts are. The scramble suit is a brilliant piece of scifi creativity and I love how rotoscoping brings that to life so well. I've been listening to your podcast but, I have to admit, there is so much talking from you that it gets to be a bit tedious. And like, why should I care what you think about the comparisons between the book and the movie? I really don't. But hey, I'm giving you a chance by listening to your podcast, right? In the end, I think Linklater brought out the best cinematic adaptation possible for this story. I had zero expectations for it when I saw it back in the movie theater so many years ago and was pleasantly surprised. I agree with you that Keanu is no great actor and he was used principally for star power. I also think Winona was way too old to play her role and it should have been given to an 18 year old teenager (if they could have found one who could act) but again, Winona probably was chosen due to, if anything, curiosity, and what's happened to her movie career given all the publicity she received early in her career. The best casting decision was Robert Downey, Jr. He's brilliant in bringing to life an extremely paranoid drug addicted character.
In many ways, Hollywood’s many adaptations of Philip K. Dick point to his genius, the strength of his storytelling, and his high regard held by the writers and other creatives there. But jeesh - it’s difficult to imagine a more difficult “sci-fi” writer to adapt, just because the worlds he creates and the conflicts in his characters are so singularly strange and often baffling. I’ve read quite a few of his works and find that they are often really compelling and really weird and disturbing. They aren’t usually light reading, I guess.
But as they go, I think this book is one of the more straightforward of his stories and one of the most easy to imagine, even if his worlds are both really striking and at the same time hard kind-of hard to imagine? I haven’t seen them all, particularly the recent series based on the Man in the High Tower, but I consider this film to be the most faithful imagining of one of his stories. In many ways, I found the movie to be more effective as a story even while the book is more compelling - and “wins,” as it were.
I wonder if you’ve read other works by Dick? I think seeing this film first would be helpful, in a way, because you can use it to set the scene for all the other heavy stuff that goes along with his writing. It’s actually been a while since I’ve read him, partly because I’m often left kind-of disturbed, and I wonder if I’d be better now at envisioning his worlds that can feel truly alien (and at the same time gripping).
But yeah, as an example, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is very different than Blade Runner in many ways. I’m not sure what sort of film a faithful retelling would even make, honestly. Dick is so often concerned with strange ideas about society, the mind, or consciousness or whatever and writes in that sort of mid-century head-trip style that would similarly make The Catcher in the Rye difficult to convey in film.
Anyway, this was great and I appreciate the scope of the works you feature. A book/film that I believe you may enjoy and might consider doing here would be Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. There’s a Soviet film that’s highly thought of (though I found it difficult when I was younger) and a more recent effort starring George Clooney. If nothing else, I’m confident you’d enjoy the book a great deal. Thanks again for your work - enjoyed this a lot!
Thanks for commenting! I've only read this and Electric Sheep by him and agreed, Scanner was a bit more straight forward. I want to re-read Electric Sheep nevada out was five years ago now that I read it and I'll compare it with Blade Runner, even though the two are so different. But yeah, his work seems tough to adapt.
And I'll add Solaris to my list! Thanks for the recommendation!
They've adapted sooo much of his stuff, much of it not terribly difficult to adapt as far as making a fun, watchable film. Total Recall, for example (based on a short story with a different title).
One I wish they would adapt, although it likely would be difficult, is Ubik. Probably my fav of PKDs output and I've read all of it.
Rory Cock-ran is a great actor, hes had alot of big roles in the past decade and he deserves it
lol Rory Coltrane !! Who?
I interpreted some of the open questions from the book as an even darker plan from Donna and the rest of the police force.
"Cephscope" to me pretty directly implies a Cephaloscope; so a tool to analyse brain function.
I think this was used by Arctor to keep an eye on his own condition - and I think it might have been destroyed by Donna as part of the plan to fry his brain; keeping him from realizing his detereoration until it's too late.
There was a passage in the book, around the middle if I remember correctly, where Arctor thinks about his worst fear: That someone could spike his drugs with something worse, poisoning him and destroying his brain.
I interpreted this as a direct hint that the police did just that. That it's not just Substance-D but a Special poison to make him detereorate faster.
He does seem to fall pretty quickly once it truly starts and everyone around him remains lucid much longer.
When in the end Donna and Mike are talking about their plan I interpreted this as confirmation. In turn this made the book even darker for me and shifts the focus more on the "the totalitarian government is as bad or even worse than the dealers", especially in light of the implication that the New Path in some way might be sanctioned, as (at least in the Film) was brought up as a theory.
The book is about 2/3rds hilarious conversations that are there for no other reason than they are hilarious.
The end where he makes everyone human as they are hits right in the soul.
They all just wanted to play, but they played to long and were punished with consequences that were far too severe.
This book was weirdly beautiful to me. It's so scattered and meandering, but I loved every damn sentence. It felt like it fit right in with my ADHD and I had the best time reading it.
I just finished the book and watched the movie. Thanks for providing a nice recap and comparison!
Thank You !
Thanks
Watching the movie for the first time I thought it was inferior to the book. But I've learned movies are invariably onto a loser when viewed in the context of a book you enjoyed reading. Watching it again recently with something of a faded familiarity with the text I was far more satisfied. I should add that after reading maybe a third of Dick's works I've become increasingly frustrated with his prose style. You can tell he churned this stuff out quickly and somewhat mechanically. There are exceptions, such as Ubik, Martian Time Slip and the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch where he seemed to invest just a bit more effort. But SD was right on the cusp of his prose going completely sideways. I compare it to Nolan's "The Prestige" - another adaptation which came out at the same time. Once again I preferred Christopher Priest's source text. But Priest was a beautiful writer whereas Dick is just hard bloody work.
Dick is very difficult to adapt to cinema. What makes Dick stand out is that the majority of his writings all take place in the mind. He's not an action writer. His writings have to do with human psychology and the story is based around that. Read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. For the screenplay, the writers stripped away so much out of the Dick's original story and made it so much more simplistic that, in my view, it sucked. But it also was more action oriented. With Scanner, there's not a lot of action to the story. So the challenge is how do you make what's going on on the minds of these drug addicts entertaining and captivating to the audience? Very difficult and while I have not liked all of Linklater's work, he does an amiable job in trying to bring this story to life (and I think in the right way) by using rotoscoping as a way of showing you just how f-up the lives of these addicts are. The scramble suit is a brilliant piece of scifi creativity and I love how rotoscoping brings that to life so well. I've been listening to your podcast but, I have to admit, there is so much talking from you that it gets to be a bit tedious. And like, why should I care what you think about the comparisons between the book and the movie? I really don't. But hey, I'm giving you a chance by listening to your podcast, right?
In the end, I think Linklater brought out the best cinematic adaptation possible for this story. I had zero expectations for it when I saw it back in the movie theater so many years ago and was pleasantly surprised. I agree with you that Keanu is no great actor and he was used principally for star power. I also think Winona was way too old to play her role and it should have been given to an 18 year old teenager (if they could have found one who could act) but again, Winona probably was chosen due to, if anything, curiosity, and what's happened to her movie career given all the publicity she received early in her career. The best casting decision was Robert Downey, Jr. He's brilliant in bringing to life an extremely paranoid drug addicted character.
Books better then the movie... lord of the rings, harry potter, the dark tower. True 9/10 the book is better then the movie.