"I wanted to tell the story the way I thought HE saw it"

July 17, 2006 1:26 PM

Here's an interview with Richard Linklater about A Scanner Darkly and Philip K. Dick, in comic-book format. Also: the much longer transcript of the interview.
posted by whir (25 comments total)

related
posted by edgeways at 1:30 PM on July 17, 2006

Rotoscoping gives me a headache.
posted by mischief at 1:42 PM on July 17, 2006

It's too bad Dick's reading of the hilarious 'suicide scene' is in RM. Fuck RealPlayer...

I saw the film on Friday, and it's definitely one I'll see again. With as much depth in the dialog that it had (to say the very least), it's a repeater for sure.

At some points I had to re-adjust myself to pay attention to the plot again after being too entertained by the animation.
posted by blastrid at 1:45 PM on July 17, 2006

The links at the bottom of the first article are worth checking out; among other things they include the aforementioned audio stream and an online version of Robert Crumb's comic about PKD.
posted by whir at 1:51 PM on July 17, 2006

Also related.
posted by Gator at 2:00 PM on July 17, 2006

Cool; I just saw this last night, actually.

I enjoyed the film, and I like this rotoscoping more than the work in Waking Life; in Scanner it was beautiful but not distracting.
posted by craven_morhead at 2:41 PM on July 17, 2006

Should this get a spoiler alert?
posted by sien at 3:53 PM on July 17, 2006

Waking Life gave me a headache, too, but not Scanner. I was impressed overall with how closely Linklater stuck to the text. I still loathe Keanu Reeves as an "actor", but Robert Downey Jr. played Barris to perfection.
posted by rhythim at 4:33 PM on July 17, 2006

Hmm, I suppose it should get a spoiler alert, sorry about that. I don't think there are any really earth-shattering revelations in the interview, though; they are talking more about the feel of the movie and book. But if you're rabidly anti-spoiler, you'd be better off not reading this until you saw the movie.
posted by whir at 4:35 PM on July 17, 2006

If you're rabidly anti-spoiler reading ANYTHING about ANYTHING you intend to watch is a pretty poor idea, especially on the internet.
posted by Artw at 4:38 PM on July 17, 2006

I was totally floored by how faithful the movie was to the book, not just in plot, but also in feel. You could tell it was a work of love and admiration. definitely a thumbs up.
posted by shmegegge at 4:49 PM on July 17, 2006

I don't know what you guys are talking about. The movie was HORRIBLE (caps horrible). I haven't been that bored in a long time. I went in expecting something close to Blade Runner or even Minority Report, but damn did it suck.
posted by exhilaration at 5:42 PM on July 17, 2006

MP3 conversion of Philip k. Dick's reading from A Scanner Darkly (cracking up)
posted by anthill at 6:40 PM on July 17, 2006

I saw the movie this weekend, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. The rotoscope style drained me, but it was for the best I suppose.

I don't think there was much spoilage in the linked text interview (certainly not in the comic). A mention of a key scene at the end, but otherwise harmless.

Thanks whir for the great interview, which had lots of great links to other PKD things that I'm still ingesting ...
posted by intermod at 7:05 PM on July 17, 2006

exhilaration: If you're expecting a movie like Blade Runner or Minority report from a faithful filming of a PKD novel, you're going to be disapointed. All of the Hollywood action stuff from those two movies (and Total Recall, Paycheck, etc.) was added by the screenwriters to the bare shell of Dick's stories. He might have written novels with pulp set dressing but he didn't really write pulp novels. The bulk of a lot of his stories is people sitting around and talking and not a whole lot of gun battles or fist-fights.
posted by octothorpe at 7:08 PM on July 17, 2006

Also also related: "Blurring the lines in 'A Scanner Darkly'" [via News.com]
posted by sfslim at 7:38 PM on July 17, 2006

I saw the movie tonight and was pleasantly surprised, a very enjoyable movie, and very well acted (yes, even Keanu).
posted by Vindaloo at 9:28 PM on July 17, 2006

re: bitching

Having not seen it yet, I can definitely say that the tone of Blade Runner, while being a good movie, didn't fit with my impressions of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep at all, any of the times I've read it. So, I can see where a "faithful" casting of one of his books might disappoint people looking for some super-duper hollywood scifi thriller.

Makes me wonder if any people really ever read Dick's work at all. That's one thing they touch on in the interview: the humor. I've always thought Dick's books were funny, especially Scanner.
posted by cellphone at 9:56 PM on July 17, 2006

Thank you.

I also checked (prompted by this article) the showtimes for Scanner (hadn't realized it was finally out, despite it being about the only movie I've been waiting to see for the past 18 months) and it's playing at the local indie cinema a few blocks away and not the gigantic multiplex. And that makes me happy!
posted by Eideteker at 7:20 AM on July 18, 2006

Huh. I was never bored by A Scanner Darkly, and was bored by parts of Blade Runner (not the point where I didn't like it overall). Go figure.
posted by Foosnark at 9:58 AM on July 18, 2006

I went in expecting something close to Blade Runner or even Minority Report...

... which are Ridley Scott and Stephen Spielberg creations, not PK Dick creations.

PKD was never really about the action outside the head as much as the action inside the the head. If you see a PK Dick adaptation that's loaded with action, you're probably not looking at a very faithful adaptation.
posted by lodurr at 11:31 AM on July 18, 2006

Hmph. Blade Runner may not be pure PKS, but it's a hell of a lot closer to the original intent than some hack-up like Minority Report or (ugh) Paycheck.

Of course I have a soft spot for Total Recall...
posted by Artw at 12:14 PM on July 18, 2006

Sure, Blade Runner is a lot closer to DADoES than Total Recall is to "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale." The Moon is a hell of a lot closer to Earth than Mars. You still can't get there in a pink El Dorado convertible. (Mike Nesmith notwithstanding.)

Which is not to say BR isn't a good flick. I don't think it's about the same things as DADoES.

As for Total Recall -- I think if I were sitting down in front of the TV on a Saturday afternoon and had to pick between that and scraping paint on the trim, I'd pick the paint scraper.
posted by lodurr at 12:24 PM on July 18, 2006

Screamers is a pretty neat interpretation of a Dick short story. I particularly like that they retained the red anti-radiation cigarettes.
posted by Artw at 12:40 PM on July 18, 2006

RUSIRIUSRADIO recent podcast #51 features an interview with Linklater ... bon appetit

http://www.rusiriusradio.com/


posted by Twang at 12:07 AM on July 19, 2006