I was just thinking about this since I was reading ‘Selected Short Stories by Philip K. Dick’. It does seem interesting that Minority Report and Total Recall (based on ‘We can remember it for you wholesale’) differed so distinctly from the written work. At least Minority Report was in the same ballpark, however! Total Recall just is lightyears away from Dick’s short story.
Then you have Blade Runner (based on 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) and Screamers (based on 'Second Variety
… great story). Now, I haven’t read ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’, nor have seen the movie Screamers, so I can’t comment on them. From what I’ve read: Blade Runner seems to veer off path (with Dick’s approval) and Screamers follows the story fairly well (at least according to IMDB’s summary of it).
At the same time I say there was a movie called Imposter based on the great Dick story. I’m not sure how well that was, but it got mixed reviews.
What’s the best news? They are making a movie out of PAYCHECK! That’s my favorite Dick short story, and I can’t wait to see it (as long as they don’t fuck it up).
Ben Affleck as Jennings? Ok, maybe I can buy that. Uma Thurman as Rachel? Not bad. The one downside? It’s directed by John Woo :(. Hopefully he can at least attempt to make an intelligent movie out of this great short story!
Well, I know to get Screamers then ;). ‘Second Variety’ is a great story :D. Though I was sad to find that it took place on another planet… I guess since the Cold War had ended, they had to do it differently.
I should have noted that I haven’t read any of Dick’s stories, so regarding my impressions of Screamers and Imposter, I cannot attest to the faithfulness of the movies to the stories.
eburacum45, I was just popping into the thread to schill for Confessions d’un Barjo, which IMHO is the most faithful adaptation of a Dick novel/story yet.
Confessions of a Crap Artist is one of my favourite of his works, and, more than any other adaptation, Barjo really feels like the book, in spite of it being in French.
Where it does depart from the source, it’s still inspired-- I love the bit where he’s using his milk cap (pre-‘pog’) collection as aromatherapy, and obliges when a curious stranger asks if he can have a go.
I loved “Total Recall” though I’m sure it wasn’t faitful to the original. Once in chester Brown’s * Yummy Fur * (a ‘slice of life’ style underground comic) three pubescent boys kissed the TV screen when TR was on and they showed the prostitute with the three breasts.
I’m a huge PKD fan (a Dickhead?), so I’m glad that Hollywood has finally began to appreciate his genius. It’s a pity that most adaptions have been so poorly done. I don’t mind if the movie veers from the storyline, the important thing is that the main themes are maintained.
That said, I think the best Phillip K Dick movie ever is… Vanilla Sky (Abre Los Ojos). Ok, ok…I know, PKD has nothing whatsoever to do with this film. Nonetheless, I think that this movie captures the reality-questioning aspect of PKD’s work more than any “real” adaptions of his stories. On top of that, it was just a better film than the others.
I’m a huge PK Dick fan, but “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” was a horrible story that barely made sense. “Minority Report,” however, was my favorite short story of his and though I dislike how they changed the plot in the movie, I still enjoy that it got made.
I love his short stories BUT… I have read that he fried his brains on drugs and lost quite a few friends because of his changing personality. That has happened to me with some friends and it is REALLY sad.
Taking drugs doesn’t expand your mind…it destroys your mind. The mind is all a writer has so why destroy it. (this is paraphrasing Asimov)
I was reading a short story by him about a computer keeping a mans mind active during a long space flight and he threw in a paragraph about THE FABULOUS FURRY FREAK BROTHERS and it just destroyed the story to me. I could see him smoking up a storm with weed wetting his pants with laughter as he put that paragraph in.
Rande…
I think that the most Phildickian (i.e., the most in the spirit of Philip K. Dick) movie I’ve ever seen is They Live, despite the fact that it didn’t derive from any Dick work.
ISiddiqui writes:
> . . . Blade Runner seems to veer off path (with Dick’s
> approval) . . .
Not exactly with Dick’s approval. As usually happens, when he sold the movie rights, he lost any ability to approve any changes. He was satisfied with what he saw of the movie, which wasn’t much. (He died several months before it opened, so all he saw was a few scenes.) He didn’t have any voice in how the movie was made though, so that was really nothing except saying, “It looks like they didn’t screw it up too much.”
This is true, but It was not just the drugs- he had serious psychological issues throughout his life. His later books, especially Valis and A Scanner Darkly illuminate his troubles in a devastating manner.
Valis deals with Dick’s experience of (according to him) being fed information directly from God or a God-Like Being, Much of which he wrote down in a work known as the “Exegesis”.
A Scanner Darkly is about, simply, drugs. I don’t want to get into the plot, but I cried while reading it, especially at the end when Dick lists his friends lost to drug use and includes his own name on the list.
For a more eloquent treatment of this than I could ever give, see http://www.hermenaut.com/a4.shtml
One great bit in A Scanner Darkly is a running gag about “the 17 planet of the Apes movies, including the one where they go back in time and all of the great historical figures turn out to have been Apes” (not a direct quote). One of the great things about PKD is that no matter what the subject matter, absurd humor always comes through, but without trivializing the nature of the story/novel/whatever.
I have seen it written that the reason that Dick’s work has never been satisfactorily made into a movie is that he can’t write endings. I agree. His narrative structure seems to peter out about 3/4 of the way through. There is nothing wrong with this, it is just not ‘possible’ to make a mainstream, successful movie out of it, so new ones have to be slapped on.
I was surfing the web last night, and I read a review of the screenplay of the upcoming Paycheck. Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, it is NOT veering that much off path. The underlying story is the same (they even hinted at the big secret to people in the know)… a few things are different. One is that a Knicks game saves Jennings (don’t ask me how). I just hope it isn’t all contained in New York City at the very least.
> I have seen it written that the reason that Dick’s work has
> never been satisfactorily made into a movie is that he can’t
> write endings.
I think that there are usually some structural problems in his novels. Particularly in the early to mid-60’s, when he was writing incredibly fast, he really wasn’t capable of writing great novels. What his novels are instead are huge bags of great ideas, the sort of thing that a great writer who was writing on speed might produce. And that’s exactly what happened. He needed the money that he could only get by putting out several novels a year, so he was constantly working through the night writing them while doing speed. (He had a wife, a daughter, and three step-daughters to support on his writing income and his wife’s jewelry business, and he and his wife were both spending money extravagantly.) I don’t think Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, for instance, is a great novel. There are lots of great ideas in it, but many of the plot threads are dropped and never picked up later. But a first-rate screenwriter can turn many of these novels into great films if they know how to toss out the extraneous plot points.
The word “Dickhead” for a PKD fan is actually a more or less standard term.
Supposedly Dick went to a doctor and after having some tests ran found out that his body processed speed so rapidly that it had no effect on him. Dick also recounted a story about being desperate for money and pawning his typewriter. No one but him and the pawnshop folks knew what he’d done, thus he was amazed a short time later when a parcel arrived on his doorstep containing a very nice typewriter, sent to him by Robert A. Heinlein, a man who’s writings Dick publicly admitted long before this that he didn’t care for.
If we are talking about his short stories, I think this is simply a way of saying his endings aren’t ‘happy’ enough ;). Look at the endings to ‘Minority Report’ or ‘We Can Remember It For You Wholesale’. They are kinda downers as endings (especially WCRIFYW) and wouldn’t fit a blockbluster picture that well.
I kinda like his endings to his short stories. Especially ‘Second Variety’, ‘Imposter’, ‘Paycheck’, ‘We Can Remember It For You Wholesale’, etc.
> Supposedly Dick went to a doctor and after having some tests
> ran found out that his body processed speed so rapidly that it
> had no effect on him.
Didn’t we discuss this on another Dick thread? Dick claimed that this happened, but it’s more likely that this was just his rationalization for doing speed. Dick was not a reliable narrator of his own life. He frequently told stories about himself that can be checked and can be found to be incorrect.
Incidentally, one of the problems with the shapelessness of his novels is that he wasn’t editing his stuff after writing it and his editors let him down by not editing it either.
I rather thought that Total Recall was true to WCRIFYW in, at least, the whole “you can’t tell what’s real” sense. As has been discussed before, PKD had some serious problems telling reality from non-reality. This was reflected in much (all?) of his writing. In TR, I felt it came through.
Why is it that the only good SF films are from PKD stories? Or is it just me?
