Hollywood's Growing Obsession With Philip K. Dick 244
bowman9991 writes "Even after Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, Impostor, and Next, it appears Hollywood's lust for movies based on Philip K. Dick material continues. The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and Terence Stamp, is the latest, and features some classic Dick themes, including the fragile nature of reality and a fight against a world controlled and manipulated by powerful unseen entities. When Congressman David Norris meets the love of his life after a political defeat, he must peel back the layers of reality to discover why a mysterious group is so desperate to make sure they never meet again. He is up against the agents of fate itself — the men of The Adjustment Bureau. The Adjustment Bureau adaptation follows news that Terry Gilliam will adapt Dick's novel The World Jones Made, that Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and Ubik are being adapted, and that a remake of Total Recall is being developed by the ironically named Original Films Studio."
Looking forward to The World Jones Made (Score:5, Informative)
Terry Gilliam is one of the most fantastic individuals in the history of film.
If you're a geek, you know him as a founding member of Monty Python (Patsy in The Holy Grail or Cardinal "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition" Fang). If you're into film, he's done some fantastic dystopian sci-fi films (Brazil, 12 Monkeys). Talk about breadth of talent.
If anyone has what it takes to do Dick well, it's Gilliam (another random piece of trivia: Gilliam was originally chosen by the author to adapt/direct the Harry Potter books. The studios didn't like Rowling's idea and it never happened.)
Re:I don't Understand (Score:5, Informative)
With many movies you could have a better ending or explanation for things, but it's just not going to fit in 2-3 hours.
Screamers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A Few More and Some Musings (Score:5, Informative)
So basically, Dick is dead and can't object, and the Trust is monetising his heritage while they still can because the clock is ticking..
But that clock will never run out. You can bet mickey mouse will ensure leeches like the PKD Trust get to make money off the author's back forever. They'll just complain here and there about minor things, and that'll be what they claim is their creativite input. Dick died in 1982, that's almost a third of a century ago, most of his works are from the 60s and 70s. He obviously isn't going to be creating more works, why the need to keep his works locked up with copyright? Copyright is clearly a tool for corporations.
Re:Wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
Total Recall... or We Can Remember It For You (Score:5, Informative)
"a remake of Total Recall is being developed by the ironically named Original Films Studio."
Wow, mixed feelings at the totally missed opportunity there.
First, Philip K. Dick never wrote a piece called "Total Recall." A few of the major themes from his short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" were grabbed and incorporated into a completely different plot to make the movie "Total Recall," but for the most part, "Total Recall" isn't Phil Dick, and "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" was not made into a movie.
So it seems like there is an opportunity here, to make a movie from the story Dick actually wrote.
Instead, though, for no detectable reason they seen to want to remake "Total Recall." I can't see the slightest reason to do this. It was already a fine film-- for what it was, which is an action-effects extravaganza that incorporated some themes from Dick's work into a Hollywood-plotted film-- and I doubt that that film can be remade better.
Re:A Few More and Some Musings (Score:2, Informative)
His adventures are available from Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org], so I would assume they are safely in the Public Domain by now.
Re:Some of P. K. Dick's stuff is great, but how ab (Score:3, Informative)
That was about as hard sci-fi as it gets.
Nope. It was a fantasy film with spaceships.
Hard SF is generally populated with plausible science and believable if somewhat limited characters, not magical spacecraft and people who were clearly hand-picked for the most important mission ever out of the leavings of a psychiatric hospital.
. . . of course. . . (Score:4, Informative)
. . . Hollywould "gets it". . . LONG after PKD's coolness buzz has faded. That's the way Big Money works. It's the way Big Money has ALWAYS worked. It's really what "cool" was first all about - until they tried to package and market cool to us. Then it was what "punk" was all about. (wash-rinse-repeat).
Change the name, but it will always be the same: The folks who try to tell us that getting rich is all about taking risks, are really the most financially secure (relatively), and therefore the most risk-averse folks on the planet, and therefore, as far as cultural trends go, will always pretty much be positioned way far back on the long-tail as far as coolness goes.
A person with a $400 million trust-fund in the bank risking his own $5 million investing in a film based on a PKD story, in 2010, is NOT anything like "cool". Though, the rank and file hoi polloi market will reward him generously.
A person with $20 in the bank risking $5 (possibly tomorrow's dinner, or the electric bill, or prescription co-pay for his antidepressant meds) on a paperback novel by a new, unknown, unpromoted writer published by an off-brand house (maybe self-published, these days), with fresh ideas that haven't been recycled a dozen thousand times by low-budget mass-market screenwriters - is the definition of cool. That guy will earn the small-scale social respect of his peers by relating his experience in reading the book, in casual conversation. That's how social animals work.
Then, in 15 years, when the trustafarians decide this writer's popularity has safely gained enough critical mass that they can risk .001% (insured) of their net worth on a film, that "cool" person, and his peers will puke when they see the trailer.
Nobody expresses this phenomenon as succinctly as "Indy-rock Pete" in Diesel Sweeties. Which, I think, ceased being cool about 5 minutes before I "discovered" and started reading it. I'm waiting for the Michael Bey version of Diesel Sweeties. 16-bit graphics and all. In 3D Imax, Dolby Surround.
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
Doom's original story was that a research lab on a Martian moon had been experimenting with teleportation technology garnered from tablets from an ancient race, explaining the mathematical basis for teleportation, as well as the dangers, and a brief of the full events of a war. That technology apparently intermediates through Hell. A rogue scientist takes an artifact (used to defeat the creatures of Hell before) into a gate that goes INTO Hell, and then the armies of Hell invade the base.
In the original progression, the armies of Hell wanted a distress signal sent to Earth to get ships for transit to Earth. The lone marine left alive after the initial invasion encountered all kinds of shit; as well as getting orders from a corrupted CO and having to recover the weapon used to such effect in the destruction of Hell's armies. There was also a fully aware counselor attempting to shut down communications or warn Earth about the invasion plans. A lot of weird shit went on, since it dealt with the supernatural aspects of ... well, Judeo-Christian Hell.
The director for the movie decided that was all a bunch of bullshit, and instead they'd just find skeletons with a super-gene from genetic alteration. They'd mix these into a retro-virus and inject the virus into random people to see what happens, thinking it'd make super-humans immune to all disease and with a rapid healing factor. Instead, it makes evil mutant zombies that go around biting other people on the neck to create more evil mutant zombies.
So, one of these was deeply thought out, with its own unique take on complex physics and advanced technology, and with dark overtones rising from an ethically corrupt research firm and from supernatural interests. The other... was boiler plate zombie-plague horror, a la Resident Evil. Which do you prefer?
new fan of Phil K Dick (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't Understand (Score:1, Informative)
A Scanner Darkly was an entirely straightforward adaptation.
Re:. . . of course. . . (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A Few More and Some Musings (Score:2, Informative)
Shakespeare got a lot of mileage out of variations on 'a bunch of stuff happens... then... everybody dies' - so I'm not sure what your objection is.
I've read most of Brunner's work. Someone survives in nearly all of them though, so probably not the same ones radtea read :)
Re:Wrong. (Score:1, Informative)
Hey, I saw that movie, except it had that dude from Jurassic Park and that dude from The Matrix and it was called Event Horizon.