Darker and darker

Ain’t It Cool just published a whole slew of reviews of A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater’s animated-over-live-action adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel. They’re mixed, but the most negative review comes from someone who hasn’t read the book.

I just finished reading PKD’s Time Out of Joint yesterday, a book with outrageous similarities to the Truman Show. I’m sure it’s been pointed out already, but it’s basically the same thing, except better. This is mainly because PKD’s novel takes its characters outside their shell existence and avoids the heavy-handed Garden metaphors in favor of social-activist, youth-revolution paranoia, which, while just as socio-politically stupid, is a lot more entertaining. I’d love to see a Truman sequel about his adjusting to whatever sort of life is outside his dome (actually a town just a few minutes from where I grew up in Florida), but director Peter Weir was too concerned with turning the fall of man into some sort of righteous morality tale. Whatever.

Anyway, as much as I love Blade Runner (it's one of my half dozen favorite movies ever), PKD needs a great adaptation. Blade Runner is a great movie, and certainly the greatest science fiction film ever, but it’s only a middling adaptation of what PKD wrote. Linklater’s ability to mix surrealism, philosophy, paranoia and period detail suggests he might be the one to deliver a movie that matches the sort of the Buchner-esque blend of madness, paranoia, druggy, and tripped-out sci-fi psychosis in which PKD specialized.