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Philip K. Dick on Blade Runner
- binarymax 17y agoWow. This is a great post. Being a young teenager and reading electric sheep and then seeing blade runner, Then to live and see things slowly unfolding toward this future he describes -- such as the rapid decline of critical life such as honeybees and frogs, BCI, AI, etc -- it really does blow my mind to see it all being a possibility - albiet a very dark one. Also Google just released the Nexus one. Coincidence? I think not!
- RevRal 17y agoAll I can say is.... is: Yes.
- pvg 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PK_Dick#Mental_health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PK_Dick#Mental_health He also never saw the released movie (which was not the commercial success he predicted), let alone the multiple later cuts.
- tjic 17y agoCommercial success? How about CULTURAL success? Blade Runner changed the direction of science fiction movies. Heck, it changed the direction of WRITTEN science fiction (and, yes, I'm saying that the movie, not the original book, changed the direction of written SF). I could go on and on, but I don't want to sound like a fanboy...but Blade Runner was - by its effects - one of the most important cultural artifacts of the second half of the 20th century.
- pvg 17y agoCommercial success? The gushing letter he wrote predicted it's going to be a commercial success. I like the movie too (well, not the terrible theatrical release) but that doesn't mean that letter isn't somewhat nuts. Heck, it changed the direction of WRITTEN science fiction Except it didn't. Science fiction was already going there anyway. William Gibson on Blade Runner - " BLADERUNNER came out while I was still writing Neuromancer. I was about a third of the way into the manuscript. When I saw (the first twenty minutes of) BLADERUNNER, I figured my unfinished first novel was sunk, done for. Everyone would assume I'd copped my visual texture from this astonishingly fine-looking film. " I don't want to sound like a fanboy Well, you're not doing a very good job of avoiding it. While you're sputtering at me and using all caps you somehow didn't notice I wasn't even talking about the movie. Simply pointing out it's a crazy letter written by a mentally ill person who hadn't even seen it. This fact is quite independent of the quality or cultural impact of the movie.
- tsally 17y agoSimply pointing out it's a crazy letter written by a mentally ill person who hadn't even seen it. I'm curious why you feel a person's mental health has anything to do with the correctness of his/her writing. It's an obviously incorrect idea, but I'm wondering why you hold it.
- pvg 17y agoI'm curious why you consider the nutty idea that mental health is completely orthogonal to one's ability to write 'correctly' obvious. If your ability to perceive reality is impaired (say, you're delusional or clinically paranoid or otherwise irrational) you're likely to have a very difficult time accurately representing and interpreting reality in writing.
- tsally 17y agoI'm curious why you consider the nutty idea that mental health is completely orthogonal to one's ability to write 'correctly' obvious. If your ability to perceive reality is impaired (say, you're delusional or clinically paranoid or otherwise irrational) you're likely to have a very difficult time accurately representing and interpreting reality in writing. If a mentally ill person writes down 1+1=2, the fact that they are mentally ill does not make them any less correct. Being mentally ill may or may not affect the probability that a person will write something correct, but that has nothing to do with the actual correctness of what is ultimately produced. Attempting to disprove what was in the letter by pointing to the author's mental illness is just you being intellectually lazy. You might as well have used his physical height or eye color. These attributes are equally valuable in disproving the correctness of ideas.
- pvg 17y agoYou might as well have used his physical height or eye color. These attributes are equally valuable in disproving the correctness of ideas. No they are not. I'm sorry but your argument is simply stupid and wrong. This is written language, not maths, ideas and thoughts have more dimensions than 'correctness'. If someone mentally ill, there is a higher chance what they write is not reflective of reality. And I wasn't attempting to 'disprove' anything in the letter using his mental illness. The letter is obviously overblown and inaccurate on its face. The guy hadn't even seen the movie! Why was he writing such weird letters? Well, I don't know it for a fact but it seems reasonable to conclude it's because he was mentally ill, not because his eyes were brown. The mental health of the author is a useful piece of information when evaluating a piece of writing. Saying that it isn't is bonkers.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- scotty79 17y agoFunny. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is one of the cases for me when book is way better than movie. I literally feel asleep on Blade Runner. Twice. Then again maybe I was too young then to even watch this. I think I should try and watch Blade Runner again.
- tjic 17y ago> "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" are one of the cases for me when book is way better than movie. You're just saying that because the Mood Organ made you want to say that...
- almost 17y agoTo me the two of them just feel totally different. I love both but have a hard time seeing them as two forms of the same thing. That's quite different from most book/films where I see the one (usually the film) as a pale imitation of the other.
- lmkg 17y agoI think this is the reason why Blade Runner is a good moving. Rather than revering the source material and trying to follow it closely, the makers told the story in a way that was designed as a movie from the ground up. The result is that it can stand on its own legs, rather than being a knock-off. It follows the attitude of Jorge Luis Borges on translation, that the translator should work as an author and not just a transcriber.
- jasonkester 17y agoWow. I know that Hollywood folk have this stereotype of overrating their own importance in the world, but wow. This is really over the top. I have no idea who this person is, but I assume he had something to do with the film. If that's the case, I just can't imagine how he could say those things with a straight face. Does he really take himself that seriously? It was a movie.
- cdavid 17y agoMaybe I am missing the irony, in which case I will look like a fool, but P.K. Dick is one of the most significant SF writer, and one of his book is the inspiration for Blade Runner. Several of his books are master pieces, and quite a few have been adapted into movies (blade runner, total recall, scanner darkly, minority report). He died more or less at the same time Blade Runner was made.
- pmichaud 17y agoEr... Dick was one of hte most influential scifi authors of our time. He wrote Bladerunner. Maybe he was over the top, but if anyone could say something like that with a straight face, maybe it's Dick.
- ThomPete 17y agoEither you are too young to know about him or you are not into sci-fi. Both are not your fault. But perhaps you should do some research about who he was before you choose to have an opinion about him.
- jasonkester 17y agoI'm 38 and am indeed quite into sci-fi. I saw Blade Runner in the theater in 1982. None of that has any bearing on whether that guy is up himself. I prefer to read things I see here without any context or preconceptions. I'll often get to the bottom of an article or all the way back to the comments here before I discover it was written by somebody I'm familiar with. I thinks that's helpful because it keeps your mind free of bias while you're soaking up what's written on the page. I'd suggest reading the letter again without any preconceptions and see if it seems a bit self-important.
- johnohara 17y agoYou really have some nice toys here.
- jcdreads 17y agoI recall observing in the early 90's, with some amazement, that the actual Times Square had started to look like its depiction in Blade Runner, with over-the-top lighted billboards in every direction and sterile, glass-fronted places of non-sex commerce. It's easy to forget that Times Square verged on being a crappy porn district when Blade Runner came out.
- pvg 17y agoTimes Square is not depicted in Blade Runner. The city in the film is Los Angeles.
- philwelch 17y agoIt's an easy mistake, since in the movies, New York City is usually depicted at night and Los Angeles is usually depicted at daytime. Blade Runner (and I guess The Fifth Element) reverse that.
- Aron 17y agoI went into reading this letter thinking that it would be another 'they destroyed my vision!' example. I'm pleasantly surprised as I have a fondness for the movie. I'm not an expert though, I just do eyes! Just eyes!
- jvdh 17y agoI went in the same way. Near the end my jaw just dropped, and all I could think was "Wow." (which is also a very short summary of what Philip K. Dick wrote).
- stcredzero 17y agoRidley Scott shouldn't be underestimated as a director. Blade runner works not only as a narrative, but also as a sequence of images designed to evoke raw emotions and reflection about the future and technological progress. It's the visual analogue of a tone poem. You can turn the volume down to O and appreciate the film on this level. The 1st Alien has the exact same thing going on.
- ilamont 17y agoI was expecting a rant as well. And I am actually a little skeptical about this letter, and not just because it lacks a signature. He never saw the final cut, yet is willing to make a grand, sweeping pronouncement about how important the movie will be. The letter also says "My life and creative work are justified and completed by BLADE RUNNER". I doubt many respected authors would make such a pronouncement about a Hollywood adaptation and their own artistic legacy without seeing the final product, but this is even more unusual considering the adaptation barely followed the narrative in the original book.
- qjz 17y agoTo be fair, nobody can claim to have seen the final cut and the continuing proliferation of versions supports the notion of it being a very important (if perennially unfinished) film. You're right that the book is very different from the film, but even here it's much different than most adaptations, as key dialog is lifted almost verbatim from the book. I think if this letter is legitimate, Dick was probably more excited about the portrayal of the universe his stories took place in, rather than the faithfulness of the script to a single one of his works.
- nonrecursive 17y agoOver the last few months I've really gotten into Philip K. Dick. He wrote some of the best sci-fi I've ever read. Whereas a lot of sci fi is about cool stuff just to write about cool stuff, PKD used imaginative/futuristic settings, characters, and objects to explore the human condition. "Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep" is a great book. One of its central questions is what makes humans, human. The book gives you plenty of ideas to mull over, and at the same time it's an exciting, plot-driven read. I watched blade runner a month ago, a couple weeks after finishing Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep. The movie was nearly incomprehensible and the acting was terrible. It was too terrible and bizarre to even really be a disappointment. All this is to say, I wonder how PKD would have felt after seeing the entire movie.
- VMG 17y ago"eXistenZ" is the only good PKD movie I know about, although it is not directly based on one specific book. Also you've got to read all the short stories. They are better than the novels in my opinion.
- proemeth 17y agoFrom imdb: The truman show 8.0 Minority report 7.7 Blade runner 8.3 Total recall 7.4
- VMG 17y agoAnd scanner darkly (7.7) - still eXistenZ is the one that really stands out for me. But I admit that there are other "good" movies out there that use PKD as a basis.
- krakensden 17y agoScanner Darkly comes closest to capturing the spirit of PKD's written work.
- mccutchen 17y agoeXistenZ was written by David Cronenberg, not adapted from a PKD book/story.
- proemeth 17y agoWhat i found most insightful is the "monotous death" he says SF is at risk of settling into. All the brilliant SF's reputation is overshadowed by the pulp works with tasteless covers, and people tend to think of SF as children's books, not serious (if you compare it to "classic" litterature). We need more works like Bradbury's, that are in themselves brilliant litterature (look at the prose in Fahrenheit 451!) as well as SF.
- JoeAltmaier 17y agoScience fiction is different than regular fiction, in that it has (surprise) science in it. Ray Bradbury is far from real science fiction.
- tsally 17y agoThis isn't correct. Science fiction routinely has elements that violate the laws of physics and nature as we know them today. Having actual science is in most cases a disqualifier (there is some SF that sticks to science, but that's hardly the norm). If your imagination is required for the work to make sense, it's probably not science.
- nihilocrat 17y agoIf I had a dime for every science fiction story with super-realistic spaceflight yet also with completely unexplained "ansible" technology that allows instantaneous communication with anyone in the universe....
- ericd 17y agoAnd good on Enders Game for trying to fill it in with ansible tech.
- proemeth 17y agoThe Martian Chronicles is SF, maybe not Hard SF, but SF. That's where the limit between SF and fantastic is blury, but in that regard Dick is sometimes more fantasy, or not so science (consider Time Out of Joint for instance, probable inspiration for the Truman Show).
- patrickgzill 17y agoFunny follow-up ... Ridley Scott, the director of BR, is also a producer of the TV show "Numbers". There is a scene where two of the FBI agents are walking through the mall area where parts of BR were filmed (where Deckard looks for, chases, and ultimately kills the dancer replicant as she crashes through the glass) and they make references to how "Ridley Scott saw this all coming" and "this area looks like something out of Blade Runner" ...
- jackfoxy 17y agoHow prescient! Coincidently "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was the last fiction I read (a couple of years ago).
- Jim72 17y agoHow rare for an author whose works inspired a movie to approve of the final product! Here's to futurism!
- mkramlich 17y agoI wish Phil would have come out and said whether he liked it or not, sheesh! ;)
- jacquesm 17y agoElsewhere on the site: http://www.philipkdick.com/films_bladerunner.html http://www.philipkdick.com/films_bladerunner.html Bladerunner is a favorite movie of mine, I must have watched it 10 times or more over the years. From the soundtrack (Vangelis) to the pre-CG visuals it's really impressive, it also realistically captures the mood of a possible near-future. After all these years I still haven't gotten around to reading the book, but that's just got bumped up quite a bit on the todo list. It's funny how the photography enhancement scene from Bladerunner is replicated in many movies later in time but never quite with the same feeling of it being possible. Is this part of the test ?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]