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A Scanner Dumbly
Philip K. Dick has long been one of my favorite authors, but cinematic adaptations of his movies have almost always been disasters. Hollywood seems to draw perverse pleasure in taking his tales of paranoia, altered perceptions, and subjective reality, and turning them into cheesy sci-fi actions films that have little if anything to do with the novels and stories they were supposedly based on. (“Total Recall” being the most egregious, but certainly not sole example. The fact that anyone could possibly read “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” and somehow transmorgify it into that festering lump of monkey shit is mindboggling to me.) Even “Blade Runner,” hands down the best PKD-based movie (and one of my alltime favorite films of any genre) succeeded on its own merits, despite deviating quite a bit from the source material.
So when I heard that the upcoming film adaptation of “A Scanner Darkly” was going to follow the book closely, and that the author’s family have had considerable input into the film, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Finally,” I thought, “they’re going to do PKD the right way.”
And then I found out the film is going to star Keanu Reeves.
God damn you, Hollywood. God damn your shit-filled souls.
