A Browser Darkly

I have been reading Philip K. Dick since high school. I still recall the oral book report I gave of Ubik. It's such a convoluted and paranoid vision and I was so tired of my classmates' closing line, "And if you want to know how it ends, you'll have to read the book...," that I concluded my book report by pronouncing, "If you want to know how it all turns out, I dare you to read the book."

I continued reading Dick over the years, met other fans, exchanged stories about his paranoid drug-distorted life, and even tracked down biographical material where I could. Although he labored in pulp fiction obscurity his entire career, his fiction is now hot material in Hollywood and at least six of his books and stories have made it posthumously to the screen and many others are under option.

If you enjoy science fiction movies, you've probably seen several that came from original material by Philip K. Dick: Blade Runner (from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), Total Recall (We Can Remember It for You Wholesale), Minority Report, and Paycheck among them. As Wired magazine noted in a terrific article from last year: two decades after his death, Philip K. Dick is "one of the most sought-after writers in Hollywood."

Even I have dreamed about optioning the rights to Philip K. Dick material ever since I first read A Scanner Darkly while living in Austin about 1980. It is a twisted and hyper-paranoid Dick tale about drug culture that alternates between laugh-aloud humor and lump-in-the-throat poignancy. When I finished it the first time, I sighed and thought, "I want to be the one who makes the movie version." As special effects improved over the years, especially when Terminator 2 style morphing technology became perfected, I concluded the conditions were finally right to bring A Scanner Darkly to the screen.

Clearly I'm not the only one who concluded this. Steven Soderbergh (sex, lies, and videotape) optioned the rights years ago. Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) wrote the screenplay.

Rights changed hands. Now Kaufman's screenplay is out; Richard Linklater's (School of Rock, Waking Life, Dazed and Confused, Slacker) version is in. Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr., and Winona Ryder(1) star. Filming is underway in Austin (where Linklater shot many of his earlier films.)

At first I thought I couldn't imagine a better set of talents to tackle this project. Then I read the word, "animation." Shudder. But I haven't seen Waking Life and so I don't know Linklater's approach of filming live action and then layering on animation. I do know they have to try some kind of special F/X magic to create the constantly morphing scramble suits Dick envisioned. So I'll hope for the best.

Back to the Charlie Kaufman screenplay: I was originally intrigued by the thought of the writer of Being John Malkovich tackling A Scanner Darkly. On the other hand, I thought Kaufman destroyed The Orchid Thief, a brilliant book about obsession (Susan Orlean would love bloggers) with his self-indulgent wacky Adaptation.

But Kaufman, too, has his devotees and it was while following links to screenplays that I first discovered the link to his fan site, and was thrilled to find the unproduced script for A Scanner Darkly! Now how cool is that? I momentarily reveled in my discovery. It was at least a day before I learned Kaufman's script had been abandoned. So far, I have yet to read it. (But for those of you wonder, the first words spoken are, "Lately, Jerry Fabin stands all day shaking bugs from his hair." I'm willing to bet that Linklater's screenplay begins somewhere else entirely.)

But it was the discovery of an unproduced screenplay of a favorite novel, believe it or not, that was the original intention of this posting, viz., a follow-up to Monday's discussion of movie script sites with the bonus discovery that not only are there hundreds of screenplays available for free download, but that among them there are many still unproduced screenplays.

There's gold in them thar hills, I tell you.

In fact, in addition to my discovery of Kaufman's script for A Scanner Darkly, I also found screenplays for Spiderman 3, and Star Wars Episode 3--each of dubious authenticity, however.

I also uncovered one other nugget--but it, too, deserves a separate posting.

Stay tuned.

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(1) Look ma, a blog entry with a footnote! A decade ago during the world-wide web stone ages--back when you could count the number of interesting web sites in four digits--I used to receive a daily link at work to a site the company webmaster deemed interesting. He once linked to a Winona Ryder fan shrine and that was the first actress I'd heard of who had a whole site maintained by loyal fans (now there are dozens for Winona alone). If you've read any Philip K. Dick at all, you know that his prototypical female protagonist returns again and again under various guises and will inevitably break your heart. I think given the obvious affection and long-held weakness many have for Winona Ryder, she is an excellent choice to play Donna.