Another Philip Dick Movie? Color Me Skeptical

It has come to my attention that yet another Philip K. Dick work is being turned into a film. This time, it's one of my three favorite Dick books, Radio Free Albemuth. I am less than certain that this is remotely a good idea.

It's not exactly that Dick's movies and stories are unfilmable - Minority Report wasn't terrible, Total Recall is actually fairly good for what it is, and Blade Runner is an absolute classic. But the latter two really diverge greatly from their original source material, and even Minority Report is a 2+hour telling of a short story, so there's a lot added on. (And I haven't seen A Scanner Darkly, but heard it was fairly good, too).

But I just don't see how Radio Free Albemuth will work as a movie. It's not just that my skepticism is based on a paranoia-filled Cold-War dystopia during a political administration that strongly represents Dick Nixon's and Joseph McCarthy's love-child (not exactly the same political-cultural climate we are in now). It's not even that Alanis Morisette will apparently play a major role in the film. It's also that I just don't see how you narrate the book in film format. I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say that the book hinges in no small part on a major narrative shift that starts with "Philip Dick" (the character)'s internal point of view in the first third of the book, shifts to his friend Nicholas Brady's point of view in the second, and returns to Dick's in the third. And those shifts in POV are one of the most seamless, simple, and yet innovative ways to shift narrative voices in a book that I've ever read. It's actually kind of central to the way the story is told, and I just don't see how that works in film. If you're not looking "through" Dick's and Brady's eyes, then the story is going to be radically different.

Again, I'm not saying the film will be terrible. But I can't help but think that, if it's to succeed, it will have to take the Blade Runner path and basically very loosely follow the story it's based upon; in other words, it will have to use Dick's ideas as a launching point, but become it's own story separate from the book. And given that for every Blade Runner there has been a Paycheck, I'm not holding my breath.

And as a final comment, please - if you've never read any Philip Dick, go out and get something by him now. I'd recommend Radio Free Albemuth, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, Dr. Bloodmoney, Confessions of a Crap Artist, The Man in the High Castle, or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as good starting points, though honestly I could recommend another 8-12 beyond that. Suffice to say, there are lots of excellent books by him, in addition to his short stories.

UPDATE...Apparently, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is also becoming a film. That may be a bit easier than Radio Free Albemuth, but not by much. Either these screenwriters/directors are amazingly good and clever, or these are going to be some major film fiascos.

I don't want to make this all self-promotion

I'm still recovering from driving home for the holidays, and am drowning a bit in things I need to get done, but I have a few things up at other places that I wanted to cross-post here in case anyone was interested.

My piece on Gaza, at GlobalComment, which took me far too long and far too much agonizing to write.

I’m an American Jew, and when I state that fact, I invite a wealth of assumptions, not all of them anti-Semitic in nature. Renee Martin recently addressed the conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, so I don’t have to (though I would like to note that Modern Mitzvot has a very good point too).

Daniele Archibugi pointed out that upcoming elections in Israel and Palestine most likely have something to do with the timing and force of the Israeli attack. But being in the U.S., I have to see it through the lens of the election we just had, here, and one of the Republican party’s favorite anti-Obama attacks.

And on a slightly lighter note, I've found the definitive piece of Bush-era fiction, and it's a comic.

I picked up DMZ #1 way back in 2005 and reviewed it for Best Shots (wow, I’ve been doing this way too long). Since then, I’ve read and dropped many other monthly comics, but DMZ has stayed on my pull list. I’ve given it as a gift, made my professors read it, and flogged it mercilessly on this very site.

But aside from being an excellent story, it’s a story that at its core is about all the major questions of the Bush era.

DMZ picks all of us up and drops us into the middle of a war zone. But Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli (and some excellent guest artists) transfer that war back home, to a place we all know. New York City is the most familiar landscape in America even to people who haven’t been there, and it was the central point of the crises we’ve dealt with in the last eight years...

DMZ holds us all responsible for the failures of our government under Bush. No one gets a free pass. Each time you think you know who Wood is pointing the finger at, you find it twisting around to point squarely back at you.

I promise to write something for you guys soon. I miss you.