Andy, Richard, Paul, Jeremy, Jessica, and I went to see A Scanner Darkly on Wednesday.
I was really looking forward to the film, having loved the director's first rotoscoped feature, Waking Life, but was disappointed. Mostly due to the subject matter. I really don't need to sit through another film about junkies. I don't find them or their ridiculous/self-important/spaced-out banter interesting in the slightest. I'm probably biased because I had a girlfriend once who was very much into the culture and I grew to both learn and hate it.
Jeremy's written his thoughts on the film on his blog -- check it out! (He liked it!) :)
The Jeremy on A Scanner Darkly article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but Phillip Dick has a fairly long note at the end of the book about why it’s about junkies. Basically, he says that the book was meant to be an amoral examination of the cause/effect relationship between drugs, druggies, and society, and in the end, was about a group of people who were punished much too hard by life for making some bad decisions and trying to have a good time. The book’s characters are all people he knew, almost all of whome died, and is dedicated to them, and himself, as he suffered some sort of permanent pancreatic damage as a result of drug abuse.
Eh, I can relate. I no longer have an interest in being entertained by, or observing “that” lifestyle. I have a hard time finding what it is people enjoy in movies even as mild as “Blow”…I’m even losing interest in old gangster movies like Scarface…
Hi RJq,
I haven’t read the book (although I love some of his other books). The film, too, has the dedication at the end of the credits.