Hey folks, Harry here... Recently I had to take Sister Satan up to San Antonio to visit the ol Grandparents and show off her baby belly to them... tattoos and all. And during the trip, she said she felt her baby moving around in there. Well... I bent down close to her... gigantic tummy, and put my ear to her tumtum... Suddenly I heard the gargling underwater and skin voice of our soon to be released spy, KublaKhan.
Unca Hawe... gargle slush... Kublubblub Khan here gurgle thromp... Look for A Scanner Darkly... burp gargle... Movement....
My sister looked at me... all odd and everthing, and as I pulled away from her baby and my future nephew's solitary confinement cell... I told her what I heard. She called me a liar... And she went back to grinding up sulphur and coal... I returned home... remembering the eerie message from in utero, and did some phoning about. I knew that A SCANNER DARKLY was a Phillip K Dick novel that I hadn't read. But I hadn't heard anything about an adaptation.
On this loose lead, I began calling up spies at various studios:
SIR ETCH-A-SKETCH (Disney): Nope not in development here. BTW that Princess TV show that Junior Mintz reported on was canned back in October.
SIR MAGNA-DOODLE (Warners) : Harry, that sounds cool, but it isn't here. Perhaps you should be following better leads than noises emanating from your sister's belly.
WIMPY (Universal) : Wow. That baby is connected. That project is currently being written by Charlie Kaufman, for the director of LOVE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES and STRANGE PLANET to direct. There's been lots of previous writers, but the project has picked up steam since we got Kaufman interested and signed. You heard we just re-upped the deal with Jersey Films (Danny DeVito's company)? It's with them!
Holy shit! This unborn child is a solid source! There's no cast or anything yet, but the project is moving forward and with the writer of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH attached. Too cool. The director is Emma-Kate Croghan, or at least she's attached at the moment according to my favorite Hamburger gorging spy at Universal. Now... for the rest of you that have no idea what this film or story is about, I included a brief review of the book I found at Amazon.Com's A SCANNER DARKLY Page, read below, or click on that link to read more!
I have read almost everything Philip K Dick has written (I Say "almost" because he was one of the most prolific authors of the genre) and this was the one which affected me the most. It is basically the story of an undercover narcotics cop, Bruce, pretending to be a drug user, Bob, living with a group of other screwed up drug users and taking large quantities of drugs. The descent into psychosis, triggered by both the drug use and the deception, (posing as an imposter) mirrors Dick's own and, though totally predictable, it is the inevitability of the grim end which provides the drama. Bob starts off in a bad way but, as his drug use accelerates, the lines between his two identities, Bob & Bruce, cop & "criminal", drug addict & narc begin to blur. Dick explores the familiar (for him) territory of Kantian philosophy in a way which anyone with familiarity with psychotropic drugs will recognise as the voice of experience. The book is full of Dick's razor humour and the ending is all the more poignant for the affection that I, at least, felt for the cast of hopeless, helpless head cases. The dedication at the end made me want to cry. I love this book
Abu
