A Scanner Darkly

[Pubrick]

Good review Matt.

really? after reading his and your review i feel like i've stumbled upon someone's therapy session transcripts.

i don't know why, i don't know why, it made me feel.. let's work through it together, go on, Rhonda, is there something you'd like to say to your husband? wonderful, now instead of blaming him why don't we try again and use more "I" words. i think we've made a lot of progress today, let's schedule another session for next week--- oh fiddlesticks she has her stupid birthday that day sorry doc she's got me by the balls you see. that's perfectly fine, now let's try again, remember what i said - and you don't hav to call me doc i'm a psychologist not a psychiatrist. okay, I feel that MY wife's birthday is stupid, and that makes ME feel angry, I don't know why. Rhonda do you have anything to say to that? i want a divorce, i don't know why.

[JG]

haha you are an odd man, pubrick. 

you'll understand a little better when u see the movie.  i hope.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

haha pubrick is such an odd man. 

one would understand a little better when one sees the movie. one would hope.

[matt35mm]

I've never read any Philip K. Dick because no other film really made me want to

A) why does a film have to make you want to?
B) Blade Runner?

A) It just didn't help when I didn't like most of the movies that were based on his books, even though I kept hearing that he was never properly adapted and was actually good and prophetic and all of that.  He just never became high on my list of interests.  When there's so many things one should see and read and hear and do, there's nothing wrong with letting a movie remind or inspire you to get on that.

B) I don't care if no one else feels this way, but I didn't really like Blade Runner.  I'll give it another shot someday, I'm sure, but I can definitely say that the movie didn't make me feel like reading the story.

Good review Matt.

really? after reading his and your review i feel like i've stumbled upon someone's therapy session transcripts.

I did specify that it was a gut reaction that I felt I should note before I watched it again to make a secondary, more precise-with-words review.  With most movies, you generally know how you should feel after you've seen it.  I'm not ashamed to note that this movie made me not know.  I wanted to note it here because I knew that I planned on seeing it again soon, and doing a lot of thinking about it.  My opinion could sway back and forth wildly on this one, and I could come back a week from now saying that, oh, actually it's just an interesting if not substantial experiment.  But I would probably give it high marks just for making me genuinely sway back and forth and having it linger in my mind.  So as for why not just wait until then and write one better review--because I wanted each to be its own reference point for that moment.

So, yes, as to a therapist, I told you what I felt.  Later, armed with time to think and a second viewing, I will more clearly elaborate.  Or you can just take it as a clue that this movie is successful at stirring you up and scrambling your brains so that you could only review it with indistinct mush, which is probably a good sign for this particular movie.  I can't review it with a Worked, Didn't, Winner format.  Sorry.

[MacGuffin]

Richard Linklater director of A Scanner Darkly
By Daniel Robert Epstein

Over the past 15 years Richard Linklater has turned into one of the great American film auteurs. His last few years have been his most exciting artistically and financially. School of Rock was his biggest hit and he followed that up with Before Sunset for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Now comes his adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel A Scanner Darkly which utilizes the computer rotoscoping he first experimented with in Waking Life. A Scanner Darkly stars Keanu Reeves as Bob Arctor, a man so far undercover within a group of junkies addicted to Substance D that he no longer knows what is real and what isn't. It also reteams him with his Dazed and Confused co-star Rory Cochrane. I got a chance to talk with Linklater about maneuvering with the Hollywood studio system, why rotoscoping works and the amazing Criterion Collection Director Approved DVD version of Dazed and Confused.

Daniel Robert Epstein: Many of the scenes in A Scanner Darkly reminded me of my friends and I sitting around getting high. We would turn to the person we knew the least and go, "You know what, you're a narc."

Richard Linklater: [laughs] This book was a little autobiographical for Philip K. Dick because at one point his family moved out and these guys moved in. It was sort of an open door policy. The people he loved were coming by and he was the host of his house. He was witty, smart and he told long stories. There were a lot of people around and he grew suspicious, especially at this time in history, that there were people around who were undercover.

DRE: In the respect of people just randomly coming by and crashing in his house, sounds like it could be autobiographical for you as well.

RL: That was me in the 80's. We all have that point in our lives. We left the front door open so people could just come in any time.

DRE: Was that in your mind when you were making this movie?

RL: It was probably in my mind as I approached the novel as something I could make into a movie. I think before you take something like that on you better feel that it is yours. There were a lot of elements that made me think, "This is the Philip K. Dick novel that I could make a movie out of." There's probably a lot of his books I couldn't, but I felt I knew these people. I knew this worked and I felt that I had a handle on it.

DRE: When you watched a scene in a movie before you guys rotoscoped how did that differ from when you watched a scene once you added the animation?

RL: The scenes without animation seemed very literal. Film is a pretty blunt instrument. This whole story exists in an altered state of being and consciousness. It definitely now has a lack of reality. In my mind, it didn't work near as well live action, there are a lot of elements that would have stood out.

DRE: Is there a future for rotoscoping besides commercials and what you do?

RL: I think people will always try to tell stories in ways that they think work for the story. It's an interesting time for animation. If there's anything going on I think it's the home computer animation. Not the Pixar version because that's pretty far out of reach for everybody but more along the lines of indie animation. Adult animation is a marginalized world which is not taken too seriously in the same way that Philip K. Dick's sci-fi writing was maybe not taken too serious. In it's day there was a sophisticated type of person who would look down their nose at it. That same person would look at the animation and not see what it is trying to do.

DRE: Philip K. Dick's work seems just as relevant now as it ever did.

RL: Yeah I think so. I think time has been nothing but great for him. His books were so far ahead of their time and in his day he was categorized into the sci-fi ghetto but time has caught up and I think people now see him for what he was, a great novelist with a lot of really stunning ideas, a lot of depth, passionately wonderful characters and just a great view of the world. Back then what he thought would have been called conspiracy or crackpot thinking. But a lot of it has proved pretty prescient. That's why this book felt very contemporary to me.

DRE: For the most part your non studio films have a very slow pace. Does it just take a slower pace to tell a more mature story?

RL: I think a lot of it has to do with the story that unfolds via the characters rather than plot driven. If you get caught up too much in a big plot, you tend to have to move faster and have more going on. This story is paced leisurely. But if you just think about it, it does take place over just a few days initially. But it just doesn't have a really hurried pace. All the nice little plot twists and turns are set in a hanging out type atmosphere.

DRE: It almost seems like you could pick up with this group of characters at any time in their lives and do another whole movie about them.

RL: [laughs] That goes for a lot of characters but of course it would be a different movie. To see guys the age of Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr., Rory Cochrane, Winona Ryder, you think that there's been a life previous to this. We see it with Bob Arctor's character with his wife and kid with a straight existence. That's probably true of the other guys too but they've reconvened in a different familial situation.

DRE: Could this be Rory's character from Dazed and Confused all grown up and on a new drug?

RL: [laughs] He should have stuck with just the marijuana.

DRE: How was it working with Rory again?

RL: Wonderful. The thing about working with actors, you just want to work with them again when the part is right. I've would love to do it again with so many people in this movie. I was very lucky. It's a wonderful cast.

DRE: For the DVD of A Scanner Darkly will we get to see scenes before they were rotoscoped?

RL: I hope so. I think there'll be a number of features like that. It won't show the entire movie in live action but maybe there will be some deleted scenes.

DRE: It is so rare that any director has more than one DVD turned into a Criterion Collection DVD. You have Slacker and Dazed and Confused just came out. How was it working on the Criterion Dazed and Confused?

RL: Criterion is great to work with. I really trust them and I just give it over and what you get back is fantastic. It feels good to have a resting place for your movie, because you can't get any better than Criterion. It's there for the fans. There's a lot of additional material. After over ten years, it feels like the final resting place.

DRE: Years ago I read that when you were shooting Dazed and Confused you were surprised that Universal Pictures wanted you to shoot out of sequence. But now it seems that you've really settled into doing studio films alongside indie films.

RL: Yeah I'm in a pretty good relationship with everybody I'm working with. It's important to understand what you're doing at any time. As long as everyone agrees on what the movie is and what it isn't then you won't have problems later on. I've been very lucky because I've never had bad creative experiences. You hear these things where they put the movie away and re-shoot endings and everybody hates everybody but I've never had that experience. Every movie I've finished is the movie I wanted to make, pure and simple.

DRE: That's pretty amazing that you've had no bad experiences because you've had some films which haven't been loved by critics or audiences.

RL: A lot of it is timing though and who doesn't have that at some point. But it's how you react to that. All you can do is bring you're A game every time and do your best but sometimes the culture seems ready to embrace what you're doing and sometimes it doesn't. Overall I've been lucky so I can't complain.

DRE: Are hamburgers the substitute for Substance D in Fast Food Nation?

RL: [laughs] In a way. In an addicting not very good for you, way.

DRE: Do you feel like there's parallels between Fast Food Nation and A Scanner Darkly?

RL: Not that much really. I think just the fact that they're coming out near each other begs the question. Fast Food Nation is very much of the real world today. It has things like labor issues so it exists in its own weird world. I personally don't see many similarities. On some levels people can see the social critique elements of both movies but that's not what it is to me.

DRE: Are you writing anything completely original right now?

RL: I've got a couple things I'm working on. I guess this is my era of interesting and challenging adaptations. I'm writing a college comedy thing. I don't know when I'll shoot it but it is something that I've been thinking about for a while.

DRE: Would that be a bigger studio film?

RL: I think it would be good for the studio label.

[bonanzataz]

eh. i didn't really like it. now, it may be that i had a couple of beers (not many) throughout the course of the movie, but i just couldn't get into it. i kept getting distracted by the animation and i just really wanted to cut through to the actors. i felt like the animation was antagonistic to the storytelling. and it's not that the movie went over my head. i understood everything that was going on, i just could not relate to anything that was happening b/c of the "dreamlike" quality the animation gave the film. while the rotoscoping technique worked very well in waking life, as that movie was supposed to be a dream, in scanner darkly, i feel like you were supposed to, at least remotely, connect to the characters and understand who they were and what the drug was doing to them. the animation completely detached me from their struggle. i thought the downey jr. and woody harrelson gave hilarious performances, but the performances were ultimately rendered flat by the showy animation technique. not to mention, linklater just got good looking actors that everybody associates with drug abuse anyway (keanu was very "whoa" in this movie). overall, an interesting movie that displays some clever writing (i've never read any of dick's stuff, but this film felt especially literary and captured that sci-fi novel feel), but it felt like linklater took a fairly well made independent movie and spent a few million dollars to rotoscope it and make it trippy b/c stoners really liked it the last time he did that. i wish i'd seen prairie home companion or wassup rockers instead.

[samsong]

needless to say (but i'm going to anyway), i completely disagree.

the notion of "connecting" with a film or its characters is completely subjective--you identify with something/someone or you don't.  i don't see how the animation can have anything to do with your ability to connect, especially since many of the decisions made while making the film, both on linklater and the actors' parts, were made knowing that it would be animated later.  the implication that the decision to use the rotoscoping technique was arbitrary suggets to me and you didn't "get the film" as you said you did.  it seems to me that you aren't meeting the film on its own terms and instead trying to force some sort of preconceived criteria of things the film should do.  as for the mention of Waking Life, i think the rotoscoping works better in A Scanner Darkly.  linklater's casting decisions can seem a bit obvious but isn't part of good casting finding the perfect actors for that particular role?  with robert downey jr, he not only gets a talented actor whose own set of abilities lend themselves COMPLETELY to the character but also has a cultural icon with a colored past that has to do with drugs--i think it gives immediacy to the film, though that's not what you think about when you watch him give his fantastic performance.  keanu worked well, too... i've come to appreciate directors who know how to take actors with limited ability and use them to their fullest (ie hou hsiao hsien and shu qi).  while there could have been a better performance for the bob arctor character, there certainly isn't anyone who looks the part more than keanu.  i also loved the contrast of aesthetics and content.  a movie that, to oversimplify it, is against drugs that IS a drug movie (a GLORIOUS one at that).  amazing, isn't it?!

at any rate, i thought A Scanner Darkly was hypnotic and compelling, and the most thoroughly entertaining film i've seen in a very long time.  but what do i know. 

[RegularKarate]

there certainly isn't anyone who looks the part more than keanu.

?

[pete]

taz, do you always watch movies drunk?

[bonanzataz]

the notion of "connecting" with a film or its characters is completely subjective--you identify with something/someone or you don't.  i don't see how the animation can have anything to do with your ability to connect especially since many of the decisions made while making the film, both on linklater and the actors' parts, were made knowing that it would be animated later.  the implication that the decision to use the rotoscoping technique was arbitrary suggets to me and you didn't "get the film" as you said you did.  it seems to me that you aren't meeting the film on its own terms and instead trying to force some sort of preconceived criteria of things the film should do.

i don't see how you can tell me that connecting with a character is subjective, but b/c i couldn't connect to THESE characters, i'm just "not getting it." yes, linklater and everybody else knows the cultural implications of animation. popularly, animation is reserved for childish or crude humor. what he was trying to do was break that barrier, but he didn't do it effectively enough or i would have been completely immersed in what was going on. now, i never suggested that i "got the film," all i said was that i understood what was going on in the movie and the plotline never lost me. i did my best to meet the film on it's own terms, as i didn't really have any expectations going into this thing. all i knew was that linklater was doing another rotoscope movie, only this time keanu was in it.

at any rate, i thought A Scanner Darkly was hypnotic and compelling, and the most thoroughly entertaining film i've seen in a very long time.  but what do i know. 

ok, a valid point, this is your opinion. but why do you feel the need to invalidate yourself with a smug comment like "but what do i know?" nothing against you, i don't really know you well enough to rip on you, but i just hate when people do that. you have an opinion. that's great. that's better than most people. the fun in arguing is in making people believe that your opinion is the best. that comment is just so blah. i want to not believe you and hate this movie even more because of that comment!

taz, do you always watch movies drunk?

that all depends on the night, the mood, and the movie, but i wasn't drunk for this movie, i was drinking. however, the ironic thing about this movie is that it's an anti-drug movie that really made me wish i was high or tripping. i'm just saying...


EDIT: yeah, right after i posted that my roommate came into my room and acting all weird. i'm like, what's up? he's like, oh, nothing, i took some shrooms an hour ago. he saw the movie with me. i guess it wasn't that effective.

[SiliasRuby]

This is the best drug movie I've seen in years and woody Harrelson is completely hilarious.

[tpfkabi]

and Black Swan plays over the credits?

this is hard for me to believe because i've read small bits of the book and it seems so dark and crazy and Black Swan is so poppy.

[modage]

the film is basically a comedy.  the song fits pretty well over the end credits.

[Pubrick]

this is hard for me to believe because i've read small bits of the book and it seems so dark and crazy and Black Swan is so poppy.

it's hard for me to believe because black swan is the worst track on the album.

the film is basically a comedy.  the song fits pretty well over the end credits.

actually that makes it easier to believe.

[JG]

i wouldn't limit the movie to a comedy.  at all.