Double Dicking: My Day with Philip K.

[my_daroga]

I married into the PKD cult. It was more or less a requirement for our involvement, a love for We Can Build You. Combined with an instinctual hatred for Blade Runner. So it was interesting, on Saturday, to go see a new play about him and a screening of the aforementioned film in its new, “Final Cut” incarnation. The play is called 800 Words: The

Comments

[inlaterdays]

How...can anyone...hate Blade Runner?

I love Do Androids too, but Blade Runner is one of those very few vastly-different-from-the-book-yet-oddly-just-as-good films to me.

[my_daroga]

It feels empty to me. It didn't move me at all the first time; granted, I saw the original, so the Harrison Ford v.o. just grated on me right off. Also it's awful to women. The only thing I came away liking, initially, was Roy/Batty. And he's still the center of the film for me.

[inlaterdays]

How is it awful to women? It's awful to everyone; it's a dystopia. The original novella was worse to women, I thought.

I liked the Harrison Ford voiceover - a stylistic tip of the hat to old film noir styles.

Man, I love that movie.

[my_daroga]

How is it awful to women? It's awful to everyone; it's a dystopia. The original novella was worse to women, I thought.

I don't remember the book too well, but they did turn the opera singer into a stripper and put her in a sci-fi pulp outfit. That's all I'm saying.

The voiceover sounds drunk. I just don't get the same sense from it; it doesn't strike me as necessary and it's a poor performance. IMO.

[inlaterdays]

I think they kind of merged the opera singer and Tyrell's niece into Rachael, and made her non-sheep-killy. And I think the voiceover was supposed to have a flat affect because Deckard's actually a you-know. (Or is he?)

I think this film is utterly brilliant and it makes me sad that all you see is sci-fi pulp. I've seen and read a lot of sci-fi pulp and this, to me, is a different animal altogether. There are so many nuances and levels of meaning and riddles fans have debated about for years.

I dunno. To each his own, I guess, but I think it's a masterpiece.

[my_daroga]

I'm a lot more cynical than you, I think. I feel that most of the time, fans find things to debate and delve into and it usually has little to do with authorial intent. This is less true of some filmmakers (Lynch comes to mind, but even he has no idea what Inland Empire is about), and I also have to confess that I've had a vendetta against Scott ever since I read about him making Gladiator and having writers follow him around so he could say "oh, hey, tigers would be cool, yeah."

It took five people to write Blade Runner, and that makes me suspicious.

I'm sorry I don't like it more either. I *do* love Roy, though. Maybe that's enough for now?

[inlaterdays]

Well, I still think Lynch is largely a giant leg-pull, so I guess we're just cynical in different ways. ;)

[my_daroga]

But when it's Lynch, I know that he's personally agonized over the decisions he's made, even if he doesn't understand them. So it's different, for me.

[my_daroga]

What?