^“I am lukewarm about everything except the animators and their artwork.”
This is how I felt about it upon watching it in Austin when it came out. DVDs arriving from Netflix today, and I can’t wait to rewatch it with a more open mind…or if I promptly decide everyone still sounds too “meaningful” (yeah, that rings a bell too, Wiley), at least I can have a closed mind to the content leaving more room to pay attention to how amazing everyone looks in it. Great, expressive animation!
Wiley, amazing to have you here? Did you work on A SCANNER DARKLY too? I love the PKD annecdote in WAKING LIFE, and having gotten way into him is what prompted me to rewatch the movie.
The only part I had in the making of Scanner was in suggesting to Rick that he make it his next project. They had originally been thinking about Valis, but the rights were problematic. I suggested Scanner because I felt like it was a good balance of humor and sadness, and that what usually gets skipped over in PKD adaptations is his sense of humor.
Good God.
It is my dream to some day adapt VALIS successfully. That is very interesting news that Linklater was considering it. Great call about the balance of sadness AND humor (or humor found in sadness) which is key to Dick and not thoroughly explored in BLADE RUNNER or TOTAL RECALL (and totally wasted in the attempts at humor in MINORITY REPORT….somebody in a thread about Spielberg this week referenced the scene of the eyeballs rolling down the hallway as the low-point in aughts cinema, and I agree it’s a valid suggestion).
“Control was given over to the people who appear in the film, but instead of letting them be themselves, they put on airs because they know they are meant to say something ‘meaningful’.”
Present company excluded? :D
Well, I don’t talk that much in it, do I? ;)
I think the movie would have held up a lot better for me without the three guys who directly talk about lucid dreaming. I find that whole sequence clumsy and annoying.
Clumsy yes. I think that’s the perfect adjective for most of the film. But I don’t find it annoying. Some of it was really trying to tap into a dream state of conscious thought. And for that end, the wishy washy unstable animation worked like a charm. Some of the transitions and location changes also helped support this. And I will admit the Hawke Delpy segment worked for me (for obvious reasons). But for the most part, I do agree the problem is in what people are actually saying. SoME MAJOR NONSENSE lol.
not so disimilar to some posts on some forums I might add.
Its a discussion passed off as a movie.
@JASON: If it’s a communication performed through changing visual elements put in sequence, it’s a movie.
well, if it is, its a bad movie.
See, now we can get somewhere, if we are so inclined.
See, now we can get somewhere, if we are so inclined.
Wiley Wiggins
I’m IN this movie and parts of it annoy the shit out of me. It was an experiment, bits if were interesting, (I like Caveh Zahedi and Charles Gunning’s scenes and I like a lot of the animation) and a lot just didn’t work in my opinion. It was an interesting experience though, and I wouldn’t exchange that.
Anyway, I haven’t thought much about the film since it came out, but some people asked me about it after it showed up on some 2000’s top lists, so I felt like I would revisit it- and after 10 years I am lukewarm about everything except the animators and their artwork. I think it could have been a lot more subtle and centered. Control was given over to the people who appear in the film, but instead of letting them be themselves, they put on airs because they know they are meant to say something ‘meaningful’.