It was a real high school. The book is out of print and is impossible to buy for a reasonable sum of money anymore but it was all true. Cameron Crowe was 19 and youthful looking enough to go undercover as a high schooler to do the reporting and write the book. The book is amazing. They elided a couple of the interesting minor storylines into one character.
6 Likes
I agree. In a way, I feel like that’s the point of the book (particularly the B-story which was taken out almost completely from the movie version). For me, the story is about humanity’s inhumanity and our willingness to accept appearances-based morality. Mercerism is a commodified religion made to exploit the feeling that maybe we should have empathy.
I’ve been known to give PKD too much credit though. 
3 Likes
I disagree. My reading of the book is that the androids can simulate being human, but they can never actually understand what being human is. They don’t have empathy, and can’t fake it well enough to pass. Not even Rachael. Mercer isn’t exploiting that we should have empathy, but a demonstration of that empathy.
2 Likes
The book inspired, but is very different from the movie. I don’t mean just surface details, at its core.
4 Likes
I found the computer game was much closer to both.
4 Likes
I know I started playing that but never finished. I remember thinking at the time the game mechanics were clunky.
1 Like
Yeah, but it had the visual feel of the film and the existential uncertainty of the book. You could never be sure until the end who was/wasn’t a replicant.
3 Likes
Thinking about it, the only decent PK dick movie, up until A Scanner Darkly, was the Arnie version of Total Recall because you were left not knowing if it was real or not.
6 Likes
Colloque de chiens aka Dog’s Dialogue aka Dog Symposium (1977)
One of the first “purely” French films director Raul Ruiz made after fleeing Pinochet’s Chile. Constructed mostly from still images, this short can’t help but bring to mind Chris Marker’s La Jetee, with which it also shares a certain circularity of narrative. A sordid, ridiculous, mechanical tale of true crime in which James Cain (or is it Jean Cocteau?) meets Jorge Luis Borges, and stray dogs provide commentary.
Highly recommended.
3 Likes
the circular narrative thing was cool, but the film didn’t work for me overall. Interesting as a window into another time and culture, though.
2 Likes
Boy, I hope that wasn’t an accurate picture of 1970’s France. 
3 Likes
Because all the authors of the book and the screenplay intended and assumed he was human?
Always worked for me.
You know how in Anne Rice’s vampire novels every single viewpoint character ends up vampirized by the end of the book? Some readers probably consider that a feature rather than a bug. It seems like there’s a certain kind of fan that is so alienated and misanthropic that they’ll be offended if they’re forced to read a story about an ordinary human being.
For me the most interesting thing about that scene is the music.
As Rachael watches (weak, broken, human) Deckard trying to clean himself up, most versions of the movie play soft romantic music. He’s so vulnerable and we’re supposed to think she’s falling for him. But in the “workprint” — the earliest version of the film we can watch — the music is harsh and dissonant, and it completely changes the meaning of the scene. In the workprint Rachael is trying to decide whether she should take this opportunity to kill Rick.
6 Likes
I would really like to see that work print. It might not be complete, but it sounds like the best version from what I’ve read.
2 Likes
I saw it at the Castro in S.F. in 1991,* and it’s still the only version I’ve ever seen in a theater.
I’m sure it’s available from Amazon and eBay as part of various “collector’s edition” boxed sets — or if you’re comfortable downloading and playing large video files you could search for “blade runner 1982 workprint bluray” at TPB.
∗ i remembered it being at the roxie but the historical record disagrees
4 Likes
I just saw a big-budget, big-name movie about the desperate evacuation of the British army from the coast of a rapidly-collapsing France during the early days of what would eventually be known as the Second World War.
It was appropriately titled “Dunkirk,” and was made in 1958.
I first learned of this version of “Dunkirk” a few years ago from the single “How Soon is Now." You see, Morrissey used a still from it on the record’s cover. It’s a movie I’ve always intended to see, but never quite got around to. I decided it was finally time to see it now that a new, slightly enigmatic, telling of the story has been filmed. This 1958 version cleverly weaves the story together from two plot threads.
First we are introduced to civilians in London — primarily Bernard Lee and Richard Attenborough. Bernard Lee is a caustic reporter who is skeptical of the optimistic news briefings he receives from the government. Richard Attenborough (not a “sir” at this time) is a small but successful businessman who has recently become a father, and is all too happy to make a profit and ignore the war as long as he can.
The second story concerns a small group of British soldiers who have been caught short by the rapid British retreat, and are trying to find their way back to their own side of the lines. Through their eyes we see the reality of the situation in France. They’re lead by John Mills (also not a “sir” at this time) and he’s always excellent in this type of role.
Since both Bernard Lee’s and Richard Attenborough’s characters own little boats, their story and John Mills’ story literally meet up on the beach at Dunkirk.
The movie shows that due to government censorship of the news and a natural avoidance of personal inconvenience, the general public in Britain is portrayed as being quite indifferent to the disaster developing on the continent. However, the glaring enormity of the situation on the beaches of Dunkirk was unignorable. The theme is that the rescue of the army from France, snatching not a victory but rather a temporary reprieve from a certain defeat, was to the general public a unifying dose of reality.
Bernard Lee is a good actor. A very good actor in fact. He has appeared in many movies, but he’s easy to over-look because he’s able to lose himself in his diverse roles so well. I’m used to seeing him in smaller, supporting parts but his role in this movie is the largest I’ve seen him play. As you might expect he plays this part well, but once again he was easy to over-look because he plays it like Jack Hawkins. In fact I had to keep reminding myself who I was watching. Perhaps the producers wanted Hawkins but couldn’t get him? Who knows.
Despite the vast scale upon which the story unfolds, despite the excellent cast, excellent sets and excellent pyrotechnics, there is in fact one glaring error I have to point out. There is, you see, one thing missing — effects shots. The only aircraft you see in this movie are taken from grainy, 16mm footage shot during the war. This adds a lot of authenticity, but it also clearly doesn’t fit in. By the time we get to the beach no aircraft are seen at all. There is in fact a few times later on in the film where there is the sound of approaching aircraft, the actors look up into the sky, and then take cover to avoid the bullets and bombs. It’s a basic rule of film-making that when the cast looks up to see aircraft you cut in a POV shot of planes approaching, but not in this movie. It just feels a little odd. A definite cinema sin. They must have saved the effects work for last and then ran out of money.
But despite that, don’t overlook this one.
————————
11 Likes
this type of lazy film-making was lampooned in Wet Hot American Summer. In this case, there is a cutaway to the raft, but it is in perfectly calm water when the story is that the raft is in danger. Then the “rescue” of the campers is “told” completely through Joe Lo Truglio’s overacted reaction.
2 Likes
I wouldn’t describe the film as cheap or lazy. I think it’s more likely it ran into a Star Trek — The Motion Picture type of situation. Where the producers took the project away from the director before it was truly complete.
2 Likes
Recently I was kinda down and looking for a good comedy - something to make me laugh and bring my mood up. I found “Fundamentals of Caring” on a list of comedy movies that someone had posted, and there were a bunch of comments about how it was really funny and pleasant. The IMDB reviews backed that up with things like “an up beat feel good movie with a lot of laughs”.
It wasn’t. It was a sad, tragic movie with just enough little bits of humor thrown in so that it wasn’t totally miserable. It wasn’t a bad movie, really. But not what I was looking for, and not at all what the reviews/comments described.
6 Likes
Commentary from another director about the film which gives an even more interesting view.
6 Likes
Thank you.
1 Like