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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (June 25, 2002)
FEATURES Dead 20 years, Philip K. Dick conquers Hollywood again By Bobby Bryant Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT) Twenty years after dying, sci ence-fiction writer Philip K. Dick is a big success. How very Dickian. “Minority Report,” Steven Spiel berg and Tom Cruise’s $100 million summer blockbuster which opened Friday, was teased from Dick’s humble 1956 short story of the same name. (The story was first published in a 35-cent magazine whose cover featured a man being attacked by what looks like a giant water flea. Eisenhower-era sci-fi artists were not subtle.) Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1990 hit, “Total Recall,” was based on another Dick story, this one from 1966. Ridley Scott’s endlessly imi tated “Blade Runner” (1982) was based on a Dick novel. Dick’s sto ries also have inspired two other, less successful, movies: “Scream ers” (1995) and “Impostor” (2002). And the five-times-married au thor of 40 mind-bending novels and 128 short stories was dead from heart failure before any of these hit the screen. It’s a perfect Phil Dick tale: Cor porate Hollywood’s hot new writer is a dead man who, for a time in the 1970s, believed he was receiving messages from higher intelligences, either alien or heavenly. Dick (1928-82) was a perfect “concept illustrator” for movies, Spielberg told Wired magazine. In the case of “Minority Report,” Spielberg and his screenwriters took Dick’s idea — of future cops who arrest people for murders they haven’t yet committed — and ex panded on it until they had a Cruise-worthy thriller. In the film, Cruise is the chief of an experimental “Precrime” squad that relies on mutant psychics to foretell who’s going to kill who, and when. (Think of it as a LaToya’s Psychic Hotline that actually works.) Then the system fingers Cruise. He’s being set up — or is he? That’s the Dickian edge — he’s in nocent and guilty at the same time. “Minority Report,” the story, is considered fairly mild Phil Dick Courtesy photo Tom Cruise fights to prove his innocence in the Steven Spielberg directed movie version of Philip K. Dick’s 1956 short story, “Minority Report.” — the author could, and did, con jure much weirder worlds. But al ways with recognizably human characters. “I love my characters,” Dick once said. “They’re my friends. When I finish a book, I go into post-partum (depression), nev er to hear them speak again, never to see them struggling and trying.” He’s best remembered for inject ing a jolting tone of paranoia, even schizophrenia, into the rational world of late-1950s and early-1960s science fiction. In many of Dick’s tales, critic John Clute wrote, “Real ity is a sham, a prop that can be whipped from under one’s feet.” And after the success of the what’s-real? drama “A Beautiful Mind,” that’s the kind of thing Hol lywood is hungry for. Entertain ment Weekly reports that Para mount Pictures has optioned the rights to one of Dick’s 1952 short stories as part of a deal that could earn the author’s estate $2 million. (The story earned Dick only $195.) Some of Dick’s major works: “Time Out of Joint” (1959) — A man discovers that his idyllic ’50s world is a sham and that he is a pawn in an interplanetary war. “The Truman Show” owed Dick a debt for this, his first hardback nov el. (“’Time Out of Joint’ sold for $750,” Dick told an interviewer in 1974. “That was a long time ago, and we are still being paid about as much money as if we were stand ing on a street comer selling apples in the Depression.”) “The Man in the High, Castle” (1962) — The father of all “alter nate-history” novels. Dick creates a world in which the Allies lost World War II and the Axis divvied up the United States. “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (1968) — In a rotting fu ture, a hired gun hunts androids who are about as human as he is. (Except for the idea and the tone, little of the book survives in “Blade Runner.”) For more on Dick’s books, visit philipkdick.com on the Web. ©2002, The State (Columbia, S.C.). Distributed by Knight Ridder,Tribune Information Services. TOASTED SUBS • SOUPS • SALADS UO Campus at 13th & Alder (Inside Starbucks) 5th Street Public Market • Gateway Blvd. & Beltline Rd. 014352 COUNSELING SERVICES summer hours 9am-5pm, Monday through Friday 346-3227 TESTING SERVICES 9am-5pm, Monday through Friday by appointment 346-3230 2nd floor Student Health & Counseling Building PHOTO 1 specials! ■ JUNE 24-30 B REPRINTS AND ■ ENLARGEMENTS B 3 x 5 - 6 for$.96 g 4x6 - 5 for $1.00 5x7 -2 for $1.50 " ' 8x10/12 -$1.50 35mm color negatives, mm Malle or glossy. Allow 35 working ™ days for 3x and 4x reprints, and 5-7 working days for 5x enlargements | and5-todays for 8x enlargements. B FUJICOLOR this Summer s *i*'.»* T^U • * - . l 7 ' %, * X ^ * V AND WIN Eugene Emerald tickets Drawings are held weekly during the season. • Close to campus * Clean Handicap Accessible Machines * serving the Area for 26 years : i lllllr MR. CLEAN JEAN S COIN-OP LAUNDRY 240 E. 17th (between High & Pearl) Hi August 3,4&7 at the Halt! . Tickets: 682-5000 X Info: 687-6526 ^ www.ofam,org Oregon Festival of American Music 2002 presents the smash hit Gershwin musical comedy Crazy fcr
