I’m applying for a job in Japan. In the latest email, the potential boss asked me to send a headshot, standard for Japanese resumes. I wanted to say that as soon as I get home to the US I can scan it in and send it, but I wasn’t quite sure how “scanner” is spelled in Japanese. I checked the always useful ALC dictionary, and they had this example:
Scanner Darkly
【著作】 《A ～》暗闇のスキャナー◆米1977《著》フィリップ・K・ディック(Philip K. Dick)
Dick is right around the top of my favorite authors of all time list, and this just reminds me how excited I am about the movie adaptation of this book that’s about to come out. The awesome trailer is here, and Wired has an article here about the trials of the rotoscoping animation they used.
I always thought that A Scanner Darkly would make a crappy movie, as too much of it was “interior dialogue” and the thoughts of the protagonists, and it was way to abstract. But I suppose I could be wrong. We shall see.
Stanley Kubrick famously wrote, after making 2001, “If it can be thought or felt or imagined, it can be filmed.” I totally disagree. I know plenty of novels that could never be made into movies. PKD made plenty of them. But others are just made for the screen. I personally want to direct my favorite story, with the most relentlessly depressing ending, “Autofac.”
I had doubts myself, but seeing the trailer has convinced me. The rotocoping technique (using filmed actors as the basis for animation) seems to be a great way to convey the sense of tenuous reality, sometimes normal sometimes drippy around the edges.