and
made insignificant by his humanity. In the
universe of Philip K. Dick,
a creature that
resembles an insect or a pudding may quilify
as
human, even when something that looks, walks,
and talks like a
man does not.
Over the last year of his life, Philip K.
Dick followed - first with
mistrust, and then
with growing admiration - the making of
the
Warner Bros. - Ladd Company - Ridley Scott film,
Blade Runner.
He criticised Ridley's first
science fiction film, Alien (1979). He
thought
the film was lacking a mature story, "a
spaceship is a
spaceship, and a monster is a
monster" (SelecT.V. Guide, 15th Feb.,
1981).
The alien creature in the film was created by
the surrealist
artist H.R. Giger.
At the beginning of the making of Blade
Runner,
Philip thought that they were just going to turn
his book
into a simple action story - "androids
killing humans and humans
killing androids"
(Ibid). There was also another trauma within
the
saga of making the film; the purchasing of
the copyright to the novel.
Warner Bros. wanted
to do a novelisation based on the screenplay of
|
the
film, which is quite often the case if a
film is loosely adapted from
an original novel.
They were going to bring in a new writer to
do
the novelisation, but they had to have Philip K.
Dick's
permission because he and his agent
wanted to re-issue the original
novel in
conjunction with the release of the film. So
the Hollywood
people offered him the
novelisation for an estimated sum of
$400,000.
He refused this offer because he wanted to
continue
writing his latest novel, The
Transmigration of Timothy Archer, (Simon
and
Schuster, 1982).
Although he didn't have any involvement
with the screenplay, Philip
was very fortunate
to get a copy of the actual finished
screenplay
and, by that time, the pre-production of the
film had
already started! He got very angry and
frustrated with the Blade Runner
people, when he
discovered that Ridley Scott told interviewer
Robert
Greenburger in March 1982 that, "I havn't
read the novel". (Starlog,
July 1982)
The copyright to his novel was bought from him
for a
modest sum by some very small operators. |