You Don't Know Dick

Our posters.  About to head out into the wild.

RYAN BRITT

Friday will see the release of a new Total Recall, which aims to erase our memories of another movie called Total Recall. Do films remember other films wholesale? Or do films dream of electric films? In either case, it remains to be seen if Total Recall is a cinematic imposter of a Philip K. Dick story or is instead just the second variety of a well-worn 90’s action movie.

In the meantime, join me as I turn my scanner, darkly, toward all of the films made from Philip K. Dick’s work and try to figure out which of them are quality movies and which actually have something in common with the source material. I’ll give each movie two letter grades: one for being a good or bad movie and one for being faithful to the source material. (Note: faithful doesn’t always mean just following the plot, but capturing the themes and essence as well.)

Last month, Lawrence Downes reviewed David F. Dufty's How to Build an Android in the New York Times Book Review. The book is the story of an android designed to look and talk like famed science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Downes writes:

But the character who ends up being most intriguing is poor nonhuman Phil, whose unknown destiny gives the book a tinge of sorrow. Tied as he is to the life and words of a deeply troubled and testy namesake, he can be churlish at times, giving snotty answers to simple questions. A Wall Street Journal writer said of Phil, “The most advanced robot on exhibition was also, in my view, the most obnoxious.”

That’s hardly surprising. But one mystery is why Phil’s creators never gave him an answer to a question you would expect anyone to ask Philip K. Dick. It’s the title of the story that inspired Blade Runner: Do androids dream of electric sheep?

That prompted this letter to the editor of the book review from Off-Ramp commentator Marc Haefele, who has a long and wonderful resume which includes editing Dick back in the day.

To the Editor:

Lawrence Downes, in his review of David F. Dufty’s How to Build an Android, wonders how the Philip K. Dick android would have answered the question posed by the book title Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I can tell you exactly what the real Philip K. Dick would have said: “I don’t know. It wasn’t my original title.”

The original title of the manuscript I received as Phil’s editor at Doubleday & Company, around the end of 1967, was Do Androids Dream? I felt the title was a little too paperback sci-fi sounding. So I proposed to my superior, Lawrence Ashmead, that the book be called The Electric Sheep. He suggested the compromise that appeared on the published hardcover the following year. Phil did not object.

Looking back, I think Do Androids Dream? was a better title.