Horselover Fat

Wired has a pretty good article on Philip K. Dick (or Horselover Fat, as he liked to refer to himself) and the increasing amount of Hollywood movies based on his work. Apart from Bladerunner, I’ve always been disappointed by what Hollywood has done to Dick’s work. Seems to me, if you’re going to make a movie based on a novel fueled by paranoia, fear, and hopelessness, it should probably be a paranoid, dark movie.

But of course, angst-ridden meditations on reality and humanity don’t make blockbusters, so the scripts are altered with grafted-on happy endings and–naturellement–chase scenes.

As much as I love Dick’s novels, the biggest problem is always that they exist more as concepts than works. If he’d taken a bit less speed and if he’d been popular enough that a good editor was assigned to him, there’s no telling how good it could have been.

For those looking for more on Dick, I highly recommend Divine Invasions, a really moving biography of this tortured soul.