Philip K Dick's most personal sci-fi book resonates with the slacker sensibilities of writer-director Richard Linklater in A Scanner Darkly. Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jnr star in this "dreamlike" yarn of drug fiends slipping into a Technicolor whirlpool of paranoia. A groundbreaking use of performance-capture animation certainly helped it to stand out from the crowd, but the movie still bombed in spectacular style at the box office. It must be a right-wing conspiracy…

Scanning For Clues

"It is one of the strangest script I've ever read," says Downey Jnr in One Summer In Austin. This half-hour featurette goes on location and talks to all of the cast and crew, as well as including excerpts of an archive interview with Philip K Dick. The author talks about the events in his own life, which inspired the novel, ie, during the days of the Nixon administration, he says he was "a marked man" and became increasingly paranoid about being watched by government spooks. In fact the records show his paranoia wasn't misplaced.

Linklater notes the "contemporary" aspects of the story, although Downey Jnr and his co-stars admit to being initially baffled by it. Only Keanu Reeves is bold enough to assert, "I really followed the book." Hmm. Is he lying to us, or are we just paranoid?

Venturing into the dark halls of the animation department, The Weight Of The Line sees how new advances in CGI technology enable Linklater to replicate the actors' performances in a live-action comicbook. He reckons, "I don't think there are any limitations to what we can do," but the schedule did extend from 9 months to 18 months using "350 man-hours per minute" to get the look just right. Apparently Reeves' "patchy beard" had the animators tearing their hair out for most of that time...

Throwing Light On Darkly

Dick's daughter Isa Hackett contributes to the film commentary, which is more than can be said for Keanu Reeves who (perhaps wisely) keeps schtum after the opening introductions. She talks about the real-life characters in her father's life - who wound up in the story, eg Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane) is based on Dick's old roommate. Later on, Philip K Dick expert Jonathan Lethem explains that every character is "part of him," because aside from worrying about the spooks watching his every move, the writer was also practised in the art of "watching himself". (Trippy...) Linklater and producer Tommy Pallotta take a backseat, but offer additional notes on casting and script development etc.

For avid fans of Philip K Dick, this DVD presents a lot of intriguing insights into his early life and influences. For everyone else, it's a wild night indoors.

EXTRA FEATURES