Philip Dick - The Shifting Realities of PK Dick

The initial question: Who is the viewpoint character? It must be either the bounty hunter Rick Deckard or Jack Isidore. Since Isidore is younger, were he to be the viewpoint character we would perhaps have something on the order of The Graduate , in which everyone over thirty is corrupt and an instrument of the Establishment, and young, free, innocent love wins out -- an oddly corny theme for such a supposedly adult movie. In the novel, Isidore has a naive love directed toward the androids; Rick Deckard's view is that the androids are vicious machines that must be destroyed. These two different (and mutually exclusive) views, running parallel to each other in a twin-plot scheme, merge toward the end of the work, when Isidore is confronted by the cruelty of the androids as they cut the legs off the spider. Rick Deckard's view has won out, and the proof of this is that Isidore tells the bounty hunter where the androids are within the decayed apartment building. Since Deckard's view proves to be correct, perhaps he should be the viewpoint protagonist. We cannot come up with "love and innocence and faith conquer all," as was done -- and I think wrongly -- in the movie The Graduate .

But if Rick Deckard is the protagonist, then we are faced with a difficult problem (or perhaps I should say a problem that must be solved): the love that the bounty hunter feels toward animals, in contrast to his heartless murders of the androids. To love an animal more than a person is a deranged or cynical view -- or so it might seem. We must learn very soon why Rick holds this view, which means an early proof for his view contrasted with Isidore's. Or is not this the major theme, this struggle between the two views -- with proof only at the end that Rick Deckard's view was correct. In the novel we are told that androids lack human feeling, warmth, and empathic sensitivity, but we are not shown this in action until the meeting of Isidore and Deckard. But perhaps this is a good way to handle it; the contrast between Isidore and his views, in contrast to Deckard and his views, in some ways is the primary story. Notice I say "story" and not theme. The theme of the book tends to cluster around the religion of Mercerism and its emphasis on shared pain and mutual compassion, a rebirth of the primordial Christian view. Or is the basic theme the broad background, the total world in which they live, with their collective and general worship of animals, the decaying huge apartment buildings, and the "specials," like Jack Isidore -- plus the running thread of their mutual empathy?

Casting is a vital question. Rick Deckard could, for example, be played by Gregory Peck (which makes him powerful and sensitive and wise), in contrast to Richard Widmark (which makes him a psychotic killer), with several lesser possibilities, such as Martin Balsam (which makes him virtually into an archetypal father figure), or someone like Ben Gazzara (which makes him bold, and a man of action). As to Isidore. He could be played, for example, by Dean Stockwell (which makes him sensitive and an introvert, living in a lonely world of his own making), or possibly Wally Cox, which makes him into Wally Cox. My theory (supra) calls for Deckard to be the protagonist, with views that the audience may not quite at first share but that at the end win out morally, psychologically, dramatically, and in all other ways. Hence I would favor someone like Gregory Peck to play Rick Deckard, and then Dean Stockwell to play Isidore. It seems to me that with each casting change -- or decision -- you have a whole new ball of wax. Think, for example, of the strong factor introduced if Rachael were played by a vibrant, hard girl such as Grace Slick (a bit of casting I would really plug for).

Of course, there is also the question of the tone of the picture; is this a touching story (Isidore protecting the androids and then, at the end, seeing what they are really like -- his soap bubble world suddenly collapsing), or Isidore as funny (via Wally Cox, etc.), or gunplay action, as Deckard shoots one android after another, or as a broad general picture of a whole and entire world that is ethnic fundamentally, with many quaint and odd customs practiced with great solemnity by the natives, customs that include murder on a legal basis: "people" (i.e. the androids) without any legal rights of any sort. Also, the film could be procop or anticop, which reverts as a question to the deeper, earlier question of what age group is the protagonist going to be?

I personally feel that the bizarre, the odd, the eerie should be played up, the pataphysical quiddities of this world in which they live. One finds this, for example, of the whole element about fake live animals, and the new animal dealers who have replaced the new car dealers of our own time. The strange , the dreamlike (as in the time-lapse and space-lapse camerawork in The Graduate ). It is a sort of pretend world... up to a point. And then the murders of the androids begin, and suddenly it is all real, all for keeps, and very much grim and unfunny.

One additional oddity: the fact that there are two Rachaels, the one whom Rick meets, and then the one Isidore meets. These are the same android, and some kind of imaginative camerawork -- superimpositions or few-frame blinks back and forth between the two androids -- is much needed, and could be a major attraction of the film. What must be made clear to the audience, however, [is] that these two Rachaels, each with its human colleague, are functioning at the same time; these are not a flashback but a simultaneous double life. For example, the android talking to Rick Deckard could say a phrase, and then when we pick the other Rachael up with Isidore, she could repeat the exact words -- an audiotrack superimposition, with the voice echoing itself as in a sort of electronic echo chamber, much improved on our own. I think that (1) it is going to be hard to get across the desired effect, but (2) it will be worth the effort. The small plot-element of the Other Police Station could be eliminated entirely.

I am not sure that the Mood Organ material should, as in the novel, begin the piece. Perhaps instead we could have Jack Isidore driving his electric-animal-repair truck setting out at dawn. Technically, I think there should be a weapon, used in particular by the bounty hunters, that isn't merely another laser tube, such as one sees in Star Trek and The Invaders . Here again, something of imagination rather than cliche is needed. This includes the sound made by the weapon; it must be new and unusual, too. A sound, for example, that a champagne bottle makes when it pops its cork.

It seems to me that one strong point of the novel is the fact that it provides space for many moods and tones: There is the dramatic search and destruction of the androids, the tenderness felt toward live animals, the weird, deserted apartment building in which Jack Isidore lives -- opportunities for humor, the peculiar, the very frightening, and, of course, the awe felt when Mercer is encountered. We can have a many-sided film... or, I would think, some of the moods (and plot, etc.) can be eliminated entirely, however important they are to the novel... and then remaining elements, such as Isidore and the Mercer theme, can be retained and built up more. But I do think that both the search and destroy androids theme must be retained (because of its connection -- contrast -- to Isidore's view), and because it all throughout the novel adds the quality of violence, of the chase... although, in regarding this, I wonder if the empathy test that Deckard gives prospective androids is adequate in the visual medium. Perhaps an entirely new type of test should be made up for this, or perhaps no test that is a question-and-answer test, but perhaps a measuring of brain-wave rhythms. This, too, is a vital area to be there with imagination, as with the kind of weapons used.