Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly. How it nearly fell apart. The incredible behind the scenes story, told for the first time in Film Stories magazine. History is filled with filmmakers who’ve made a hit film, and then used that creative latitude to make something more risky. Steven Spielberg used the success of Jaws to open ... A Scanner Darkly | The exclusive story of Richard Linklater’s animated cult classic – only in Film Stories magazine
Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly. How it nearly fell apart. The incredible behind the scenes story, told for the first time in Film Stories magazine.
History is filled with filmmakers who’ve made a hit film, and then used that creative latitude to make something more risky. Steven Spielberg used the success of Jaws to open the way for Close Encounters Of The Third Kind; Francis Ford Coppola went from the acclaim of the Godfather films to the far riskier Apocalypse Now.
In 2003, director Richard Linklater landed his biggest mainstream film to date with the comedy School Of Rock – a comedy so beloved by audiences that it was later turned into a stage musical. With that studio film to bolster his reputation, Linklater embarked on a more personal project: an adaptation of Philip K Dick’s 1977 novel, A Scanner Darkly.
A semi-autobiographical sci-fi piece about reality-warping drugs and high-tech state surveillance, it was hardly the kind of material that Hollywood studios or movie stars would welcome with open arms. All the same, Linklater and his producer-partner began working on an adaptation, with Linklater writing a screenplay that hewed far more closely to the original novel than most other films based on Dick’s stories.
“I was determined to keep what usually gets tossed out in adaptations of his work,” Linklater tells us in the new edition of Film Stories magazine. “They usually just grab the big idea, and he had so many, then build something like a traditional narrative around it. My goal was to capture, amongst the shifting realities, the digressive conversations, wicked humour, suburban blandness, and sad and lonely darkness enveloping [protagonist] Arctor’s life.”
To add further to the challenge, Linklater and producer Tommy Pallotta decided to tell the story through rotoscope animation – an expansion of techniques they’d first applied to the similarly trippy Waking Life in 2001. “A Scanner Darkly has a really unstable sense of reality and identity, and rotoscope animation helps you experience that,” Pallotta says.
After an initial struggle to find a star willing to back it, A Scanner Darkly began production in 2004, with an extraordinary cast of names: Keanu Reeeves came first, followed by Robert Downey Jr, Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson.
The film’s production was, however, marred by personnel changes and technical challenges that, at one stage, threatened to tear the entire project apart. It’s an extraordinary story – one that takes in a team of animators who’d never made such a film before, abrupt exits, a leaking roof and a rising budget.
As A Scanner Darkly celebrates its 20th anniversary, we tell the definitive story of the animated cult classic’s making, with exclusive interviews with its director, producer, lead animators and composer. You’ll find it in the pages of Film Stories issue 60, with original A Scanner Darkly artwork on the cover, and special bundle deals including postcards and a signed LP.
These are strictly limited, so order yours from our online store while stocks last. And if you have a Philip K Dick fan in your life, do spread the word.
