Yesterday I saw the new Matt Damon movie, The Adjustment Bureau. I didn’t know too much about it on the way in. Early on, my wife asked me, “is this based on a Philip K. Dick book?”
I said, “I don’t know… if not directly, then indirectly.” I answer a lot of her questions that way — if not directly, then indirectly. As it turns out, The Adjustment Bureau is based on a Philip K. Dick short story, The Adjustment Team, published in 1954.
As anyone who reads Philip K. Dick knows, movies based on his work never quite get it right. They seem to get the nugget of “what’s real and what’s not real,” but they aren’t very good at capturing the dark humor or the giddy paranoia.
Richard Linklater‘s A Scanner Darkly (2006) comes pretty close, but the rest are off by a mile. I’m thinking of Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), Minority Report (2002) and Paycheck (2003).
When I say “off by a mile,” I don’t mean they’re not good movies, and I don’t mean they’re not “true” to the books or stories they’re based on. I mean they don’t really capture the feel of a Philip K. Dick story, and in large part that’s due to Hollywood’s inability to give us an honest-to-goodness Dickian hero.
The protagonists in Dick stories are usually bumbling, insecure average guys (and usually below average when it comes to their skills with women). Do the lead actors from these movies seem like bumbling, insecure average guys? Harrison Ford from Blade Runner? Arnold Schwarzenegger from Total Recall? Tom Cruise from Minority Report? Ben Affleck from Paycheck?
And now Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau?
Insecure and bumbling? Of course not. For Damon, they took the main character from Dick’s story and changed him from a married, low-level employee to a dynamic, up-and-coming U.S. Senate candidate in pursuit of the hot-chick contemporary dancer he accidentally encountered in a men’s room.
And that’s okay, as far as a Sunday matinee goes. But it’s not very Philip K. Dick, and it’s not very The Adjustment Team.
In the short story, the forces in charge — the members of the Adjustment Team — are, in phildickian fashion, a bunch of screw-ups. Everything goes awry, for example, because a member of the team entrusts a lazy dog to perform a crucial function.
This is one area where The Adjustment Bureau stays at least a little true to the spirit of Philip K. Dick. The people pulling our strings aren’t really very good at it — they mess up, then mess up even further trying to cover their butts. That’s believable in a bureaucratic sense and a cosmic sense.
I have no real beef with The Adjustment Bureau, and it’s my understanding that Philip K. Dick’s daughter was involved in the making of the film. I’m all for that. And I’m all for more movies based on Philip K. Dick stories. I just know they’ll get it right one of these days.
And I know it’s not easy. Heck, I can’t really think of which actor I’d cast as a Philip K. Dick hero. Maybe Steve Buscemi? Maybe Oscar-nominated John Hawkes could do it? The Rock? Chameleon-like Eddie Murphy, playing ALL the roles?
Yesterday I saw the new Matt Damon movie, The Adjustment Bureau. I didn’t know too much about it on the way in. Early on, my wife asked me, “is this based on a Philip K. Dick book?”
I said, “I don’t know… if not directly, then indirectly.” I answer a lot of her questions that way — if not directly, then indirectly. As it turns out, The Adjustment Bureau is based on a Philip K. Dick short story, The Adjustment Team, published in 1954.
As anyone who reads Philip K. Dick knows, movies based on his work never quite get it right. They seem to get the nugget of “what’s real and what’s not real,” but they aren’t very good at capturing the dark humor or the giddy paranoia.
Richard Linklater‘s A Scanner Darkly (2006) comes pretty close, but the rest are off by a mile. I’m thinking of Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), Minority Report (2002) and Paycheck (2003).
When I say “off by a mile,” I don’t mean they’re not good movies, and I don’t mean they’re not “true” to the books or stories they’re based on. I mean they don’t really capture the feel of a Philip K. Dick story, and in large part that’s due to Hollywood’s inability to give us an honest-to-goodness Dickian hero.
The protagonists in Dick stories are usually bumbling, insecure average guys (and usually below average when it comes to their skills with women). Do the lead actors from these movies seem like bumbling, insecure average guys? Harrison Ford from Blade Runner? Arnold Schwarzenegger from Total Recall? Tom Cruise from Minority Report? Ben Affleck from Paycheck?
And now Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau?
Insecure and bumbling? Of course not. For Damon, they took the main character from Dick’s story and changed him from a married, low-level employee to a dynamic, up-and-coming U.S. Senate candidate in pursuit of the hot-chick contemporary dancer he accidentally encountered in a men’s room.
And that’s okay, as far as a Sunday matinee goes. But it’s not very Philip K. Dick, and it’s not very The Adjustment Team.
In the short story, the forces in charge — the members of the Adjustment Team — are, in phildickian fashion, a bunch of screw-ups. Everything goes awry, for example, because a member of the team entrusts a lazy dog to perform a crucial function.
This is one area where The Adjustment Bureau stays at least a little true to the spirit of Philip K. Dick. The people pulling our strings aren’t really very good at it — they mess up, then mess up even further trying to cover their butts. That’s believable in a bureaucratic sense and a cosmic sense.
I have no real beef with The Adjustment Burea, and it’s my understanding that Philip K. Dick’s daughter was involved in the making of the film. I’m all for that. And I’m all for more movies based on Philip K. Dick stories. I just know they’ll get it right one of these days.
And I know it’s not easy. Heck, I can’t really think of which actor I’d cast as a Philip K. Dick hero. Maybe Steve Buscemi? Maybe Oscar-nominated John Hawkes could do it? The Rock? Chameleon-like Eddie Murphy, playing ALL the roles?
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