Released in 2006, A Scanner Darkly is one of many films based on the writings of Philip K. Dick. Directed by Richard Linklater and starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., and Winona Ryder, the film was an interesting science fiction tale based around drugs. Reeves plays Arctor, an undercover cop in a not-too-distant future that becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.
A Scanner Darkly now arrives in HMV stores in an exclusive Premium Bluray. The special disc also includes a set of art cards, a digital copy of the movie and some great extras including a commentary with director Richard Linklater and star Keanu Reeves. To commemorate this grand release, we’ve compiled a list of several interesting facts about the film and it’s production. Enjoy.
1. The film was shot in just 23 days, not bad for a feature length film will a plethora of stars. However, the shoot was only the first step towards completing the film. Linklater had to complete and lock-in the final edit of the film before it was handed over to his animation team who painstakingly morphed the image into animation form. The process took around 18 months to complete.
2. It’s the highest grossing and most expensive rotoscoped animated feature. It grossed $7,659,918, but cost $8.7 million meaning that it sadly failed to recoup its costs.
3. Robert Downey Jr stars in the film as Barris. In order to remember all of his character’s frantic lines, he wrote most of them down on post it notes. He then scattered these notes around the set so he can read them as he was performing. The animators then had the additional job of removing them from the picture during post-production.
4. The end credits include an abridged version of the afterword of the Philip K. Dick’s novel upon which the film is based. In this afterword, Dick lists the people that he knew whom have suffered irreparable physical or mental damage or death as a result of drug use. He also includes himself as being a victim of pancreatic damage.
5. Before filming began, Richard Linklater rounded up the cast for a full two weeks of rehearsal. This was in a bid to fine-tune the script. The result was a blend of Linklater’s writing, the actor’s interpretations, and Dick’s novel.
6. In preparation for their roles, Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., and Rory Cochrane, had very different strategies. Cochrane apparently came up with his character just before he arrived to work, whilst Robert Downey Jr. memorised his dialogue by writing it out in run-on sentences. He then studied them and converted them to acronyms in addition to the aforementioned post-it notes. Reeves had the most traditional method, he relied on the book and marked down each scene in the screenplay to the corresponding page.
7. In order to find the right place for Arctor’s house, the team looked at no less than 60 houses. They were struggling to find one that could believably look so run down. Then they found one whose previous owners had left just a month prior to filming, and they had left it in such a state that production designer Bruce Curtis had to make only minor modifications.
8. The name, A Scanner Darkly, is an appropriation of Corinthians 13:12 –
“For now we see through a glass darkly; but then, face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known.”
9. Linklater wasn’t the first person to eye the novel for a film adaptation, Terry Gilliam originally wanted to make it in the early 1990s.
10. The source of the organic component of drug, Substance D, Clerodendron Ugandens, is apparently based on a real species of flower of the same name. It has since been reclassified and is now known under the correct name “Rotheca myricoides”. As mentioned in the film, the plant is highly poisonous to humans and livestock.
The Premium Collection version of A Scanner Darkly is available on Blu-ray exclusively from HMV now.
