A Scanner Darkly (film)

A Scanner Darkly
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Richard Linklater
Written by	Novel: Philip K. Dick Screenplay: Richard Linklater
Produced by	Tommy Pallotta George Clooney Steven Soderbergh Anne Walker-McBay Palmer West Jonah Smith Erwin Stoff
Starring	Keanu Reeves Robert Downey, Jr. Woody Harrelson Winona Ryder
Cinematography	Shane F. Kelly
Edited by	Sandra Adair
Music by	Graham Reynolds
Distributed by	Warner Independent
Release dates	July 7, 2006 (limited) July 28, 2006 (wide)
Running time	100 minutes
Country	Template:Film US
Language	English
Budget	$8,700,000
Box office	$7,659,918 (worldwide)

A Scanner Darkly is a 2006 Animated film directed by Richard Linklater based on the novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick. The film tells the story of identity and deception in a near-future dystopia constantly monitored by intensive high-technology police surveillance in the midst of a drug addiction epidemic. To give the film its distinct look, the movie was filmed digitally and then animated using interpolated rotoscope over the original footage.

The film was written and directed by Linklater, and stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey, Jr., and Rory Cochrane. Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney are among the film's executive producers. A Scanner Darkly was released in July 2006 in limited release, and then widely released later that month. The film was screened at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival, and nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form in 2007.

Plot

In the future "seven years from now," America has lost the war on drugs. A highly addictive and debilitating illegal drug called Substance D, made from a small blue flower, has swept across the country. In response, the government develops an invasive, high-tech surveillance system and puts in place a network of informants and undercover agents.

Bob Arctor (Reeves) is an undercover agent assigned to immerse himself in the drug underworld and infiltrate the drug supply chain. Arctor and his housemates, Ernie Luckman (Harrelson) and James Barris (Downey Jr.), live in a suburban tract house in a poor Anaheim, California neighborhood. They are heavy drug users, and they pass their days by taking drugs and having long, drug-inspired conversations.

When Arctor is at the police station, he is codenamed Fred, and hides his identity from his fellow police officers by wearing a high-tech scramble suit that changes every aspect of the wearer's appearance. Arctor's superior officer, Hank, like all other undercover officers at the station, also wears a scramble suit.

While posing as a drug user, Arctor becomes addicted to Substance D, a powerful psychoactive drug which causes a dreamy state of intoxication and bizarre hallucinations; chronic users may develop a split personality, cognitive problems, and severe paranoia. Arctor befriends an attractive young woman named Donna Hawthorne (Ryder), a user of cocaine, Arctor's supplier of Substance D, and part of the drug scene. Arctor hopes to buy so much Substance D from Hawthorne that she is forced to introduce him to her supplier, but Arctor develops romantic feelings for her. However, Hawthorne refuses Arctor's sexual advances and Arctor's housemates question the true nature of their relationship. Barris implies to longtime friend and near-insane Substance D addict Charles Freck (Cochrane) that he has made advances toward Donna only to be refused, and suggests that Freck supply her with cocaine in order to attract her attention away from Arctor and convince her to lower her drug prices.

Hank orders Fred to step up surveillance on the members of the Arctor household. Hank assumes Fred is one of the drug users in the Arctor household, but does not know which one, and actually orders Fred to focus the surveillance on Arctor. In the meantime, the household members are extremely paranoid that the police have bugged their home and are watching their every move. The paranoia reaches extreme levels, and Arctor seems to become wrapped up in the concern of his housemates, even forgetting that he is the undercover agent spying on his justifiably paranoid friends. Meanwhile, Barris secretly contacts the police and tells them he suspects Hawthorne and Arctor are part of a terrorist organization. Barris unknowingly tells this to Arctor himself at the police station while Arctor is wearing his scramble suit (i.e. in his job as Fred).

Due to Arctor's heavy use of Substance D, he apparently develops cognitive problems which stop the two hemispheres of his brain from communicating with each other, and as a result he is receiving two different sets of information that are in conflict. As a result, Arctor is no longer able to distinguish between his roles as a drug user and undercover policeman, which makes him incapable of performing his job. Hank reprimands Arctor for becoming addicted to Substance D while undercover, and warns him that he will be disciplined.

After Barris supplies information to the police on the terrorist organization that Hawthorne and Arctor supposedly belong to—including a recording that Hank immediately recognizes as fake, synthesized on a computer—Hank orders Barris held on charges of providing false information to the police, which he assures Barris is "merely a cover" to protect him while the information is evaluated. After Barris' arrest, Hank reveals to Fred that he has figured out, through the process of elimination, his true identity, and that his identity is indeed Arctor. Arctor is surprised to learn his own true identity and he begins to act extremely confused and disoriented. Hank then informs Arctor that the whole point of the surveillance was to catch Barris, not Arctor himself; the police suspected Barris of being involved in the Substance D ring, and they were setting him up by driving up his paranoia level until Barris cracked and tried to cover his tracks with the false info. While a disturbed Arctor begins to break down, Hank phones Donna and asks her to take Arctor to New Path, a corporation that runs a series of rehabilitation clinics. After Arctor leaves the office, Hank heads to the lockers to remove his scramble suit, and his true identity is revealed to be Donna Hawthorne.

At New Path, Arctor experiences the severe symptoms of Substance D withdrawal. As part of the rehabilitation program, Arctor is renamed Bruce and put through psychological reconditioning treatments. Arctor has serious brain damage from his withdrawal from Substance D.

Sometime later Donna, using the name Audrey, has a conversation with another officer named Mike (seen undercover as an orderly at New Path), in which both reveal that New Path is responsible for the manufacture and distribution of Substance D. Donna/Audrey was part of a greater police operation to infiltrate New Path, and Arctor had been selected, without his knowledge or consent, to carry out the sting. It is revealed that the police had intended for Arctor to become addicted to Substance D; his well-being was sacrificed so that he might enter a rehabilitation center unnoticed as a real addict in order to find conclusive proof of New Path's crimes. They are dubious if there is still enough of Arctor left to find the evidence.

To continue his rehabilitation, New Path sends Arctor to work at an isolated New Path corn farming prison. Arctor spots rows of blue flowers hidden between rows of corn. These flowers, referenced throughout the film, are the source of Substance D. As the film ends, Arctor hides one of the blue flowers in his boot, so that when he returns to the New Path clinic during Thanksgiving he can give it to his friends.

End credits

The end credits feature an abridged version of the afterword of Dick's novel, in which Dick lists people he knew who have suffered serious permanent physical or mental damage (brain damage, psychosis, pancreatic trauma, etc.) or death as a result of drug use. Dick includes his own name on the list, as "Phil," a victim of permanent pancreatic damage.

Linklater adds another name to the credits and dedicates the film to the memory of Louis H. Mackey, an influential philosophy professor at the University of Texas at Austin; he had appeared in two of Linklater's previous films. He died in 2004.

Cast

• Keanu Reeves as Bob Arctor/Fred/Bruce
• Robert Downey, Jr. as James "Jim" Barris
• Winona Ryder as Donna Hawthorne/Hank/Audrey
• Woody Harrelson as Ernie Luckman
• Rory Cochrane as Charles Freck

Production

Originally, Richard Linklater toyed with adapting the Philip K. Dick novel Ubik but stopped early on because he was unable to obtain the rights and he "couldn't quite crack it." He began thinking about A Scanner Darkly, another Dick novel while talking to producer Tommy Pallotta during the making of Waking Life. Linklater liked A Scanner Darkly more than Ubik and felt that he could make a film out of it. According to Linklater, the challenge was capturing "the humor and exuberance of the book but not let go of the sad and tragic." Linklater was not interested in turning the book into a big budget action thriller as had been done in the past because he felt that A Scanner Darkly was "about these guys and what they're all doing in their alternative world and what's going through their minds is really what keeps the story moving." He wanted to keep the budget under $10 million so that he could have more creative control, remain faithful to the book, and make it an animated film.

After completing School of Rock, Linklater told Pallotta that he wanted to make A Scanner Darkly next. It was important to him that Dick's estate approve his film. Pallotta wrote a personal appeal and pitched a faithful adaptation of the novel to Russ Galen, the Philip K. Dick estate's literary agent who shared it with the late author's two daughters (Laura Leslie and Isa Hackett) who own and operate their father's trust. Dick's daughters weren't too keen on "a cartoon version" of A Scanner Darkly. After high profile adaptations, Minority Report and Paycheck, they took a more proactive role in evaluating every film proposal, including unusual projects like Linklater's. They read Linklater's screenplay and then met with him to discuss their respective visions of A Scanner Darkly. They felt that it was one of their father's most personal stories and liked that Linklater wasn't going to treat the drug aspects lightly, that he wanted to set it in the near future and make it right away.

Casting

For the dual roles of Bob Arctor and Fred, Linklater thought of Keanu Reeves, but figured that the actor would be burnt out from making another science fiction film after making The Matrix trilogy. Robert Downey Jr. was attracted to the film when he heard Reeves was going to star and Linklater to direct. He thought that the script was the strangest one he had ever read. Linklater wrote the role of Freck with Rory Cochrane in mind. The actor was interested but didn't want to re-create his role in Dazed and Confused. Both Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder agreed to appear in the film based on the script. Both Reeves and Ryder agreed to work for the Screen Actors Guild scale rate plus any back-end profits. As with Linklater's earlier Waking Life, conspiracy theorist radio host Alex Jones has a small cameo as himself.

Principal photography

Linklater assembled the cast for two weeks of rehearsals in Austin, Texas before principal photography began in order to fine-tune the script. The result was a fusion of Linklater's writing, the novel and the actors' input. To prepare for their respective roles, Cochrane came up with his character five minutes before he got on the elevator to work; Downey Jr. memorized his dialogue by writing it all out in run-on sentences, studying them and then converting them to acronyms; and Reeves relied on the book, marking down each scene in the screenplay to the corresponding page.

Principal photography began on May 17, 2004 and lasted six weeks. Arctor's house was located on Eric Circle in Southeast Austin. The previous tenants had left a month prior to filming and left the place in such a state that production designer Bruce Curtis had to make few modifications so that it looked like a run-down home. The filmmakers had looked at 60 houses before settling on this one. Linklater shot a lot of exteriors in Anaheim, California and then composited them into the Austin footage in post-production. Because everything would be animated over later, makeup, lighting and visible equipment, like boom mics, were less of a concern. However, cinematographer Shane Kelly carefully composed shots and used a color palette with the animators in mind. Sometimes, they would show up to tell Kelly what they needed. Because the movie was being shot on film and then animated, occasionally actors forgot they would later be animated as they worked through a scene. Robert Downey Jr. noted that he completely forgot the scene would later be animated as he worked through several takes in order to produce the smoke ring that would be featured in Barris' first closeup shot.

Dick's daughters visited the set during filming and spoke with the principal cast and crew members who made the two women feel like they were a part of the production. Extensive on-set footage of the filming of A Scanner Darkly was featured in a UK documentary about Richard Linklater directed by Irshad Ashraf and broadcast on Channel 4 in December 2004.

Animation

After principal photography was finished, the film was transferred to QuickTime for a 15-month animation process: interpolated-rotoscoping. A Scanner Darkly was filmed digitally using the Panasonic AG-DVX100 and then animated with Rotoshop, a proprietary graphics editing program created by Bob Sabiston. Rotoshop uses an animation technique called interpolated rotoscope, which was previously used in Linklater's film Waking Life. Linklater discussed the ideas and inspiration behind his use of rotoscoping in a UK documentary about him in 2004, linking it to his personal experiences of lucid dreaming. Rotoscoping in traditional cel animation originally involved tracing over film frame-by-frame. This is similar in some respects to the rotoscope style of filmmaker Ralph Bakshi. Rotoshop animation, however, makes use of vector keyframes, and interpolates the in-between frames automatically.

The animation phase was a trying process for Linklater who said, "I know how to make a movie, but I don't really know how to handle the animation." He had gone the animation route because he felt that there was very little animation targeted for adults. Each minute of animation required 350 hours of work with 50 animators working full-time every day.

Post-production problems

Originally, the film was supposed to be released in September 2005. Most of the animators were hired locally with only a few of the 30 people having movie-making experience. Six weeks into the animation process, only a few animated sequences were close to being completed while Linklater was off making Bad News Bears. Sabiston had divided the animators into five teams and split the work amongst them. However, there was poor communication between the teams and the uniform animation style that Linklater wanted was not being implemented. After almost two months some animators were still learning the software and Linklater became frustrated with the lack of progress.

Animation and training for the 30 new artists had begun October 28, 2004. In late November, Mark Gill, head of Warner Independent Pictures, asked for a status report. There were no finished sequences as the majority of animators were still learning to implement the film's highly-detailed style. Under pressure, some animators worked 18-hour days for two weeks in order to produce a trailer and this seemed to appease Gill and Linklater. Sabiston and his team were falling behind on the studio's 6-month animation schedule and asked that the schedule be extended to a year and that the 2 million dollar animation budget be enlarged accordingly. This created tension and in January 2005, while Sabiston and his four-person core team were strategizing at a local cafe, Pallotta changed the locks and seized their workstations, replacing them with two local artists, Jason Archer and Paul Beck. Sabiston's four team leaders Patrick Thornton, Randy Cole, Katy O'Connor and Jennifer Drummond subsequently received the credit "additional animation" in the film, despite having worked six-months previously designing the general look of the animation as well as the scramble suit, hiring and training animators, and 3D compositing.

The studio increased the budget to $8.7 million (it was originally $6.7 million) and gave Linklater six more months to finish the film. Pallotta took charge and instituted a more traditional Disney-esque production ethic that included a style manual, strict deadlines and breaking the film up into smaller segments. The animation process lasted 15 months. Regarding the post-production problems, Linklater said, "There's a lot of misinformation out there... Changes took place during the early stages of us really getting going on this had everything to do with management and not art. It was a budgetary concern, essentially."

A test screening was scheduled for December 2005 and went reasonably well. A revised release date was set for March 31, 2006, but Gill felt that there would not be enough time to mount a proper promotional campaign and the date was pushed forward to July 7, putting the film up against Pixar's Cars and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Music

The score (more than an hour's worth is in the film) was provided by Austin, Texas-based composer Graham Reynolds. Linklater approached Reynolds in 2003 after a club performance and suggested Reynolds create the score for A Scanner Darkly. Linklater and Reynolds had worked previously on Live from Shiva's Dance Floor, a 20 minute short featuring Timothy "Speed" Levitch.

The composition and recording process took over one and a half years (the unusual time allotment was due to the film's time-consuming animation process) and was done in Reynolds' east Austin home, in his bedroom. This is not a synthesized score; all the instruments except electric guitar and bass were acoustic, though many were transformed through effects. The film also includes clips of five Radiohead songs — "Fog," "Skttrbrain (Four Tet Mix)," "The Amazing Sounds of Orgy," "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors," (although the last two appear uncredited) — and one Thom Yorke solo song, "Black Swan." An early test screening featured an all-Radiohead soundtrack.

Soundtrack

The album is available from Lakeshore Records and includes the score by Graham Reynolds featuring the Golden Arm Trio. Additionally, the CD includes exclusive remixes of Graham's music by DJ Spooky and Jack Dangers (Meat Beat Manifesto). After finishing the film, Reynolds set to work on remixing the surround sound music into stereo. He then selected 44 minutes out of the film score in order to craft a listening CD while attempting to retain some feel of the arc of the film. Some of the shorter cues were assembled into longer CD tracks.

Reaction

Having never been intended for mainstream audiences, A Scanner Darkly opened in seventeen theaters and grossed $391,672 for a per-theater average of $23,039. The film saw some expansion in later weeks but did not earn back its $8.7 million production budget. It grossed $5.5 million in North America and $2.1 million elsewhere.

Critical reception

In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, "it's the real world or what we perceive the real world to be that makes for the more obviously bad trip, not scary little pills". Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times found the film "engrossing" and wrote that "the brilliance of [the film] is how it suggests, without bombast or fanfare, the ways in which the real world has come to resemble the dark world of comic books". In his review for the Village Voice, J. Hoberman wrote, "What's extraordinary about Linklater's animation, computer-rotoscoped in the fashion of his 2001 Waking Life, is just how tangible the Dickian labyrinth becomes", and praised Robert Downey Jr.'s performance: "Midway through 2006, this supporting turn is the performance to beat in what seems the year's American movie to beat". Andrew Sarris, in his review for The New York Observer, wrote, "Mr. Linklater emerges once again as the Austin auteur par excellence". Empire magazine's Kim Newman gave the film four stars out of five and wrote, "its intelligence makes it near-essential viewing". In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Thompson wrote, "Linklater's rotoscoping process underscores this grave new world with pop-arty creepiness. Its dramatically muting effect, which shaves the highs off the more histrionic performances yet doesn't undercut the more subtle elements ... squeezes everything into a unified nightmare".

Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C-" rating and Owen Gleiberman was unimpressed, writing that the film is "more fun to think about than [it] is to experience", and found the film's storyline "goes nowhere". In his review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw wrote, "The movie is often startling and engrossing, but the question of what the heck is going on, and why, is never entirely absent from your mind". Jack Mathews, in his review for The New York Daily News, called it, "a murky, dialogue-heavy tale of intrigue". The film holds a 67% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Its weighted reception at Metacritic is 73/100 (generally favorable reviews).

DVD

The DVD was released in North America on December 19, 2006 and in the UK on January 22, 2007. The following extras are included: the theatrical trailer; "Weight of the Line," an animation tales feature; "One Summer in Austin," a short documentary on the filming of the movie; and audio commentary from actor Keanu Reeves, director Richard Linklater, producer Tommy Pallotta, author Jonathan Lethem, and Phillip K. Dick's daughter, Isa Dick Hackett. Entertainment Weekly felt that the commentary track was "friendly and aimless", but that the featurette on the rotoscoping process, "a lot more lively".

See also

• List of animated feature films
• Post-production hell

Further reading

• Bradshaw, Nick (August 2006). "Lost in the Loop: Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly replicates Philip K. Dick's druggy dystopia". Sight & Sound. 16 (8). British Film Institute: 40–43. ISSN 0037-4806.
• Mayshark, Jesse Fox (2007). "Richard Linklater". Post-pop Cinema: The Search for Meaning in New American Film. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-99080-X.
• Smith, Gavin (Jul/Aug 2006). "A Scanner Darkly and Fast Food Nation: two sides of the American nightmare". Film Comment. 42 (4). New York City: Film Society of Lincoln Center: 26–31. ISSN 0015-119X. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

• A Scanner Darkly
• A Scanner Darkly at IMDb
• A Scanner Darkly at AllMovie
• A Scanner Darkly at Rotten Tomatoes
• Movie details at Philip K. Dick's official site
• A Scanner Darkly at warnerbros.com
• A Scanner Darkly - the artists/animators website
• A Scanner Darkly draft script by Charlie Kaufman (December 20, 1997)