The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick

Starring:Robert Anton Wilson, Paul Williams (III), Scott Apel, Jay Kinney, Ray Nelson (II), Miriam Lloyd, Jason Koornick, Duncan Watson, Sharon Perry
Director: Mark Steensland
Studio: First Run Features
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

The visionary work of science fiction legend Philip K. Dick inspired the films Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), and Minority Report (2002). Films from John Carpenter's They Live to David Cronenberg's eXistenZ to The 6th Day mine the same sense of the technological morass, complex conspiracies, and manipulated and uncertain realities that Dick spun out in such novels as Time Out of Joint and A Scanner Darkly. Dick's unnerving ideas influenced a generation, but despite the title of this labor-of-love documentary, it's less about his work than the life-changing events of the last decade of his life. The bizarre true story of paranoia, mind-altering drugs, mystical visions, and an 8,000-page treatise called The Exegesis is as compelling as any of his novels. All it lacks is a grounding: filmmakers Mark Steensland and Andy Massagli take for granted a familiarity with the author and his work. That may leave the casual viewer a bit bewildered by it all, but fans will appreciate the comments of cult author Robert Anton Wilson and rare audio recordings of Dick himself (set to funky minimalist animation). Lacking a strong portrait of Dick's life and work before the visions, The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick is hardly definitive, relying almost solely on interviews to flesh out the figure, but it is a valuable first step in exploring the work of one of the most influential "unknown" authors of our time. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews:

Great Service.......2007-07-05

I am so satisfied with the speed with which I received this product! It came very promptly. The book is in excellent condition. I couldn't be any happier. Thanks so much!

Weak.......2005-12-01

Dick really deserves some first class documentaries exploring his remarkable life and personality- and this one just doesn't cut the mustard.

If you love Philip Dick, you already know these stories (which, the ones they get to, are very shallowly explored), and if you are unfamiliar with Dick, this, I can safely guess, will not make you very interested in looking deeper. The interviews are not very revealing, the audio clips out of context and thematically meaningless, his works are not explored, there was no access to persons, pictures, video footage that make documentaries worthwhile. There are animated clips that are annoying and last too long.

This film is not totally without redeeming qualities, just not enough to warrent a purchase; unless, of course, you would like to see extended footage of the librarian talking on and on about the Dick archives.

If you would like to get a deep look into Dick, I would recommend the intriguing book "Only Apparently Real" by Paul Williams. Once, Philip Dick had his house broken into and a filing cabinet/safe blown up. This book, which is a series of interviews, has Dick, in his own words, unspool theory after theory after theory about whom may have done it and why: the police, The CIA, drug dealers, Black Panthers, and even at one point, himself. It shows how his mind functioned, like a megacomputer on acid and amphetamines, staring straight into the void. Also recommended is "Divine Invasions" by Lawrence Sutin, a more traditional bio but very well written. Then there is "I am alive and you are dead" by Emmanuel Carrere which I have not read yet but is supposed to be very good.

We can respect the efforts and the intent of the filmakers, but the results just left me cold.

Quirky, interesting look at a fascinating, visionary writer.......2005-05-14

I have only read We Can Build You and a portion of Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick--I definitely plan to finish Dr. Bloodmoney very soon-but that was enough to arouse my interest in this documentary about the enigmatic science fiction author. Genius or madman, or both, Philip K. Dick possessed a visionary perception of this life, which he referred to as the "Black Barred Prison." He steeped himself in the sorts of philosophical questions that usually mark the end of sanity: What is real? Who is real? What if I swapped minds with a friend--would I find that we view the world in the same way?

The fact that Philip K. Dick stories have been the basis for immensely popular Hollywood films--Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report--are the least interesting details discussed in the fascinating, very low budget documentary, The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick. The fact that Dick was married, much less four times during his life, is not even touched upon. For better or worse, the filmmaker, Mark Steensland, focuses on the truly bizarre aspects of Dick's life, and the bizarre aspects were legion.

The first episode of Dick's life examined is the time in 1971 when he returned to his house to find that someone had broken in and blown open his 1,100 pound safe with explosives. The vault contained all of Dick's personal papers, tax returns, as well as an unknown quantity of drugs. One friend suspected those drugs to be heroin. Although a frequent and fervent drug-user, Dick summoned the authorities, even calling the FBI to investigate the matter. It remains vague just how deeply the authorities investigated this break-in and theft, but they did take the time to inform Dick that they felt he was, in fact, responsible for the act. As writer Paul Williams--whose 1975 profile on Dick was partly responsible for launching Dick's modest fame during his lifetime--points out, Dick was charmed by this notion, and actually spent some time meditating on the possibility that he had breached his own safe with explosives somehow without consciously knowing about it. No conclusions are offered, though one friend and writer speculates that some of the transient youth who crashed and used drugs at Philip K. Dick's home had violated his safe and made off with a quantity of drugs. Not long after the incident, Dick made rapid plans to leave California, heading up to Vancouver, British Columbia where he entered a drug treatment facility.

The next period in Dick's life that's examined in the documentary centers on what Dick referred to "2-3-74", meaning February and March of 1974. Following a period of illness, sporadic drug use, and coming out of a vitamin experiment where Dick's body had been bombarded with mega doses of Vitamin B, Dick answered a knock at his door one day to find a delivery driver from the local pharmacy had arrived with his prescription. As the girl at the door handed Dick the bag containing his prescription, his eye fell upon a Christian fish symbol pendant that hung around the girl's neck. He was then overtaken by an intense flash of light that knocked him unconscious, or at least senseless, for a period of twenty-four hours. The experience was very profound, leaving Dick with the sense that he had had an encountered with God. He referred to the experience as arising from a "pink beam" of light, and spent the next several years of his life writing about the experience in a body of work he titled "Exegesis." This piece of writing ultimately came to span 8,000 pages, and obsessed him until his death.

Interviews with Dick's contemporaries and fans are intermingled with animations of Philip K. Dick sitting at his typewriter, knocking off typewritten introductions and brief explanations about his experiences. Dick speaks through these animations; there is copious audio recordings of Dick speaking, but apparently the only footage of him on television was taped for a French network. All reviewers on the Internet Movie Database slam these animated interludes, I actually felt they added an interesting, quirky layer to this already strange and fascinating film. There is something haunting and fitting about an animation speaking onscreen for Philip K. Dick.

Although the friends, acquaintances and fans of Dick are not particularly well-spoken--seeming at times to ramble and digress from the point at hand--this only serves to further inject the documentary with the surreal mood that must have pervaded Dick's life.

Whether it can ever been determined whether Philip K. Dick was a genius or a madman, there is no question that the man lived a strange and intriguing life. He was a man of deep thought, unafraid to ask himself staggering questions about his own existence. One compliment given to his "Exegesis" by the publisher of Gnosis magazine, is that although it arose from a mystical experience, the work was not at all dogmatic. Dick explored numerous paths and possibilities of the source of the experience, and expressed many varying ideas on its meaning. Dick wrote his "Exegesis" in order to help him understand exactly what his "pink beam" experience was all about, not to convince others that it happened, or had some particular meaning.

As a writer, I'm always inspired by seeing documentaries about famous and infamous writers. The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick was an enjoyable surprise, and definitely a quirky piece of popular culture that is worth finding and viewing.

Just re-read the stories and watch the movies.......2004-10-22

I bought this (without reading the reviews) because I thought it would provide some real context to the genius whose work spawned so many excellent movies, but was I ever disappointed.
I read PKD's stories back when he was alive, and was hoping for some insight into how his mindset influenced his work. There was very little of that. This was a movie that cried out for some critical synopis of Dick's work, and should have tied his eccentricities or psychosis to his output. Instead, we are left with reminicences, some of which are interesting, but very little insight into this artist. A big disappointment--even for a fan.

Interesting discussions, abysmal production.......2004-09-19

Some day Philip K. Dick may get the documentary he deserves, one that gives us the life and the works; unfortunately, this isn't it. "The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick" is, at best, the first step. And while I appreciate the effort put into making this film, as well as the astute contributions by interviewees, this is a seriously flawed production, and does, indeed, seem like a college project hamstrung by a commensurate lack of funding.

For instance, as the director was unable to use any actual video of PKD, he hit upon the idea of using a cartoon version of PKD to segue from one "segment" to the next, but also to provide the "medium" to present a garbled, and at times, indiscernible PKD speaking in an interview, without, however, the benefit of subtitles. As Elvis Mitchell noted in his review of the movie for the NY Times, the "animated version of Dick behind the typewriter, which suggests a low budget version of the Cryptkeeper...underscores the minimal amount of money the filmmakers had (reportedly about $10,000) to finish the project, which was shot on videotape and feels even more cheaply done than an episode of "Biography" on A&E." (3/2/2001)

To note that mind-numbing repetitions of the same minimalist animation overlaid with an abysmally god-awful techno(?) soundtrack that no one in their right mind should be subjected to would be to belabor the obvious. Suffice it to say that before long I was muting the music, and then fast-forwarding through the un-animated animated segments to locate the next interesting "human" moment.

Insofar as the dvd bonus features package goes, forget about it. The dvd simply recycles the comments already presented in the film. So there is nothing new except for the interview with the director and the definitions of a half dozen key terms in the late oeuvre. Big deal.

Given the fact that some half dozen of PKD's stories have been made into movies (with more reputedly on the way), its high time for a full scale documentary. This "Gospel" may be a first attempt, but PKD deserves more and better. Seriously.

[As a side note: back in the day, when it lived up to its name, The Learning Channel aired a wonderful series (co-executive produced by Walter Cronkite and Goeffrey C. Ward) called "The Great Books." Imagine what they might have done with Philip K. Dick.]

DVD:

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