If the destination was uncertain in Before Sunset, it’s downright unsettling in A Scanner Darkly, Linklater’s very faithful adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s most personal novel that wrestles with addiction, paranoia and identity both humorously and mournfully.  Done in the rotoscoped animation style of 2001’s Waking Life and indulging in some of that film’s penchant for wild discourse, A Scanner Darkly doesn’t take long to establish itself as something far darker and more thematically cohesive.  This does not, however, mean that Linklater’s adopted anything resembling a three-act structure; though there does seem to be a story happening to the characters, they’re either unaware or unwilling to actively participate in it, which is consistent with the “Turn on, tune in, drop out” lifestyle advocated by Timothy Leary in the 1960s that eventually claimed Philip K. Dick and many others memorialized at the end of his novel and Linklater’s film.

If you have not read A Scanner Darkly, you might want to avoid this interview until you’ve seen the movie, because we discuss the “surprise” ending right off the bat.  Linklater can’t help but be an interesting interview, but I really do feel like we were warming up right as I got the sign to put a lid on it.  I don’t mean this as a complaint (Richard had a flight to catch that afternoon and many other journos to chat up before then); after all, Linklater will be available later in the year when Fast Food Nation rolls out.

As for now, here’s a brief conversation with Richard Linklater, whose films I love when they’re not called Bad News Bears.  (Sorry, man!)

The thing that I loved about this movie, and the reason I connected with it so fully, is that the experience of watching it so closely mirrored the feeling of reading the novel.

Oh, good!

One thing I thought was interesting, though, and this might be tenuous, is that you’ve said this film plays like a nightmare.

Well, it is your worst paranoid nightmare for yourself, to imagine everyone around you is sort of using you, and you’re being set up.  It’s like the further reaches of personal paranoia, but he’s right, and he goes down this road.  It just gets darker, and at the end you’re just sort of… (laughs).  You’re not even fundamentally alive, but you’re being used.

Well, building off that nightmare idea, I thought the film was an interesting counterpoint to Waking Life.  In Waking Life, Wiley [Wiggins] floats away from us at the end presumably returning to reality, while here we float away from Keanu, leaving him in the cornfield—

(Laughing) – a burnt-out husk!  I haven’t really thought about that too much, but that’s pretty good.  (Laughs)

It does help unite the films in my mind. 

That’s good.  I’ll use that as bookending metaphors. 

(Laughing)  When did you first read A Scanner Darkly?

I came to it a little later.  I was in my mid-twenties.  My girlfriend gave me VALIS.  I had seen Blade Runner, I knew the name, and I had a few books around, but I never read them.  Finally, I read VALIS, and that’s an interesting one to start with.  It’s kind of layered and kind of crazy, so I just kind of went back and started picking off others.  I still haven’t read everything over the years.  I’m not the Gnostic, deity Philip K. Dick worshipping type of fan, but I am a big fan.  I’ve always loved his characters and his writing.  And post-Waking Life.  Philip K. Dick was kind of on my mind, so I went back and revisited a few.  I thought about Ubik a little bit, but Scanner was different to me now.  It was more poignant for having lived to be older.  That memoriam at the end, my own list had gotten longer, you know?  Everyone who was on this film had their own list of people that just… went away.  It’s sad.  I responded to what I always felt was a very personal novel to him.  And I felt it was the kind of thing I could do.  I shared the view of that book – the humor and the tragedy.  It felt like the one I was chosen for.  I wouldn’t be the right director for a lot of Philip K. Dick books.

Did it take much convincing with the Dick daughters?

Yeah.  They needed to meet with me.  I flew up to the Bay Area and hung out with them, and they said, “Just so you know, our dad would still be writing if it wasn’t for drugs”.  And he would.  It’s a tragedy.  And they wanted to make sure that the drug element… that I had the right, respectful tone.  But they liked the script.  I think they liked that I kept the memoriam at the end.  And Isa Hackett, his youngest daughter, looking at that list, said, “Just so you know, that’s my dad.”  Everyone knows Philip K. Dick put himself on the list.  And then, pointing to another name, she said, “That’s my mom.  I was the little girl in that house.  We moved out, and those guys moved in.”  And I’m like, “Wow!”  I always knew it had to be that; I knew this was real to them, and I was going to try to do it justice.  And I sat next to Isa in the screening; I looked over and (pointing to his cheek) she had a little tear.

This was a film that kept coming up as potentially going into production with a variety of directors.  And there was a script by Charlie Kaufman.

Yeah.  I’m hearing now more people who were attached that I didn’t even know about.  I didn’t know that Terry Gilliam wanted to do it at one point.