Penny Blood's Heidi Martinuzzi
talks with Keanu Reeves, Richard
Linklater, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson
about A Scanner Darkly, opening in theatres July 7.
A Scanner Darkly is based on science fiction legend Phillip K Dick’s novel of the same name, first published in 1977. Like other science fiction films taken from Dick’s work (Minority Report, Blade Runner, Total Recall, Paycheck, Imposter…etc.) A Scanner Darkly tells the story of a grim future where ordinary people battle corporations, government schemes, and each other just to survive. Adapted by Richard Linklater who also directs, the film stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. As in his 2001 film Waking Life, Linklater uses digital effects to animate the actors.
Reeves plays Bob Arctor, a man addicted to Substance D, a drug that causes extreme brain damage in those who are addicted. He lives with Jim Barris (Downey) and Ernie Luckman (Harrelson) in a run-down tract house in suburbia, and has an unfulfilling romance with the lovely coke addict Donna Hawthorne (Ryder). They’re “living their lives, hanging out, and just trying to get through their day,” says Linklater. But there’s another side to Bob Arctor; he’s also an undercover narcotics officer who goes by the name “Fred” and is spying on his friends in order to provide the government with information about Substance D and those who use it. Unfortunately, because Bob is himself hooked on Substance D, his brain just isn’t working right anymore.
“When I was playing Arctor I learned about Fred, and when I was playing Fred I learned about Arctor,” says Reeves. “They both definitely feel differently about themselves internally. There were days when it was confusing, but I got a lot of enjoyment out of the experience of playing those scenes and figuring it out.”
For Robert Downey Jr., playing Barris, the hyperactive, hyper-intelligent roommate who can’t seem to be trusted was a similarly enjoyable challenge.
“This guy’s off the hook. He reminds me of those propeller-headed guys that you knew in high school who knew how to take apart a bike and put it back together and other freaky stuff. I thought it would be really fun to play him.” Downey’s character is prone to long, energetic rants about the world, making cocaine, love, life, and anything that comes into his drug-addled mind. “The last three or four films that I have done combined don’t have as much dialogue as I had in the first three days on this movie,” he jokes.
Woody Harrelson is also very lively, but in a different way, as Ernie Luckman. “Luckman has an innocence about him, even though he’s kind of crazy and messed-up in so many ways,” he says. “There’s a lot of duplicity with all of these characters, except, oddly enough, for Luckman, which really suited me. It’s interesting that he’s the only one not pretending- at least, that’s the way I believed it and that’s the way I played it”.
As Arctor/Fred, Reeves goes deeper and deeper into a confusing reality where he seems to forget who he is at times. Sometimes he’s a cop, and sometimes he’s a regular guy, dealing with mixed feelings about betraying his friends, betraying his government, and some even deeper issues about betraying his family.
“There is a clear line in the beginning when there’s Arctor inside of Fred,” says Reeves. “Then they start to come together and mesh, and there’s a point where they are all destroyed, or brought to neutral.”
Winona Ryder plays the woman Bob Arctor loves. She can’t abide to be touched however, claiming, “Because I do so much coke, I have to be careful”. She is also addicted to Substance D, like everyone around her, and no one really knows much about her.
“You’re not sure who is telling the truth, who’s working for who, who’s screwing who over,” says Ryder. “You never get all the answers. Its like rats in a cage - the government makes people turn against each other by giving them false information, making them confused while getting them hooked on drugs to be undercover.”
“It’s a bizarre kind of story,” adds Harrelson. “It’s stories within stories, strange realities within strange realities… you don’t know what’s real and what’s illusion.”
Downey had a similar reaction when he first read the screenplay. He put aside his reservations and decided to work on it anyway.
“I thought it was probably the strangest script I’d ever read…But I knew Keanu was doing it and Richard was directing it, and I thought ‘these guys are pretty smart and know a good role. I wonder how this will turn out’.
Winona Ryder really loves the intensity that the confusion adds to the story and to her character. “It’s one of the most complex, layered unusual and challenging pieces of literature that I’ve ever read - both the book and Richard’s adaptation.” She says. “The script, which really captured the feel of the book, is almost impossible to describe. To me, it’s ultimately about identity - loss of identity, search for identity - but there are so many different levels.”
Reeves has starred in another Phillip K. Dick adaptation: Johnny Mnemonic. Dick has a huge fan following, not only among sci-fi fans but people who love his noir-ish thriller style. Reeves has an opinion on why Dick adaptations are so popular and why so many of them have been made.
“He tells great stories. I relate to the situations I find his characters in. He’s wickedly funny, he’s got brutal irony. I like the context of his stories… people in situations that aren’t what they seem. The plight of the individual against forces beyond their control.”
“He writes great romantic stories,” adds Reeves. “People are in love, people are greedy, people are angry, people are needy, people are scared. I relate to the world which he writes about.”
Though Reeves insists that A Scanner Darkly remains one of the most faithful adaptations of a Phillip K. Dick story to date, the director, Linklater, is somewhat hesitant to agree. Says Linklater, “To remain true to the book is to attempt something that is more difficult in film than in literature, which is to be both comedy and tragedy at the same time. I wanted the film to capture the humor and exuberance of the book but not let go of the sad and tragic. It’s a tonal challenge for sure, but that is the heart of the story.”
Reeves was very adamant about playing Bob Arctor as much as he could like the character Dick had created in the novel. “I took the book along with me,” Reeves insists, when he was onset. “I would mark down each scene to the corresponding page in the book, then I would write down certain comments that Phillip K Dick had written about the character or what the character was saying or how he felt. I would really read it and feel it and try to match it until I felt like the character was in the right place. I really followed the book.”
Acting in a movie where you’re going to end up as a cartoon didn’t affect the way the actors handled it. Reeves was sometimes forced to wear something called a “scramble suit”, which in the finished animated version is a suit that constantly changes his hair, eyes, skin, and clothes, so that no one can recognize the undercover agents working on very important drug bust cases. Though when actually filming, the “scramble suit” was just an ordinary change of clothes, Reeve’s face was covered and his facial expressions hidden. It was tricky to get the balance of acting and being “animated” correctly.
“I didn’t have my face to convey information, so I might make a move a little bigger. I think some of the other actors would occasionally be more animated. But for me, I only did it mostly in the scramble suit”.
Ryder tried not to let herself be limited by the animation. “I don’t think of it as being animated.” She states. “I thought that we were just filming a movie. I couldn’t think about that. I was just doing my same job.”
The film was animated with a process called rotoscoping. To be clear, Ryder adds, shyly, “And I don’t really know what rotoscoping is.”
Because the United States is engaged in a foreign war, and issues of privacy and security monitoring have become increasingly prominent, the ideas in A Scanner Darkly take on new significance. “To me, it’s really eerie how relevant it is politically and socially,” says Ryder. “I was happy to be a part of a movie like that. I think Dick was really on the money when he wrote it. It’s amazing what he predicted. It is a terrifying time right now in this country and in the world. The more terrifying it gets the more people have to find humor in it. It’s not like people become sheep when it gets terrifying.”
“It does make you wonder sometimes,” muses Reeves, “something like 70% of your life you’re either on camera or being documented in terms of your transactions…what does that do? What do you become? Who’s wielding the camera? What are they doing with that information?”
And THAT is what A Scanner Darkly is really about: terror and power and trust, how nothing can be trusted, not the government or friends or what you see in your own head.
A Scanner Darkly opens in theatres July 7th.
Heidi Martinuzzi
HeidiMartinuzzi.com
Movie links:
A
Scanner Darkly
Philipkdick.com
