RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH (2008) - PREVIEW

Radio Free Albemuth (2008)

Starring: Alanis Morissette, Shea Whigham, Jonathan Scarfe
Director: John Alan Simon
Rated: Unrated
U.S. Opening Date: TBA 2008

THEY SAY

Based on a novel by Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?).

Radio Free Albemuth was Dick's most autobiographical novel. In an alternate reality circa 1985, President Ferris F. Fremont, a Richard Nixon clone, is still in the White House chasing after the shadowy terrorist organization called Aramchek. In the name of security the U.S. has become a police state. A record store clerk in Berkeley named Nick Brady (Jonathan Scarfe) begins to have visions and embarks upon a plot to overthrow the government with the help of a mysterious woman named Sylvia (Alanis Morissette) and his best friend, science fiction writer Philip K. Dick himself (Shea Whigham).

In the below interview, director John Alan Simon talks about Dick and how he wanted to do a faithful adaptation of his book:

http://www.dickien.fr/dossiers/johnalansimon/john-alan-simon-2008.html

WE SAY

Even though numerous movies have been based on Philip K. Dick material – from Blade Runner to A Scanner Darkly – few, if any of them, actually managed to capture what Dick’s writings were really on about. Usually his stories merely serve as a clothesline for directors to pin their own action movie plotlines on.

This small indie movie starring everybody’s favorite Canadian songstress Alanis Morisette might just be it though, a genuinely Dickian movie adaptation. (Cinema audiences might remember Morissette in the bit part of God in Kevin Smith’s controversial 1999 movie, Dogma.) As die-hard Dick fans consider us excited even though we still want some film-maker with balls out there to make a movie out of Dick’s most far-out and weirdo book ever, namely Valis . . .

(Ironically Dick is the most filmed science fiction author in Hollywood. Ironic because he alas never lived to see any of the financial benefits and died right before Blade Runner was actually finished. Instead he struggled financially throughout most of his life, a bit like, um, Mozart and Van Gogh.)