Yesterday I just finished watching The Phantom of Liberty, a movie made in 1974 by Luis Buñuel. I was quite impressed, and surprised to see a combination of a few styles of film that I like a great deal. One style if the basic slightly surreal style of Buñuel, and the other is the telling of many stories, loosely joined, in sequence. In other words, think of a very funny, wickedly deranged version of Slacker. One sequence in particular (the one with the gunman on top of the building) made me think that Linklater intentionally paid homage to this film. This movie is a must for anyone that enjoys clever foreign movies.
Speaking of Linklater, I recently read Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said which was mentioned at the end of my favorite Linklater film, Waking Life. It was a great book, one of the best of Dick's I've read. And after reading the essay referenced by the movie, though, I've decided he's quite delusional about his alleged coincidences about this book (although I have never read the Book of Acts). For example, he says:
In 1970 I wrote a novel called Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. One of the characters is a nineteen-year-old girl named Kathy. Her husband's name is Jack. Kathy appears to work for the criminal underground, but later, as we read deeper into the novel, we discover that actually she is working for the police. She has a relationship going on with a police inspector. The character is pure fiction. Or at least I thought it was.
Anyhow, on Christmas Day of 1970, I met a girl named Kathy—this was after I had finished the novel, you understand. She was nineteen years old. Her boyfriend was named Jack. I soon learned that Kathy was a drug dealer. I spent months trying to get her to give up dealing drugs; I kept warning her again and again that she would get caught. Then, one evening as we were entering a restauant together, Kathy stopped short and said, "I can't go in." Seated in the restaurant was a police inspector whom I knew. "I have to tell you the truth," Kathy said. "I have a relationship with him."
This coincidence doesn't strike me as very coincidental. In the book, a girl Kathy forges identify papers, and has a husband named Jack who is either dead or exiled. She is also a police informant. I fail to see the connection between her and a friend of Dick named Kathy who has a boyfriend named Jack, and a relationship with a police inspector. The fact that she is a drug dealer is not coincidental, especially if you consider that Philip K Dick did a huge amount of drugs. Probably half the people he knew were drug dealers. The relationship with the police inspector did not necessary mean she is an informant. The only real similarity is the names, both of which are common.
At any rate, it's a bit silly to dwell on something so obviously crazy, and Philip K. Dick was one undoubtedly mental. But I wouldn't like him so much if he wasn't.
Posted by ahyatt at January 4, 2006 07:56 PM