The Lathe of Heaven

The Lathe of Heaven has just been re-released. It's being shown on many PBS stations, and is also now on video. This was all due to high fan demand.

This is a dreamy, scary sci-fi flick with strong moral lessons. It's almost like a play: set mostly in one place, with only three characters involved. The special effects aren't stunning, but they're perfectly effective. The story is wildly original: what would the world be like if your dreams all came true- not your daydreams, but the uncontrollable ones at night?

Last night I got a chance to see one of my favorite SF movies, and it only took 20 years.

Back in 1978, I was working at a mom-and-pop bookstore in Dallas called Taylors. One day one of the customers bought a book by Ursula K. LeGuin: "The Lathe of Heaven". I told her that she was one of my favorite authors, and that I loved the book. She said that she was involved in the production of a film of the book that was to be done locally.

Early in 1980 it was aired. Bruce Davison (recently the Senator in "X-men") played the protagonist, George Orr. And various Metroplex locations stood in for Portland in the near-future year of 2002. City Hall (later the OCP HQ in "Robocop"), Reunion Arena and the Water Gardens in FW (previously used in "Logan's Run").

George Orr has a problem: dreams. He doesn't want to have any. He takes drugs to try and thwart his unconscious so that he can sleep but not dream. Because if he does dream a special kind of dream, an "effective" dream, it changes reality "all the way back to the Stone Age".

Dr. William Haber is an oneirologist: a dream specialist. He doesn't believe George's story, of course. He thinks that George is sick, not cursed. He eventually comes around to the realization that George is right. A power struggle ensues to decide who will be in charge of deciding who gets to make the decisions of how to use this power.

The story touches on race relations, psychology, Taoism and more. And all on a miniscule budget of 250K.

An added bonus was the addition of interviews with Bruce Davison and Ms. LeGuin, the latter with Bill Moyers. She rarely does interviews, and it was wonderful hearing her add little behind-the-scenes details and commenting on the story and film. Since my understanding of Taoism is limited to readings of "The Tao of Pooh", I didn't realize the use of Taoism until I heard UKL mention it.

If I had had 90 bucks to blow on a KERA membership, I could have gotten the video from them. In fact, the on-air weasel said that the tape was "only available through public TV". If you check amazon.com, as I did last night, you will find that this is a bald-faced lie: TLoH will be released on VHS and DVD later this month, with the interviews and all.

The only thing that burned my butt about the film that I saw last night was the one change they made. Originally, they used Ringo Starr's version of the Beatles tune "A Little Help from My Friends". The new version has a different cover version. One of the reviews on amazon.com stated that this was because it would cost too much to get the rights from Michael Jackson, who now owns the entire Beatle catalog. This doesn't work. IMHO, MJ would get money no matter who did it.

Uncle Steve says check it out.

To those who came to this one expecting the A&E remake, don't worry. You've come to the right place. Although the A&E version has all the glitz and glamor, this 1980 PBS production has all the rest (which the A&E is sadly missing).

1. It is fairly loyal to the material, Ursula K. Le Guin's novel.

2. It is well acted, arguably very well acted.

3. Characterization is loyal to that in the novel.

4. It communicates the somewhat convoluted plot quite effectively.

5. It carries the message forward. (No spoilers here.)

(The A&E remake accomplishes *none* of these.)

So snag this one on DVD while it's still available. Watch it. It's a little treasure. Although the glitz and glamor of the A&E remake are missing, it has everything else.

"Antwerp"

The world of literature lost one of its finest writers with the death of Ursula Le Guin this year (2018) at the age of 88. She was one of my heroes. Her writing is humane, wise, and penetrating, and she followed no 'school', no ideology, no fashion. I write for a living too (though it's writing of a very different kind), and if I could write just one page, even one paragraph that would live up to her standards, I'd be proud of it the rest of my life.

Well, anyway: The Lathe of Heaven is one of her SF novels and probably my favorite among them. It's a singular vision that stands alone in her own work, and in fact I can't think of any other novel to easily compare it with by anything else in SF either. It belongs vaguely to an alternate-worlds genre, but with differences. Not all that long after it was written, this movie adaptation was done for original TV broadcast, so it has a low-budget feel to it, and the lead actors (Bruce Davison, Kevin Conway, Margaret Avery) weren't all that well known at the time. It's even in black and white format. But put all that aside: it actually stays pretty close to the Le Guin storyline, unlike the inferior 2002 adaptation that strayed off the path. It's such a great story and so easily translatable to the screen for today's SF-familiar audiences that you can easily imagine a much bigger-budget superb production being done now complete with advanced CGI that would do justice to the hero George Orr's world-changing visions.

George Orr (Davison) is a perfectly ordinary, nice, low-key guy except for one thing: when pressed into it, he has "effective dreams" that change reality and rewrite history. He doesn't want to do this, but gets taken advantage of by psychiatrist William Haber (Conway) who uses George to enable his own altruistic but power-hungry goals. George's torturous journey through one history after another and eventual resolution are the substance of the movie.

This production disappeared for a long time after its original airing, but finally now you can see it on YouTube. Well worth it.

Le Guin's stories haven't generally been served well on movies and TV but so much better could be done with them. The Earthsea fantasy books are on a level with Narnia and Tolkien and they would work brilliantly if well produced. The recent TV production of them turned out to be a travesty. So would others of her SF novels like City of Illusions, Planet of Exile, or The Left Hand of Darkness (well, maybe that last one would be best as an indie film.) Hollywood is missing a bet.

I thought this was one of the best science fiction movies of all time. I thought the story was thoughtful, inventive and very, very interesting. I have since thought that this might be some sort of collective unconscience view of how the world is created and maintained by God and that mankind being a part of God is aware of this concept. (Or maybe I'm just reading too much into the movie.) In any case, I would very much like to see this movie come out on video tape so that I might buy a copy. I've got my fingers crossed. My review of the movie is "WAY TO GO!!"