The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick

After watching this "film" i was moved to seek out the fiction of

Phillip K. Dick.

So that's a good thing....Dick comes of as an interesting writer

worthy of further study.

The filmmakers, however, have assembled the material within in

such a fey, self-satisfied and fanboy-esque ineptitude that i found

myself, after a time, staring out the window and listening, rather

than watching the amateurishly-assembled and shot interview

footage or (especially) the amazingly ill-conceived "animated"

scene breaks. The people responsible for this have no idea of

film-making or pacing; had they no idea of how the silly, repetitive

"animated" scene breaks would grind everything to a halt? Jesus.

If you want to learn more about Dick, fine...you can get some idea

from the material within. But, as film-making, this is an amateurish

embarrassment.

Rambling chatter about Philip K Dick, best known for the novels that became Minority Report, Blade Runner and Screamers. The chatter is loosely grouped together by subject but it drifts back and forth through many subjects. Its interesting to listen to but a bit tough to watch.

The trouble is that this is nothing more than interviews with people who knew Dick talking, inter-cut with some audio interview footage spiced up with cartoon of Dick at the typewriter. There is almost nothing other than the interviews themselves, no photos, some fleeting shots of printed material and of the outside of Dick's house. There is no narration, no attempt to explain any of the works he wrote or of his life, its simply remembrances that will mean nothing to anyone who has never read any of his books or, more importantly, never heard any of the stories of the man. My Dad who watched this with me was totally bewildered because he didn't know about Dick's life.

If you want an introduction to Philip K Dick and his work go somewhere else, this will put you off him forever. If you already know the man you may want to rent this, and then do something else while listening to it since its a dull thing to watch, but an interesting thing to listen to since the stories told are quite funny assuming you have some context to understand the craziness of them.

It's possible for a low budget fan documentary to be good, even interesting. Ed Wood and Jack Nance fans have made low budget documentaries about their respective topics which, although flawed, still held my interest.

The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick however, is not such a documentary as it fails on almost every level. There is no archival material of Dick and little biographical info. The director appears more obsessed with Dick's visions and drug use rather than his incredible talent.

The only appearance of Dick himself is muffled audio over a typewriter animation. The annoying animation is repeated ad nauseum, quickly becomes very grating and had me reaching for the fast forward on the remote. Even a still photo of Dick with the voiceover would have been better than this pathetic attempt.

The production quality is poor, with shaky camera work, bad sound and music that ranges from jarringly bad techno to lame piano. The interviews are the highlight of the film, but even they are repetitive and many border on pointless (e.g. the librarian giving a tour of the Phillip K Dick collection, which is basically a tour of a bookshelf). Would it have killed the film makers to identify who they are actually interviewing, and what their relationship to Dick was?

Even hardcore Phillip K Dick fans would gain little from watching this. Most people would be hard pressed to watch it at all. The most disappointing aspect is that Dick is one of the seminal writers of his generation, and his legacy deserves much better than this weak effort.

2/10

Poor documentary of this sci-fi great explores houses he used to live in here in the bay area (with the webmasters of PKD websites as guides) and other irrelevant details while failing to really explore what makes his writing unique. But then, if I wanted to know that, I guess I'd pick up one of his books (which I often like to do). This film is for people who are not Philip K. Dick fans, but might have seen "Total Recall" or "Blade Runner" or "Minority Report" (the worst one yet.... or wasn't there something with Gary Senise or whatever his name is? Hopefully that got shelved) and they want to know what this guy's about, but they don't know how to read. For those people and no one else, this film is recommended.

Not recommended for fans of PKD: you won't find out anything you don't already know.

p.s. just reading through my comments from years ago here in 2008 and wanted to point out that I did actually see "Imposter" with Gary Sinise and it was one of the more decent Philip Dick movies relatively speaking. At least Sinise isn't some kind of superman or supermodel, he looks like a "dickian" hero.

I want to make my review a riff on another review, written by Kurt Winter of New Jersey. He starts off by saying, "If I weren't already a PKD fan ... this docuflick would do absolutely nothing for me." And that is the very heart of the problem here. If I did not know who Phil Dick was, I would not have learned it from this film. When was he born? When did he die? Where did he grow up? These things are never stated.

Winter writes, "While it was certainly informative, it could have been edited better, and could have been more broad." I completely agree, especially with the editing. Sometimes the different voices blend together to tell a story, sometimes they seem poorly connected. And the segue from one spot to the next is weak.

More charismatic people to interview, or at least an eloquent narrator, would have helped a great deal. Just showing clips from people who knew Dick does not really tell the story. These people should be used to support the story, not be the backbone. The younger guys with websites seem completely out of place and even if their words are true, they come off as amateur.

But, hey, if you are a Dick fan and want to hear his friends -- including Robert Anton Wilson and the author of "They Live" -- this is worth checking out.