The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick
by Mark Steensland
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DVD details
Actor: D. Scott Apel, Miriam Lloyd, Paul Williams Robert Anton WilsonDirector: Mark Steensland
Brand: Koch International
Producer: Andy Massagli Mark Steensland
Writer: Andy Massagli Mark Steensland
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2010-07-13
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: First Run Features
DVD Reviews of The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick
DVD Review: Quirky, interesting look at a fascinating, visionary writer
Summary: 4 Stars
I have only read We Can Build You and a portion of Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick--I definitely plan to finish Dr. Bloodmoney very soon-but that was enough to arouse my interest in this documentary about the enigmatic science fiction author. Genius or madman, or both, Philip K. Dick possessed a visionary perception of this life, which he referred to as the "Black Barred Prison." He steeped himself in the sorts of philosophical questions that usually mark the end of sanity: What is real? Who is real? What if I swapped minds with a friend--would I find that we view the world in the same way?
The fact that Philip K. Dick stories have been the basis for immensely popular Hollywood films--Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report--are the least interesting details discussed in the fascinating, very low budget documentary, The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick. The fact that Dick was married, much less four times during his life, is not even touched upon. For better or worse, the filmmaker, Mark Steensland, focuses on the truly bizarre aspects of Dick's life, and the bizarre aspects were legion.
The first episode of Dick's life examined is the time in 1971 when he returned to his house to find that someone had broken in and blown open his 1,100 pound safe with explosives. The vault contained all of Dick's personal papers, tax returns, as well as an unknown quantity of drugs. One friend suspected those drugs to be heroin. Although a frequent and fervent drug-user, Dick summoned the authorities, even calling the FBI to investigate the matter. It remains vague just how deeply the authorities investigated this break-in and theft, but they did take the time to inform Dick that they felt he was, in fact, responsible for the act. As writer Paul Williams--whose 1975 profile on Dick was partly responsible for launching Dick's modest fame during his lifetime--points out, Dick was charmed by this notion, and actually spent some time meditating on the possibility that he had breached his own safe with explosives somehow without consciously knowing about it. No conclusions are offered, though one friend and writer speculates that some of the transient youth who crashed and used drugs at Philip K. Dick's home had violated his safe and made off with a quantity of drugs. Not long after the incident, Dick made rapid plans to leave California, heading up to Vancouver, British Columbia where he entered a drug treatment facility.
The next period in Dick's life that's examined in the documentary centers on what Dick referred to "2-3-74", meaning February and March of 1974. Following a period of illness, sporadic drug use, and coming out of a vitamin experiment where Dick's body had been bombarded with mega doses of Vitamin B, Dick answered a knock at his door one day to find a delivery driver from the local pharmacy had arrived with his prescription. As the girl at the door handed Dick the bag containing his prescription, his eye fell upon a Christian fish symbol pendant that hung around the girl's neck. He was then overtaken by an intense flash of light that knocked him unconscious, or at least senseless, for a period of twenty-four hours. The experience was very profound, leaving Dick with the sense that he had had an encountered with God. He referred to the experience as arising from a "pink beam" of light, and spent the next several years of his life writing about the experience in a body of work he titled "Exegesis." This piece of writing ultimately came to span 8,000 pages, and obsessed him until his death.
Interviews with Dick's contemporaries and fans are intermingled with animations of Philip K. Dick sitting at his typewriter, knocking off typewritten introductions and brief explanations about his experiences. Dick speaks through these animations; there is copious audio recordings of Dick speaking, but apparently the only footage of him on television was taped for a French network. All reviewers on the Internet Movie Database slam these animated interludes, I actually felt they added an interesting, quirky layer to this already strange and fascinating film. There is something haunting and fitting about an animation speaking onscreen for Philip K. Dick.
Although the friends, acquaintances and fans of Dick are not particularly well-spoken--seeming at times to ramble and digress from the point at hand--this only serves to further inject the documentary with the surreal mood that must have pervaded Dick's life.
Whether it can ever been determined whether Philip K. Dick was a genius or a madman, there is no question that the man lived a strange and intriguing life. He was a man of deep thought, unafraid to ask himself staggering questions about his own existence. One compliment given to his "Exegesis" by the publisher of Gnosis magazine, is that although it arose from a mystical experience, the work was not at all dogmatic. Dick explored numerous paths and possibilities of the source of the experience, and expressed many varying ideas on its meaning. Dick wrote his "Exegesis" in order to help him understand exactly what his "pink beam" experience was all about, not to convince others that it happened, or had some particular meaning.
As a writer, I'm always inspired by seeing documentaries about famous and infamous writers. The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick was an enjoyable surprise, and definitely a quirky piece of popular culture that is worth finding and viewing.
Description of The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick
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