Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

PodBill Just what I expected

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

dbborroughs 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.

Junkie-6 While I enjoyed listening to the handful of people that are interviewed, this is a seriously shoddy effort. No other documentary filmmaker is going to be in fear of being overshadowed by Mark Steensland. He has no narration, no biographical information, no archival footage (of which I have seen and know of PKD on a couple of talkshows), nothing to cut away to from the talking heads, and when he does show a magazine cover and article header they are flashed so quickly that you don't even have a chance to see it without hitting the freezeframe button and not even a PHOTOGRAPH of the man on the box or in the "film"! There are a couple of sound-bites from a wealth of taped interviews that are played with a poorly animated cartoon PKD lip-synching along. This animated PKD also serves to break up the material into sections with looooong animations of him getting paper, inserting it in a typewriter, typing a bit, pulling the paper out of the typewriter and laying the sheet down with one sentence on it. This repeated three times to complete the preface to the section. After seeing this animated sequence that makes South Park look like the height of technological wizardry, it wears REALLY thin. I had to resort to fast forwarding through the animations to get on with the damn thing. Still, the interviews were semi-cool - except for the real lack of information they provide and the somewhat derogatory way in which they are presented. Steensland claims to be a fan, but obviously has no interest in providing any back ground, history, or any details about Dick's life, except for a handfull of moments that portray him as a drug-addled lunatic. This should have been an incredible tribute and biography of a brilliant man, but it is neither. It's so poorly done that it makes the entire documentary genre look bad and will not make anyone want to read Dick's books if they haven't already.

MeanTimeProductions Except for choosing the most fascinating subject to "document" (the brilliant author Philip K. Dick), the "filmmakers" of TGATPKD manage to do everything else wrong. This SOV (shot on video) documentary is so devoid of form and style that what little substance remains is not worth muddling through this disaster to see and hear. The location sound is terrible, the videography pedestrian, and worst of all, the pace of the editing is atrocious. These (so called) "filmmakers" let their interviewees go on and on and on and on and on and on, not employing the simplest of editing techniques: crosscutting between interviewees to "edit" what they've said to encapsulate a topic point in sections to build towards a cohesive whole. Surprise-surprise: editing is not just slapping a bunch of footage together. I too could go on and on and on about how abysmal the editing is, but suffice it to say this TGATPKD feels like it was "edited" by a group of public access trainees. The opening credits sequence is super-weak "animation" that goes on forever; but what's worse is that this "animation" continues throughout the "film" as a means to give form to the late author, who was (sound) recorded in a previous interview. And the constant quasi-futuristic background music (I dare not call it a score) that persists from beginning to end is so awful that if it isn't stock library background music (usually used for corporate videos or local cable commercials), then the amateur(s) who wrote and recorded it should be ashamed. THIS "FILM" IS THE REASON WHY I CAN'T CONVINCE MOST OF MY FRIENDS THAT DOCUMENTARIES DON'T ACTUALLY STINK AND AREN'T ALL BORING. TGATPKD is proof that if there is a built-in audience for the subject matter that any given filmmaker (the makers of TGATPKD are certainly not filmmakers -- hacks is more like it) sets out to EXPLOIT, said filmmaker will find a distributor, no matter how bad their "film" is.

C. M. O'Brien This documentary explores the life and work of Philip K. Dick (PKD), a unique writer whose mindbending work and concepts have had much influence in films inspired by his work such as "Total Recall' and "Blade Runner" to "The Matrix" and "Fight Club".Unfortunately though it deserves an A for Effort, this film is flawed in a number of ways.Nothing of Dick's background is revealed, the film focuses more on the latter years and 1974 Gnostic religious experience of Dick than on his early life, and this is to the film's detriment as clues to these events could might lie in his formative years. As the previous reviewer noted, the same rhythm and animated sequence of PKD sitting at his typewriter are repeated endlessly over old audio recordings of Dick's interviewsI would like to have seen more of Dick's associates and family interviewed, and more of the feel of an overall biography.