A Scanner Darkly (film)
Encyclopedia
A Scanner Darkly is a 2006 science fiction
thriller directed by Richard Linklater
based on the novel of the same name
by Philip K. Dick
. The film tells the story of identity and deception in a near-future dystopia
constantly under intrusive high-technology police surveillance in the midst of a drug addiction epidemic. The movie was filmed digitally
and then animated
using interpolated
rotoscope
over the original footage, giving it its distinctive look.
The film was written and directed by Linklater and stars Keanu Reeves
, Winona Ryder
, Woody Harrelson
, Robert Downey, Jr., and Rory Cochrane
. Steven Soderbergh
and George Clooney
are among the executive producers. A Scanner Darkly had a limited release in July 2006, and then a wider release later that month. The film was screened at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival
and the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival
, and nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form in 2007.
, with 20% of the population being addicts. The highly addictive 'Substance D', a powerful psychoactive drug causing a dreamy state of intoxication and bizarre hallucinations, has swept across the country; chronic users may develop a split personality, cognitive problems, and severe paranoia. In response, the government develops an invasive, high-tech surveillance system and puts in place a network of informants and undercover agents.
The film opens with Charles Freck awakening in his cramped apartment to hallucinations of insects crawling all over him and his sleeping dog. Freck takes a shower, hoping to wash the insects away, but he is unsuccessful and contacts James Barris for help. Barris agrees to meet Freck in a cafe, where they both daydream and hallucinate. Both of them are drug addicts and both are addicted to 'Substance D'. Barris muses - "Either you're addicted, or you haven't tried it".
Bob Arctor is an undercover Police detective assigned to immerse himself in the drugs underworld and infiltrate the supply chain. Arctor and his housemates, Ernie Luckman and James Barris, live in a suburban house in a cul-de-sac in a run-down part of Anaheim, California
. They pass their days by taking drugs and having long, paranoia-inspired conversations. At the Police station Arctor works as a detective codenamed Fred, and he hides his identity from his fellow Police officers by wearing a high-tech scramble suit that constantly changes every aspect of the wearer's appearance. Arctor's senior officer Hank, and all of the other undercover officers at the station, also wear scramble suits.
Whilst posing as a drug user, Arctor becomes addicted to 'Substance D'. Arctor also befriends an attractive young woman named Donna Hawthorne, who is a cocaine
addict; she is Arctor's supplier of 'Substance D' and part of the drugs scene. Arctor hopes to purchase large enough quantities of 'Substance D' from Donna so that she is forced to introduce him to her supplier, but Arctor develops romantic feelings for her. Donna rejects Arctor's sexual advances and Barris questions the true nature of their relationship. Barris implies to Freck that he too has made advances towards Donna only to be similarily rejected.
Hank orders Fred to step up surveillance on the group. Hank assumes that Fred is one of the members of the Arctor household, but does not know which one. Hank suggests that Fred concentrate his surveillance on the suspected ringleader, Arctor, thereby unknowingly ordering him to spy upon himself. Meanwhile, the household members are paranoid that the Police have bugged their home and are watching their every move. Their paranoia reaches extreme levels and Arctor becomes wrapped up in the concerns of his housemates, forgetting that he is an undercover Police officer. Barris secretly contacts the Police and tells them that he suspects that Donna and Arctor are part of a terrorist organization. Barris unknowingly conveys this information to Arctor at the police station, when Arctor is wearing his scramble suit in his role as Detective Fred.
Due to Arctor's use of 'Substance D', he develops cognitive problems which stops the two hemispheres of his brain from communicating with each other, causing him to receive two different sets of information that are in conflict with one another. Throughout the story Arctor experiences flashbacks to his family life, wherein he has a wife and two daughters, and he reminisces about the times he spent with them. Arctor later learns that he does not, in fact, have a family.
After Barris supplies the Police with a fake recording which he alleges proves that Donna and Arctor belong to a terrorist organisation, Hank orders that Barris is held on charges of providing false information to the Police. After Barris's arrest Hank reveals to Fred that he has deduced, through the process of elimination, that Fred is really Arctor. Arctor is surprised to learn of his own true identity and he becomes extremely confused and upset. Hank informs Arctor that the whole point of the surveillance was to catch Barris, not Arctor; the Police suspected Barris of being involved in the 'Substance D' supply chain all along, and were setting Barris up by increasing his paranoia until he attempted to cover his tracks. As a result of his 'Substance D' addiction Arctor is no longer able to distinguish between the roles of his undercover character and his real job as a Police officer. Hank reprimands Arctor for becoming addicted to 'Substance D' and warns him that he will be disciplined.
Whilst a clearly distressed Arctor begins to break down, Hank phones Donna and asks her to take Arctor to New Path, a corporation that runs a series of rehabilitation clinics. After Arctor leaves the office, Hank enters the locker room and removes his scramble suit, at which point his true identity is revealed to be Donna. At New Path, Arctor experiences the severe symptoms of 'Substance D' withdrawal. Also at New Path is Charles Freck, who was admitted after a failed suicide bid. As part of the rehabilitation program, Arctor is renamed Bruce and put through psychological reconditioning treatments. Arctor suffers brain damage as a result of his withdrawal from 'Substance D'.
Sometime later Donna, now using her real name Audrey, has a conversation with another Police officer named Mike (briefly seen undercover as an orderly at New Path). It is revealed that New Path is responsible for the manufacture and distribution of 'Substance D'. Donna and Mike are part of a Police operation to infiltrate New Path, and Arctor had been selected - without his knowledge or consent - to carry out the sting. It is further revealed that the Police had intended for Arctor to become addicted to 'Substance D'; his well-being was sacrificed so that he might enter a rehabilitation center unnoticed as a genuine addict in order to find proof of New Path's crimes. They debate whether or not there is still enough left of Arctor's mind for him to know what to do if he finds any evidence.
To continue his rehabilitation, New Path sends Arctor to work at an isolated New Path farming prison, where he spots rows of blue flowers hidden between rows of corn. These flowers, referenced throughout the film, are the source of 'Substance D'. As the film ends, Arctor hides one of the blue flowers in his boot, so that when he returns to the New Path clinic during Thanksgiving he can give it to his friends.
Linklater adds another name to the credits and dedicates the film to the memory of Louis H. Mackey, an influential philosophy professor at the University of Texas at Austin; he had appeared in two of Linklater's previous films. He died in 2004.
as Bob Arctor / Fred. Arctor is an undercover detective who works at the local Police Station. Arctor tries to blend in with his housemates Barris and Luckman, becomming addicted to 'Substance D' in the process. As the film progresses Arctor suffers the effects of being addicted to the drug, and his mind breaks down to the point where he can no longer determine what is fact and what is fiction. In his role as detective Fred, Arctor wears a scramble suit to hide his true identity.
Robert Downey, Jr. as James Barris. Barris is a drug addict who lives with Arctor and Luckman. Barris is manipulative in his behaviour towards the other members of the group and he appears to have his own agenda.
Woody Harrelson
as Ernie Luckman. Luckman is a drug addict who lives with Arctor and Barris. Luckman is the most laid-back member of the group.
Rory Cochrane
as Charles Freck. Freck is a drug addict who lives in his own apartment and associates with the group. Freck has been using Substance D either more frequently or for longer periods of time than the other members of the group. At the start of the film he is seen suffering severe side effects. His mental breakdown is quicker than the others and, unable to cope, he attempts suicide. Freck's bid fails and he is admitted to New Path for rehabilitation.
Winona Ryder
as Donna Hawthorne / Audrey / Hank. Donna is a low-level drug dealer who supplies Arctor with 'Substance D'. At the films conclusion it is revealed that Donna is really an undercover Police detective named Audrey, who also poses as Arctor's supervisor Hank. Audrey wears a scramble suit whilst at the Police Station to hide her true identity.
toyed with adapting the Philip K. Dick
novel Ubik
but stopped early on because he was unable to obtain the rights and he "couldn't quite crack it."
He began thinking about A Scanner Darkly, another Dick novel while talking to producer Tommy Pallotta during the making of Waking Life
. Linklater liked A Scanner Darkly more than Ubik and felt that he could make a film out of it. According to Linklater, the challenge was capturing "the humor and exuberance of the book but not let go of the sad and tragic."
Linklater was not interested in turning the book into a big budget action thriller as had been done in the past because he felt that A Scanner Darkly was "about these guys and what they're all doing in their alternative world and what's going through their minds is really what keeps the story moving." He wanted to keep the budget under $10 million so that he could have more creative control, remain faithful to the book, and make it an animated film.
After completing School of Rock
, Linklater told Pallotta that he wanted to make A Scanner Darkly next. It was important to him that Dick's estate approve his film. Pallotta wrote a personal appeal and pitched a faithful adaptation of the novel to Russ Galen, the Philip K. Dick estate's literary agent who shared it with the late author's two daughters (Laura Leslie and Isa Hackett) who own and operate their father's trust.
Dick's daughters weren't too keen on "a cartoon version" of A Scanner Darkly. After high profile adaptations, Minority Report
and Paycheck
, they took a more proactive role in evaluating every film proposal, including unusual projects like Linklater's. They read Linklater's screenplay and then met with him to discuss their respective visions of A Scanner Darkly. They felt that it was one of their father's most personal stories and liked that Linklater wasn't going to treat the drug aspects lightly, that he wanted to set it in the near future and make it right away.
, but figured that the actor would be burnt out from making another science fiction film after making The Matrix trilogy. Robert Downey Jr. was attracted to the film when he heard Reeves was going to star and Linklater to direct. He thought that the script was the strangest one he had ever read. Linklater wrote the role of Freck with Rory Cochrane in mind. The actor was interested but didn't want to recreate his role in Dazed and Confused
. Both Woody Harrelson
and Winona Ryder
agreed to appear in the film based on the script. Both Reeves and Ryder agreed to work for the Screen Actors Guild
scale rate plus any back-end profits. As with Linklater's earlier Waking Life
, syndicated radio host Alex Jones has a small cameo
as himself.
before principal photography
began in order to fine-tune the script. The result was a fusion of Linklater's writing, the novel and the actors' input. To prepare for their respective roles, Cochrane came up with his character five minutes before he got on the elevator to work; Downey Jr. memorized his dialogue by writing it all out in run-on sentences, studying them and then converting them to acronyms; and Reeves relied on the book, marking down each scene in the screenplay to the corresponding page.
Principal photography began on May 17, 2004 and lasted six weeks. Arctor's house was located on Eric Circle in Southeast Austin. The previous tenants had left a month prior to filming and left the place in such a state that production designer Bruce Curtis had to make few modifications so that it looked like a run-down home. The filmmakers had looked at 60 houses before settling on this one. Linklater shot a lot of exteriors in Anaheim, California
and then composited them into the Austin footage in post-production. Since the live action footage was to be animated over later, makeup, lighting and visible equipment, like boom mics, were less of a concern. However, cinematographer Shane Kelly carefully composed shots and used a color palette with the animators in mind. Sometimes, they would show up to tell Kelly what they needed. Because the movie was being shot digitally and then animated, occasionally actors forgot they would later be animated as they worked through a scene. Robert Downey Jr. noted that he completely forgot the scene would later be animated as he worked through several takes in order to produce the smoke ring that would be featured in Barris' first closeup shot.
Extensive on-set footage of the filming of A Scanner Darkly was featured in a UK documentary about Richard Linklater directed by Irshad Ashraf
and broadcast on Channel 4
in December 2004.
for a 15-month animation process: interpolated-rotoscoping. A Scanner Darkly was filmed digitally
using the Panasonic AG-DVX100
and then animated with Rotoshop
, a proprietary graphics editing program created by Bob Sabiston
. Rotoshop uses an animation
technique called interpolated
rotoscope
, which was previously used in Linklater's film Waking Life
. Linklater discussed the ideas and inspiration behind his use of rotoscoping in a UK documentary about him in 2004, linking it to his personal experiences of lucid dreaming
. Rotoscoping in traditional cel animation originally involved tracing over film frame-by-frame. This is similar in some respects to the rotoscope style of filmmaker Ralph Bakshi
. Rotoshop animation makes use of vector
keyframes, and interpolates the in-between frames automatically.
The animation phase was a trying process for Linklater who said, "I know how to make a movie, but I don't really know how to handle the animation." He had gone the animation route because he felt that there was very little animation targeted for adults. Each minute of animation required 350 hours of work with 50 animators working full-time every day.
Animation and training for the 30 new artists had begun October 28, 2004. In late November, Mark Gill, head of Warner Independent Pictures
, asked for a status report. There were no finished sequences as the majority of animators were still learning to implement the film's highly-detailed style. Under pressure, some animators worked 18-hour days for two weeks in order to produce a trailer, which seemed to appease Gill and Linklater. Sabiston and his team were falling behind on the studio's 6-month animation schedule and asked that the schedule be extended to a year and that the 2 million dollar animation budget be enlarged accordingly. This created tension and in January 2005, while Sabiston and his four-person core team were strategizing at a local cafe, Pallotta changed the locks and seized their workstations, replacing them with two local artists, Jason Archer and Paul Beck. Sabiston's four team leaders Patrick Thornton, Randy Cole, Katy O'Connor, and Jennifer Drummond subsequently received the credit "additional animation" in the film, despite having worked six months designing the general look of the animation and the scramble suit, hiring and training animators, and 3D compositing.
The studio increased the budget from $6.7 to $8.7 million and gave Linklater six months to finish the film. Pallotta took charge and instituted a more traditional Disney-esque production ethic that included a style manual, strict deadlines, and breaking the film up into smaller segments. The animation process lasted 15 months. Linklater said, in regard to the post-production problems, "There's a lot of misinformation out there... Changes took place during the early stages of us really getting going on this had everything to do with management and not art. It was a budgetary concern, essentially."
A test screening in December 2005 went reasonably well. A revised release date was set for March 31, 2006, but Gill felt that there would not be enough time to mount a proper promotional campaign and the date was changed to July 7, putting the film up against Pixar
's Cars
and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
.
-based composer Graham Reynolds
. Linklater approached Reynolds in 2003 after a club performance and suggested Reynolds create the score for A Scanner Darkly.
Linklater and Reynolds had worked previously on Live from Shiva's Dance Floor, a 20 minute short featuring Timothy "Speed" Levitch.
The composition and recording process took over one and a half years (the unusual time allotment was due to the film's time-consuming animation process) and was done in Reynolds' east Austin home, in his bedroom. This is not a synthesized score; all the instruments except electric guitar and bass were acoustic, though many were transformed through effects. The film also includes clips of five Radiohead
songs — "Fog
", "Skttrbrain (Four Tet Mix)
", "The Amazing Sounds of Orgy
", "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors
", (although it appears uncredited), "Reckoner
" — and one Thom Yorke
solo song, "Black Swan
." An early test screening featured an all-Radiohead soundtrack.
and includes the score by Graham Reynolds
featuring the Golden Arm Trio
. Additionally, the CD includes exclusive remix
es of Graham's music by DJ Spooky
and Jack Dangers
(Meat Beat Manifesto
). After finishing the film, Reynolds set to work on remixing the surround sound
music into stereo. He then selected 44 minutes out of the film score in order to craft a listening CD while attempting to retain some feel of the arc of the film. Some of the shorter cues were assembled into longer CD tracks.
of The New York Times
wrote that the film "has a kind of hypnotic visual appeal".
Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times
found the film "engrossing" and wrote that "the brilliance of [the film] is how it suggests, without bombast or fanfare, the ways in which the real world has come to resemble the dark world of comic books".
In his review for the Village Voice, J. Hoberman
wrote, "What's extraordinary about Linklater's animation, computer-rotoscoped in the fashion of his 2001 Waking Life, is just how tangible the Dickian labyrinth becomes", and praised Robert Downey Jr.'s performance: "Midway through 2006, this supporting turn is the performance to beat in what seems the year's American movie to beat".
Andrew Sarris
, in his review for The New York Observer, wrote, "Mr. Linklater emerges once again as the Austin auteur par excellence".
Empire
magazine's Kim Newman
gave the film four stars out of five and wrote, "its intelligence makes it near-essential viewing".
In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Thompson wrote, "Linklater's rotoscoping process underscores this grave new world with pop-arty creepiness. Its dramatically muting effect, which shaves the highs off the more histrionic performances yet doesn't undercut the more subtle elements ... squeezes everything into a unified nightmare".
Entertainment Weekly
gave the film a "C-" rating and Owen Gleiberman
was unimpressed, writing that the film is "more fun to think about than [it] is to experience", and found the film's storyline "goes nowhere".
In his review for The Guardian
, Peter Bradshaw wrote, "The movie is often startling and engrossing, but the question of what the heck is going on, and why, is never entirely absent from your mind".
Jack Mathews, in his review for The New York Daily News, called it, "a murky, dialogue-heavy tale of intrigue". Rotten Tomatoes
gives the film a score of 68% based on 174 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6 out of 10.
Its weighted reception at Metacritic
is 73% based on reviews from 33 critics, considered "generally favorable reviews".
, and Philip K. Dick's daughter, Isa Dick Hackett. Entertainment Weekly
felt that the commentary track was "friendly and aimless", but that the featurette on the rotoscoping process, "a lot more lively".
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
thriller directed by Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater
-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...
based on the novel of the same name
A Scanner Darkly
A Scanner Darkly is a BSFA Award winning 1977 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The semi-autobiographical story is set in a dystopian Orange County, California, in the then-future of June 1994...
by Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
. The film tells the story of identity and deception in a near-future dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
constantly under intrusive high-technology police surveillance in the midst of a drug addiction epidemic. The movie was filmed digitally
Digital cinematography
Digital cinematography is the process of capturing motion pictures as digital images, rather than on film. Digital capture may occur on video tape, hard disks, flash memory, or other media which can record digital data. As digital technology has improved, this practice has become increasingly common...
and then animated
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
using interpolated
Rotoshop
Rotoshop is a proprietary graphics editing program created by Bob Sabiston.Rotoshop uses an animation technique called interpolated rotoscoping, which has been used in Richard Linklater's films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, as well as the Talk to Chuck advertising campaign for Charles Schwab....
rotoscope
Rotoscope
Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator...
over the original footage, giving it its distinctive look.
The film was written and directed by Linklater and stars Keanu Reeves
Keanu Reeves
Keanu Charles Reeves is a Canadian actor. Reeves is perhaps best known for his roles in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Speed, Point Break and the science fiction-action trilogy The Matrix...
, Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder is an American actress. She made her film debut in the 1986 film Lucas. Ryder's first significant role came in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice as a goth teenager, which won her critical and commercial recognition...
, Woody Harrelson
Woody Harrelson
Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson is an American actor.Harrelson's breakthrough role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd...
, Robert Downey, Jr., and Rory Cochrane
Rory Cochrane
Rory Cochrane is an American actor. He is known for playing Ron Slater in Dazed and Confused, Lucas in Empire Records, and Tim Speedle in CSI: Miami.-Early life:...
. Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
and George Clooney
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...
are among the executive producers. A Scanner Darkly had a limited release in July 2006, and then a wider release later that month. The film was screened at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival
2006 Cannes Film Festival
The 2006 Cannes Film Festival ran from May 17, 2006 to May 28, 2006. Twenty films from eleven countries were in competition for the Palme d'Or. The President of the Official Jury was Wong Kar-wai, the first Chinese director to preside over the jury....
and the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival
The Seattle International Film Festival , held annually in Seattle, Washington since 1976, is among the top film festivals in North America. Audiences have grown steadily; the 2006 festival had 160,000 attendees...
, and nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form in 2007.
Plot
Seven years from now America has lost the war on drugsWar on Drugs
The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention being undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade...
, with 20% of the population being addicts. The highly addictive 'Substance D', a powerful psychoactive drug causing a dreamy state of intoxication and bizarre hallucinations, has swept across the country; chronic users may develop a split personality, cognitive problems, and severe paranoia. In response, the government develops an invasive, high-tech surveillance system and puts in place a network of informants and undercover agents.
The film opens with Charles Freck awakening in his cramped apartment to hallucinations of insects crawling all over him and his sleeping dog. Freck takes a shower, hoping to wash the insects away, but he is unsuccessful and contacts James Barris for help. Barris agrees to meet Freck in a cafe, where they both daydream and hallucinate. Both of them are drug addicts and both are addicted to 'Substance D'. Barris muses - "Either you're addicted, or you haven't tried it".
Bob Arctor is an undercover Police detective assigned to immerse himself in the drugs underworld and infiltrate the supply chain. Arctor and his housemates, Ernie Luckman and James Barris, live in a suburban house in a cul-de-sac in a run-down part of Anaheim, California
Anaheim, California
Anaheim is a city in Orange County, California. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was about 365,463, making it the most populated city in Orange County, the 10th most-populated city in California, and ranked 54th in the United States...
. They pass their days by taking drugs and having long, paranoia-inspired conversations. At the Police station Arctor works as a detective codenamed Fred, and he hides his identity from his fellow Police officers by wearing a high-tech scramble suit that constantly changes every aspect of the wearer's appearance. Arctor's senior officer Hank, and all of the other undercover officers at the station, also wear scramble suits.
Whilst posing as a drug user, Arctor becomes addicted to 'Substance D'. Arctor also befriends an attractive young woman named Donna Hawthorne, who is a cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
addict; she is Arctor's supplier of 'Substance D' and part of the drugs scene. Arctor hopes to purchase large enough quantities of 'Substance D' from Donna so that she is forced to introduce him to her supplier, but Arctor develops romantic feelings for her. Donna rejects Arctor's sexual advances and Barris questions the true nature of their relationship. Barris implies to Freck that he too has made advances towards Donna only to be similarily rejected.
Hank orders Fred to step up surveillance on the group. Hank assumes that Fred is one of the members of the Arctor household, but does not know which one. Hank suggests that Fred concentrate his surveillance on the suspected ringleader, Arctor, thereby unknowingly ordering him to spy upon himself. Meanwhile, the household members are paranoid that the Police have bugged their home and are watching their every move. Their paranoia reaches extreme levels and Arctor becomes wrapped up in the concerns of his housemates, forgetting that he is an undercover Police officer. Barris secretly contacts the Police and tells them that he suspects that Donna and Arctor are part of a terrorist organization. Barris unknowingly conveys this information to Arctor at the police station, when Arctor is wearing his scramble suit in his role as Detective Fred.
Due to Arctor's use of 'Substance D', he develops cognitive problems which stops the two hemispheres of his brain from communicating with each other, causing him to receive two different sets of information that are in conflict with one another. Throughout the story Arctor experiences flashbacks to his family life, wherein he has a wife and two daughters, and he reminisces about the times he spent with them. Arctor later learns that he does not, in fact, have a family.
After Barris supplies the Police with a fake recording which he alleges proves that Donna and Arctor belong to a terrorist organisation, Hank orders that Barris is held on charges of providing false information to the Police. After Barris's arrest Hank reveals to Fred that he has deduced, through the process of elimination, that Fred is really Arctor. Arctor is surprised to learn of his own true identity and he becomes extremely confused and upset. Hank informs Arctor that the whole point of the surveillance was to catch Barris, not Arctor; the Police suspected Barris of being involved in the 'Substance D' supply chain all along, and were setting Barris up by increasing his paranoia until he attempted to cover his tracks. As a result of his 'Substance D' addiction Arctor is no longer able to distinguish between the roles of his undercover character and his real job as a Police officer. Hank reprimands Arctor for becoming addicted to 'Substance D' and warns him that he will be disciplined.
Whilst a clearly distressed Arctor begins to break down, Hank phones Donna and asks her to take Arctor to New Path, a corporation that runs a series of rehabilitation clinics. After Arctor leaves the office, Hank enters the locker room and removes his scramble suit, at which point his true identity is revealed to be Donna. At New Path, Arctor experiences the severe symptoms of 'Substance D' withdrawal. Also at New Path is Charles Freck, who was admitted after a failed suicide bid. As part of the rehabilitation program, Arctor is renamed Bruce and put through psychological reconditioning treatments. Arctor suffers brain damage as a result of his withdrawal from 'Substance D'.
Sometime later Donna, now using her real name Audrey, has a conversation with another Police officer named Mike (briefly seen undercover as an orderly at New Path). It is revealed that New Path is responsible for the manufacture and distribution of 'Substance D'. Donna and Mike are part of a Police operation to infiltrate New Path, and Arctor had been selected - without his knowledge or consent - to carry out the sting. It is further revealed that the Police had intended for Arctor to become addicted to 'Substance D'; his well-being was sacrificed so that he might enter a rehabilitation center unnoticed as a genuine addict in order to find proof of New Path's crimes. They debate whether or not there is still enough left of Arctor's mind for him to know what to do if he finds any evidence.
To continue his rehabilitation, New Path sends Arctor to work at an isolated New Path farming prison, where he spots rows of blue flowers hidden between rows of corn. These flowers, referenced throughout the film, are the source of 'Substance D'. As the film ends, Arctor hides one of the blue flowers in his boot, so that when he returns to the New Path clinic during Thanksgiving he can give it to his friends.
End credits
The end credits feature an abridged version of the afterword of Dick's novel, in which Dick lists people he knew who have suffered serious permanent physical or mental damage (brain damage, psychosis, pancreatic trauma, etc.) or death as a result of drug use. Dick includes his own name on the list, as "Phil", a victim of permanent pancreatic damage.Linklater adds another name to the credits and dedicates the film to the memory of Louis H. Mackey, an influential philosophy professor at the University of Texas at Austin; he had appeared in two of Linklater's previous films. He died in 2004.
Cast
Keanu ReevesKeanu Reeves
Keanu Charles Reeves is a Canadian actor. Reeves is perhaps best known for his roles in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Speed, Point Break and the science fiction-action trilogy The Matrix...
as Bob Arctor / Fred. Arctor is an undercover detective who works at the local Police Station. Arctor tries to blend in with his housemates Barris and Luckman, becomming addicted to 'Substance D' in the process. As the film progresses Arctor suffers the effects of being addicted to the drug, and his mind breaks down to the point where he can no longer determine what is fact and what is fiction. In his role as detective Fred, Arctor wears a scramble suit to hide his true identity.
Robert Downey, Jr. as James Barris. Barris is a drug addict who lives with Arctor and Luckman. Barris is manipulative in his behaviour towards the other members of the group and he appears to have his own agenda.
Woody Harrelson
Woody Harrelson
Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson is an American actor.Harrelson's breakthrough role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd...
as Ernie Luckman. Luckman is a drug addict who lives with Arctor and Barris. Luckman is the most laid-back member of the group.
Rory Cochrane
Rory Cochrane
Rory Cochrane is an American actor. He is known for playing Ron Slater in Dazed and Confused, Lucas in Empire Records, and Tim Speedle in CSI: Miami.-Early life:...
as Charles Freck. Freck is a drug addict who lives in his own apartment and associates with the group. Freck has been using Substance D either more frequently or for longer periods of time than the other members of the group. At the start of the film he is seen suffering severe side effects. His mental breakdown is quicker than the others and, unable to cope, he attempts suicide. Freck's bid fails and he is admitted to New Path for rehabilitation.
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder is an American actress. She made her film debut in the 1986 film Lucas. Ryder's first significant role came in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice as a goth teenager, which won her critical and commercial recognition...
as Donna Hawthorne / Audrey / Hank. Donna is a low-level drug dealer who supplies Arctor with 'Substance D'. At the films conclusion it is revealed that Donna is really an undercover Police detective named Audrey, who also poses as Arctor's supervisor Hank. Audrey wears a scramble suit whilst at the Police Station to hide her true identity.
Production
Originally, Richard LinklaterRichard Linklater
-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...
toyed with adapting the Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
novel Ubik
Ubik
Ubik is a 1969 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. Critic Lev Grossman described it as "a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you'll never be sure you've woken up from."-Plot synopsis:...
but stopped early on because he was unable to obtain the rights and he "couldn't quite crack it."
He began thinking about A Scanner Darkly, another Dick novel while talking to producer Tommy Pallotta during the making of Waking Life
Waking Life
Waking Life is an American animated film , directed by Richard Linklater and released in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame.The film focuses on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and...
. Linklater liked A Scanner Darkly more than Ubik and felt that he could make a film out of it. According to Linklater, the challenge was capturing "the humor and exuberance of the book but not let go of the sad and tragic."
Linklater was not interested in turning the book into a big budget action thriller as had been done in the past because he felt that A Scanner Darkly was "about these guys and what they're all doing in their alternative world and what's going through their minds is really what keeps the story moving." He wanted to keep the budget under $10 million so that he could have more creative control, remain faithful to the book, and make it an animated film.
After completing School of Rock
School of Rock
School of Rock, also called The School of Rock, is a 2003 American musical comedy film directed by Richard Linklater, written by Mike White, and starring Jack Black...
, Linklater told Pallotta that he wanted to make A Scanner Darkly next. It was important to him that Dick's estate approve his film. Pallotta wrote a personal appeal and pitched a faithful adaptation of the novel to Russ Galen, the Philip K. Dick estate's literary agent who shared it with the late author's two daughters (Laura Leslie and Isa Hackett) who own and operate their father's trust.
Dick's daughters weren't too keen on "a cartoon version" of A Scanner Darkly. After high profile adaptations, Minority Report
Minority Report (film)
Minority Report is a 2002 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg and loosely based on the short story "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick. It is set primarily in Washington, D.C...
and Paycheck
Paycheck (film)
Paycheck is a 2003 film adaptation of the short story of the same name by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The film was directed by John Woo and stars Ben Affleck, Uma Thurman and Aaron Eckhart...
, they took a more proactive role in evaluating every film proposal, including unusual projects like Linklater's. They read Linklater's screenplay and then met with him to discuss their respective visions of A Scanner Darkly. They felt that it was one of their father's most personal stories and liked that Linklater wasn't going to treat the drug aspects lightly, that he wanted to set it in the near future and make it right away.
Casting
For the dual roles of Arctor and Fred, Linklater thought of Keanu ReevesKeanu Reeves
Keanu Charles Reeves is a Canadian actor. Reeves is perhaps best known for his roles in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Speed, Point Break and the science fiction-action trilogy The Matrix...
, but figured that the actor would be burnt out from making another science fiction film after making The Matrix trilogy. Robert Downey Jr. was attracted to the film when he heard Reeves was going to star and Linklater to direct. He thought that the script was the strangest one he had ever read. Linklater wrote the role of Freck with Rory Cochrane in mind. The actor was interested but didn't want to recreate his role in Dazed and Confused
Dazed and Confused
"Dazed and Confused" is a song by Jake Holmes, which was covered by The Yardbirds, and later reworked by Led Zeppelin who hold a separate copyright on the song.-Jake Holmes:...
. Both Woody Harrelson
Woody Harrelson
Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson is an American actor.Harrelson's breakthrough role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd...
and Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder is an American actress. She made her film debut in the 1986 film Lucas. Ryder's first significant role came in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice as a goth teenager, which won her critical and commercial recognition...
agreed to appear in the film based on the script. Both Reeves and Ryder agreed to work for the Screen Actors Guild
Screen Actors Guild
The Screen Actors Guild is an American labor union representing over 200,000 film and television principal performers and background performers worldwide...
scale rate plus any back-end profits. As with Linklater's earlier Waking Life
Waking Life
Waking Life is an American animated film , directed by Richard Linklater and released in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame.The film focuses on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and...
, syndicated radio host Alex Jones has a small cameo
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
as himself.
Principal photography
Linklater assembled the cast for two weeks of rehearsals in Austin, TexasAustin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
before principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
began in order to fine-tune the script. The result was a fusion of Linklater's writing, the novel and the actors' input. To prepare for their respective roles, Cochrane came up with his character five minutes before he got on the elevator to work; Downey Jr. memorized his dialogue by writing it all out in run-on sentences, studying them and then converting them to acronyms; and Reeves relied on the book, marking down each scene in the screenplay to the corresponding page.
Principal photography began on May 17, 2004 and lasted six weeks. Arctor's house was located on Eric Circle in Southeast Austin. The previous tenants had left a month prior to filming and left the place in such a state that production designer Bruce Curtis had to make few modifications so that it looked like a run-down home. The filmmakers had looked at 60 houses before settling on this one. Linklater shot a lot of exteriors in Anaheim, California
Anaheim, California
Anaheim is a city in Orange County, California. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was about 365,463, making it the most populated city in Orange County, the 10th most-populated city in California, and ranked 54th in the United States...
and then composited them into the Austin footage in post-production. Since the live action footage was to be animated over later, makeup, lighting and visible equipment, like boom mics, were less of a concern. However, cinematographer Shane Kelly carefully composed shots and used a color palette with the animators in mind. Sometimes, they would show up to tell Kelly what they needed. Because the movie was being shot digitally and then animated, occasionally actors forgot they would later be animated as they worked through a scene. Robert Downey Jr. noted that he completely forgot the scene would later be animated as he worked through several takes in order to produce the smoke ring that would be featured in Barris' first closeup shot.
Extensive on-set footage of the filming of A Scanner Darkly was featured in a UK documentary about Richard Linklater directed by Irshad Ashraf
Irshad Ashraf
Irshad Ashraf is a British documentary film maker with a reputation for making stylish, visually innovative documentary films about history, art and politics....
and broadcast on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
in December 2004.
Animation
After principal photography was finished, the film was transferred to QuickTimeQuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
for a 15-month animation process: interpolated-rotoscoping. A Scanner Darkly was filmed digitally
Digital cinematography
Digital cinematography is the process of capturing motion pictures as digital images, rather than on film. Digital capture may occur on video tape, hard disks, flash memory, or other media which can record digital data. As digital technology has improved, this practice has become increasingly common...
using the Panasonic AG-DVX100
Panasonic AG-DVX100
The Panasonic AG-DVX100 was the first affordable digital progressive scan camcorder.The camera is popular among television studios and is popular with independent film makers because of its many film-emulating features and has a large following. Currently the latest and last revision is the DVX102B...
and then animated with Rotoshop
Rotoshop
Rotoshop is a proprietary graphics editing program created by Bob Sabiston.Rotoshop uses an animation technique called interpolated rotoscoping, which has been used in Richard Linklater's films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, as well as the Talk to Chuck advertising campaign for Charles Schwab....
, a proprietary graphics editing program created by Bob Sabiston
Bob Sabiston
Bob Sabiston is an American film art director, computer programmer, and creator of the Rotoshop software program for computer animation. Sabiston began developing software as a graduate researcher in the MIT Media Lab from 1986 to 1991...
. Rotoshop uses an animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
technique called interpolated
Interpolation
In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, interpolation is a method of constructing new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data points....
rotoscope
Rotoscope
Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator...
, which was previously used in Linklater's film Waking Life
Waking Life
Waking Life is an American animated film , directed by Richard Linklater and released in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame.The film focuses on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and...
. Linklater discussed the ideas and inspiration behind his use of rotoscoping in a UK documentary about him in 2004, linking it to his personal experiences of lucid dreaming
Lucid dreaming
A lucid dream is a dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. The term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik van Eeden . In a lucid dream, the dreamer can actively participate in and manipulate imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can seem real and...
. Rotoscoping in traditional cel animation originally involved tracing over film frame-by-frame. This is similar in some respects to the rotoscope style of filmmaker Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
. Rotoshop animation makes use of vector
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
keyframes, and interpolates the in-between frames automatically.
The animation phase was a trying process for Linklater who said, "I know how to make a movie, but I don't really know how to handle the animation." He had gone the animation route because he felt that there was very little animation targeted for adults. Each minute of animation required 350 hours of work with 50 animators working full-time every day.
Post-production problems
Originally, the film was supposed to be released in September 2005. Most of the animators were hired locally with only a few of them having movie-making experience. Six weeks into the animation process, only a few animated sequences were close to being completed while Linklater was off making Bad News Bears. Sabiston had divided the animators into five teams and split the work amongst them. However, there was poor communication between the teams and the uniform animation style that Linklater wanted was not being implemented. After almost two months some animators were still learning the software and Linklater became frustrated with the lack of progress.Animation and training for the 30 new artists had begun October 28, 2004. In late November, Mark Gill, head of Warner Independent Pictures
Warner Independent Pictures
Warner Independent Pictures was the specialty division of film studio Warner Bros. Entertainment. Established in August 2003, its first release was 2004's Before Sunset...
, asked for a status report. There were no finished sequences as the majority of animators were still learning to implement the film's highly-detailed style. Under pressure, some animators worked 18-hour days for two weeks in order to produce a trailer, which seemed to appease Gill and Linklater. Sabiston and his team were falling behind on the studio's 6-month animation schedule and asked that the schedule be extended to a year and that the 2 million dollar animation budget be enlarged accordingly. This created tension and in January 2005, while Sabiston and his four-person core team were strategizing at a local cafe, Pallotta changed the locks and seized their workstations, replacing them with two local artists, Jason Archer and Paul Beck. Sabiston's four team leaders Patrick Thornton, Randy Cole, Katy O'Connor, and Jennifer Drummond subsequently received the credit "additional animation" in the film, despite having worked six months designing the general look of the animation and the scramble suit, hiring and training animators, and 3D compositing.
The studio increased the budget from $6.7 to $8.7 million and gave Linklater six months to finish the film. Pallotta took charge and instituted a more traditional Disney-esque production ethic that included a style manual, strict deadlines, and breaking the film up into smaller segments. The animation process lasted 15 months. Linklater said, in regard to the post-production problems, "There's a lot of misinformation out there... Changes took place during the early stages of us really getting going on this had everything to do with management and not art. It was a budgetary concern, essentially."
A test screening in December 2005 went reasonably well. A revised release date was set for March 31, 2006, but Gill felt that there would not be enough time to mount a proper promotional campaign and the date was changed to July 7, putting the film up against Pixar
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
's Cars
Cars (film)
Cars is a 2006 American animated family film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter and co-directed by Joe Ranft. It is the seventh Disney·Pixar feature film, and Pixar's final, independently-produced motion picture before its purchase by Disney...
and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a 2006 adventure fantasy film and the second film of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, following Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl . It was directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and produced by...
.
Music
The score (more than an hour's worth is in the film) was provided by Austin, TexasAustin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
-based composer Graham Reynolds
Graham Reynolds
Graham Reynolds Austin, Texas based, Composer-bandleader Graham Reynolds creates, performs, and records music for film, theater, dance, rock clubs and concert halls with collaborators ranging from Richard Linklater to DJ Spooky to the Austin Symphony Orchestra...
. Linklater approached Reynolds in 2003 after a club performance and suggested Reynolds create the score for A Scanner Darkly.
Linklater and Reynolds had worked previously on Live from Shiva's Dance Floor, a 20 minute short featuring Timothy "Speed" Levitch.
The composition and recording process took over one and a half years (the unusual time allotment was due to the film's time-consuming animation process) and was done in Reynolds' east Austin home, in his bedroom. This is not a synthesized score; all the instruments except electric guitar and bass were acoustic, though many were transformed through effects. The film also includes clips of five Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
songs — "Fog
Knives Out
"Knives Out" is a song by English rock band Radiohead. The composition features electric and acoustic guitars, complemented by singer Thom Yorke's vocals. It appears on Radiohead's 2001 album Amnesiac, recorded during the same sessions as the previous album Kid A...
", "Skttrbrain (Four Tet Mix)
COM LAG (2plus2isfive)
Omitted is the seven-minute demo version of "There There", which appears on the first "2+2=5" single.- "I Will" :"I Will " is an alternative version of the album track "I Will" and was released on the second "2+2=5" CD single...
", "The Amazing Sounds of Orgy
Pyramid Song
"Pyramid Song" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead. It was the first single from their 2001 album Amnesiac and the first Radiohead single released in over three years, after none were taken from their previous album Kid A....
", "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors
Amnesiac
Amnesiac was generally well-received by critics. It was also ranked as one of the best albums of the year by several publications. The Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll ranked it number 6 on their top 10 albums of the year. Alternative Press declared it the #1 album of the year...
", (although it appears uncredited), "Reckoner
Reckoner
"Reckoner" is a song by the English alternative rock band Radiohead, and is the seventh track on their 2007 album In Rainbows. The song was released as the third and final single from In Rainbows on 23 September 2008. It was released through the Radiohead Remix website in the form of "stems",...
" — and one Thom Yorke
Thom Yorke
Thomas "Thom" Edward Yorke is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar...
solo song, "Black Swan
Black Swan (song)
"Black Swan" is a song by Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke and is the fourth track on his 2006 album The Eraser. The song was released to American radio in July 2006 . In early August 2006, the song placed at #40 in Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart."Black Swan" dates back to the Kid A sessions...
." An early test screening featured an all-Radiohead soundtrack.
Soundtrack
The album is available from Lakeshore RecordsLakeshore Records
Lakeshore Records is the independent music division of Lakeshore Entertainment . They started out as WILL Records.Will Records were started by Skip Williamson in the early 90s...
and includes the score by Graham Reynolds
Graham Reynolds
Graham Reynolds Austin, Texas based, Composer-bandleader Graham Reynolds creates, performs, and records music for film, theater, dance, rock clubs and concert halls with collaborators ranging from Richard Linklater to DJ Spooky to the Austin Symphony Orchestra...
featuring the Golden Arm Trio
Golden Arm Trio
Golden Arm Trio is the performance and recording vehicle of Graham Reynolds, a composer, bandleader, pianist and drummer based in Austin, Texas who works constantly in theater, dance, film, concert halls, and nightclubs...
. Additionally, the CD includes exclusive remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
es of Graham's music by DJ Spooky
DJ Spooky
Paul D. Miller , known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author...
and Jack Dangers
Jack Dangers
Jack Dangers is an electronic musician, DJ, producer, and remixer best known for his work as the primary member of Meat Beat Manifesto. He lives in San Francisco.-Career:...
(Meat Beat Manifesto
Meat Beat Manifesto
Meat Beat Manifesto, often shortened to Meat Beat or MBM, is an electronic music group originally consisting of Jack Dangers and Jonny Stephens formed in 1987 in Swindon, UK...
). After finishing the film, Reynolds set to work on remixing the surround sound
Surround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
music into stereo. He then selected 44 minutes out of the film score in order to craft a listening CD while attempting to retain some feel of the arc of the film. Some of the shorter cues were assembled into longer CD tracks.
Box office
A Scanner Darkly opened in seventeen theaters and grossed $391,672 for a per-theater average of $23,039. The film saw some expansion in later weeks, but ultimately was about $1 million short of earning back its $8.7 million production budget. It grossed $5.5 million in North America and $2.1 million elsewhere.Critical response
Manohla DargisManohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
wrote that the film "has a kind of hypnotic visual appeal".
Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
found the film "engrossing" and wrote that "the brilliance of [the film] is how it suggests, without bombast or fanfare, the ways in which the real world has come to resemble the dark world of comic books".
In his review for the Village Voice, J. Hoberman
J. Hoberman
James Lewis Hoberman , also known as J. Hoberman, is an American film critic. He is currently the senior film critic for The Village Voice, a post he has held since 1988.-Education:...
wrote, "What's extraordinary about Linklater's animation, computer-rotoscoped in the fashion of his 2001 Waking Life, is just how tangible the Dickian labyrinth becomes", and praised Robert Downey Jr.'s performance: "Midway through 2006, this supporting turn is the performance to beat in what seems the year's American movie to beat".
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...
, in his review for The New York Observer, wrote, "Mr. Linklater emerges once again as the Austin auteur par excellence".
Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazine's Kim Newman
Kim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...
gave the film four stars out of five and wrote, "its intelligence makes it near-essential viewing".
In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Thompson wrote, "Linklater's rotoscoping process underscores this grave new world with pop-arty creepiness. Its dramatically muting effect, which shaves the highs off the more histrionic performances yet doesn't undercut the more subtle elements ... squeezes everything into a unified nightmare".
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
gave the film a "C-" rating and Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is an American film critic for Entertainment Weekly, a position he has held since the magazine's launch in 1990. From 1981–89, he worked at the Boston Phoenix....
was unimpressed, writing that the film is "more fun to think about than [it] is to experience", and found the film's storyline "goes nowhere".
In his review for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Peter Bradshaw wrote, "The movie is often startling and engrossing, but the question of what the heck is going on, and why, is never entirely absent from your mind".
Jack Mathews, in his review for The New York Daily News, called it, "a murky, dialogue-heavy tale of intrigue". Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
gives the film a score of 68% based on 174 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6 out of 10.
Its weighted reception at Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
is 73% based on reviews from 33 critics, considered "generally favorable reviews".
Home media
The DVD was released in North America on December 19, 2006 and in the UK on January 22, 2007. The following extras are included: the theatrical trailer; "Weight of the Line", an animation tales feature; "One Summer in Austin", a short documentary on the filming of the movie; and audio commentary from actor Keanu Reeves, director Richard Linklater, producer Tommy Pallotta, author Jonathan LethemJonathan Lethem
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels...
, and Philip K. Dick's daughter, Isa Dick Hackett. Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
felt that the commentary track was "friendly and aimless", but that the featurette on the rotoscoping process, "a lot more lively".