‘Scanner’ taps into fear of government spying

Director Richard Linklater began writing his adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s “A Scanner Darkly” shortly after 9-11 . Dick’s book is a personal story — certainly his most autobiographical work — of the paranoia and recklessness of the drug world, set in a near future where the government routinely spies on its citizens in the name of maintaining law and order.

“It’s funny, the sci-fi elements in his work aren’t about life on other planets or romantic notions,” Linklater (“Slackers,” “Before Sunrise”) says. “He saw control of population, how power will use technology to condition you. It feels like some kind of Soviet-style conditioning, where they’ll tell you you’re free. But when at some point, when you’re just generally paranoid, it gets into the psyche of a country.”

“I felt it as an American for the first time ever, post 9-11, that you kind of have to watch what you say,” Linklater continues. “I was a little bit afraid for the first time. The thing’s in the air. You can’t really have an opinion now, or you hate your country.”

Linklater’s movie, which features the same rotoscope animation he used in his 2001 film, “Waking Life,” is incredibly faithful to its source material, so much so that it infuriated some Warner Bros. executives, who found the movie’s tonal shifts problematic. Too bad, says Linklater, who had final cut of the film that opens today.

“The thing is a full-blown comedy, but then it’s a full-blown tragedy, too,” he says. “I always thought Philip K. Dick was hilarious, but you never see that in the movies based on his work. That’s how specifically the drug world is. It can be exuberant and fun. There’s an up, but the down can be swift and can go from fun to tragedy really fast. And that’s the heart of the story.”

“A Scanner Darkly” arrives as the eighth movie adapted from a Philip K. Dick short story or novel. No. 9 — a big-budget, boom-boom Nicolas Cage movie, “Next” (based on Dick’s story “The Golden Man”), opens next year.

“It’s easy to see why filmmakers look to his work,” says “Scanner” producer Tommy Pallotta. “Philip K. Dick was a visionary who came up with these great premises that incorporated philosophical ideas into their fabric. He’s more popular now than ever because the things he was writing about are more relevant. Certainly, they’re more evident.”

Says “Scanner” director Richard Linklater: “It seems like every week there’s a revelation — NSA spying, the government tapping millions and millions of phone calls — that makes Philip K. Dick’s view of the future that much more right on. The paranoia he felt about Nixon has come around again tenfold.”

“Scanner,” then, gets it right.