SCANNING KEANU AND WINONA

From the mind of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick also known for Blade Runner and Minority Report comes A Scanner Darkly set in the paranoid future of California where average citizens are spying on one another to enforce national security and stamp out drugs. Directed by Richard Linklater the film uses the same technique of live action layered with animation as he did in his film Waking Life. Keanu Reeves is a government recruiter who is ordered to spy on his friends as an undercover narcotics agent.

Winona Ryder plays Donna, one of the drug users whose suspected activities of taking Substance D, the drug of the future are secretly being monitored by Keanu’s character. Winona says she was very taken with the novel.

“With Arctor he’s the family man, he’s got a wife and kids. He’s going down this kind of conceptual path of marriage and husband and father. Like he says, he says, ‘I hate my life. Nothing will ever change. This will never end.’ And there’s something inside him where he’s not happy. And he breaks out of it.”

A Scanner Darkly adapted by director Linklater for the screen is the most autobiographical Philip K. Dick story to date as it deals with his own struggles with drug abuse. The film opens Friday, July 7.rn

“It’s one of the most complex and layered and unusual and challenging pieces of literature that I’ve ever read, both the book and Richard’s adaptation, the script which really captured the feeling of the book. It’s almost impossible to describe.”