User Reviews

As a certifiable "Dick-head," I bought this docu in the hopes it might shed some additional light on one of the greatest purveyors of sci-fi and American literature in general. Dick was a brilliant -- a superlative I seldom use -- man. His stories were fascinating meditations on what constitutes reality, self, etc. Sadly, this docu is a cheapo featuring some nice interviews with Dick friends and fans (could have done without the fans, who while sincere didn't seem that knowledgeable or at the very least interesting).

Most distracting -- and reeking of padding -- are the "animated" segments. Truly awful. I assume they were done in Flash, but they are static beyond belief. I speed-scanned through them all.

Dick deserves a fine documentary. This isn't it. Read Lawrence Sutin's bio if you seek info on Dick. Or read Paul Williams' interviews with the man. Skip this sorry effort.

After watching this "film" i was moved to seek out the fiction of

Phillip K. Dick.

So that's a good thing....Dick comes of as an interesting writer

worthy of further study.

The filmmakers, however, have assembled the material within in

such a fey, self-satisfied and fanboy-esque ineptitude that i found

myself, after a time, staring out the window and listening, rather

than watching the amateurishly-assembled and shot interview

footage or (especially) the amazingly ill-conceived "animated"

scene breaks. The people responsible for this have no idea of

film-making or pacing; had they no idea of how the silly, repetitive

"animated" scene breaks would grind everything to a halt? Jesus.

If you want to learn more about Dick, fine...you can get some idea

from the material within. But, as film-making, this is an amateurish

embarrassment.

PKD is a good subject for a documentary, but this piece is hampered by a lack of visual stimulus, a slow-starting narrative, and especially an overload of silly graphics.

The content starts getting intriguing and compelling about half-way through, but it takes some time to get there, a shame, since it seems that there is plenty of material to start off this direction at a much earlier point. In addition to this, there is a sequence of CGI that is repeated again and again, that is painful to watch, but is unrelenting. Although removing it would make this a very short documentary, it is cruel to leave in.

All that said, if you're a fan, you might as well watch it, there is plenty of interest, especially if you thought Jason Koornick was a spazz in grade school.

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.

Poor documentary of this sci-fi great explores houses he used to live in here in the bay area (with the webmasters of PKD websites as guides) and other irrelevant details while failing to really explore what makes his writing unique. But then, if I wanted to know that, I guess I'd pick up one of his books (which I often like to do). This film is for people who are not Philip K. Dick fans, but might have seen "Total Recall" or "Blade Runner" or "Minority Report" (the worst one yet.... or wasn't there something with Gary Senise or whatever his name is? Hopefully that got shelved) and they want to know what this guy's about, but they don't know how to read. For those people and no one else, this film is recommended.

Not recommended for fans of PKD: you won't find out anything you don't already know.

p.s. just reading through my comments from years ago here in 2008 and wanted to point out that I did actually see "Imposter" with Gary Sinise and it was one of the more decent Philip Dick movies relatively speaking. At least Sinise isn't some kind of superman or supermodel, he looks like a "dickian" hero.

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.

They might have done better if they had interviewed some people who actually knew the man. You know, like Time Powers, Jim Blayock, some wives and kids. Instead, they chose some people who read some of his work and might have met him once at a convention.

Furthermore, they're all guessing at what his life and work were about. They really don't know anything. They're like those New Critics who believe that the author's opinion means nothing, and the reader's interpretation is everything.

This so-called documentary is slipshod. It is neither entertaining nor enlightening.

~~~

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.

It's easy to criticize the low budget production value of this documentary, however, that and the quirky, semi-inarticulate interviewees only accentuates the surreal mood that must have pervaded Philip K. Dick's life.

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.

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.

I have read a great deal of Phillip Dick's work and was looking forward to seeing this. Hoo-boy, was THAT a mistake. The audio interviews of Mr. Dick were equalized/engineered so badly as to be unintelligible. The animated character that was shown during the audio interviews of Mr. Dick was at best laughable and at worst disrespectful. Mix the typewriter crap animation (mentioned in other reviews) with the cheesiest synthesizer soundtrack I have ever heard and you have a product that would drive Mother Teresa to walk into an orphanage with a fully loaded street-sweeper and open fire. This pathetic attempt at a documentary is almost criminal. Paraphrasing another reviewer here, it is a shame that one of the greatest writers of the last century gets this kind of treatment. Amen.

It's possible for a low budget fan documentary to be good, even interesting. Ed Wood and Jack Nance fans have made low budget documentaries about their respective topics which, although flawed, still held my interest.

The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick however, is not such a documentary as it fails on almost every level. There is no archival material of Dick and little biographical info. The director appears more obsessed with Dick's visions and drug use rather than his incredible talent.

The only appearance of Dick himself is muffled audio over a typewriter animation. The annoying animation is repeated ad nauseum, quickly becomes very grating and had me reaching for the fast forward on the remote. Even a still photo of Dick with the voiceover would have been better than this pathetic attempt.

The production quality is poor, with shaky camera work, bad sound and music that ranges from jarringly bad techno to lame piano. The interviews are the highlight of the film, but even they are repetitive and many border on pointless (e.g. the librarian giving a tour of the Phillip K Dick collection, which is basically a tour of a bookshelf). Would it have killed the film makers to identify who they are actually interviewing, and what their relationship to Dick was?

Even hardcore Phillip K Dick fans would gain little from watching this. Most people would be hard pressed to watch it at all. The most disappointing aspect is that Dick is one of the seminal writers of his generation, and his legacy deserves much better than this weak effort.

2/10

Do not believe the video or DVD cover of this 80 minute documentary, or infomercial, depending on your point of view. The film makers will whet your appetite with an outline about the famed science fiction author, two of whose awkwardly titled novels became "Total Recall" and "Blade Runner." They will tell you that in 1971, Dick's personal safe was broken into, with personal items taken. They will tell you of his suicide attempt. They will tell you of his vision from God in a pink beam of light. They will tell you that he wrote his own personal philosophy in an 8,000 page manuscript. The video box will triumph its own computer animated effects, giving body to Dick's long ago audio tape recordings, complete with a funky techno soundtrack. They lie. A few science fiction writers and personal friends are trotted out and interviewed at length about the author, who died in 1982. I cannot remember who they were, because they are introduced once and then never referred to by name again. We find out PKD (as he is smarmily referred to throughout) was a drug-abusing paranoid who probably had a stash of heroin stolen out of his safe. His suicide attempt was a half-hearted plea for help. His vision and manuscript were either words and images from God, or the hazy result of a regimen of pain killers and vitamins he was hooked on in the 1970's. The computer animation giving us something to look at as Dick speaks is terribly disappointing. Instead of something along the lines of contemporaries "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" or even "Shrek," we are treated to bargain basement computer animated cartooning. Dick, who is not shown otherwise, is some guy with a beard sitting at a typewriter. Although we hear him laughing and smiling in the audio, the cartoon PKD never changes expression. We also hear an unseen interviewer (the tapes were taken from a 1975 Rolling Stone interview), and the interviewer remains unseen in the cartoon. The funky techno soundtrack consists of a pre-programmed drum machine laying down a dull track as the cartoon PKD puts paper in his typewriter, pretends to type out little facts about his life (referring to PKD in the third person), then fades to black.

The film feels like a second part to a longer work. His early life is never discussed, this begins in 1971 with the break-in. His novel and short story titles are consistently tossed around, yet I did not know them. Dick is heard talking about the insanity of a novel he wrote entitled "The Three Stigmatas of Palmer Eldritch," or is it Eldritch Palmer?, and yet the topic is dropped. We are treated to a hand-held tour of PKD's papers at Cal State- Fullerton for no other reason than to fill out the movie. At one point PKD had a vision about an illness his son had, and this metaphysical diagnosis saved the offspring's life. He was married? He had a son? These unimportant tidbits of biographical information are never elaborated on. At the end of the film, the film makers tell you to go out and read some PKD. I think I will, just because the film makers failed in their attempt to answer any questions about the poor guy, much less provide a personal belief "gospel" he may have had. I cannot recommend this sloppy effort.

I just watched this "documentary". I'm at a loss for words to express anything good about this piece... Which can only be described as a high school quality, steaming pile of sh!t. It pains me to say something so harsh about a documentary, because I usually love documentaries. I don't usually write reviews, but felt it necessary to warn others who might want to learn about Philip K. Dick. This low budget mistake is a dis-service and will turn watchers off to PKD through sheer boredom- which I can only assume is the exact opposite of what the producers had originally intended. Speaking of producers... Mark Steensland and Andy Massagli give credit to themselves no less than 6 TIMES EACH in the opening/closing credits for this festering ball of cat vomit . One of them lists himself as "Camera Director"... Which consists entirely of placing a camera on a tripod with seemingly no regard for lighting, then making sure that camera NEVER moves. Bravo. Unrated and uninteresting, this is an hour and 21 minutes I can't get back. Not only that, but what a horrible loogey to hock on such a great writer as PKD. Thanks a lot. In contrast, the episode of Prophets of Science Fiction dedicated to PKD is excellent! And the camera moves. And Ridley Scott doesn't credit himself 6 times... Although, he deserves it far more than these hacks. Thank you, drive-thru.

I want to make my review a riff on another review, written by Kurt Winter of New Jersey. He starts off by saying, "If I weren't already a PKD fan ... this docuflick would do absolutely nothing for me." And that is the very heart of the problem here. If I did not know who Phil Dick was, I would not have learned it from this film. When was he born? When did he die? Where did he grow up? These things are never stated.

Winter writes, "While it was certainly informative, it could have been edited better, and could have been more broad." I completely agree, especially with the editing. Sometimes the different voices blend together to tell a story, sometimes they seem poorly connected. And the segue from one spot to the next is weak.

More charismatic people to interview, or at least an eloquent narrator, would have helped a great deal. Just showing clips from people who knew Dick does not really tell the story. These people should be used to support the story, not be the backbone. The younger guys with websites seem completely out of place and even if their words are true, they come off as amateur.

But, hey, if you are a Dick fan and want to hear his friends -- including Robert Anton Wilson and the author of "They Live" -- this is worth checking out.

If I weren't already a PKD fan, and have read more than a dozen of his novels, this docuflick would do absolutely nothing for me.

There is only about six or seven different interviewees, with scant biographical information. Cut scenes between interviews are overly long, and an annoying techno soundtrack makes archival audio from PKD inaudible.

While it was certainly informative, it could have been edited better, and could have been more broad.

This is something that diehard PKD fans will enjoy, but don't expect the kind of documentary quality that "Roger and Me" and "Sense of Life" convey. For all its flaws, still worth a look.

I found this documentary great... I don't know what you guys are all moaning about. The cartoon portion of Dick with his actual voice from archive tapes is great. These were just fans, let me see some of you do a better job! I give it a 10 out of 10 because what made Phil K Dick was his mind... and these guys focus on the transcending event of Phil's LIFE! I remember a few years after I watched this i considered finding God. And it was this testimony that led me to reading the Gospel and asking God to be real to me. Nothing happened so I just kept asking for the Holy Spirit, which Phil K Dick received the moment that girl walked up to his door with the Jesus necklace. I kept asking and reading the gospel in secret.. alone, no church, just my room. Three weeks later I was overtaken by a love freight train. I felt like I was either stuck in a permanent dream or dead and in heaven, then the visions of Jesus came, of heaven, of hell and Satan, angels in my room... ITS all real folks... IF SOMEONE wants GOD revealed, just ASK that out loud and ask GOD in Jesus name for the HOLY Spirit, the Living Water... and read the new testament as you remain pure for a time not partaking in the world. Thanks Phil K Dick for helping me see the LIGHT! Thanks filmmakers for making this movie! Thank you God for Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit for those who do not JUDGE the word and give it a chance remaining objective! ANYONE has questions on my visions, how to find God, etc... lemme know: djvalis AT gmail dot com

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 interviews

I would like to have seen more of Dick's associates and family interviewed, and more of the feel of an overall biography.