The Adjustment Bureau

Matt Damon, Emily Blunt

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. – Philip K. Dick

There is a thin line between genius and just plain crazy. When it comes to writer Philip K. Dick that line was almost non-existent, and if it was there he was using it as a jump rope. He was so crazy that, if he was a female, I probably would have dated him. Dick was one of the most prolific and important writers of modern science fiction. Hollywood has optioned dozens of his stories. Those that have made it to the big screen have met various degrees of success. Movies like Total Recall, Minority Report and Blade Runner are considered modern classics. Others like Next, Impostor, and Paycheck arrived at the box office stillborn. It is easy to see why Hollywood has fallen in love with Dick. He wrote stories where the protagonist discovers that reality is not what it seems, that it is an artificial construction, that there is an alternative reality beneath perception, and it is often sinister. Yet, it was Philip K. Dick’s own insanity that fed these stories.

Dick’s problems probably date back to his birth. After a difficult pregnancy, his twin sister Jane died a month after their birth. He would irrationally blame himself for her death because his mother told him that due to his constant hunger she did not have enough milk left over for his sister and that she died for malnutrition. Never mind what kind of mother would tell her child such a thing. Maybe it was survivor’s guilt, but Philip, throughout the rest of his life, became obsessed by his sister. With his parents separating when he was six, the youngster suffered from a strange swallowing disorder that prevented him from eating in public, in all probability a psychosomatic illness, and severe vertigo which led him to feel detached from reality. He would never quite trust his senses. Throughout his life he would battle agoraphobia and suffer nervous breakdowns.

Dick also battled the phobia that someone was watching him. This condition was fueled by the fact that as an adult he lived in Berkeley during the 1960s. As the old saying goes, just because you are paranoid, does not mean that someone is not watching you. The FBI kept a constant, ever present eye on the anti-war movement there, and kept a file on persons of interest. By the time his third marriage rolled around, he was hooked on amphetamines and other drugs. Under these prescriptions his perception of reality often became askew. He reported seeing a giant metallic face in the sky for several days. He also deepened his interest in Christianity, attending church constantly. After pulling a gun on his wife and moving on to a fourth one, Nancy, Dick grew close to Episcopal Bishop Jim Pike, a man who was put on trial for heresy for rejecting many of the fundamental beliefs of the faith, including that Jesus did not really die on the cross. After Pike’s son killed himself, Dick wondered what kind of world it is where a bishop’s son would commit suicide. For the writer, it crystallized something he had suspected for a long time. Philip took the Gnostic view that such a world could not have been created by a loving God. Instead a lesser, evil God must have formed this existence. That is the only thing that could explain the pain and heartache of this existence.

When marriage number four fell apart, because of his interaction with the criminal element due to his acquiring drugs, his home became a crash pad for runaways and the less desirable elements of society. Insane with drugs and no structure, Dick claimed his home had been broken into and that military explosives had been used to try to open the file cabinets where he kept the manuscripts for several of his stories and some were missing. While the police concluded that Dick himself had probably done it, the writer believed that he had somehow uncovered a conspiracy in one of his writings and needed to flee the area. He went to Vancouver, tried to kill himself as he had done several times before, and was checked into a drug treatment center called X-Kalay where he could be monitored. As he told one friend, he was seemingly “living out a Philip K. Dick Novel.”

While he had been published quite a bit, the magazines that ran his stuff never gave him much money, so he spent most of his adult life penniless, and even had to eat dog food at point. With no money or home to go back to, Dick moved in with some college students and married for a fifth time. This wife, like the others, gave him a run for his money in the sanity department. Yet, it was routine dental surgery that led him to break further from reality. Under the influence of sodium pentothal, when the nurse came to do a check up visit, she was wearing a Christian fish necklace and the light hit it just right to where Dick believed a laser beam hit him between the eyes. This began several weeks of hallucinations in which he heard voices from the third person in the trinity, whom he called Valis, at other times he believed it to be a Soviet use of esp, or satellites from a god-like creature giving him visions. Any doubts he had that it was all in his head disappeared when he had a vision that his son would die if an undiagnosed hernia was not taken care of. The child had a hernia. For Dick it was clear that the world was just a projection, maybe even just bits of streaming information. He battled fears of brainwashing and tried to kill himself again. Just on the cusp of being famous with the release of the movie Blade Runner in a few months and enjoying all the success that he deserved from his literary output, Philip K. Dick died of a massive heart attack at 53.

I tell Philip K. Dick’s story so that a person can get a sense of the psychosis behind his works and why Hollywood has such a hard time translating his writings to the screen. The Adjustment Bureau is based on a short story called “Adjustment Team,” but other than the word “Adjustment” and Dick’s paranoia that reality is not what it seems and that sinister forces are at work, the short story and movie have nothing to do with each other. In fact, the central character is not even remotely similar.

I have come to believe that, along with Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, and George Clooney, Matt Damon is the smartest man in Hollywood. While guy pal Ben Affleck’s career has fallen of the map due to poor choices when it comes to the roles he plays. For the most part, he usually picks smart, intelligent projects. Here he is getting 20 percent of the first dollar gross. In other words, if the movie does well, Matt does well. It also might explain why the studio decided on a release date that promises almost no crowds. What one finds in this film is a sci-fi movie that turns into a love story.

Damon is David Norris, a young man running for the Senate. He is everything you would ever want in a candidate, except a bit too honest. He loses. As he is trying to come to terms with what happened and writing his concession speech, he meets a beautiful woman named Elise (Emily Blunt). She inspires him to give the perfect speech. It is the kind of rhetoric that people dream of. Not only does he become the frontrunner for the Senate seat that will open in three years but people begin to see him as Presidential timber. One little problem, Elise is gone. Until the next election, he must go back to work at a hedge fund. Yet, there are unseen forces at work and a coffee not spilling sets their plans askew. On a city bus he sees Elise again but is not supposed to. These mystery men’s “Plan” quickly goes haywire and they must make sure the two stay apart. What is going on here? What is going on behind the curtain of reality and why will humanity crumble if it is not stuck to? If you buy into the love story, you will enjoy the movie.

Verdict: A Middle of the Road Philip K. Dick Tale