Another upcoming cinematic success for Philip K. Dick
He is, of course, dead. And he never made a whole lot of money. But now Dick is a “brand image,” says his agent, Russell Galen in this story from Wired, “The Second Coming of Philip K. Dick.”
“It may be for the best that Dick’s career in Hollywood took off only after his death, because he’d certainly have had a hard time handling it in life. Psychologically, the guy was a mess. His fear of going out in public was so bad it’s difficult to imagine him taking a meeting at a film studio. According to Isa Dick-Hackett, one of three children he produced in five marriages, he couldn’t even make good on a promise to take her to Disneyland when she was little. ‘Twenty or thirty minutes into it, he started to complain of back pain and had to leave,’ she says. ‘Later, I realized the crowds just freaked him out.’ ”
My connection? Jay Kinney deeply admired Dick’s work. Jay started Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions. I wrote for Gnosis almost from Day One, and I regard that connection as one of my big breaks as a writer.