My name is Philip K. Dick. I'm a science fiction writer. I'm the author of such sci-fi classics as Paycheck, The Minority Report, The Adjustment Team, A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and, of course, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. That's the one about implanting false memories, and the mutability of identity.
But being a pulp fiction writer is hard: living from royalty check to royalty check, typing as fast as you can to stay ahead of the landlord, popping psychotropic pills to keep the creative juices flowing. It's not like they're going to make a big budget Hollywood movie adaptation out of one of my genre works. That's where the real money is.
So I scraped together my pathetic royalties, and went to the Rekall Corporation. They promised to make my wildest fantasies come true...
My name is Ahnold Schwarzenegger. I'm an Austrian bodybuilder turned screen actor. I'm the star of such big budget Hollywood movie blockbusters as Predator, True Lies, The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and, of course, Total Recall. That's the one where I have false memories implanted, and wake up a spy on Mars.
Total Recall is based on a short story called We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by an obscure sci-fi hack named Philip K. Dick. Lots of big budget movies have been adapted from Dick's work: Paycheck, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, A Scanner Darkly, etc. Blade Runner, one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time, is based on Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? Dick allegedly died of a stroke four months before Blade Runner opened. He didn't live to see his literary reputation rescued from the trash heap. Sucks to be him.
But even the life of a big Hollywood movie star isn't all it's pumped up to be. By the end of the 1990's, my career was sagging. I was starring in weak vehicles like The Last Action Hero, Jingle All The Way, and Batman and Robin, playing second fiddle to a Batman with latex nipples. Director Joel Schumacher is such a girly man.
But I'll be back. I scraped together my huge royalties, and went to the Rekall Corporation. They promised to make my wildest fantasies come true...
My name is Ahnold Kennedy. I'm the Governor of the state of California. I've married into a politically powerful clan. I'm a strong voice of moderation in Republican circles. There's even talk of amending the Constitution so I can run for President of the United States some day. America is a great country.
But by the end of the 2000s, California was deflated worse than a bodybuilder off of steroids. Maria said Hasta la vista, baby when she discovered I had put a brötchen in the housekeeper's Deutsch oven. The Republican party had shifted so far to the right that it made Hitler look moderate. Even my planned animated TV series, The Governator, was cancelled. All I have to look forward to are puny cameos in geriatric ensemble pieces like The Expendables and The Expendables 2.
But I'll be back. I scraped together what I had left from the divorce settlement, and went to the Rekall Corporation. They promised to make my wildest fantasies come true...
My name is Colin Farrell. I'm an Irish-born screen actor. I'm currently starring in a remake of Total Recall. Yeah, the Arnold Schwarzenegger picture from the 1990s. I think it's based on some short story by some wanker named Dick. Just like Adrien Brody starred in that Predators sequel last year. I'm hoping to get big like Arnie.
Fat bleedin' chance. It's being released in the dog days of August. You know what that means: the producers don't expect it to be able to compete with the real blockbusters of summer--your Dark Knight, your Spider-Man, your Avengers. Just my luck, the one superhero movie I manage to appear in, and it turns out to be Daredevil.
The life of a B-list Hollywood actor is, well, B-list. Especially for a sensitive bloke such as myself. What I really want to be is a writer; we Irish chaps are natural-born story tellers. So I scraped together my modest royalties, and went to the Rekall Corporation. They promised to make my wildest fantasies come true...
My name is Philip K. Dick. I'm a science fiction writer....