À l’occasion de la promotion de son nouveau film Win Win (IMDB), Paul Giamatti a eu l’occasion de faire le point sur The Own in Daylight, projet qui mélangerait la biographie de Philip K. Dick avec les brides du roman sur lequel il travaillait au moment de sa mort.

Pour rappel, nous avons eu l’occasion de faire une interview du scénariste Tony Grisoni. J’avais même tenté de faire une petite présentation en 2008. Vous pouvez également lire l’intégralité des nouvelles concernant ce projet en utilisant le tag The Owl in Daylight.

GIAMATTI: Isa, one of his daughters, we were talking to about it. I, I don’t know. You know, it’s a tough thing. They never did a script based on that story which was the last unpublished thing of his that still hasn’t ever been public-. Well, he never wrote it. It only exists in the form of him telling somebody on tape, the plot to it. So, we were gonna use that actually ‘cause he got more and more into that thing of using himself as a character. So that seemed, actually, like a good launching pad for some kind of biopic about him ‘cause a straight biopic about him would be sort of pointless. So, it was always a tough thing to get the script right and that didn’t happen for a while. So, it’s gone in and out and I think they’ve gone back and forth about being willing to do it or not and, you know, it’s, he’s a tricky figure and, you know, for them I think it’s… There’s days when I think they’re very enthusiastic about it and then there’s days when they’re like, “You know what? Maybe we should just…”

Autrement dit, les négociations se poursuivent avec les ayants-droits autour de l’écriture du scénario. Comme il s’agit d’utiliser le nom et le la personne de Dick eux seuls peuvent donner l’autorisation nécessaire !

GIAMATTI: Well, that’s what I kept saying was, you know, the idea is almost more to make a biopic about his mind, or something. You know, and it’s like, so yeah, there were lots of interesting ideas that got thrown around, but always with him as a character in a story that’s more fictionalized, OR, take, like, a very specific period of his life. Like, the whole thing at the end of his life where he had these kinds of, you know, I guess, sort of, schizoid visions about, you know, that we were actually living in ancient Rome still and stuff like that. You know, to either really narrow it down or do something that kind of opened it up and made it, sort of, fictional, in some way. You know? ‘Cause, it just doesn’t seem, like, to have a whole lot of point to just make a biopic about him. He’s too interesting? (Laughs) You know what I mean? It’s like, his mind is too interesting. His life was sad. I don’t know that it would be all that (pauses then laughs) It would just be kind of depressing.

J’aime beaucoup cette approche : parler de Philip K. Dick en mêlant réalité et fiction, le texte et la vie. J’aime encore plus l’ambition derrière le projet.

Et vous ?

Paul Giamatti parle un petit peu plus dans le reste de l’interview, allez y jeter un œil. (Source, ou encore l’audio)

Tags: The Owl in Daylight, Adaptation, Isa Dick