Even Ursula K. Le Guin thought her 1971 novel “The Lathe of Heaven” unfilmable. There were simply too many ideas and shifting realities to be communicated in a visual format.
It took PBS heavy hitters, WNET’s David Loxton (executive producer of “Great Performances” and “American Playhouse,” Academy Award winner for “The Times of Harvey Milk”) and WGBH’s Fred Barzyk (whose programs aired on GBH, HBO, ABC, CBS, and NBC, an Emmy and Peabody Award winner), to prove her wrong.
Last night, Roy and I tested ourselves against “The Lathe of Heaven” (1980), a no-budget adaptation that miraculously gets just about everything right. If you’re curious to explore more ambitious speculative fiction than the superhero junk cluttering today’s multiplexes, definitely check this one out. The surviving source material is rather primitive (remastered from two-inch Quadruplex videotape), but the transfer at the link is not bad.
https://archive.org/details/the-lathe-of-heaven-1980
At all costs, avoid the murky upload on YouTube!
Fortunately, the power of the original story is such that the message transcends the medium. You can watch us grapple with some of the themes during last night’s discussion here:
On Sunday, Roy will welcome special guest Shawn Tabor, executive director, writer, and producer at Battlegrounds Productions, who is currently serving as property master and military consultant, among other things, on the web series “Star Trek: New Voyages.” Tabor will talk about his experiences on the show and friendship with William Windom, an actor known to “Star Trek” fans for his role in the original series episode “The Doomsday Machine.”
Make the voyage to the comments section to give “props” to Shawn Tabor, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. The conversation will livestream on Facebook, this Sunday evening at 7:30 EDT!
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