Hacker Cinema
The Galactic Pot Healer
2010 · Film · short · 9 min
Directed by Shana Moulton
Inspired by the Phillip K. Dick novel by the same name, The Galactic Pot Healer is part of the Whispering Pines series, in which Moulton's hypochondriac alter-ego navigates the enigmatic and magical qualities of her personal belongings. In this episode, Cynthia, dressed flamboyantly in a blue velvet robe with green eyeshadow and pink lipstick, follows messages received from household objects during her daily beauty and medicinal routine. These messages direct her to take her broken pot to a mysterious figure known as the Galactic Pot Healer, who, headless and draped in a pink snuggie, reshapes shattered pots with assembly-line efficiency. When the healer tells Cynthia that her pot is beyond repair, the figure offers a massage and a replacement pot is poked and pinched from the skin of her back. Here, a comic, surreal, and uncanny tale takes the form of a sardonic engagement with modern mysticism and healing practices.
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1 comment on Hacker News
I strongly recommend reading Ubik. To me it is his strongest and most consistently good book.
I used to love The Three Stigmata too, but when I tried to read it again recently I couldn't get in to it either. I do think you have to be in the right mood to savor a Dick book, so maybe I was in the wrong mood that time.
The other first-tier PKD book for me is Martian Time-Slip.
Second-tier PKD books for me are VALIS and Galactic Pot Healer.
Third-tier are Maze of Death, Eye in the Sky, and Divine Invasion (the 2nd in the VALIS trilogy.. didn't like the 3rd in the series, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer at all).
Many of his other books, like Lies, Inc, also have great parts in them, but are kind of inconsistent.
Some of his short stories are excellent. My favorites:
- Beyond Lies the Wub
- Roog
- The Father Thing
- Faith of Our Fathers
I didn't really like A Scanner Darkly, nor Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep and would consider them of minor import had not movies been made of them. Other books in this category are Now Wait for Last Year (made in to Total Recall) and Time Out of Joint (made in to The Truman Show.. though the book is much darker). The movie Minority Report was based on another minor short story of his, as The Terminator might have been partially based on his story Second Variety.
Virtually all of the movies made from his work only bear only a very slight resemblance to the originals, which tends to be a lot darker, a lot less action-filled, and much more thought-provoking than the Hollywood adaptations.