Total Recall is one of those movies whose spectacle convinced critics it was dumber than it was. It’s a brash and loud film, with more humor than most action fans might be used to, and for the time extraordinarily violent. It’s a constant roller coaster ride, but the coaster is riding through interesting ideas, not just action set pieces.
Buy Total Recall: The Official Story of the FilmQuaid (Schwarzenegger) is an everyman, and he’s bored. That’s despite being married to and getting to bang early ’90s Sharon Stone every night. He wants to go to Mars. Enter Rekall, a memory implantation service, who will give him memories of a trip to Mars as real as the real thing. But when the procedure begins, Quaid freaks out… and learns he’s not Quaid. That’s a personality imposed on him because he has been to Mars. He is, in fact, a corporate secret agent who might have defected to the anti-corporate Martian Rebellion.
Or that might be an implanted memory, and he’s just the boring construction worker with delusions.
What makes Total Recall special as a film is that it keeps that sense of ambiguity in the forefront. Which is the illusion, Quaid, or the action-movie violence and intrigue he finds himself in? It gives the film spectacular license to go over the top in thrills and violence because it all might be a dream, anyway.
This cinematic vision took an exceedingly long time to get to the silver screen. The most interesting parts of Simon Braund’s particularly good Total Recall: The Official Story of the Film detail the circuitous route the story took to get there.
Its starts with Philip K. Dick. Famous now for being the source of Blade Runner and for writing books under the influence of LSD, for a long time he was a serious writer struggling under the impetus of being just a genre hack. He wrote 44 novels and over a hundred short stories, but never got the respect he sought in his lifetime. One of those stories was “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”. Ronald Shusett read it, loved it, and brought it to his roommate and writing partner Dan O’Bannon. They wrote Alien together. O’Bannon, a longtime sci-fi fan, was already familiar with the story, and agreed it would make a great film.
That seems to be all they agreed on, because the screenwriting process stalled out time and again, and went through several hands. A David Cronenberg version made it through maybe a dozen drafts. That movie even got into pre-production, with sets being built, before the plug was pulled.
Arnold Schwarzenegger eventually got wind of the story and became fascinated with it. He also wanted to work with Paul Verhoeven, fresh off Robocop. So, he made the connections happen. All the old drafts of the screenplay were delivered to Verhoeven (5,000 pages of material), and he picked out what he liked best.
This book details the process of making the movie, which had the usual ups and downs. This is not exactly a warts-and-all, behind-the-scenes story (it is The Official Story, after all) but Braund doesn’t sugarcoat the difficulties that went into making the film in Mexico. Everyone loves Arnold, of course. There are hints that maybe Sharon Stone wasn’t so easy to work with. But overall, it’s a detailed story of the film’s journey from conception to release.
It’s also lavishly illustrated with stills, behind-the-scenes photos, and concept art, all in full color. It’s a beautifully produced book that offers fascinating insight into the creation of a pretty weird action thriller that has more than stood the test of time.
Total Recall: The Official Story of the Film by Simon Braund has been published by Titan Books.
