I thought the ARPA-net subplot with former PI "Fritz" would have worked well in the movie had it not been pressed for time. When Fritz tells Doc he could possibly track down where Shasta is through the net, Doc tellingly replies "Do you think it knows where I can score?" This line was reworked to fit in the movie but with the Oujie board idea instead.
shareYeah the scene towards the end about the new technology and spying/surveillance was good.
Also liked the scenes with Doc's parents. The phone call towards the end of the book would have made a good warm and fuzzy scene, but PTA went with the Coy family reunion for that.
Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride
The ambiguity of Prussia's death.
In the movie, Doc shoots him and goes about his night with Bigfoot.
In the book, there's a brief exchange between the both of them, but Doc kills him. He rejects the ride with Bigfoot and walks off, only to be shot at once again by Prussia in the middle of street. Doc hides, and Prussia falls right over, dead.
Doc didn't know if he hallucinated killing him or only wounded him. But shortly afterwards, he sort of realizes (or theorizes) that he killed two people and is expecting the grief to hit him at some point in the future. Then again, that could only be the inner-paranoid in Doc talking.
If you're jivin' me my man, I say to you
Yeah, liked it too but I thought it would be a bit off-kilter to use that part in the movie. I laughed when I read this exchange:
DOC Did I hit you?
PRUSSIA Yeah, you got me.
DOC Fatal I hope?
PRUSSIA Yeah, feels like it.
DOC How can you tell for sure?
PRUSSIA Maybe it'll be on the News at 11, a$$6hole.
Yeah it doesn't match the film's tone. But I do wish it were there, almost in the same way Paul treated Sortilege as a questionable entity.
It happened, but small things make you question whether or not it really did happen
If you're jivin' me my man, I say to you
The first thing that comes to mind are Bigfoot's chocolate bananas in the freezer at the police station .
Also the part when Doc goes to Arrepentimento in the desert and meets Riggs Warbling could be one of the most psychedelic parts of the film (although the film is better without the whole Las Vegas trip).
I was just going to add the Riggs bit - felt like a nice tag to the Bigfoot real estate TV ad.
Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride
Arpanet was without a doubt was the best part left out. Especially considering that in the final pages, Doc meets a wizard kid on the Internet protype who makes him fear he will be obsolete without adapting to this new technology.
The Edward Snowden/NSA story broke in the middle of filming. Had the timing been different, it's not hard to see PTA including it as a reminder that digital surveillance has long been a source of establishment corruption.
The Vegas stuff. When he buys the coffee cup for Bigfoot.
shareThe Vegas stuff in the book felt like it was pretty crucial and I'm stunned it didn't make it into the film.
But what I REALLY had wished had made it into the film was Doc's kiss-off revenge line in response to Crocker Fenway telling him "you people lost respect the first time you paid rent" or whatever it was. In the book, he gets in a terrific line attacking Fenway's greed; it was changed to something else for the movie.