Source Code / The Cure

Interesting movie yesterday. A few minutes into Source Code I had a funny déjà vu feeling that finally solidified this morning – I wrote basically the same story, or at least the same setup, almost twenty years ago. "The Cure," which was in Terry Carr's Universe 3 (1993) and my collection None So Blind. It's about a guy who keeps being recycled through virtual reality scenarios where he dies; at first he has no idea why it's happening, but slowly he comes to realize that he's in a hospital undergoing some experimental treatment that has gone awry.

In the movie, he goes through the same experience over and over, which would be a lot less expensive to film. In mine, he's in the Yukon for one paragraph, and then in Vietnam, and then in outer space, and so forth. The pattern's similar. I think mine would make a better movie, but it would have a Kubrick budget.

I do recommend Source Code as an exciting movie with an engaging level of structural complexity and some really super acting. Good dialogue and dramatic in-your-face special effects. But I wish they'd done my story instead, and I was lounging in a hammock in Tahiti on my ill-gotten gains.

Joe