THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 27, 1995 TAG: 9505260059
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
THEY CALL HIM ``the father of cyberpunk.''
For 10 years now, this Virginia native has been writing about computers and the way they will change the world forever. He predicted an impersonal world of microchips and information highways.
After many thwarted attempts, Hollywood has finally caught up with William Gibson's brand of computer-chip scariness. ``Johnny Mnemonic,'' a $20 million production starring Keanu Reeves, comes to the nation's screens this week. Its wacko cast and way-out plot presents a future that is as bleak as it is bizarre.
``In many ways, `Johnny Mnemonic' is more current now than when I wrote it,'' William Gibson said, starring from behind thinly-rimmed spectacles as he talked about his screenplay, based on one of his short stories. ``Yes, I wrote about `the web' 10 years ago and, yes, I did think it would change all life and that these changes would be irrevocable.''
With a sad look into space, he added, ``I never thought I would be seen as the spokesperson for the phenomenon.
``I'm afraid I don't participate. I don't even have a modem or any kind of equipment. I really have no desire to get `on line' with all America.''
But ``Johnny Mnemonic'' is the product of a mind that must work a little differently. It is set in the 21st century when information is the ultimate commodity. Cyberspace is an everyday reality. Criminal hackers thrive to the point that special ``messengers'' are needed to carry highly personal information embedded in their brains.
Johnny (Keanu Reeves, in his first movie role since ``Speed'') agrees to deliver information that could cure a major international disease - for a price. In order to fill his brain with the data, he had to erase most of his own memories. He wants his identity back, and his memory, but he has to find the secret access-code that allows him to download his mind or he'll die.
We aren't making this up. Gibson did.
Johnny is chased by Japanese gangsters (led by big Japanese star Takeshi) and a ruthless bounty hunter known as Street Preacher (Dolph Lundgren, who once gave Rocky a rough time). To even things out, Johnny is helped by Jane (Dina Meyer), his ``street samurai'' bodyguard; Spider (punk-rocker Henry Rollins), a renegade doctor; and The LoTeks, led by J-Bone (rapper Ice-T).
And then there's a mechanical dolphin who thrives on heroin and specializes in breaking codes.
Add a rock-music score and you have one of the more way-out movies to come along in a month of on-line cyber time. It's directed by Robert Longo, one of America's most provocative artists, who has never made a movie before now.
Gibson is thrilled by the whole thing. ``When I walked on that set in Montreal and saw what they had created, especially the setting for Heaven, the center of the resistance leaders, I almost cried. To see something that you had visualized just in your mind be brought to life in this way was amazing to me. It was like walking into a world I had created, but never expected to see.''
Hollywood has been flirting with Gibson's cyber-inspired science fiction since 1984, when his first novel, ``Neuromancer,'' swept the major sci-fi awards. All four of his novels and his short-story collec-tion have been optioned for movies.
Gibson's most recent novel ``Virtual Light'' was a best seller in hardcover. He is credited with inventing the concept and coining the term ``cyberspace'' and has also been cited as a visionary who predicted and influenced the technology of virtual reality.
His fame, though, didn't get movies made. ``Robert and I had in mind making a little art house movie, for about $1 million, out of `Johnny Mnemonic,' '' he said. ``We couldn't get anyone to give us $1 million. Then, people told us that `You're stupid. Ask for $20 million and they'll listen.' They did.''
William Gibson was born in Conway, S.C., and raised in Wytheville, Va., where, at age 15, he began reading every science-fiction novel he could find.
He felt that he was always cut out to be some kind of artist, but maintains ``I was more pro-slacker than a hippie. In my late 20s, all my friends were becoming lawyers. I had some feeling of shame, so I felt that if I was going to say I was a writer, I had to write something. So I tried writing science-fiction.
``I never saw myself as any kind of forecaster. I was more exploratory. What I was trying to find was a way of exposing contemporary reality. I don't think people really want to know the future. . . .''
Gibson went to Canada, partially to escape the draft, but he maintains that he always wrote the draft board and told them where he was.
``I think I wasn't drafted just because someone didn't want to do all the paperwork,'' he said. Married to actress Barbara Sukowa, who is in the movie, he has lived in Vancouver for the past decade.
His written world is bleaker than the movie version which, at the least, ends with a hint of hope.
``I think that we are ruled by a chasm of chaos, largely brought about by television,'' he said. ``We face absolute dread or absolute ecstasy, depending on the moment. We are bombarded with deranging and downbeat facts about which we can do nothing. Then the commercial comes on, and it saves us. We know we can cope, after all. Commercials suggest that we do, after all, have some power. Someone still wants us to buy.''
He is not worried about computers leading to increasing isolation.
``When the telephone was invented,'' he said, ``they all predicted it would be the end of conversation. They predict it again. But the advent of global communication via the computer is not the saddest thing that could happen. People shouldn't sit at the keyboard CONSTANTLY but at least, with it, they have SOMETHING. It's, hopefully, just for contact. Perhaps people will still have social contact. In any case, I'm not as paranoid about the use of the net as I am, say, about the use of fertilizer.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Columbia/Tristar
Keanu Reeves...
by CNB