I ask, in my writing, What is real? We are bombarded with pseudo realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives. I distrust their power. It is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.
Philip K. Dick, author of "Paycheck," a short story written in 1953

Inventively mingling the futuristic and the realistic, "Paycheck" creates a world of exotic technology that includes devices that can erase memories, machines that can create the weather and smokeless cigarettes. Blending the genius of celebrated science fiction writer Philip K. Dick's high-concept vision of the world of tomorrow with his own stylised and highly choreographed action, director John Woo creates a very human action thriller that combines stories of both self-discovery and love.

But Woo is not the first director to be captivated by Philip K. Dick's work. Since 1982, the year the author died, Dick's mind-bending fiction has been cinematically re-imagined, providing audiences with a string of films like the critically acclaimed "Blade Runner" and the smash hits "Total Recall" and "Minority Report." Highly prolific, Dick produced 30 novels and 100 short stories between 1952-1982, and those that fell under the umbrella of science fiction, revolutionised the genre by breaking into unfamiliar psychological territory no author had entered before.

In fact, it is Dick's imaginative exploration of memory manipulation and the way in which he describes how misused technology can wreak havoc on humanity that enticed director John Woo to bring "Paycheck" to the screen.

"I'm a big fan of Philip K. Dick, and I especially like the provocative moral issues he raises in 'Paycheck,'" says Woo. "His heroes are very human, very grounded in reality, not superhuman like in a lot of science fiction."

Recognising themes of honour, loyalty, revenge and moral crisis that have preoccupied him as a filmmaker for decades, Woo was eager to bring Dick's short story to life. He especially appreciated the author's protagonist Michael Jennings -- a complex man who is ambiguously drawn into an ethical dilemma, recognises the tragic consequences of his actions and, despite the danger, takes heroic action.

"The script, was extremely smart, interestingly complicated and very well-written," says Ben Affleck, who portrays Jennings. "When you combine high-concept science fiction source material from Philip K. Dick -- whose work has already proven to work well on the screen -- with a master of the visual medium like John Woo directing, you have the makings of something extraordinary."

Describing his character as a brilliant "reverse-engineer," capable of disassembling high-tech equipment and reassembling it into a device with even more advanced technology, Affleck says that while his character may be a genius, he still has an emotional side, as depicted in his relationship with Rachel. 

Affleck says that he relished playing Jennings, a character that undergoes such a dramatic psychological and moral metamorphosis. "He's not a super agent, super spy or a superhuman," observes the actor. "He's an engineer, a man who uses his brains to work backwards out of problems, and now he's got to work backwards to figure out his life." 

Affleck feels the story poses many very interesting, highly ethical questions: "What actually makes up a life well-lived?" he muses. "Is it really important to remember the small details in life? And if we could learn how to control our future, then what would be the point of trying to change anything?"

On the other end of Jennings moral dilemma, and the man who offers him the biggest paycheck of all, is billionaire entrepreneur Jimmy Rethrick, portrayed by Aaron Eckhart, who spins a modern twist into his villain role. 

"Rethrick and Jennings were buddies who wanted to save the world through technology," explains Eckhart. "But along the way Rethrick alters his idealist vision in favor of personal power and ambition. Now he wants to use technology to change the world. Basically, the guy is a real Machiavellian character. He sees 'The Machine' his company has developed as his legacy that will change the entire course of the Earth."

bringing paycheck to the big screen

Director John Woo and producer Terence Chang assembled some of their most trusted collaborators in the making of "Paycheck," including cinematographer Jeffrey L. Kimball, ASC, weapons co-ordinator Rock Galotti and stunt brothers Gregg and Brian Smrz.

But it was producers John Davis and Michael Hackett who had the vision to call on screenwriter Dean Georgaris to bring Philip K. Dick's intricate story to life and John Woo to bring it to the screen.

"It takes a writer with true insight to interpret a multifaceted story like Dick's and make it accessible the way Dean has," says producer Davis. "Dean's cinematic understanding of Dick's short story, coupled with John Woo's extraordinary directing skills, is exactly what a film like this calls for."

Producer Hackett couldn't agree more. "Dean gave us a superb script filled with just the kind of action sequences that Woo could make sensational. Their energy, along with the crew they brought onboard, made the making of this film as exciting as the final project."

Shot entirely in Vancouver, Canada, which doubled for Seattle, the production team made their home base at Vancouver Film Studios for the four-month shoot.

While Woo had worked with Kimball, Galotti and the Smrz brothers before, it was the first time that his team included production designer William Sandell. Having collaborated with a number of distinguished directors in his career, including Wolfgang Petersen on "The Perfect Storm" and recently Peter Weir on "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," Sandell says he was fascinated with how Woo juxtaposed such a tremendous love story into a science fiction framework.

"John has a way of making the smallest things magical," recalls Sandell, who brought a team of illustrators and model builders together to flesh out the vision of the film months in advance of shooting. "We decided to design the production as a stylish mystery, not your average high-concept futuristic design that can have a tendency to look artificial. Instead, we went with a slick, clean look, which we felt better served the sophisticated nature of the story."

Jeffrey L. Kimball, ASC, the cinematographer Woo has worked with since "Mission: Impossible 2," warned Sandell very early on about the necessity for a lot of room in the sets, knowing that the director would want the freedom to move within them.

"Jeffrey explained to me that things would be very active on the set, so I got a little wild, making it possible for each set to break apart like a puzzle box," remembers Sandell. "John wanted to be able to move in and out at will, so the sets turned out to be huge."

Kimball affirms that when working with Woo, the camera is in constant motion, and often while trying to execute the director's vision, it's not easy to keep up with him. "The hard part for me is figuring out how to light when you're looking around at all these different directions at once," says Kimball. "It's always quite a challenge for me, but I definitely enjoy it."

Sandell built many sets on the sound stage, including Rachel's apartment, the FBI offices, the interrogation rooms and Rethrick's office. He also used the sound stage for what he calls his "crowning achievement," the massive biolab set, which also housed Jennings' lab. A superb concrete and steel monolith in perfect harmony with the themes of Philip K. Dick's story, the biolab also delicately incorporated the earthy, human warmth of Jennings and Rachel's developing love, as represented in the contrasting greenery and growing plant life in Rachel's environmental biology lab.

In addition to the lab set, Sandell's personal favourite was the interior of Rachel's apartment. "It's a beautiful little jewel, surrounded by a translight reflecting a local location that had a very sophisticated design feel," recalls Sandell. "We extrapolated from that exterior design and built the inside of Rachel's apartment to reflect the sophistication of all that surrounded it."

Sandell also had the daunting challenge of building a subway system -- in three weeks. Constructed under a huge circus tent, the production designer and his team built 250 running feet of tunnel and track, making the chase scenes both exciting and realistic.

Also in keeping with John Woo's scaled-down vision of futurism, costume designer Erica Edell
Phillips made stylized and sleek costumes rooted in contemporary aesthetics. "John didn't want to make a statement with the wardrobe," says Phillips. "Rather, he wanted the characters' subtle attire to evoke a clean modernism."

Ben Affleck's look in the film was modelled after Cary Grant in Hitchcock's "North by Northwest." Much like Grant, Affleck spends a great deal of his time on screen in the same gray suit. To facilitate that, Phillips made 47 identical grey suits, all custom-tailored in an elegant and classic design, with narrow lapels and pant legs, befitting an engineer with serious business on his mind.

creating amazing action sequences

While all of the chase scenes in "Paycheck" are visually stunning, the most dramatic work for the stunt department was the motorcycle chase through the streets of Vancouver. In that sequence, Jennings finds himself careening through traffic -- at times oncoming -- on a motorcycle with Rachel in tow. Second unit director Brian Smrz and his brother, stunt co-ordinator Gregg Smrz, prepared for the sequence with intricately detailed storyboards.

Helping to intensify the action and bring audiences closer into the movement, Brian Smrz used cutting-edge, remote mechanical camera rigs, such as the descender, a device that allows the camera to drop on a cable from great heights at a quick clip. Traveler rigs, allowing the camera to travel along a cable the length of a city block were also constructed to run parallel to the street and elevated above the rooftops.

choreographing the gun battles

Woo's action sequences are legendary, admired and duplicated the world over, and often they are enhanced with a gun battle. Lightning-paced and frequently described as operatic, the director's gun battles present unparalleled challenges to a weapons co-ordinator. Safety concerns are key, as these battles often involve numerous and varied firearms exploding at the same time, while multiple cameras move through the action for exhaustingly long takes.

Robert "Rock" Galotti has been Woo's weapons specialist for more than 11 years, and it is his job to maintain all firearms. He also trains the actors in their proper usage and is responsible for overall safety.

"People think the guns used in films are not real weapons, that they're replica firearms used only for movies, but that's not true. They are real, albeit modified by professionals to fire blank ammunition, but they function as true weapons," says Galotti. "A load is a blank cartridge -- basically, a round without a projectile -- and, in my personal opinion, blanks are almost as dangerous as a live round because people think they're safe."

Among the arsenal of famed John Woo shots is the classic scene in which two actors face off with a pistol pointed at each other's head. It's a tense moment for a weapons coordinator -- with the stakes so high, there is simply no room for error. "I really like doing close gunfire like that," Galotti concedes. "I like doing things that people say can't be done, but there are ways to do shots that are amazing and look insanely dangerous -- if you know what you're doing, have confidence in your equipment and do the proper testing."

Ironically, for all of the explosive gun action in his films, John Woo has never owned or operated a firearm. "I've asked John numerous times if he'd like to go to the range and experience target shooting, but he always declines," says Galotti. "He's become famous for his action films with the use of firearms and the man simply has no desire to ever fire a weapon."

challenging the art of visual effects

As for the visual effects in the film, John Woo let Gregory L. McMurry, his visual effects supervisor, know from the start that he prefers to rely mainly on actual footage and physical stunt work and not on computer-generated imagery. "John presented me with quite a challenge -- I had to avoid doing visual effects and look for 'natural' solutions," remembers McMurry, who also worked on Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner."

One of the ways in which McMurry accomplished his task was through what he calls "enhanced photography," extreme close-ups of images, generated by the computer, which a traditional camera lens cannot obtain. It is these images -- some vivid and hyper-real, others less defined -- that appear among the visions of the future and memories of the past as viewed in Jennings' mind or projected by the "fortune-telling" machine he has created.

In creating additional imagery for Jennings' memories, McMurry turned to dreams as a source of reference, conducting an informal study of members of the production crew to evaluate the way in which people dream differently. "Strangely enough, some said they have dreams in which they see themselves actually watching themselves," laughs McMurry. "That means that there are actually two of them in their dreams!"

Most importantly, what McMurry discovered from his research is that people dream and recount memories in completely different ways, giving him the leeway to use several different kinds of footage to depict memories.

"Memories don't always have to be shown from an individual's point of view, and often dream memories are impressions and not necessarily literal images," McMurry observes. "That's why in this film we felt at liberty to use both."

An avid fan of Philip K. Dick, McMurry feels that the author touches people in a very personal way, examining not just where the future can go, but also how it affects each one of us individually.

"A lot of science fiction stories deal with grand ideas like going from planet to planet, but Dick's stories are often about who we are and what drives us," says McMurry. "I see 'Paycheck' as a story about not just how knowing the future can affect us, but how we, as individuals, can affect the future."