QWhat happened to Luckman?
AThis is not revealed in either the movie or the book, and is left to the viewer's imagination.
QWhat's the deal with Barris's $3-for-a-gram-of-cocaine aerosol trick?
ACocaine is an excellent topical anesthetic, and there is an urban legend dating from the 1960s that certain pain medications had it as an active ingredient. One such product (allegedly) was Solarcaine (the sun-burn stuff.)Barris claimed that from a $3 bottle of "Abrasocaine" (in the book it was Solarcaine) he could get extract a gram of pure cocaine. His technique was to spray the aerosol into a balloon and quick-freeze it, "causing the cocaine to rise to the surface because they are lighter than the oils." Presumably he would break the balloon and scrape the coke off the top from the frozen mass inside.No, it won't work... not the least among reasons being there's no cocaine there to begin with.The scene serves the purpose of showing Barris as a know-it-all who talks large but ultimately fails at every project. Of course, it's always possible he knew it wouldn't work anyway, and was just playing with Freck's mind.
QWhat does the title "A Scanner Darkly" mean?
AThe title is a play off a Bible passage: "For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12). In the book and movie, a "scanner" is a surveillance device, and the main character (who is under surveilance) gives the following monologue near the end, when his life is collapsing:
What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. I'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too.
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