Altered States

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"Altered state" redirects here. For altered states of consciousness, see Altered state of consciousness.

Altered States
DVD cover art
Directed by	Ken Russell
Produced by	Howard Gottfried
Written by	Paddy Chayefsky (as Sidney Aaron)
Starring	William Hurt
Music by	John Corigliano
Cinematography	Jordan S. Cronenweth
Editing by	Eric Jenkins
Distributed by	Warner Brothers
Release date(s)	1980
Running time	102 minutes
Country	USA
Language	English
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IMDb profile

Altered States is the name of both a novel (ISBN 0-06-010727-8) and a film adaptation of that novel, both written by Paddy Chayefsky. It was the only novel that Chayefsky ever wrote, and his final film. Both novel and film are based on Dr. John C. Lilly's sensory deprivation research conducted in isolation tanks and sometimes under the influence of drugs like LSD. Although Chayefsky never contacted Lilly directly, Lilly liked the film version, and noted the following in an Omni magazine interview published in January 1983:

The scene in which the scientist becomes cosmic energy and his wife grabs him and brings him back to human form is straight out of my Dyadic Cyclone (1976, ISBN 0-671-22218-X).

As for the scientist's regression into an ape-like being, the late Dr. Craig Enright, who started me on K (ketamine) while taking a trip with me here by the isolation tank, suddenly "became" a chimp, jumping up and down and hollering for twenty-five minutes. Watching him, I was frightened. I asked him later, "Where the hell were you?" He said, "I became a pre-hominid, and I was in a tree. A leopard was trying to get me. So I was trying to scare him away."

The manuscript of The Scientist (1978 ISBN 0-397-01274-8, updated in 1988 and reissued in 1996, ISBN 0-914171-72-0) was in the hands of Bantam, the publishers. The head of Bantam called and said, "Paddy Chayefsky would like to read your manuscript. Will you give him your permission? I said, "Only if he calls me and asks permission." He didn't call. But he probably read the manuscript.

Some of the events portrayed in this film seem to be based on the studies of the French surrealist and author Antonin Artaud; the protagonist visits a tribe of isolated Mexican Indians and participates in their sacred ritual involving local hallucinogens for the purpose of investigating the common religious experience. Much of the setting of this part of the film also appears to be based on Artaud's description of the natural, although seemingly man-made landscape of the Indians; in the movie, this was represented by huge stone mushrooms.

The film, released in 1980, was directed by Ken Russell, after Arthur Penn resigned in a dispute with Chayefsky. It starred William Hurt (in his screen debut), Blair Brown, Charles Haid and Bob Balaban. It was also the film debut of Drew Barrymore. As in the novel, the film concerns a university scientist named Dr. Edward Jessup (Hurt) obsessed with discovering the origin and meaning of life through direct observation. He undergoes a series of bizarre transformations induced by his sensory-deprivation experiments. Each time the scientist transforms, he genetically regresses to an evolutionarily earlier form of life. At one stage the scientist becomes a wild, neanderthal-like humanoid, and later a sort of giant amoeba. Ultimately the doctor devolves into a swirling primordial mass, only to be rescued by his wife and restored to his humanity. Classical composer John Corigliano was Oscar-nominated for the score.