S1E14 - SEVERED Origins - "Paycheck"
Severed: The Ultimate Severance Podcast
Allen Stare
4.8 • 639 Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2023
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the WGA strike grinds on, I decided to look into some of the things that have been cited by Dan Erickson as inspiration for "Severance." I'm calling this the Severance 'Origins' series. Look for it in the regular 'Severed' Podcast feed.
Philip K. Dick's work is often referenced as heavily influential to 'Severance'...some even think the relief statue in the Lumon Atrium is an homage to PKD. I don't know if I would go that far, but I'm certainly in awe of Mr. Dick's ideas and have been a fan ever since "Bladerunner."
Today we're going to have a look at a story called "Paycheck" by Philip K. Dick. Dan Erickson has mentioned it several times in interviews as being an inspiration for "Severance." It was originally written in 1952. It was then adapted and made into a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster in 2003. It didn't bust any blocks...but it did hang onto some of the more important ideas found in Dick's original story.
Fire up your workstations, Refiners, and let's take a look at the file called "Paycheck."
[WARNING: SPOILERS!! This podcast will spoil KEY PLOT POINTS from the 2003 movie "Paycheck", the 1952 novella "Paycheck" and another movie inspired by a PKD story: 1990's "Total Recall." You have been warned...]
Huge thanks to Adam Scott, star of 'Severance' and host of the Severance Podcast for recording a custom intro for "Severed." Make sure to check out 'The Severance Podcast w/Ben Stiller & Adam Scott" wherever you found this one!
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Needing your own copies of the Lexington Letter and Orientation Booklet? I've got you covered with downloadable PDFs of both documents:
LETTER: LEXINGTONLETTER-TheLetter.pdf
HANDBOOK: LEXINGTONLETTER-MDROrientationHandbook.pdf
You haven't completely watched 'Severance' until you've listened to 'Severed.'
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Severed, the Ultimate Severance Podcast. |
| 0:10.2 | Hey there, MacroData refiners, long time, no elevator ride. |
| 0:18.5 | So good to see you've decided to join me for this special edition |
| 0:21.7 | of Severed, the Ultimate Severance podcast. Since we're in a holding pattern due to the |
| 0:27.0 | Writers Guild of America Strike, WGA Strong, I've been looking for things to keep us all busy. |
| 0:33.9 | Idle hands on the severed floor usually lead to break room visits, and no one wants that. |
| 0:39.4 | Since we might not be seeing a new episode of severance for several months, I decided to look |
| 0:43.7 | into some of the things that influenced Dan Erickson and the severance writing and creative |
| 0:48.8 | team as they were developing the series. This is something I'm calling severed origins. |
| 0:55.4 | One of the properties most often name-checked in interviews is a novella by Philip K. Dick called Paycheck. It was originally |
| 1:00.6 | written in 1952. The premise was updated and made into a 2003 movie starring Ben Affleck, Aaron Eckart, |
| 1:07.1 | Uma Thurman, and Paul Giamatti. I've both read the novella and watched the movie. |
| 1:11.9 | I thought it might be fun and interesting to see what parts of paycheck may have influenced |
| 1:17.0 | what we're seeing in Severance. As usual, huge spoilers for both the movie and the novella. |
| 1:23.7 | If you haven't seen the movie or read the book and you want to be surprised, you'd better stop this podcast right now. |
| 1:30.6 | The movie intertwines many of the original ideas from the novella with director John Wu's outrageous action set pieces. |
| 1:38.0 | Wu is the Hong Kong Wildman who's given a set-action classics as hard target, broken arrow, face off, and Mission Impossible 2. |
| 1:45.9 | Nothing explodes and no doves were released in the novella. |
| 1:50.3 | I guarantee you a lot of stuff explodes in the movie with at least one dove and, of course, motorcycles. |
| 1:56.9 | Not sure why, but John Wu loves to put people on motorcycles. |
| 2:01.5 | So, refiners, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at this very creative, very tortured guy named Philip K. Dick. |
| 2:08.1 | Referred to as PKD by his fans, Dick was a huge force in 20th century sci-fi. |
... |
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