Philip K Dick – The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch
This is a book that completely blew my brain when I read it. I came out absolutely dazed. I read the last section in one evening, and I remember it being so frightening – I've not re-read it since because I don't want to ruin the effect it had on me, but there was something so terrifying about the idea of a God that is just this uncaring malevolent thing. The imagery of how the God manifests itself – just metal teeth and an eye – it's really frightening. It captured that sense of cosmic dread that you get from Lovecraft and all those sorts of books. And because the whole thing's about psychosis and drugs and hallucinations and paranoia and they're all wrapped up in it. It's a wonderful book.

I thought Possum was a really psychedelic film in that very British drab and gritty way.

It was something that was in the script anyway but was played with more in the edit. We decided we could make more of that and make more of the fact that it was Philip's world we were seeing through his eyes. And he's going all over the place. He's revisiting the same places over and over again and slowly he's coming apart. It was a way of making you question his recall and his version of events, so you're seeing something's in there that you'll see a bit more of later on and that will make you think about his frame of mind. Trying to capture a sense of someone's mind in meltdown. I don't think that meltdowns are logical processes.