Adaptations
An adaptation entitled The Lathe of Heaven produced by the public television station WNET, and directed by David Loxton and Fred Barzyk, was released in 1980. It was PBS's first direct-to-TV film production and was produced with a budget of $250,000. Generally faithful to the novel, it stars Bruce Davison as George Orr, Kevin Conway as William Haber, and Margaret Avery as Heather LeLache. Ursula K. Le Guin herself was heavily involved in the production of the 1980 adaptation, and has several times expressed her satisfaction with it.
PBS' rights to rebroadcast the film expired in 1988, and it became the most-requested program in PBS history. Fans were extremely critical of WNET's supposed "warehousing" of the film, but the budgetary barriers to rebroadcast were high: the station needed to pay for and clear rights with all participants in the original program; negotiate a special agreement with the composer of the film's score; and deal with the Beatles recording excerpted in the original soundtrack, "With a Little Help from My Friends", which is an integral plot point in both the novel and the film. A cover version replaces the Beatles' own recording in the home video release.
The home video release is remastered from a video tape of the original broadcast; PBS, thinking the rights issues would dog the production forever, did not save a copy of the production in their archives.
A second adaptation was released in 2002 and retitled Lathe of Heaven. Produced for the A&E Network and directed by Philip Haas, the film starred James Caan, Lukas Haas, and Lisa Bonet. The 2002 adaptation discards a significant portion of the plot, some essential characters, and much of the philosophical underpinnings of the book and the original PBS production. Ursula K. Le Guin disapproved of the A&E production, and stated that she found it "misguided and uninteresting".
A stage adaptation by Edward Einhorn, produced by Untitled Theater Company #61, is scheduled for 2012 at the 3LD Art + Technology Center in New York City.
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