WELT AM DRAH

'''WELT AM DRAHT (trans. as WORLD ON WIRES, WORLD ON A WIRE [WORLD ON THE WIRE]). Rainer Werner Fassbinder, dir.''' Fassbinder, Fritz Müller-Scherz, script. West German TV, 1974. IMDb gives running time as "205 (2 parts)" and notes no source novel. Cinefantastique preview of THE 13TH FLOOR quotes Josef Rusnak as saying the source of WAD was "this novel out of the 60's called Simulcrum [sic] 3. It features a most convincing story outline to the subject of VR. In it, you have a hero who realizes on his search during a murder mystery that his own world is a computer generated simulation. . . . This guy wrote the novel in 1963, and in it there's a computer simulation where they call their characters 'ID' units.' All the ID units were stored in memory drums"—and Fassbinder is said to have attempted "to reproduce the whole novel" (19). We were unable to find Sumulcrum 3 or Simulacrum 3 in the on-line World Catalog, nor a synopsis of WAD in the general film histories we consulted.