Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
VHS cover for Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
Directed by	Douglas Williams
Produced by	Robert Lantos Stephen J. Roth
Written by	John Varley (short story) Corinne Jacker (teleplay)
Starring	Raúl Juliá Linda Griffiths Wanda Cannon Donald C. Moore Louis Negin Chapelle Jaffe Jackie Burroughs Maury Chaykin
Music by	John Tucker
Cinematography	Barry Bergthorson
Edited by	Rit Wallis
Distributed by	New World Video (VHS and Laserdisc)
Release date	1983 (1983)
Running time	83 min.
Country	United States
Language	English

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is a 1983 television film, starring Raúl Juliá and Linda Griffiths. It was produced by Canada's RSL Productions in Toronto. Financing was provided by WNET and New Jersey Public Television (NJPTV), which had hoped to create an entire science fiction series adapting famous works; but, because of lack of funding, this was the last of three productions after The Lathe of Heaven and Between Time and Timbuktu.

The script was based on a 1976 John Varley short story. The production was not a critical success and was satirized by Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) in 1997, complete with a spoof of a public television pledge drive.

In a future dystopia, Aram Fingal (Raúl Juliá) is a lowly programmer working for Novicorp. Arts are prohibited, and he is caught watching the classic film Casablanca ("scrolling up cinemas") on his workstation. To rehabilitate him, the company transfers his mind ("doppels" him) into a wild baboon (a process which has become routine, with people buying "doppeling vacations"). For a few minutes, Juliá narrates over footage of wild animals, and Fingal begins to enjoy his baboon existence until he finds his peaceful perch in a tree threatened by an elephant shaking it for fruit. He activates an escape clause that is supposed to return his mind to his original body. Unknown to Fingal, however, his body has been accidentally tagged for transfer to separate wing for a sex change; and, with the computer unable to return him to his body, Fingal's mind must be kept active by storing it in Novicorp's central computer – the HX368, which controls everything from finances to the weather – until his body is located. His mind can only be maintained in such a way for a limited time before it is destroyed.