There are immediate differences apparent between this and the 1980 version.

This is a remake, also made as a tv movie. Despite a low-budget, this is a standout work that did highly ambitious things and remained faithful to the book – it is notable for being one SF adaptation of its era that comes with a grand conceptual reach. This was given film treatment as The Lathe of Heaven (1980), a tv movie for the US PBS network starring Bruce Davison as George Orr and Kevin Conway as Dr Faber. The Lathe of Heaven (1971) is one of Ursula Le Guin’s SF novels and concerns a man whose dreams have the ability to change the world. The first two books of the trilogy were badly adapted into the tv mini-series Earthsea (2004) and the later ones more successfully with the anime Tales from Earthsea (2006). Le Guin won a number of Hugo and Nebula Awards for works like The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) set on a planet where the inhabitants change sex the novella The Word for World is Forest (1972, expanded to a novel 1976) about the despoliation by colonists of an alien society whose entire world consists of a forest and The Dispossessed (1974), which offered a depiction of a society based on anarchist principles Her most famous works were the Earthsea fantasy series, consisting of the trilogy A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1972) and later follow-ups, which told the story of an apprentice wizard attending wizarding school. Le Guin (1929-2018) was one of the great sf/fantasy authors. George begins to feel that Haber is using him and appeals to Heather to find a way to stop it. On successive treatments, Haber uses the process to change his professional success and importance. After Haber hypnotises George, he causes the painting in Haber’s office to change when he wakes. George explains to Haber that his dreams are capable of changing the world and that nobody except himself notices when he wakes up. She arranges for the court to drop sentence and George to be turned over to dream specialist Dr Walter Haber.

He explains to his lawyer Heather Lelache that it was because he was trying to stop himself from dreaming. George Orr is found having taken an overdose of medications.

George the lathe of heaven