Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, let's see what
Speaker 1: are we talking about this week? Oh, this is going
Speaker 1: to be our episode from nine to seventeen, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: in which we discussed the really excellent, quite fun nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine film Time After Time, in which Jack the
Speaker 1: Ripper steals HG. Wells time machine and travels to modern
Speaker 1: day San Francisco. This one is kind of a classic,
Speaker 1: kind of a minor classic. A lot of people love
Speaker 1: this film. We really enjoyed it. Hope you enjoy our
Speaker 1: discussion of it. Let's go.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamp and.
Speaker 3: This is Joe McCormick, and it is Time Travel o'clock
Speaker 3: on Weird House Cinema. Today's movie selection is the nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy nine and romantic sci fi adventure Time After Time
Speaker 3: by the American writer and filmmaker Nicholas Meyer. So this
Speaker 3: is a movie that I had never seen until this week,
Speaker 3: and I came across it by way of a plot
Speaker 3: description in some article I was reading somewhere. I don't
Speaker 3: even remember what it was now, but I discovered in
Speaker 3: this article that there was allegedly a time travel adventure
Speaker 3: movie in which the English writer HG. Wells, real historical
Speaker 3: figure author of the novel The Time Machine, played in
Speaker 3: this movie by Malcolm McDowell, must use a real time
Speaker 3: machine to chase Jack the Ripper played by a smooth
Speaker 3: and sadistic David Warner, through space and time in this
Speaker 3: time machine to prevent the Ripper from slashing twentieth century
Speaker 3: disco dancers. And the premise was it sounded so bonkers
Speaker 3: that I immediately thought this had to be a good
Speaker 3: option for weird House. And then the really surprising thing
Speaker 3: was the more I read about it, the more it
Speaker 3: seemed that most critics really liked this movie, even though
Speaker 3: I had somehow never really heard of it, or if
Speaker 3: i'd heard about it, it didn't make enough of an impression
Speaker 3: that I remembered it. So I saw this out, and
Speaker 3: I got to say I was really impressed. Now, on
Speaker 3: the downside, for weird House context, at least, I will
Speaker 3: say this movie doesn't actually when you're watching it, feel
Speaker 3: quite as weird in its execution as a straight read
Speaker 3: on the premise would lead you to assume. But nevertheless,
Speaker 3: I think this is mostly just a really great movie,
Speaker 3: and it opens up all kinds of interesting, bigger questions
Speaker 3: about the themes and ambitions of time travel stories and
Speaker 3: science fiction in general.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was excited to view this film again, especially
Speaker 1: after watching Spooky's last week, in part because I was
Speaker 1: excited because you had never seen it, and so that
Speaker 1: would make it fresh. It's a film that I had
Speaker 1: not seen in a long time. I remember watching it
Speaker 1: on TV. I don't know if they used to show
Speaker 1: it on like TNT or maybe came on A and
Speaker 1: E or something back in the day, but I remember
Speaker 1: watching it on television, and oh it does. It holds
Speaker 1: up so well. I've spoken to various people and folks
Speaker 1: who have seen this movie. They tend to like it.
Speaker 1: I haven't met anybody who hated it. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like an Orange Julius. I guess, as long as you
Speaker 1: just don't really hate orange juice or really hate you know,
Speaker 1: malls or malls or something. I don't know. It's a
Speaker 1: terrible analogy, but I don't know. There's something about about
Speaker 1: this film just seems to sit well with most people.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Everything's very well calibrated, like it's sci fi,
Speaker 1: but it's not so sci fi that it turns off
Speaker 1: people that would be opposed to say rampaging more locks,
Speaker 1: And yet people like us who might say, why are
Speaker 1: there no more locks in this picture? It's still it's
Speaker 1: still so captivating and well acted and well put together
Speaker 1: that I ultimately can't argue too much about the results.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. I mean I would have, of course
Speaker 3: enjoyed it if it went much weirder and wrapped in
Speaker 3: more HG. Wells, lower, had more locks and all kinds
Speaker 3: of stuff like that. It doesn't, And in fact, the
Speaker 3: film is almost the opposite of that. I would say,
Speaker 3: for a science fiction movie involving one of the most
Speaker 3: notorious sadistic serial killers in history, this is an extremely
Speaker 3: cozy feeling movie. Would you agree?
Speaker 1: I would agree. I believe this was a PG, but
Speaker 1: it was a nineteen seventy nine PG, so I do
Speaker 1: not recommend watching this with your young children. Right, there
Speaker 1: is blood, and there's some mature themes that are explored,
Speaker 1: But even those mature themes, which are just part of
Speaker 1: the tapestry you're invoking by bringing in a character like
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper, they are handled in a very light
Speaker 1: and ultimately kind of comforting way, I guess.
Speaker 3: And I think it also helps that you know it's funny.
Speaker 3: I want to criticize myself because I think in a
Speaker 3: previous episode of Weird House Cinema, I was trying to
Speaker 3: list actors that just have that evil look, that unfortunately
Speaker 3: just have faces where maybe they can't overcome the fact
Speaker 3: that they look sadistic and sinister, and one of the
Speaker 3: actors I singled out in this regard is Malcolm McDowell.
Speaker 3: I'm like, it's going to be hard to have Malcolm
Speaker 3: McDowell as a hero because he just looks like an
Speaker 3: evil person. That's not a nice thing to say, but
Speaker 3: for some reason he does. And yet I hadn't seen
Speaker 3: this movie at the time. In this movie, he's so sweet.
Speaker 1: He is, He's very lovable in this he's a Victorian
Speaker 1: teddy bear, and he also feels smaller than usual, probably
Speaker 1: by design the way they were shooting him and maybe
Speaker 1: leaning into his actual hide a little bit instead of
Speaker 1: putting him in an apple box or something. It's also
Speaker 1: fascinating that this was the film that followed up The
Speaker 1: Notorious Caligula, in which he very much played a villain
Speaker 1: and a nasty character in a nasty film, and apparently
Speaker 1: that was part of it. He's like, I really don't
Speaker 1: want to play a villain for once. Can I play
Speaker 1: the hero of a picture? And yeah, he's great in this.
Speaker 3: It's almost hard to imagine the gap that has crossed
Speaker 3: going from Caligula to this sweet romantic time travel adventure,
Speaker 3: you know, love story galloping across time. Caligula is it's
Speaker 3: It's a movie that I have tried to watch for
Speaker 3: badness sake years ago with some friends and I couldn't
Speaker 3: make it through the movie. It is just so repulsive
Speaker 3: and like it is the one of the ugliest movies
Speaker 3: I've ever seen. The colors hurt the eyes. It's just
Speaker 3: relentless depressing violence and depravity. There's one part that's, you know,
Speaker 3: it would have been funny in a different movie because
Speaker 3: it's so ridiculous. There's a part where like I think
Speaker 3: Malcolm McDowell is like watching a gigantic lawnmower in ancient Rome,
Speaker 3: just like cut off the heads of people who were
Speaker 3: buried up to their necks. But the movie is like
Speaker 3: so depressing, Like even that wasn't funny, so it's just yeah,
Speaker 3: just awful. And then yeah, going for that to this,
Speaker 3: which is just this spry, sprightly, beautiful time travel adventure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's quite quite a leape. But yeah, he's
Speaker 1: very good in this. And I will say that as
Speaker 1: Malcolm McDowell aged, I feel like he kind of aged
Speaker 1: into that face even more to where it's harder to
Speaker 1: imagine older Malcolm McDowell. I'm playing a likable character, a
Speaker 1: non villain. But I say that he's been in so
Speaker 1: many films. I'm sure he pops up later on playing
Speaker 1: like a kind grandfatherly character. But also I think he
Speaker 1: became increasingly type cast as he got older too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's still active. We'll get into his BioPen in
Speaker 1: a bit. But yeah, he's still active, so there's still time.
Speaker 3: Okay, how about a movie where Malcolm McDowell plays Santa Claus.
Speaker 3: He could go to Kurt Russell route. You know, I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess the part of the thing is if you
Speaker 1: are going to pay out and get Malcolm McDowell to
Speaker 1: play Santa Claus in your film, then clearly you want
Speaker 1: villainous Santa Claus, Like, wonder, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: You know? At this point is one of the Yeah,
Speaker 3: one of those Santa Claus is the monster movies, like
Speaker 3: the one with Goldberg, remember that one?
Speaker 1: I know of it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe we should give a little historical context for
Speaker 3: the premise of this movie, which is, once again HG.
Speaker 3: Wells must pursue Jack the Ripper through time in a
Speaker 3: time machine to stop him from ripping the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's let it rip here. So first of all,
Speaker 1: what do you need to know about HG. Wells and
Speaker 1: the time Machine to enjoy this film? Well, not a lot,
Speaker 1: but here are the basics. Time Machine is an excellent
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety five novel by English writer HG. Wells, who
Speaker 1: lived eighteen sixty six through nineteen forty five. It's a
Speaker 1: short read, widely available, and in my opinion, it holds
Speaker 1: up really well. It's a very readable text today.
Speaker 3: One thing that's worth noting is that the time this
Speaker 3: movie is set before HG. Wells wrote the novel, So
Speaker 3: he wrote the novel in eighteen ninety five. I don't
Speaker 3: remember exactly the year, but I think this is set
Speaker 3: in eighteen ninety one one or ninety three, something like that.
Speaker 3: Or the beginning is before they travel through.
Speaker 1: Time eighteen eighty eight. I believe, oh okay, that would
Speaker 1: be that would be prime ripping time, right there?
Speaker 3: Oh okay, all right.
Speaker 1: At any rate, this is not the absolute first time
Speaker 1: travel yarn. It's an interesting discussion to get in. I
Speaker 1: think we've talked about this in the show when he's
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, like, who was the first person
Speaker 1: to deal with time travel? But it was the first
Speaker 1: time travel story to gain just a huge degree of popularity,
Speaker 1: and Wells actually coined the term time machine. Now, to
Speaker 1: be clear, the character in the book is just the
Speaker 1: time traveler and is not Wells himself.
Speaker 3: Wells written from a first person perspective.
Speaker 1: It is but I don't think we're really supposed to
Speaker 1: assume that Wells made a time machine.
Speaker 3: No, no, no no.
Speaker 1: This film, however, takes a different approach. Wells was a futurist,
Speaker 1: though in real life he was not an inventor outside
Speaker 1: of the invention of sci fi concepts and the like
Speaker 1: and the exploration of new ideas. The book has been
Speaker 1: adapted a few different times, the famous nineteen sixty George
Speaker 1: Powe adaptation. This one has a really iconic look for
Speaker 1: the time machine wonderful morlock designs. Like when you think morlocks,
Speaker 1: these are the more locks you probably picture. But there
Speaker 1: was also a nineteen seventy eight TV movie and a
Speaker 1: two thousand and two remake that I've seen, and as
Speaker 1: I remember it being alright. But the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: it is that it was directed by Wells's great grandson,
Speaker 1: Simon Wells.
Speaker 3: Really that's interesting. Yeah, that's worth seeing it on its own.
Speaker 3: Even if it came out in two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: which man movies from two thousand and two, it is
Speaker 3: hard to escape that early two thousand's look. It just
Speaker 3: kind of bleeds into everything. I watched the movie from
Speaker 3: two thousand and two the other day. It was a
Speaker 3: really bad but enjoyable Clint Eastwood detective movie from two
Speaker 3: thousand and two called blood Work. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you've seen that one.
Speaker 1: I've not seen that one.
Speaker 3: Well, so, I mean absolute like hack detective story, hilarious
Speaker 3: but also quite fun, and it's got that look it
Speaker 3: just like everything from two thousand and two has this
Speaker 3: I don't know, this some feature of like the contrast
Speaker 3: and the colors and everything just everything looks kind of
Speaker 3: slick and awful.
Speaker 1: Well, it's been a while since I've saw the two
Speaker 1: thousand and two Time Machine, but I remember, I remember
Speaker 1: being entertained by it, and I remember that it had
Speaker 1: Jeremy Irons as a Morlock in it.
Speaker 3: So oh, good, good choice there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember the Morlocks look pretty good. But then again,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm generally in on the idea of moralo.
Speaker 1: It's hard to break more locks for me.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: But one thing that was true about the historical figure HG.
Speaker 3: Wells that is also true of the character in the
Speaker 3: movie is that he was known as something of a
Speaker 3: kind of progressive utopian socialists and a futurist, so he
Speaker 3: had a lot of like visions of the future that
Speaker 3: involved progressive political ideals. I'm not sure if all of
Speaker 3: the exact things stated by the character in the film
Speaker 3: would be real things that HG. Wells thought or would
Speaker 3: have said, but it's at least sort of in the ballpark.
Speaker 1: Right And then yeah, Ultimately, the film is largely about
Speaker 1: the idea that if Wells represents optimism for the future
Speaker 1: coming out of the Victorian Age, and ultimately the optimism
Speaker 1: about what was possible in the Victorian Age in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen hundreds. Then our other figure represents the worst
Speaker 1: of that time period, the notorious character of Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 1: So what do you need to know about Jack the Ripper? Okay,
Speaker 1: here are the basics. So in many ways this is
Speaker 1: the original true crime sensation and a topic of continued
Speaker 1: and largely fruitless intrigue today. Also referred to as a
Speaker 1: leather Apron, this was an unidentified serial killer active in
Speaker 1: London's Whitechapel district around eighteen eighty eight. He targeted under
Speaker 1: privileged members of society, generally prostitutes, and was known for
Speaker 1: the modus operandi of slicing first the throat then the abdomen,
Speaker 1: as well as his taunting letters to the media.
Speaker 3: Now, one note I do have there is that because
Speaker 3: this movie set me off on a reading spree where
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, I need to know things about
Speaker 3: Jack the Ripper. The letters are one of the most
Speaker 3: famous things about him, though I think there is serious
Speaker 3: doubt about the authenticity of all of the letters that
Speaker 3: I think there's only one letter that historians take seriously
Speaker 3: at all all as possibly being from the killer himself,
Speaker 3: and this is the so called from Hell letter because
Speaker 3: and I think the reason this is the only one
Speaker 3: that's really taken seriously is that it was accompanied by
Speaker 3: a jar containing a piece of actual human kidney, allegedly
Speaker 3: taken from one of the victims, though it's not possible
Speaker 3: to confirm whether it actually came from a victim or not.
Speaker 3: They didn't have like DNA testing at the time, obviously,
Speaker 3: and so it could have been obtained from a medical
Speaker 3: college or cadaver or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe the police at the time they suspected
Speaker 1: or one of their theories was that that was the
Speaker 1: origin of the organs. It came from some sort of
Speaker 1: a cadaver situation as opposed to a murdered victim.
Speaker 3: And one of the weird things about it is that
Speaker 3: the from Hell letter, I will say, just as like
Speaker 3: a literary appraisal of the interest contained in these letters,
Speaker 3: it's one of the less interesting ones. Like the really
Speaker 3: interesting letters are the ones that are pretty much yeah,
Speaker 3: known to be hoaxes that were sent possibly by like
Speaker 3: journalists trying to gin up interest in the story further
Speaker 3: to sell more newspapers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, those are some of the more entertaining letters.
Speaker 1: But also and you can see why they would have
Speaker 1: been fabricated just to sort of drum up this this
Speaker 1: this paranoi and excitement about the murders they have that
Speaker 1: one of them has that line, I shan't stop ripping.
Speaker 3: Right till I am good and buckled or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, you know, there's a high probability that
Speaker 1: he didn't write any of these letters, but they are
Speaker 1: very much associated with him. The idea, this figure that
Speaker 1: is killing and then mocking the press, that is that
Speaker 1: is the subject of all this media and public fear
Speaker 1: and fascination, but is also potentially feeding it as well
Speaker 1: and feeding off of it, right.
Speaker 3: And I think it's these letters, even though probably none
Speaker 3: of them are authentic, or at least most of them
Speaker 3: are not authentic, it's these letters that sort of create
Speaker 3: one of the most lasting legacies of Jack the Ripper,
Speaker 3: which is this idea that he's sort of playing a
Speaker 3: game of chess with the police and that this is
Speaker 3: a major part of his motivation. And this does come
Speaker 3: through in the movie as well, because you see Jack
Speaker 3: the Ripper in his identity before he's revealed to be
Speaker 3: Jack the Ripper. He is a friend of H. G.
Speaker 3: Wells and they play chess together in the movie, and
Speaker 3: you know he's very into like outsmarting his opponents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now there are I think just five verified murders
Speaker 1: if you will, by Jack the Ripper, though there are
Speaker 1: others that may or may not be attributed to him,
Speaker 1: depending on where you're falling. And then likewise, there's a
Speaker 1: great deal of folklore, fiction and pseudohistory that just abound
Speaker 1: within the realm of ripperology. He was never caught, and
Speaker 1: there are numerous suspects that have been discussed over the years,
Speaker 1: and they range from the potentially believable to the outrageous
Speaker 1: to the unbelievable even during the time, and some of them,
Speaker 1: some of these suspects did have a surgical background, because
Speaker 1: there was the whole apparent removal of organs in the murders,
Speaker 1: and so you know, some thought, well, this indicates that
Speaker 1: they had the individual had some level of training or
Speaker 1: expertise or familiarity with human anatomy. Now, in time after time,
Speaker 1: the Ripper is this character, doctor John Leslie Stevenson, who
Speaker 1: is not an historical person as far as I can tell.
Speaker 1: But weirdly enough, the nineteen nineties Outer Limit episode Ripper,
Speaker 1: which stars David Warner and Carrie Elwiss, was co written
Speaker 1: by Leslie Stevens. So there you go. That's enough of
Speaker 1: a connection for Ripper ology.
Speaker 3: I think, wait, is Leslie Stevens a real person and
Speaker 3: it's just a coincidence? Or is this a pseudonym for
Speaker 3: saying it was like written by David Warner or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an IMDb writing credit that's not Warner.
Speaker 1: So I think it's either just somebody who happens to
Speaker 1: be Leslie Stevens, or is the actual Jack the Ripper
Speaker 1: having time traveled to the nineties to make a career
Speaker 1: for himself in in TV screenplay writing.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the last week I have been wandering around
Speaker 3: my house non stop singing that Cindy Lauper song. I
Speaker 3: can't get it out of my head. Is it not
Speaker 3: used in the film? In fact, the song was released
Speaker 3: after this film came out. Is there any connection between them?
Speaker 1: Allegedly, Cindy Lapper was inspired to write the song because
Speaker 1: she liked the movie, and weirdly enough, there was a
Speaker 1: In recent history, there has been a there was an
Speaker 1: attempt to bring the novel Time after Time back as
Speaker 1: a TV series, and each episode of the TV series
Speaker 1: gets its title from the lyrics to Cindy Lauper's Time
Speaker 1: after Time.
Speaker 3: Nice. Nice. Cindy Lauper doesn't get enough credit as a songwriter.
Speaker 3: You know, have you ever have you ever actually listened
Speaker 3: to the like the lyrics of girls Just Want to
Speaker 3: Have Fun? Actually like a sort of profound and sad song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I like some Cindy Lapper. I haven't really
Speaker 1: been playing her recently, but yeah, she had a number
Speaker 1: of hits. I would generally take the Cindy Lapper songs
Speaker 1: of that era and put them above the Madonna songs
Speaker 1: of that era.
Speaker 3: Ooh, I don't know if I would go that far,
Speaker 3: but definitely I'm a fan. And now I have to
Speaker 3: correct myself because I actually just looked it up to
Speaker 3: make sure and found out that Cindy Lauper did not
Speaker 3: write Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Her version was
Speaker 3: a cover version. Whoops. Oh okay, okay, Well great song anyway,
Speaker 3: and her version is great.
Speaker 1: So we've already pretty much done our elevator pitch for
Speaker 1: Time after Time? Shall we go ahead and listen to
Speaker 1: just a little bit of the trailer audio, not the
Speaker 1: full thing, but just a little bit of the trailer.
Speaker 3: Maybe some man I don't like this trailer. I feel
Speaker 3: like it really it takes away from the movie. But okay,
Speaker 3: let's just get at least get a snippet.
Speaker 4: The time is eighteen three and novelist and in better H. G.
Speaker 4: Wells makes a startling announcement, gentlemen, I am talking about
Speaker 4: traveling through time in a machine constructed for that Betty Puppose.
Speaker 3: The first to use the machine.
Speaker 4: However, is doctor John Leslie Stevenson, better known to history
Speaker 4: as Jack the Ripper Time after time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is this is a bad trailer. I hate
Speaker 1: the comedic trailer narrator who's like Jack the Ripper is
Speaker 1: on a on a vacation, you know, it's like always
Speaker 1: this kind of like Casey caseum ask voice that's like,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a good time at the theater and yeah,
Speaker 1: give me the voice of God any day over this nonsense.
Speaker 3: The trailer is bad in numerous ways, and I do
Speaker 3: not recommend watching it. First of all, because of what
Speaker 3: you're saying. The tone and the narrator are irritating, and
Speaker 3: I think do not accurately communicate the spirit and feeling
Speaker 3: of the movie. And second, the trailer reveals the entire plot,
Speaker 3: including the ending it's one of those awful things. So like,
Speaker 3: if you've seen the trailer, the movie is kind of
Speaker 3: spoiled for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not a good way to go into this film.
Speaker 3: Now, being a time travel movie, one of the things
Speaker 3: that I was thinking about for this episode is it
Speaker 3: it sort of made me want to create an in
Speaker 3: house taxonomy of major types of time travel stories, sorted
Speaker 3: by prevalent themes. And of course, any given movie or
Speaker 3: story can partake of multiple different time travel themes, multiple
Speaker 3: of the themes that follow that we're about to talk about.
Speaker 3: And I'm also sure this list will not be exhaustive.
Speaker 3: People will probably write in and be like, hey, what
Speaker 3: about this type of movie. It'll be something I didn't
Speaker 3: even think about. But I think here are some of
Speaker 3: the major categories of time travel stories, and we can
Speaker 3: talk about how time after time fits or does not
Speaker 3: fit into each of them. So the first one I
Speaker 3: wanted to mention is what I would call the debugging
Speaker 3: history story. And this is a type of time travel
Speaker 3: story that focuses primarily on isolating variables of cause and
Speaker 3: effect in the progression of history and human life. So
Speaker 3: it's largely concerned with the consequences of decisions and the
Speaker 3: long term ripple effects of seemingly minor events and encounters.
Speaker 3: So this can be seen, for example, and Back to
Speaker 3: the Future, where Marty McFly learns that certain minor interventions
Speaker 3: with his parents as teenagers, like he gives his teenage
Speaker 3: dad a pep talk about standing up for himself and
Speaker 3: so forth, this radically changes the circumstances of his family
Speaker 3: thirty years later. Or it can be seen in movies
Speaker 3: that don't even really feature time travel, but just merely
Speaker 3: the alteration of past events. An example here might be
Speaker 3: the final act of It's a Wonderful Life, where George
Speaker 3: Bailey learns that if Clarence the Angel tweaks history so
Speaker 3: that he was never born, everybody else in his life
Speaker 3: turns out miserable and impoverished, and he sees the impact
Speaker 3: that his life had. I would actually say that Time
Speaker 3: after Time does not partake heavily of the debugging history theme,
Speaker 3: though there are little nods here and there, especially at
Speaker 3: the ending. We can maybe something we could talk about
Speaker 3: if you want or not, though it's a spoiler for
Speaker 3: the movie, But this is not the major type we're
Speaker 3: dealing with in Time after Time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this film. Ultimately, the character of Wells is more
Speaker 1: interested in protecting the future. That's what prompts him to
Speaker 1: travel through time in the film, or at least not
Speaker 1: necessarily at protecting the actual future, but protecting Well's idea
Speaker 1: all the future. So in a sense, the existence of
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper in even in the late nineteenth century
Speaker 1: is a threat to his worldview and vision for change.
Speaker 1: The idea of Jack the Ripper escaping into his envisioned
Speaker 1: utopia is a total threat to this idea.
Speaker 3: Now, while we're going through and talking about time after time,
Speaker 3: I feel like we should also just run through this
Speaker 3: list the example of Transfers to the other time travel
Speaker 3: movie we've done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the basic answer is always going
Speaker 1: to be yes, sort of maybe, but who knows, because
Speaker 1: Transfers is all over the place with time travel and
Speaker 1: why they're doing it and who's doing it. But I
Speaker 1: would say, yes, Transfers definitely does this, but.
Speaker 3: It's messy, Okay, that's debugging history. The next major time
Speaker 3: travel theme I would say is Journey to Time Island.
Speaker 3: This is a time travel story. This is probably one
Speaker 3: of the least thematically interesting ways of using time travel
Speaker 3: in a story. And it's a story that uses some
Speaker 3: time in the future or the past primarily as a
Speaker 3: hostile setting for adventure. So in these stories, the past
Speaker 3: or the future can be thought of as largely equivalent
Speaker 3: to physical places like Skull Island or the Forbidden Planet.
Speaker 3: It's just a dangerous place for the characters to arrive
Speaker 3: and then face unfamiliar challenges. And I will say Time
Speaker 3: after Time does not largely fall into this category, but
Speaker 3: actually HG. Well's novel The Time Machine is more in
Speaker 3: this vein.
Speaker 1: Yeah, traveling into a distant future for example, that definitely
Speaker 1: is a commentary on the present or the Victorian present
Speaker 1: that the author lived in. But also it is just
Speaker 1: kind of this fantastic place in which to have an adventure, right.
Speaker 3: I think the Time Machine also partakes largely of another
Speaker 3: more interesting category we'll get to.
Speaker 1: In a minute now, the time travel the time Island.
Speaker 1: Rather this idea, I was thinking to myself, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: what's something that falls in line with this? In my
Speaker 1: mind instantly goes to Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder,
Speaker 1: though that one is also a debugging history tale to
Speaker 1: a large extent, sort of accidental debugging of the.
Speaker 3: History This is bugging history. Yeah, inserting bugs in the
Speaker 3: lines of code of history.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the idea I can go back into dinosaur days
Speaker 1: and have a safe adventure dinosaurs, but then you find
Speaker 1: out no, you cannot by doing so, you're totally bugging
Speaker 1: in the future.
Speaker 3: That's a very good observation. Okay. Third category, so we
Speaker 3: had debugging history, journey to time island. Third one, I
Speaker 3: will say is what I would call fish out of time.
Speaker 3: This is a time based equivalent of the standard fish
Speaker 3: out of water plot seen most often in comedies, where
Speaker 3: most of the tension, usually comedic tension, is based on
Speaker 3: failures of the out of place protagonists to understand and adapt,
Speaker 3: understand and adapt to local conditions, expectations, you know, wandering
Speaker 3: around being confused by surroundings, accidentally violating taboos. So you
Speaker 3: can think of like Borat but with time instead of place,
Speaker 3: or Demolition Man with the Three seashells.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another example of this would be a Connecticut Yankee
Speaker 1: in King Arthur's court. Sure you know whether a lot
Speaker 1: of comedic fodder is made on the fact that, oh,
Speaker 1: this person's out of time. They don't know what this means,
Speaker 1: and the people that he's around now, they don't know
Speaker 1: what this means, and hilarity encies.
Speaker 3: And you know, I will say, usually Fish out of
Speaker 3: Time is not one of my favorite time travel themes,
Speaker 3: but Time after Time has a good amount of this,
Speaker 3: and I loved it in this movie. I would say,
Speaker 3: is it works much better in Time after Time than
Speaker 3: it usually does in other stories of this sort.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really excels at this, often with stuff that
Speaker 1: on paper just sounds awful, like the idea what if H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells traveled to the late seventies and went to a McDonald's.
Speaker 1: It sounds awful, but it's great. It's great. My favorite
Speaker 1: that's one of my favorite scenes where he goes into
Speaker 1: McDonald's and he's trying to make sense to everything. And
Speaker 1: then later he's having a meal with the romantic interest
Speaker 1: and she asked or how the food is and he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's better than the Scottish restaurant where I had breakfast
Speaker 1: MS McDougall's. So yeah, Yeah, this film excels at the
Speaker 1: Fish out of Time.
Speaker 3: Oh, and he gets really excited when he figures out
Speaker 3: what fries are.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, He's like, oh, it's pump Fritz it's
Speaker 1: pum friends. Now, as far as transfers goes, I think
Speaker 1: they did that. I'm pretty sure they did this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a fair amount of humor in trancers, So
Speaker 1: it's if you have humor in your time travel a scenario,
Speaker 1: you're probably engaging in this trope.
Speaker 3: Okay. The next category is the one. I feel like
Speaker 3: I need a snapier name for this one, but it's
Speaker 3: basically what I would call the time travel arms race.
Speaker 3: And these are the ones that tend to be the
Speaker 3: most complicated in terms of plotting, and that's because they're
Speaker 3: the ones that take the premise the most seriously, like
Speaker 3: they're thinking really hard about what it would actually be
Speaker 3: like to have the power to travel back in time,
Speaker 3: and not just as a means to get the protagonist
Speaker 3: to an unfamiliar setting, but actually as an ongoing mechanism
Speaker 3: that can be used over and over, often ultimately as
Speaker 3: a weapon, something that grants god like power, because if
Speaker 3: you know what's going to happen in advance, and you
Speaker 3: have the power to go back in time and approach
Speaker 3: any situation differently, you can make almost any situation turn
Speaker 3: out your way. And so this gives anybody who possesses
Speaker 3: the power of time travel the temptation to use it
Speaker 3: for selfish, deceitful, or evil purposes, And so I think
Speaker 3: these plots often contain both protagonists and antagonists who have
Speaker 3: the power to travel through time trying to sort of
Speaker 3: travel back further and further to gain advantage over one another.
Speaker 3: So the themes of this would usually include thoughts about weaponry, strategy, tricks,
Speaker 3: and the dangers of having too much power, especially too
Speaker 3: much technological power. Good examples of this I think would include,
Speaker 3: like the movie Primer, the overarching premise of the Terminator films,
Speaker 3: though there's not a lot of this mechanic within the
Speaker 3: movies themselves Terminator, the setup of each film usually involves
Speaker 3: some form of the time travel arms race, and I
Speaker 3: guess in terms of more recent movies, you could think
Speaker 3: about Tenet as a version of this.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, now, Transfers, I think I think definitely
Speaker 1: Transwers got into this territory because there is the idea that, yeah,
Speaker 1: cult members have gone back in time and they have
Speaker 1: transfer armies, and so we need to send transfer cops
Speaker 1: back in time to deal with them. So, yeah, Transfers
Speaker 1: being a high minded time travel movie definitely gets in
Speaker 1: on this action, though I.
Speaker 3: Would say Time After Time has very little of this,
Speaker 3: and it would have made it an entirely different film
Speaker 3: in ways that we might mention later when we talk
Speaker 3: a little bit more about the plot. But I don't
Speaker 3: really hold this against the movie because it just decided
Speaker 3: to go in a different direction with the way it
Speaker 3: structured its story. But Time after Time could have been
Speaker 3: a completely different film if it had just taken this
Speaker 3: premise seriously and HG. Wells had said, Okay, I can
Speaker 3: always just go back one more day in the past
Speaker 3: and do this instead.
Speaker 1: Right, right? Or I guess another thing that could have
Speaker 1: complicated matters is the idea of is the question of
Speaker 1: how many time machines are there, and is the time
Speaker 1: machine a singular entity or is time travel a technology
Speaker 1: that may be reproduced in this film. In Time after Time,
Speaker 1: there is one time machine, and there's some interesting plot
Speaker 1: mechanics that keep it that way. And additionally, nobody has
Speaker 1: subsequently understood how time travel works. The time machine winds
Speaker 1: up in a museum in San Francisco, and it's fully functional,
Speaker 1: and nobody has really taken it apart to figure out
Speaker 1: how it works. Which if you're going to be really
Speaker 1: pedantic about it, Yeah, that's kind of silly, but it
Speaker 1: works within the context of the film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed. So the next category I want to mention
Speaker 3: is kind of a subcategory because it's more of a
Speaker 3: category that would apply to usually how a like a
Speaker 3: twist at the end of a time travel story. But
Speaker 3: this is what I would call the have you heard
Speaker 3: about the Fates version. I kind of don't want to
Speaker 3: list examples of this because by including them in this
Speaker 3: category I would usually be spoiling some kind of good
Speaker 3: twist in the movie. But this is a variation that
Speaker 3: usually starts with something that looks more like debugging history
Speaker 3: or the time travel arms race, only for the protagonists
Speaker 3: to discover too late that the Fates cannot be outrun
Speaker 3: and while they thought they were avoiding some bad outcome
Speaker 3: by going back and changing the past, they in fact
Speaker 3: were not avoiding it or were even causing it, or
Speaker 3: something to that effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not so much. In this picture. Trancers did
Speaker 1: not really get into this either, but I will say
Speaker 1: that it does remind me. And this is not a
Speaker 1: spoiler because and I'll explain why, but the Stephen King
Speaker 1: time travel novel eleven twenty two sixty three is really
Speaker 1: good for starters. I highly recommend this book, but it
Speaker 1: definitely gets into this area early on, because there's this
Speaker 1: idea that, yes, you can travel back into the past
Speaker 1: via this portal, but once you get there, changing history
Speaker 1: in any meaningful ways is incredibly difficult, because there's a
Speaker 1: sense that it's like time, is this this surging river,
Speaker 1: and to try and divert the river's course. There are forces,
Speaker 1: not forces with names or faces so much, but like
Speaker 1: just reality itself will revolt against you, like everything will
Speaker 1: go wrong in your attempt to try and change the
Speaker 1: course of history.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting. Yeah, I haven't read that one, but
Speaker 3: you've tempted me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Basically, an individual becomes convinced that going back and
Speaker 1: stopping the assassination of John F. Kennedy will make the
Speaker 1: world a substantially better place in the future, and therefore
Speaker 1: it's worth it. It's worth basically like a one way
Speaker 1: trip to go and see this through. And it's and
Speaker 1: he King explores it for in a very long book.
Speaker 1: And also it's a love story, which of course brings
Speaker 1: us back to this movie. I was wondering as I
Speaker 1: was watching it, how many subsequent time travel romances would
Speaker 1: just simply not exist if not for Time after Time.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about everything from Outlander to Highlander, which even
Speaker 1: though Highlander is not about traveling through time via mechanic,
Speaker 1: it is about immortal characters living outside of their original
Speaker 1: time and then falling in love. So I feel like
Speaker 1: the film was probably very influential on this sort of
Speaker 1: subgenre of time travel fiction.
Speaker 3: Oh well, I think this is another great category we
Speaker 3: should mention, which is the love across time story, which
Speaker 3: is time after time. I think you could definitely says
Speaker 3: an example of it's a type of love story. You know,
Speaker 3: it's common in a love story to have people who
Speaker 3: who clearly want to be together, but there's some kind
Speaker 3: of tension that keeps them apart, and that could be
Speaker 3: you know, social expectations, it could be you know, in
Speaker 3: romantic comedies, is often a series of farcical misunderstandings that
Speaker 3: leads them to fighting each other. But in a lot
Speaker 3: of more sort of serious and tragic love stories across history,
Speaker 3: it's often been like separation of time of space, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: like we're from different kingdoms or something, and we can't
Speaker 3: be together for that reason, But there are movies that
Speaker 3: do this with time travel as well. It's like, well, no,
Speaker 3: I've got to go back to my time, and you
Speaker 3: don't want to leave your time and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Other times it's the lady hawk scenario. It's like,
Speaker 1: you're you're a hawk during the day, I'm a wolf
Speaker 1: at night, and we're just not lying. We can't align.
Speaker 1: That's accept during a total eclipse, right.
Speaker 3: That's right, okay. And then one last category I want
Speaker 3: to mention because I think this is the one that
Speaker 3: applies the most to time after time. This is the
Speaker 3: category I would call fresh eyes for bad eras. And
Speaker 3: this is the type of time travel story that is
Speaker 3: primarily about commenting on the particular features of an age
Speaker 3: of the time in which they are set, usually the present,
Speaker 3: but often also the future as influenced by the present.
Speaker 3: And so I think these tend to contain the most
Speaker 3: social commentary of any of the time travel subgenres. So
Speaker 3: the time traveler is able to look upon an age
Speaker 3: such as the present and see it with fresh eyes,
Speaker 3: noticing things, usually bad things that the chronolocals have learned
Speaker 3: to ignore just because they're in your to them, and
Speaker 3: so Time After Time actually, much like H. G. Wells
Speaker 3: actual novel, The Time Machine, partakes heavily of this theme,
Speaker 3: tying it back into the novel The Time Machine itself.
Speaker 3: Apart from it just being a sort of journey to
Speaker 3: Time Island, it's also very much this one because he
Speaker 3: was using a dystopian vision of the future to suggest
Speaker 3: that such a future would follow from negative trends that
Speaker 3: existed in his present. So he's commenting on the present
Speaker 3: by suggesting a horrible future. But in Time after Time,
Speaker 3: it's just looking directly at the present. And I think
Speaker 3: this is one of the most interesting ideas in the movie.
Speaker 3: So it takes these two time travelers from eighteen nineties London.
Speaker 3: So HG. Wells, who the character in the film, is
Speaker 3: a progressive, utopian socialist in eighteen nineties London. He believes
Speaker 3: that humanity will pretty soon advance to a golden age
Speaker 3: of peace and prosperity and egalitarianism, where there will be
Speaker 3: no war, no violence, no inn quality, no oppression, and
Speaker 3: so forth. And then the other is Jack the Ripper,
Speaker 3: who is sort of the embodiment of violent, sadistic, misogynist ID.
Speaker 3: And what if these two figures suddenly got a look
Speaker 3: at the world in nineteen seventy nine without having a
Speaker 3: chance to get used to it as time progresses slowly
Speaker 3: in the normal sense, what would they think? So, of course,
Speaker 3: there's a scene in the present where Jack the Ripper
Speaker 3: turns on a TV and he just starts flipping channels
Speaker 3: for Wells to see what's on, and it's just seen
Speaker 3: after scene both real and fictional of hatred, violence, murder,
Speaker 3: war terrorism, nuclear escalation, full contact football, and Wells is
Speaker 3: horrified to see that his utopian dreams were hopelessly naive,
Speaker 3: and the Ripper is just like, yes, good war football,
Speaker 3: I am home.
Speaker 1: This is a lovely scene. Yeah, taking place in Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper's hotel room. That's a little messy because he's
Speaker 1: been staying there. He hasn't been ripping there, but he's
Speaker 1: been staying there. He has this line has several lines
Speaker 1: that really drive this home, but one of them is
Speaker 1: ninety years ago, I was a freak. Today I'm an amateur.
Speaker 1: That's right, and there's Yeah, there's so much to love
Speaker 1: in this. Some of the little things, like when he
Speaker 1: turns on the TV, he's like he's clearly at ease
Speaker 1: in this world. He's wearing the suit of the day,
Speaker 1: you know, of the time period. He's he's largely acclimatized
Speaker 1: to the late nineteen seventies at this point. But then
Speaker 1: he holds the remote control in a really weird fashion
Speaker 1: to turn on the TV, which is a great touch.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like he because this character, Yeah, he's like,
Speaker 1: I feel the spirit of this age, but I'm not
Speaker 1: altogether on the technology just yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great. And there are all these little things
Speaker 3: in the movie that signal this as it goes on,
Speaker 3: that there's an irony where H. G. Wells is the
Speaker 3: progressive futurist and the age that he travels to does
Speaker 3: include a lot of the ideals he believed in, Like
Speaker 3: he is pleased to discover that women have more rights
Speaker 3: now than they did in his time and so forth.
Speaker 3: But there's this irony because he, for some reason doesn't
Speaker 3: feel comfortable and easy to adapt to the culture of
Speaker 3: the future in the way that Jack the Ripper does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the treatment of the Ripper in this it reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot of the ideas that Alan Moore would
Speaker 1: would later explore in his his now classic graphic novel
Speaker 1: From Hell about Jack the Ripper, in which the Ripper
Speaker 1: is presented as the dark embodiment of the Victorian age
Speaker 1: and ultimately the beginning of the twentieth century, a kind
Speaker 1: of profit of the modern age to follow. Now, needless
Speaker 1: to say, that's a much darker treatment, and our ripper
Speaker 1: in this film does not see himself as such a
Speaker 1: grandiose figure. He's he simply shan't stop ripping, and this
Speaker 1: is an even better age in which to do it.
Speaker 1: But he, like, like that line above that we mentioned, implies,
Speaker 1: he feels like the world has ultimately passed passed him by.
Speaker 1: It's even, it's even it's not only met his his
Speaker 1: his spear, but it has surpassed his spirit. But he's
Speaker 1: happy to live in this age, right.
Speaker 3: And so one could take this in a kind of
Speaker 3: simplistic way and say that, well, maybe the movie is
Speaker 3: just engaging in the sort of naive pessimism, the pessimistic
Speaker 3: bias that makes people always think that times are just
Speaker 3: the worst they've ever been, things are always getting worse
Speaker 3: the hell in a hand basket, thinking, I would say,
Speaker 3: the movie actually doesn't quite do that. It pretty frequently
Speaker 3: acknowledges things that in Well's view, are better about the
Speaker 3: present than they were in Well's time. But there's also
Speaker 3: something off about the modern age, especially something the sort
Speaker 3: of about the sort of indifference to violence and the
Speaker 3: sort of callousness of the modern world that the Ripper
Speaker 3: finds very welcoming.
Speaker 1: What is the headline in the newspaper that he picks
Speaker 1: up about. It's a sports headline. It's like Ram's massacre
Speaker 1: cults or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is Ram's mall cults or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Which I love that moment. That's a great one
Speaker 1: of many great moments in the film where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that headline is just insane. It implies outside of the
Speaker 1: you know, the modern sports understanding of it, that that
Speaker 1: like herbivores are carrying each other apart in the streets,
Speaker 1: you know, like we're living in like a biblically misaligned age.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so, I don't know. I appreciate the the
Speaker 3: interesting complexity of the feeling that it has about the
Speaker 3: present that like, some things have definitely progressed and gotten
Speaker 3: better since the time that Wells is used to, but
Speaker 3: there are other things that are just sort of like
Speaker 3: always new sicknesses that continually emerge throughout history, and there's
Speaker 3: something going on with the kind of with the kind
Speaker 3: of inurement to violence and hatred that just is pervasive
Speaker 3: in the modern world.
Speaker 1: And I think I think a lot of this is
Speaker 1: exemplified by the setting, because you know, I like the
Speaker 1: idea of setting it in in the United States, even
Speaker 1: though it you know, begins in what is supposed to
Speaker 1: be London. But you could have easily you could imagine
Speaker 1: someone arguing, well, let's set this in seventies New York,
Speaker 1: you know, just straight to Hell City. But no, you
Speaker 1: go to San Francisco. And their treatment to San Francisco
Speaker 1: is this kind of almost fifty to fifty split of
Speaker 1: cedier elements and seedier parts of town. But also you
Speaker 1: have so many You have a lot of time in
Speaker 1: the film to admire sort of modern late seventies architecture
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, to walk through the parks in public spaces.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a nice balance. It's achieved through
Speaker 1: the setting, and ultimately the film is like a in
Speaker 1: a way, it's like it makes you want to visit
Speaker 1: of San Francisco. It's like a tourism brochure for the city.
Speaker 3: They spend a lot of time wandering around the Pan
Speaker 3: American Exposition buildings, which is funny because he's you know,
Speaker 3: Wells is admiring them. In Mary Stein Virgin's character, I
Speaker 3: think she has to break his heart and inform him
Speaker 3: that they're made of plaster.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. He asked if they're made of marble and
Speaker 1: she says it says no plaster.
Speaker 3: But is that actually worse? I don't know. They are
Speaker 3: beautiful to look at. Since I guess it's time to
Speaker 3: jump into the connections anyway, I just wanted to flag
Speaker 3: a strange fact, which is that? Okay? So this movie
Speaker 3: was directed and at least in part written by Nicholas Meyer.
Speaker 3: I know was based on a novel, and I think
Speaker 3: there are multiple story credits for the movie, but Nicholas
Speaker 3: Meyer the director and I think wrote the screenplay at
Speaker 3: least or was one of the writers. He made this movie,
Speaker 3: which is about HG. Wells and Jack the Ripper traveling
Speaker 3: through time to nineteen seventy nine San Francisco, and Nicholas
Speaker 3: Meyer also was one of the writers of Star Trek
Speaker 3: four The Voyage Home, which involves time traveling to present
Speaker 3: day San Francisco, but from the future instead of the past. Interesting,
Speaker 3: he knows what he likes. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Nicholas Meyer was born nineteen forty five American writer and
Speaker 1: director who first made a splash with the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: four Sherlock Holmes novel The Seven Percent Solution, in which
Speaker 1: Sigmund Freud helps Sherlock Holmes battle his drug addiction.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Meyer wrote the screenplay for then the nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: film adaptation that starred Nicole Williamson, Robert Duval, Alan Arkin,
Speaker 1: and Lawrence Olivier, as well as Charles Gray and Samantha Egger.
Speaker 1: It was a big hit. Meyer wrote more Holmes novels
Speaker 1: and then went on to direct this film in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, followed by Star Trek two, The Wrath of
Speaker 1: Kahn in nineteen eighty two, and Star Trek Being Discovered
Speaker 1: Country in nineteen ninety one, among other films, but those
Speaker 1: were the big ones.
Speaker 3: One interesting thing about Nicholas Meyer as a filmmaker was
Speaker 3: that he was also behind the nineteen eighty three TV
Speaker 3: special or TV movie The Day After, which was a
Speaker 3: supposedly factual look at the possibilities of nuclear war, like
Speaker 3: what if the Cold War went hot? And this It's
Speaker 3: hard to tell exactly how influential it was, but it
Speaker 3: has been alleged that this TV movie was pretty influential
Speaker 3: even at high levels of government, and changed the thinking
Speaker 3: of some military and political officials about antagonism in the
Speaker 3: Cold War.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Now. He also wrote a number of screenplays,
Speaker 1: including but not limited to, Star Trek, The Voyage Home,
Speaker 1: The Human Stain, and the pilot episode for the twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen TV series Time After Time, which we alluded to earlier,
Speaker 1: which I have not seen it. It may be great,
Speaker 1: but just looking at stills, it looks like it asked
Speaker 1: the question what if time after Time? But hunkier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's got some very square jaw lines.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, Nicholas Meyer Saturn Award winner, and he's been
Speaker 1: nominated for both an Academy Award and three Emmys.
Speaker 3: But if I understand correctly, this movie, much like two
Speaker 3: thousand and one A Space Odyssey, was one of the
Speaker 3: rare cases where a movie based on a book is
Speaker 3: being completed simultaneously to the completion of the book.
Speaker 1: That's right, And this leads us to the writer Carl Alexander.
Speaker 1: This is the son of William Tunberg, who wrote the
Speaker 1: screenplay for Old Yeller and the nephew of Carl Tunberg,
Speaker 1: who wrote the screenplay for Ben Hurr. This was his
Speaker 1: first novel, Time after Time, though the book was actually
Speaker 1: optioned before it was completed by Nicholas Meyer, who happened
Speaker 1: to be a friend of Alexander's who had heard him
Speaker 1: talking about it and had I think, looked at a
Speaker 1: part of the novel before it was completed, and so
Speaker 1: he was like, this is it. I want this to
Speaker 1: be my next film, So the film is finished alongside
Speaker 1: the book. The book and the film were being completed
Speaker 1: at the same time.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He went on to follow this up with a
Speaker 1: sequel novel in twenty nineteen, or at least it published
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. I'm not sure if someone else had
Speaker 1: to finish it for him or how it worked out
Speaker 1: with the manuscript, because he lived nineteen thirty eight through
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, so he would not have lived to see
Speaker 1: Jacqueline the Ripper published in twenty nineteen. Now, the writer
Speaker 1: Steve Hayes also has a story credit on in this
Speaker 1: born nineteen thirty one. Again, I think this comes back
Speaker 1: to the fact that the screenplay in the novel were
Speaker 1: essentially being completed. At the same time, Hayes did a
Speaker 1: lot of TV writing, including for at least two series
Speaker 1: that I wasn't familiar with based on popular eighties action
Speaker 1: films Conan which ran ninety seven through ninety eight, and
Speaker 1: Rambo from nineteen eighty six, which I got excited about
Speaker 1: and then realized that it was a cartoon. But then
Speaker 1: also I find that weird that we decided Rambo needed
Speaker 1: to be a cartoon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't know there was a Conan or Rambo
Speaker 3: TV series.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's come back to Malcolm McDowell, who
Speaker 1: plays h. G. Wells in this Born in nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: and this is a guy where it's hard to even
Speaker 1: figure out where to begin. Legendary British actor who played
Speaker 1: Alex and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange in nineteen seventy one. Again,
Speaker 1: he was in the notorious nineteen seventy nine film Caligula,
Speaker 1: which came right before this one. He was in eighty
Speaker 1: two's Cat People. I fondly remember him from a child
Speaker 1: watching nineteen eighty three. He's Blue Thunder. He plays the
Speaker 1: villain in that who flies this little helicopter that battles.
Speaker 1: Our big combat police helicopter that is Blue Thunder.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, I do not have a helicopter a battle movie.
Speaker 3: How many are there? And I remember there's one called
Speaker 3: I think Firebirds that has maybe Charlie Sheen or somebody
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 1: I think, so yeah, this one. I have no idea
Speaker 1: how big of a splash Blue Thunder was at all,
Speaker 1: but it was big for me as a kid because
Speaker 1: my aunt had taped some films off of HBO. This
Speaker 1: was one of them, and it was probably inappropriate for
Speaker 1: me to be watching it, but I mainly watched it
Speaker 1: for the helicopter combat scenarios, and then I would build
Speaker 1: the helicopters out of legos and have them crash into
Speaker 1: each other.
Speaker 3: That's great. I was wrong. Actually it wasn't Charlie Sheen.
Speaker 3: It was Nicholas Cage who was in Firebirds.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: Firebirds was a one of those bad action movies that
Speaker 3: I taped off TV when I was a kid, because
Speaker 3: I was like, looks like this will be a military
Speaker 3: Harry action movie. I'm you know, I'm a boy in
Speaker 3: East Tennessee. This is the kind of movie I'm supposed
Speaker 3: to be watching. Not great, So Malcolm McDowell. Like we said,
Speaker 3: he continues to work a lot in films and TV.
Speaker 3: We can't we can't mention everything he's been in before.
Speaker 3: I believe he's come up on the show before, not
Speaker 3: not maybe in a film that we've watched, but in
Speaker 3: you know, the various connections. But he played doctor Loomis
Speaker 3: in both of Rob Zombie's Halloween films, which I have
Speaker 3: not seen, but I assume he's villainous in those. Oh no,
Speaker 3: he I mean he looks villainous because Malcolm mcdell usually does,
Speaker 3: though he doesn't in time after time. I don't know
Speaker 3: how exactly they accomplished that, maybe with the careful use
Speaker 3: of hairstyling and facial hair. But no, he's not villainous
Speaker 3: in the Rob Zombie Halloween movies. He's just not super helpful. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting things about Malcolm mcdowll in this
Speaker 1: film is that this is where he met his second wife,
Speaker 1: Mary Stubergen, who plays the character Amy Robbins born nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three. But yeah, they apparently met on this film,
Speaker 1: fell in love on this film, were subsequently married, and
Speaker 1: their son is Charlie McDowell or one of their children Anyways,
Speaker 1: Charlie McDowell, who is a director who directed the excellent
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen film The One I Love.
Speaker 3: Mary Stein Virgin is also great in this. She has
Speaker 3: a kind of funny, nervous energy in the movie, and
Speaker 3: she's of course great as a comic actress. She essentially
Speaker 3: would you say that you think she was sort of
Speaker 3: playing a similar character in this to the character she
Speaker 3: plays in Back to the Future three.
Speaker 1: I guess so. Back to the Future three is one
Speaker 1: of those films that I think most people only see once,
Speaker 1: so I don't really remember her all that. I remember
Speaker 1: the basics of the character, but I don't know how
Speaker 1: closely they align with this.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, I was just thinking Back to the Future
Speaker 3: three had to in part be based on or partially
Speaker 3: derived from her role in Time after Time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would. I would think so. I mean,
Speaker 1: because ultimately, I think most time travel romance novels or
Speaker 1: films or TV shows have it have to at least
Speaker 1: in some way look back to Time after Time. It
Speaker 1: feels very influential.
Speaker 3: But yeah, she I think it took me a while
Speaker 3: to figure out that she is so good as a
Speaker 3: comic actress because I think I recall the first the
Speaker 3: first role in which I really became familiar with her
Speaker 3: was as like a nefarious lawyer defending the bad company
Speaker 3: in Philadelphia. Oh okay, you remember that.
Speaker 1: It's been a long time. I think I saw that
Speaker 1: many years ago.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I think she plays a ruthless lawyer who's
Speaker 3: who's defending the company this being sued and she has
Speaker 3: like cruel scenes where she grills Tom Hanks on the stand.
Speaker 3: But that was before i'd seen her really in any
Speaker 3: comedy stuff. And she's great in comedies. She's great in
Speaker 3: Step Brothers, where Will Ferrell is her son, I think,
Speaker 3: and well, you know, it makes me wonder as Will
Speaker 3: Ferrell her son with h. G. Wells from this movie.
Speaker 1: I always enjoy her when she's she often pops up
Speaker 1: in various comedy things that her husband Ted Danson is in,
Speaker 1: and so she's been very funny in some of those films.
Speaker 1: I remember she was in Elf and had a pretty
Speaker 1: fun role in that. But ultimately Academy Award winning Actor
Speaker 1: here with Mary as his steam burgon here, and she's
Speaker 1: pretty good in this. Yeah, she's it's a it's it's
Speaker 1: an interesting role because she's called upon in I think
Speaker 1: her only second screen presence to play the modern woman,
Speaker 1: to like to represent not only the modern woman from
Speaker 1: the film's perspective, but the future woman, the woman of
Speaker 1: the future from H. G. Wells perspective. So it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a it mostly holds up today. There are
Speaker 1: certainly some some choices here and there where you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I think they would they would inevitably do that differently
Speaker 1: if you were to create this again in like twenty
Speaker 1: twenty or twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: But well, I would say those are not choices on
Speaker 3: mary Stein versions in the script. Yeah, there are some,
Speaker 3: like it is ironic that some of the parts of
Speaker 3: this movie that the movie clearly regards as the most
Speaker 3: illustrative of the culture of the modern world are exactly
Speaker 3: the ones that have aged the most poorly. Like they're like,
Speaker 3: there's a scene where mary Stein Margins character uses casually
Speaker 3: using offensive language to refer to lesbians, like she says
Speaker 3: the D word. I assume that that word was considered
Speaker 3: derogatory at the time. I think it was. And she
Speaker 3: talks about how she does want to pursue her own
Speaker 3: career ambitions, but she offers the disclaimer that I'm not
Speaker 3: women's lib.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh. She also echoes this idea that one's work
Speaker 1: should be your life and that that's like a healthy
Speaker 1: choice for the modern professional as if. Like, ultimately, Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper's main flaw is that he's making too much
Speaker 1: time for his hobbies.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah. I do think it's interesting though in this film,
Speaker 3: that's like compairing these you know, different expectations for how
Speaker 3: the future will turn out, especially with regards to things
Speaker 3: like moral values and all that that. Like, some of
Speaker 3: the things that are that are considered the most like
Speaker 3: sort of textural illustrations of how people think in the
Speaker 3: modern world are some of the things that have aged
Speaker 3: the worst.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that is interesting. But again, ultimately this is
Speaker 1: the writing nothing on Mary. Mary's great in this true.
Speaker 1: All right, let's let's get to our ripper. Let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the actor who plays doctor John
Speaker 1: Leslie Stevenson aka Jack the Ripper. This is the legendary
Speaker 1: David Warner.
Speaker 3: David Warner is fantastic in this.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, he's he is great. Warner born nineteen forty
Speaker 1: one as of this recording, still still still around and
Speaker 1: either still active or was still active in a limited
Speaker 1: to a limited degree as of like twenty twenty. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, especially when you're older individuals like this. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he has effectively retired at this point
Speaker 1: or he's going to come back and do some more
Speaker 1: voice acting. But he, like McDowell, has been in just
Speaker 1: everything twice. He has two hundred and twenty five acting
Speaker 1: credits on IMDb. He has done theater, he has done
Speaker 1: audio dramas. He seems like a guy who has just
Speaker 1: constantly been working through you know, just just NonStop throughout
Speaker 1: his career. Yeah, and like McDowell, he also has a
Speaker 1: real knack for playing villains and has played some really
Speaker 1: notable ones. He was in Titanic, he was in Tron
Speaker 1: Time Bandits. Oh yeah, he was in Star Trek. The
Speaker 1: Undiscovered Country also popped up on some key episodes of
Speaker 1: Trek television series, including the one where the Romulin tortures Picard.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, not a Romulant. It's a Cadassian. Good what
Speaker 1: are they?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Not a Kardashi Cardassian, Yes, the Kardassians. He plays a
Speaker 1: Cardassian in that, and a Cardassian interrogator, and he is
Speaker 1: torturing Picard and trying him to to like break him
Speaker 1: a very memorable episode.
Speaker 3: Speaking of being in time travel movies, Oh, I love
Speaker 3: him in Time Bandits. He plays the villain in Time Bandits.
Speaker 3: He's the embodiment of evil. He's sort of the devil,
Speaker 3: but he is obsessed with technology in Time Bandits, which
Speaker 3: I think has some sort of satirical content, but like
Speaker 3: a lot of things in Time Bandits and Terry Gilliam
Speaker 3: movies more generally, and it's a thing that I like
Speaker 3: a lot of times, the satire is not super clear.
Speaker 3: It's satirical in a kind of vague way. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I love that the devil like he's he seems to
Speaker 3: not really understand what subscriber try dialing is, but he
Speaker 3: really wants to know about it, and he really wants
Speaker 3: to know about you know, about computers and things.
Speaker 1: I need to watch that one again.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So David Warner is an actor who's been in way
Speaker 1: too many things to list here, but I thought I
Speaker 1: might mention some of some of my additional favorite roles
Speaker 1: that he's had, and I think all of these are
Speaker 1: roles where he doesn't necessarily play a villain. He has
Speaker 1: a role in John Carpenter's in the Mouth of Madness,
Speaker 1: he plays the head of the Assassin's Guild and the Hogfather,
Speaker 1: and oh, most memorably, he plays both a good guy
Speaker 1: and a bad guy in the Quest of the Delta Knights.
Speaker 3: I don't know that movie.
Speaker 1: Oh, oh my goodness. So the Quest of the Delta
Speaker 1: Knights is this low budget Renfestie fantasy yarn and it
Speaker 1: was used on Mystery Science Theater three thousand, so it
Speaker 1: was riffed on that show. And it's a strong Mystery
Speaker 1: Science Theater three thousand episode, as I recall. But it's
Speaker 1: what the thing I love about it is that it's
Speaker 1: not something that comes to mind as a good David
Speaker 1: Warner film. But there was a fabulous interview with David
Speaker 1: Warner on The av Club by Will Harris with David Warner.
Speaker 1: This was in twenty seventeen where they basically just run
Speaker 1: through and ask him about various films that he was in,
Speaker 1: just you know, what kind of stories do you have
Speaker 1: from this picture? What kind of stories you have from
Speaker 1: this picture? And they asked him about the Quest of
Speaker 1: the Delta knightes and he responded with this, wow. Well,
Speaker 1: that was, of course a low budget film, which what's
Speaker 1: that called Mystery Science Theater? It ended up there laughs.
Speaker 1: But I had great fun doing it, playing two parts.
Speaker 1: Originally I was just asked to play the one part,
Speaker 1: and I said, would it save you money if I
Speaker 1: played two parts for the same money? And they said yes.
Speaker 1: So I had great fun changing from a black wig
Speaker 1: into a gray wig and putting brown contact lenses into
Speaker 1: my normal blue eyes. It was great fun logistically. So
Speaker 1: I have great affection for that little, low budget film.
Speaker 1: I've always loved that, this idea, that this film that
Speaker 1: we think of as being bad and you know, forgettable
Speaker 1: for an actor of David Warner's pedigree. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: that was tremendous fun. I'm so glad I did that picture.
Speaker 3: Wonderful.
Speaker 1: In that same interview, he also mentions that when it
Speaker 1: comes to time after time, the studio wanted Mick Jagger
Speaker 1: for this role. But yeah, but the filmmakers are like, no,
Speaker 1: we don't want Mick Jagger. We really want David Warner.
Speaker 1: And they fought for David Warner and thank god they
Speaker 1: got him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you had to save Mick Jagger for free Jack.
Speaker 1: I think free Jack chowse us everything we need to
Speaker 1: know that it would have. I'm not saying mc jagger
Speaker 1: would have made a bad Jack the Ripper, but I
Speaker 1: don't think he would have been well, he would not
Speaker 1: have been a very good Jack the Ripper. Let's just
Speaker 1: leave it there.
Speaker 3: I like David Warner. Yes, I'm glad we got David Warner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's great in this Get the Mate. That's your
Speaker 1: Mad Jagger, though that's not your David Warner, our ripper
Speaker 1: in this film of Doctor Stephenson. He's very, very stern,
Speaker 1: but at times he has a sardonic wit to him.
Speaker 1: He's it's just it's a great role and he has
Speaker 1: a lot of great lines in it. It's a very
Speaker 1: interesting villain. And ultimately I think this may be my
Speaker 1: my favorite take on Jack the Ripper. I mean, Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper is a character that doesn't automatically mean great
Speaker 1: film presence, but he's I think Warner is terrific in
Speaker 1: this film.
Speaker 3: You know what I also love Warner in is Tron,
Speaker 3: where there's a thing in Tron where the same actor
Speaker 3: will usually play a character in the real world in
Speaker 3: meete space, but then also play a character within the
Speaker 3: digital world. And so David Warner does he's like a
Speaker 3: sort of corrupt software business leader guy. I think he
Speaker 3: steals somebody's ideas for some video games or something in
Speaker 3: the real world. But then within the computer world he
Speaker 3: plays the villain Sark, who is this evil like you know,
Speaker 3: Frisbee player who works for the Master Control program. If
Speaker 3: you haven't seen The Old Tron, it's worth seeing for
Speaker 3: a number of reasons. But David Warner is a great
Speaker 3: villain in it.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, he's great. Oh I should also I mentioned
Speaker 1: that nineties Outer Limits episode that has Jack about Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper. I watched it last night, so I just
Speaker 1: have to share real quick. It's titled Ripper, and it's
Speaker 1: pretty fun. It's maybe a little long, like the episode
Speaker 1: is longer than the premise demands, but it's it's pretty great.
Speaker 1: Carrie Elwiss is in it, but also Francis Fisher and
Speaker 1: France Newan of Death Moon Fame for us of Death
Speaker 1: Moon Fame. I don't think anybody is actually of Death
Speaker 1: Moon Fame, but but it's got a fun cast and
Speaker 1: the premise is essentially this, what if the Jack the
Speaker 1: Ripper murders were not due to a human killer, but
Speaker 1: we're due to some sort of a of an alien
Speaker 1: space snake that goes that travels into people's mouths and
Speaker 1: then emerges from their bellies, thus creating the abdominal wounds
Speaker 1: associated with.
Speaker 3: The Jack the Ripper killings. Wow, yeah, so it's okay.
Speaker 3: Is David Warner played the snake?
Speaker 1: No, David Warner plays a Scotland yard investigator, and Carrie
Speaker 1: Elwiss plays a former doctor turned opium And what is
Speaker 1: he is? He's an opium attic, but also he's drinking
Speaker 1: too much absinthe and is just generally depressed and sweaty
Speaker 1: all the time. And so so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: great overacting from him, like just the right level of overacting,
Speaker 1: the type of overacting you you want from Carrie Elvis.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I guess I gotta see that one. Maybe
Speaker 3: it'll come up in a future anthology episode. All right.
Speaker 1: As far as other people in the film, like these
Speaker 1: are really the three main characters, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: many of these other individuals we need to go into.
Speaker 1: Some of them are only in it briefly.
Speaker 3: There are some cameos that pop out. Corey Feldman shows
Speaker 3: up as a child. I don't think he has any lines,
Speaker 3: but I just saw him and I was like, wait,
Speaker 3: that's Corey Feldman. And then he just walks off screen.
Speaker 1: He may say something like look, mama, time machine or
Speaker 1: something like that man's in I don't know, he maybe
Speaker 1: says something, but yeah, this was his film debut. Another
Speaker 1: film debut. I believe this was at least his first credit.
Speaker 1: Film screen credit is mc gainey, who displays one of
Speaker 1: the London Bobbies. But this is an actor born nineteen
Speaker 1: forty eight. You may not envision him in your mind
Speaker 1: when I say his name, but if you look him up,
Speaker 1: you'll be like, oh, that guy because he's a character
Speaker 1: actor frequently cast as rotund creepers, bikers, and bad cops.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think about the pilot of the plane in con Air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's right, that was him. Now. I usually
Speaker 1: pinpoint the music, and I should pinpoint the music in
Speaker 1: this one as well. It is a score by Miklos Rosa,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen oh seven through nineteen ninety five. So
Speaker 1: if you're watching this in the score of this film
Speaker 1: feels very traditional. Well, that's because Rosa cut his teeth
Speaker 1: on film scores in the thirties and forties. He was
Speaker 1: a Hungarian American child prodigy. His earliest successes included The
Speaker 1: Feathers in nineteen thirty nine and The Thief of Baghdad
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty. He earned seventeen Academy Award nominations, including
Speaker 1: three oscars for Spellbound in forty five, a Double If
Speaker 1: in forty seven, and Ben Her in fifty nine. So
Speaker 1: huge name in the score business in the Golden Age
Speaker 1: of Hollywood. He composed a good one hundred scores and
Speaker 1: also maintain a career as a concert composer. So even
Speaker 1: though it's not the sort of film score that I
Speaker 1: would want, I would personally want to listen to outside
Speaker 1: of the viewing experience, it's a fine score by a
Speaker 1: legendary composer.
Speaker 3: It is a nonsynse score that you will allow.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I will allow it.
Speaker 3: So I guess we're getting kind of close to the
Speaker 3: end here. It doesn't make a lot of sense, I
Speaker 3: think for this one to talk in much detail about
Speaker 3: the plot or scene by scene, but I mean broadly,
Speaker 3: the main thing is you have this setup where you
Speaker 3: establish the characters in the eighteen nineties, and then there
Speaker 3: is invocation of the time travel mechanism. So Jack the
Speaker 3: Ripper escapes to the future, and HG. Wells realizes what
Speaker 3: is happened, realizes that his friend is in fact Jack
Speaker 3: the Ripper has escaped to the future using his time
Speaker 3: machine that he invented, and now it's his responsibility to
Speaker 3: track him down and bring him to justice. So that's
Speaker 3: one half of the plot, is this sort of chase
Speaker 3: through time, and then the other half is broadly the
Speaker 3: love story. When HG. Wells arrives in the future, he
Speaker 3: and Mary Steinbergen, they meet each other at a bank
Speaker 3: because he is trying to exchange one hundred year old
Speaker 3: British pounds for money that he can use to buy
Speaker 3: Palm Fritz at mcdongle's and she is working there at
Speaker 3: the currency exchange. They meet and they fall in love,
Speaker 3: and there's a very sweet love story that develops between
Speaker 3: them as the plot goes on, and the threat of
Speaker 3: Jack the Ripper is sort of looming in the background.
Speaker 3: But apart from that, I mean, I guess, drawing on
Speaker 3: the themes, I think one thing that's interesting in this
Speaker 3: movie is it's very pointed about H. G. Wells's reaction,
Speaker 3: his extreme resistance to army himself with weapons in his
Speaker 3: struggle against Jack the Ripper when he goes to try
Speaker 3: to apprehend him. At first, he doesn't arm himself or
Speaker 3: try to use force in any way. He just goes
Speaker 3: and tries to talk him into coming back with him,
Speaker 3: and even later on, as the threat becomes more and
Speaker 3: more dire, it's only at a point of sort of
Speaker 3: like breakdown an extremity that he finally gets a gun.
Speaker 3: It's something that he's been urged to do, I think
Speaker 3: by Mary Steinbergen and maybe other characters before that time.
Speaker 3: And I wondered what you thought about that. It was
Speaker 3: an interesting decision to make this character who's so almost
Speaker 3: irrationally resistant to using weapons or arming himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did wonder at that point in the film,
Speaker 1: like what it was ultimately supposed to mean. Like maybe
Speaker 1: I guess it was probably more about the character and
Speaker 1: the necessity of the plot, Like it may be one
Speaker 1: of those situations where you're like, Okay, he's in a
Speaker 1: life and death struggle. Surely he would break and get
Speaker 1: some sort of a weapon at this point. And then
Speaker 1: it also helps with the whole situation where the police
Speaker 1: have apprehended him and they find him not only behaving
Speaker 1: suspiciously but also armed. So I guess it has its
Speaker 1: role in the plot. I don't. I struggled to get
Speaker 1: anything more significant out of it.
Speaker 3: Personally, Well, well, I mean, I mean, I think it
Speaker 3: probably has something to do with like his utopian ideal,
Speaker 3: because Wells is imagining, you know, he's his character, and
Speaker 3: the actual HG. Wells in the late nineteenth century was
Speaker 3: a member of the Fabian Society and didn't think that,
Speaker 3: you know, that incrementalist change in a progressive direction would
Speaker 3: eventually eliminate war and poverty and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: And so if he's thinking of the utopian ideal, I mean,
Speaker 3: it seems that he is committed to the utopian ideal
Speaker 3: of nonviolence in a way that even could be very
Speaker 3: self destructive and could be seen as irrational. In this
Speaker 3: case is where like clearly he's dealing with like a
Speaker 3: dangerous killer one on one. Yeah, And it's interesting that
Speaker 3: the time when he breaks this is in a moment
Speaker 3: of weakness. It's when he's sort of like lost it.
Speaker 1: True, true, Yeah, But.
Speaker 3: I thought that also had interesting implications. And I don't
Speaker 3: want to spoil anything, but for how how the conflict
Speaker 3: has finally resolved in the.
Speaker 1: End, another point I would I would make about the
Speaker 1: time machine because I, you know, what, to step into
Speaker 1: a movie like this and I expect to sort of
Speaker 1: geek out about the particulars of time travel a bit.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because if you asked me to explain
Speaker 1: exactly how the time machine works, and I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about like the you know, the power system in all
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be like solar powered or something, but.
Speaker 3: There's solar powered even though it's in his basement, right.
Speaker 1: But there's this whole bit about the different keys that
Speaker 1: make it do different things, and I cannot tell you
Speaker 1: what how these exactly worked. But the film, the film
Speaker 1: screenplay and presentation is so effective that you you don't
Speaker 1: really have to think too much about it. But it's
Speaker 1: almost like the whole situation where it's like you have
Speaker 1: to try and draw a bicycle. You have this vision
Speaker 1: of the bicycle and and you think you understand it,
Speaker 1: but then you really don't, not enough to draw it. Now.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's how the time machine functions in
Speaker 1: this plot. Like they it works. I understand how it
Speaker 1: functions in the plot and ultimately in the climax of
Speaker 1: the picture. But I also would struggle to explain how
Speaker 1: these keys work and which one does what.
Speaker 3: That's one type of writing skill. I mean, one good
Speaker 3: quality of writing is writing that gives you the illusion
Speaker 3: of explanatory depth. I mean, most stories that you enjoy,
Speaker 3: you probably couldn't go through and explain in the same
Speaker 3: level of detail as the author why exactly everything happens
Speaker 3: and stuff. But there's a sort of ease you settle
Speaker 3: into with certain types of storytelling, with good writing and
Speaker 3: all that, where you just kind of like forget about it,
Speaker 3: You don't worry about it, and you accept that everything
Speaker 3: makes sense even when it often doesn't. And I mean,
Speaker 3: and one way in which it doesn't that I wanted
Speaker 3: to bring up is how this movie does not get
Speaker 3: into the archetype of the time travel story the arms
Speaker 3: that I was talking about earlier, and I was thinking
Speaker 3: about how different the movie could have been if it
Speaker 3: had embraced that ethic. So when Jack the Ripper flees
Speaker 3: to the future, the way HG. Wells decides to deal
Speaker 3: with it is he's going to go to the same
Speaker 3: time in the future and bring him back, instead of
Speaker 3: going one day in the past and preventing Jack the
Speaker 3: Ripper from stealing his time machine in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like that might have been a wiser choice, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have made for his fun of motion picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, just different storytelling sensibilities. And ultimately, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think it comes down to what is it that
Speaker 3: the storyteller really wants us to think about. In this case,
Speaker 3: I think they want us to think about the qualities
Speaker 3: of the present age in which the movie was made,
Speaker 3: sort of the arc of history, and how that would
Speaker 3: be sort of metabolized by somebody from the past with
Speaker 3: utopian ideals and things like that, And it wants to
Speaker 3: tell that kind of story more than it wants to
Speaker 3: tell the kind of story about the power that would
Speaker 3: be granted by a time machine and how people would
Speaker 3: use that power.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. My final note on this film is that
Speaker 1: there's a scene later on where HG. Wells is using
Speaker 1: a phone booth. Oh wait, let me back up. Another
Speaker 1: great point in this film where I was laughing out
Speaker 1: loud and disturbing my wife while she's trying to work
Speaker 1: in the next room. Was the whole scene with the
Speaker 1: garbage disposal. Like, there's a scene where somebody goes to
Speaker 1: use a garbage disposal and you just see the hand.
Speaker 1: It turns out it's not HG. Wells, But you're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, don't let HG. Wells use the garbage disposal.
Speaker 1: He is not ready for this technology.
Speaker 3: Very good point. Yeah, and he's repeatedly confused by phones,
Speaker 3: though he eventually gets the hang of them.
Speaker 4: M m.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there's a great part where he goes to
Speaker 3: a telephone booth. And there's some like graffiti that I
Speaker 3: think is supposed to display the sort of like violence
Speaker 3: and callousness of the age.
Speaker 1: Yes, it says eat razor blades, which is great because
Speaker 1: it's one of the I love it when movie graffiti
Speaker 1: is like clearly orchestrated. It doesn't feel like an organic
Speaker 1: bit of legit graffiti art from the age, like this
Speaker 1: is the prop department. But it feels perfect for this film,
Speaker 1: Like it feels in line with the sort of worries
Speaker 1: about the future and the present that are inherent in
Speaker 1: this tale of Jack the Ripper traveling through time. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna probably go and close it out here. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there. If you
Speaker 1: have not seen Time after time, well lucky you. It's
Speaker 1: widely available on disc and as a digital purchase or rental,
Speaker 1: or a physical rental if you have a video store
Speaker 1: like say Videodrome in your area. As of this recording,
Speaker 1: it's currently streaming on HBO Max in the US, so
Speaker 1: if you sign into that app, into that app, if
Speaker 1: you use that service, you can skip all the Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat and Suicide Squad stuff, go right to the classics.
Speaker 1: They really have a great selection of older films on there.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I've lately been impressed by the selection of
Speaker 3: older movies on HBO Max. Thumbs up on that.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Weird House Cinema, you'll find it on Fridays
Speaker 1: and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're
Speaker 1: primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays we put aside
Speaker 1: most of the science discussion. I guess there's been more
Speaker 1: of it in here since we're talking about time travel,
Speaker 1: but generally Fridays those are our days to just talk
Speaker 1: about weird films, and thus.
Speaker 3: Here we are huge thanks as always to our wonderful
Speaker 3: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 3: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 3: or any other, to suggest topic for the future, just
Speaker 3: to say hello. You can email us at contact at
Speaker 3: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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