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Speaker 2: Oh geez boat, it's showtime.
Speaker 1: People say good money to see this movie. When they
Speaker 1: go out to a theater.
Speaker 3: They want clothed, sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in
Speaker 3: the projection Booth.
Speaker 4: Everyone for ten podcasting isn't boring, Cut it off?
Speaker 3: Thrilled you with the stand misery, the shining, Carry Tommy
Speaker 3: Knuckers and stand by me now. Stephen King's Next Tale
Speaker 3: is brought to television as an ABC premier event. Imagine
Speaker 3: you're asleep on a crowded midnight flight, but when you
Speaker 3: wake up, only ten people are left on the plane.
Speaker 5: Where is everybody?
Speaker 6: What's going on here on the plane?
Speaker 1: No pilot, no crew, and no.
Speaker 5: One on the ground. You don't want to panic on
Speaker 5: a hands doing may day, may day.
Speaker 1: There's nothing out there. What happened to the world? They
Speaker 1: knew what they do?
Speaker 7: Have no play war.
Speaker 1: I really don't want to go down there. But this
Speaker 1: is only the beginning. This place is utterly totally deserted.
Speaker 1: It's really wrong here my look.
Speaker 3: Patricia Wedding, Deed Stockwell, David Morris and Bronson Pinchot, And
Speaker 3: I say your seatbelt. Stephen kids, the Langoliers.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 1: joined me once again as mister Joe madri Hey. Mike
Speaker 1: also joining us as Ms Marta Georgiovic.
Speaker 8: Hello, Hello, Ready to talk about the big picture.
Speaker 1: We are looking at the nineteen ninety five mini series
Speaker 1: The lenge Leers, based on a Stephen King novella and
Speaker 1: adapted and directed by Tom Holland. The film stars David
Speaker 1: Morse as pilot Brian Engel and Bronson Pinshow as businessman
Speaker 1: Craig Toomey. They are two passengers on an unusual flight
Speaker 1: from LA to Boston by way of the Twilight Zone.
Speaker 1: We will be spoiling this movie as we go along,
Speaker 1: so if we don't want anything ruined, turn off the
Speaker 1: podcast and come back after you've seen it. We will
Speaker 1: still be here. So, Joe, when was the first time
Speaker 1: you saw the Lengeliers and what did you think?
Speaker 4: I am a lifelong Stea King nerd, so I was
Speaker 4: there for all of the annual Stephen King mini series
Speaker 4: that aired on ABC back in the nineties, and I
Speaker 4: guess this one was Spring of ninety five, so it
Speaker 4: came after it and The Tommy Knockers and The Stand
Speaker 4: which is sort of a tough act to follow, and
Speaker 4: the Langoliers did not follow it particularly well.
Speaker 9: I was excited. I remember being excited.
Speaker 4: About it because I had read, actually, I think one
Speaker 4: of the first Stephen King stories I ever read. I
Speaker 4: picked up Four Past Midnight when it first came out.
Speaker 4: I'd only read maybe one or two Stephen King books
Speaker 4: before that, and I remember really liking the Langoliers in
Speaker 4: that collection, especially, I think because I had grown up
Speaker 4: in a small town where there wasn't much on TV,
Speaker 4: so we had like one UHF station in the in
Speaker 4: the afternoons they would play you know, Old Star Treks
Speaker 4: and Adam's Family and Twilight Zone episode and Syndication, and
Speaker 4: I loved the Twilight Zone, so I feel like I
Speaker 4: was kind of predisposed to like The Langoliers, which is
Speaker 4: really just sort of an extended Twilight Zone episode. I
Speaker 4: remember thinking it's extended pretty far for a mini series.
Speaker 4: It's the materials a little light. I was underwhelmed, I suppose,
Speaker 4: and I don't think that. I have watched the mini
Speaker 4: series honestly since nineteen ninety five until this podcast came up,
Speaker 4: So I blame you.
Speaker 1: You're going to have to watch it for your next
Speaker 1: book anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I'll get there eventually, and Marta, how about
Speaker 4: yourself now?
Speaker 8: In preparation for this podcast a few days ago, I
Speaker 8: also read the novella for the first time as well,
Speaker 8: and I love that. I absolutely inhaled it. I could
Speaker 8: not put it down. So going into the mini series,
Speaker 8: I was a bit, you know, worried. It's three hours
Speaker 8: of mid nineties network television. But I also realized if
Speaker 8: you really lean into it and lean into the pay thing,
Speaker 8: the flat lighting, it kind of, weirdly enough, works like
Speaker 8: you feel trapped in that eerie dead time with the characters.
Speaker 8: So I don't know, there's something to appreciate about it.
Speaker 8: I guess I can say.
Speaker 1: I came to this one kind of backwards. I ran
Speaker 1: across the film Timekeepers of Eternity, and I was like,
Speaker 1: what the hell is this? Why is there? It was
Speaker 1: like a still image of Bronson Pinchot in black and white.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, what is this thing? What Timekeepers of Eternity?
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this and started watching it and
Speaker 1: I was just like, Oh, this is this is what.
Speaker 1: Wasn't this a TV series? Wasn't this a made for
Speaker 1: TV thing? And kind of just was like, oh, oh
Speaker 1: oh the Lengo Leers. Okay. And the only thing I
Speaker 1: knew about the Lengo Leers is it's famous for one thing,
Speaker 1: horrible special effects. And I said, you know, I've never
Speaker 1: given this a chance. So I said, let me listen
Speaker 1: to the book, and I bought and downloaded Four past
Speaker 1: Midnight on Audible, and I was so thrilled to have
Speaker 1: Willem Dafoe narrating this for me. I was ecstatic listening
Speaker 1: to the story. Strange story and yeah, we'll definitely talk
Speaker 1: about the pacing and stuff. I was so shocked that
Speaker 1: it was like eight hours long, and there's a point
Speaker 1: I think about six hours in where it's just like, well,
Speaker 1: where are they going to go from here? What the hell?
Speaker 1: They're back on the plane, they're flying back, They've got
Speaker 1: this big thing that they're about to go through. How
Speaker 1: are they going to make this go for two more hours.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was fascinating, and as I was listening
Speaker 1: to it, I kept thinking of other things and we'll
Speaker 1: definitely talk about that as we go along as well.
Speaker 1: So now that I've worked my way backwards from Timekeepers
Speaker 1: of Eternity through other mediums back to the Leangaliers, finally
Speaker 1: watched The Langaliers and I was like, oh, this wasn't
Speaker 1: too bad. It is strange. It's a strange movie, strange hastaying,
Speaker 1: strange pacing to the story as well. They cut out
Speaker 1: a lot of interior dialogue, obviously when it comes to
Speaker 1: the series, the two part series, three hours worth of
Speaker 1: this stuff. It makes sense that they do because we
Speaker 1: don't need to get into the heads of every single
Speaker 1: character that's on here. But it is interesting to see
Speaker 1: this whole idea of a bunch of people kind of
Speaker 1: trapped in a spot, but then they're not trapped anymore
Speaker 1: for a third of it, and then they get trapped again.
Speaker 1: They trap themselves on the airplane again because now they're
Speaker 1: trying to save themselves. But yeah, it was just an odd,
Speaker 1: odd way of presenting this whole thing. What I felt
Speaker 1: like should have been a short story, but really stretched out.
Speaker 1: But it didn't feel like one of these Stephen King
Speaker 1: stories where you're just like, oh my God, would you
Speaker 1: please just end this thing already, which sometimes his stories
Speaker 1: feel like that for me, some of his full length novels,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, yeah, this probably should have been a
Speaker 1: short story, whereas with this. Listening to the story, I
Speaker 1: was pretty compelled by it, and I really enjoyed some
Speaker 1: of the things that were happening with it. It is
Speaker 1: interesting that he's got the writer character in here. I mean,
Speaker 1: how many times does Stephen King deal with writers in
Speaker 1: his stories? And then also the little girl who's blind,
Speaker 1: and of course it's like, okay, you've got the person
Speaker 1: with some sort of malady who makes up for it
Speaker 1: in another way. Kind of reminded me of like Nick
Speaker 1: from the Stand, or know, any number of characters that
Speaker 1: Stephen King has written before, where they might be deficient
Speaker 1: in one area but they are superstars in other areas.
Speaker 1: And especially with this little girl of her whole fate
Speaker 1: that she has. But it's a challenging film, let's put
Speaker 1: it that way.
Speaker 8: What I found interesting as well is, I mean, obviously
Speaker 8: there's some changes done to the mini series but a
Speaker 8: lot of it would seemed lifted directly from the pages.
Speaker 8: Like the dialogue especially was very true to King's story,
Speaker 8: and that really surprised me. I wasn't expecting that at all.
Speaker 4: That was Tom Holland, who is the writer and director,
Speaker 4: went into this very concerned about being faithful. I think
Speaker 4: because by the by the mid nineties, you know, fidelity
Speaker 4: to Stephen King was such a big thing with his fans.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 4: That's I think why the mini series format was more popular,
Speaker 4: because you could fit more of the stuff that was
Speaker 4: in the books in there. And he really does stick
Speaker 4: very close to the dialogue, but it's it's kind of
Speaker 4: inescapable the challenges of going from one medium to another.
Speaker 4: The whole Apple and Oranges comparison, because I mean, what
Speaker 4: I think really works about the novel or novella, I'm
Speaker 4: not sure linkwise which which it actually should be classified as.
Speaker 4: But what works is kind of the inner thoughts of
Speaker 4: the characters and the fact that you're getting into their
Speaker 4: heads and when you really just kind of bringing it
Speaker 4: down to dialogue, I mean, it's three hours.
Speaker 9: Of a lot of talking.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just I mean, it's it's theater. You know,
Speaker 4: most of its theater and then they, you know, throw
Speaker 4: in this CGI effect in the last hour. I guess
Speaker 4: that's supposed to be like a curveball. I was reading
Speaker 4: in one of the old I don't remember, maybe it
Speaker 4: was like Cine Fantastique or something, an interview with the
Speaker 4: producer Richard Rubinstein, who is you know, he's kind of
Speaker 4: doing his huckster thing of trying to pitch what this
Speaker 4: mini series is going to be. And he said, you know,
Speaker 4: the logline was like it's it's Stephen King meets Irwin Allen,
Speaker 4: you know, and Irwin Allen did the big you know,
Speaker 4: the big budget disaster movies of the seventies like Beside
Speaker 4: an Adventure and The Towering Inferno and The Swarm. I
Speaker 4: feel like that's kind of misleading, because I there's not
Speaker 4: a lot of spectacle in the Langeliers at all. This
Speaker 4: is not a spectacle driven thing. This is a Twilight
Speaker 4: Zone episode. It's very theatrical, and it's almost like trying
Speaker 4: to be true to the style of a Twilight Zone
Speaker 4: episode that is even kind of shot the same way.
Speaker 4: It's like very traditional coverage, the wides, mediums, tights, and
Speaker 4: then like these extreme close ups with somebody kind of
Speaker 4: looming into the camera, and it really is an extended episode.
Speaker 4: And you know, my memory of the Twilight Zone is
Speaker 4: it in the later seasons they started to go to
Speaker 4: the one hour format instead of the half hour, and
Speaker 4: it wasn't as good. So a three hour Twilight Zone
Speaker 4: episode for me, is a lot to take.
Speaker 1: So at its heart, this is a story of a
Speaker 1: group of people that wake up on an airplane and
Speaker 1: they find that all of the other passengers are gone.
Speaker 1: That includes the pilot. The copilot, everybody's gone, and we're
Speaker 1: left with just a handful of folks. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: what maybe ten characters. I never actually sat down and
Speaker 1: took account of them. They all wake up, they find
Speaker 1: that everybody's missing. They divert the plane from Boston to Banger.
Speaker 1: As they're flying, they keep looking out the window and
Speaker 1: not seeing anything. They're unable to contact anyone at home.
Speaker 1: They don't know what's going to be there when they
Speaker 1: land in Banger, Maine. And of course it just made
Speaker 1: me laugh that they divert the plane to Maine, especially
Speaker 1: to Banger, because that's you know, such as Stephen King
Speaker 1: kind of stomping grounds. They get off the plane, they
Speaker 1: find that there's nobody there, but then they start hearing
Speaker 1: this noise that just keeps getting louder and louder, and
Speaker 1: basically they just kind of figure out, mostly through the
Speaker 1: writer character who's played in the movie by Dean Stockwell,
Speaker 1: find out that basically the whole world seems to be
Speaker 1: like deprived of energy, that it's like a twilight time
Speaker 1: is passing differently, and they kind of figure out like,
Speaker 1: if we don't move, if we don't get back on
Speaker 1: this plane and hopefully fly our way back, that whatever's
Speaker 1: happening to the world is going to happen to them,
Speaker 1: like they're going to be depleted of energy. And then
Speaker 1: of course we find out what the langueliers of the
Speaker 1: title are, which are basically a made up thing inside
Speaker 1: of mister Toomey's head, but they kind of line up
Speaker 1: between his fantasies, his nightmares of his father, and this
Speaker 1: horrible relationship that he had with his father and mother,
Speaker 1: and they eliminate the mother character. It's just the father
Speaker 1: in the movie. If they don't move, they're going to
Speaker 1: get eaten by these creatures, these terrifically ridiculous creatures that
Speaker 1: really reminded me of do you guys remember the movie Critters?
Speaker 1: Reminded me of Critters because they're basically just teeth and
Speaker 1: hair and they just eat everything. And I guess there
Speaker 1: were how the world cleans itself between one day and
Speaker 1: the next, and it's kind of a reset thing and
Speaker 1: they fly off and they try to go back through
Speaker 1: the rift that they just it's all conjecture. It's all
Speaker 1: just Dean Stockwell character just constantly like, well maybe it's this,
Speaker 1: and everything that he says ends up being true, and
Speaker 1: he's just constantly trying to figure things out. One of
Speaker 1: the things I like in the book is that there
Speaker 1: are several times where different characters will have these revelations.
Speaker 1: There's a young man Alfred will figure out a little
Speaker 1: bit of the mystery, and then the Dean Stockwell character
Speaker 1: will figure out a little bit of the mystery, and
Speaker 1: then even the David Morse character, we'll figure out a
Speaker 1: little bit of the mystery. And it's just like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, well, if we reduce cabin pressure, then
Speaker 1: we'll all fall asleep, because we have to be asleep
Speaker 1: to go through this thing, and because that's how we
Speaker 1: made it through the first time, so somebody's got to
Speaker 1: sacrifice themselves and stay awake so that they can turn
Speaker 1: the air pressure back on, you know. And meanwhile Albert
Speaker 1: is like, oh, well, if we take these things back
Speaker 1: onto the plane, the plane has energy and it hasn't
Speaker 1: yet been sapped of energy or anything. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just very very chunked as far as like on the plane,
Speaker 1: on the ground, back on the plane. And then there's
Speaker 1: that little denument at the end where like time kind
Speaker 1: of catches back up with them, and by that point
Speaker 1: we're down to what four characters, maybe a few more
Speaker 1: because we have lost a lot of people along the way.
Speaker 8: For me, what really worked was how little of the monsters,
Speaker 8: the languelgeers you actually see, because going in this all
Speaker 8: I knew, of course, was about the CGI. That's what
Speaker 8: everybody seems to be talking about. But it really doesn't
Speaker 8: even take up that much time in the film, and
Speaker 8: it's less about the monsters eating time and more about
Speaker 8: people realizing they've slipped out of the present, and that
Speaker 8: to me is truly horrific. And then you have King
Speaker 8: who literalizes that slow decay of meaning right the empty airport,
Speaker 8: the fluorescent home, everywhere. It all just feels like Time's
Speaker 8: corpse so perfect actually watching it now in twenty twenty
Speaker 8: five that the CGI and set design looks so dated
Speaker 8: because it almost reinforces the idea that this world has expired, right.
Speaker 4: I do love the concept, and I think it's something
Speaker 4: that works so well on the page, because really it's
Speaker 4: a story that's about so much of the stories about dread,
Speaker 4: and it's kind of about this feeling of the uncanny,
Speaker 4: and you know, like with the noise of the languelers coming,
Speaker 4: like all the characters have a different description of what
Speaker 4: they and they all kind of describe it as something familiar,
Speaker 4: but the fact that it's something different for all of
Speaker 4: them is a little unnerving. I can't even remember all
Speaker 4: the descriptions. One of them says it's like rice crispies
Speaker 4: and milk, and everybody sort of has their own spin
Speaker 4: on it. And there's just something creepy about the fact
Speaker 4: that it's familiar and unfamiliar. They don't actually know what
Speaker 4: it is. They can't place it, and they're trying to
Speaker 4: come up with some sort of equivalent in their past experience.
Speaker 4: I mean, they're reaching for that and can't quite come
Speaker 4: up with it. And the same thing with like the
Speaker 4: experience of everything being kind of gray out, that like
Speaker 4: sensory experience doesn't work. Things taste flat, you know, there's
Speaker 4: no taste. You can't smell, things you can't sound is
Speaker 4: not really working right, There's something that's not kind of
Speaker 4: vivid about the sound. Everything sounds a little muted. It's
Speaker 4: these things that you can describe on the page where
Speaker 4: you can talk about somebody's experience of this, their experience
Speaker 4: of the uncanny, and a good writer can put you
Speaker 4: in their head as they're feeling disoriented. And I think
Speaker 4: the trick with a film of you know, going to
Speaker 4: the different medium is it's like so much of it
Speaker 4: is about can you visualize something or can you put
Speaker 4: something on the soundtrack that is that disorienting or that
Speaker 4: destabilizing in these really subtle ways.
Speaker 9: That's a really tall order.
Speaker 4: I feel like instead what they did was say, well,
Speaker 4: we're just going to say all that great stuff that
Speaker 4: Stephen King described, We're just going to have them say
Speaker 4: it or you know, what they're feeling, because because King
Speaker 4: says it so well in the book, We're just going
Speaker 4: to make that dialogue, which is this trap that people
Speaker 4: fall into with Stephen King adaptations, We're going to be
Speaker 4: really faithful, and by being faithful, you don't recognize that
Speaker 4: there's something that has to happen when you're translating from
Speaker 4: one medium to the other. When it was interviewing Diane
Speaker 4: Johnson about The Shining and she, you know, is incredibly
Speaker 4: brilliant writer, and she said, what you really have to
Speaker 4: do is come up with objective correlatives for what's on
Speaker 4: the page. And so instead of you know, doing kind
Speaker 4: of extended dialogue about the violent history of the Overlook Hotel,
Speaker 4: you do something like a visual metaphor of the blood
Speaker 4: pouring out of the elevator that is just a surreal
Speaker 4: thing that kind of, you know, smacks the audience out
Speaker 4: of their comfort zone. The dialogue just doesn't get it done.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 9: I just keep coming back to thinking.
Speaker 4: Well, The Languel Years is a play, it's a it's
Speaker 4: sort of a theater, maybe not even theater of the
Speaker 4: mind theater.
Speaker 9: That's not enough for me with a story like this,
Speaker 9: to say nothing of the CGI.
Speaker 1: What's like, we are missing a lot of these characters' motivations.
Speaker 1: I mean, when I look at the movie, just as
Speaker 1: the movie, there's very little of the Laurel Stephenson character.
Speaker 1: The Patricia Wedding is the actress playing Laurel. There's very
Speaker 1: little of Kate Maberlys Dinah Bellman character, and then the
Speaker 1: Frankie Faison, who I love him. He's barely present in
Speaker 1: this movie as Don Gaffney, and I'm just like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really would have liked to have known these characters
Speaker 1: a little bit more because as it ends up, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe we get a little of David Morris, but it
Speaker 1: really becomes the Mister Toomey Show. And that's fine, but
Speaker 1: mister Toomey, I mean bron Spins show is playing him
Speaker 1: at eleven almost the entire time, if not the entire time,
Speaker 1: and it really becomes all about him and all about
Speaker 1: the blind girl. Everybody else kind of takes a side seat.
Speaker 8: It doesn't even open with Dinah or Brian Ingele, which
Speaker 8: I think the book opens with Brian Engele. It opens
Speaker 8: the mini series opens with Nick and I thought that
Speaker 8: was very very bizarre, and then we kind of see
Speaker 8: Dinah a little bit with her aunt and then Toomey,
Speaker 8: but it was just completely different to the book, which
Speaker 8: I just couldn't think fure out why, especially with Nick too.
Speaker 1: I pictured Nick as being a lot older than the
Speaker 1: actor that's portraying him, and I don't know what that was,
Speaker 1: if that was the Foe's reading of the character or
Speaker 1: just you know, they describe him as basically like a
Speaker 1: British secret agent, but it felt like he was very
Speaker 1: world weary to me. So I just pictured somebody a
Speaker 1: little bit older in my mind, almost like if David
Speaker 1: Morse and the actor playing Nick had switched spots. I
Speaker 1: could almost see that because I can see David Morse
Speaker 1: being more of like world weary, and also he would
Speaker 1: probably make a killer assassin because I usually see him
Speaker 1: as a bad guy in most movies.
Speaker 4: I totally pictured Cary Grant from Charade as Nick, and
Speaker 4: that's because I also listened to the Willem Dafoe audiobook,
Speaker 4: and Willem Dafoe whenever he goes into Nick, he like
Speaker 4: does his British accent and it's carry Grant. It's like
Speaker 4: that's what he thinks of British accent. I'm sure like
Speaker 4: I should give Willem Dafoe more credit. He probably doesn't
Speaker 4: think that that's what a British accent is he's just like, well,
Speaker 4: doing sort of a you know, Stephen King's version of
Speaker 4: you know of Hitchcock here. So I'm gonna just make
Speaker 4: Nick carry Grant. I'm just going to cast him in
Speaker 4: that role. But I just the way he delivers the lines.
Speaker 4: I just, I just I'm not going to do a
Speaker 4: carry Grant impression. I promised, But if you want to
Speaker 4: hear a good one. Willem Dafoe, reading the Languelaer.
Speaker 10: In his mind's eye, he now saw that angel moving
Speaker 10: not over Egypt, but through Flight twenty nine, gathering most
Speaker 10: of the passengers to its terrible breast, not because they
Speaker 10: had neglected to daub their lintils or their seatbacks, perhaps
Speaker 10: with the blood of a lamb, but because why because why?
Speaker 10: Albert didn't know, but he shivered just the same and
Speaker 10: wished that creepy old story had never occurred to him.
Speaker 10: Let my frequent flyers go, he thought, except it wasn't funny.
Speaker 8: I'm sad I didn't do the audio book. I feel
Speaker 8: like I'm missing out on something big here, guys.
Speaker 4: He should have been in the movie.
Speaker 1: Defee was amazing, especially when he's reading to me internal dialogue,
Speaker 1: and especially reading Toomey's father and Toomey's mother and just
Speaker 1: Willem Dafoe putting on that voice of like Okay, Craigy
Speaker 1: Weggy and I'm like, oh man, this is making my
Speaker 1: skin crawl. Yeah he doesn't, Oh he is all in.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, whenever he talks about the big picture,
Speaker 1: he like really shouts it at you. It's like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah he really.
Speaker 9: He earned his.
Speaker 1: Money on that audio com that audio book. That's for sure,
Speaker 1: sounds amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: The one thing with too me actually, what I found
Speaker 8: interesting is that there's is you were saying, Mike, there's
Speaker 8: no mention of the mother, And then that almost didn't
Speaker 8: really work for me because all that Craigy Weggy stuff
Speaker 8: is then transferred onto the father, which I don't even think.
Speaker 8: I don't think that that was his nickname for a
Speaker 8: son in the book, or maybe it was, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the whole thing of like his both of his
Speaker 1: parents were terrible, between the father just drilling all of
Speaker 1: this into him and like you know, the Langeliers eat
Speaker 1: up little boys that aren't committed to the big picture
Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff, like basically the most
Speaker 1: a type personality ever, just drilling it into this little boy,
Speaker 1: and then when he's out of the big picture or
Speaker 1: when he's not around, you've got the alcoholic mother who
Speaker 1: she tortures him somehow. And I'm trying to remember what
Speaker 1: it is, does she time up or something?
Speaker 8: It's the cigarette between his toes or match, maybe one
Speaker 8: or the other.
Speaker 1: Which kind of plays into the whole life of the
Speaker 1: matches thing when it comes to them trying to light
Speaker 1: the match and not being able to light the match.
Speaker 8: I love King's take with Toomey. I saw Toomey as
Speaker 8: like capitalism's fever dream seeing. To me, it's the most
Speaker 8: painfully American response to metaphysics imaginable. He's terrified of wasting
Speaker 8: a second, he's shredding paper to self soothe. He's literally
Speaker 8: being devoured by his own idea of productivity. I think
Speaker 8: it's his dad that says, what is it? Lying down
Speaker 8: on the job? Is lying down on the job. So
Speaker 8: he's screaming that and it's just hilarious and tragic to.
Speaker 1: Me all at once.
Speaker 8: And I really loved how King described all of that
Speaker 8: in the book. So I mean, I'm talking about the
Speaker 8: book more than I had about the mini series, but
Speaker 8: it's something that really stood out to me and really
Speaker 8: stuck with me.
Speaker 11: The latest from a twisted imagination of Stephen King are
Speaker 11: creatures called Langaliers who will make their way into your
Speaker 11: home VA mini series. Their purpose to turn an ordinary
Speaker 11: trip into a flight of terror. If he bravely ventured
Speaker 11: to the set in Maine and found our own twisted
Speaker 11: tour guide of sorts star of the sci fi thriller
Speaker 11: at Bronson Pinchot.
Speaker 4: How do you feel about Bronson Pinchot? Can we just
Speaker 4: talk about Bronson Pinchot for a minute, because I feel
Speaker 4: like he's kind of the biggest thing in this mini
Speaker 4: series and I went kind of poking around looking at
Speaker 4: reviews and he's definitely kind of the other than the CGI.
Speaker 4: Bronson Pinjo's what people are talking about, and it's like
Speaker 4: I love it or hate I mean, some people are
Speaker 4: really enthusiastic about his performance while acknowledging that it's completely
Speaker 4: over the top. So it's like I came away going, well,
Speaker 4: when does over the top work for the movie? And
Speaker 4: when when does it not? Does it work for this
Speaker 4: because it's such a contrast to you know, the rest
Speaker 4: of the cast is kind of doing their like you know,
Speaker 4: day players on a TV soap opera and they're just
Speaker 4: there's a blandness. And then it's like he comes in
Speaker 4: just trying to just wreck shop, you know, basically, I
Speaker 4: mean just you know, chewing the scenery. And it's strange.
Speaker 4: I mean I kind of wonder, like, what is Tom
Speaker 4: Holland as the director, Like is he sitting back going
Speaker 4: you know, this doesn't mesh, but it's bringing some life
Speaker 4: to it. I mean, what must he have been thinking
Speaker 4: to just kind of let ronson Pinchot kind of run
Speaker 4: rough shot over the whole production like that?
Speaker 9: Is that a positive or a negative?
Speaker 1: Even Pinchow's not just his demeanor, but just the way
Speaker 1: that his character is made up. With this hair slicked back,
Speaker 1: he looks like he's sweaty at all times, and then
Speaker 1: he's got black circles around his eyes. He almost looks
Speaker 1: like a member of the living dead a lot of
Speaker 1: times because he's pale, he's got the black circles, he's
Speaker 1: got the hair slipped back. I guess he could also
Speaker 1: be a vampire. I mean, he does look supernatural through
Speaker 1: a lot of this, and just like you're saying, he's
Speaker 1: playing at you know to the hilt every single time
Speaker 1: I paid for a ticket to Boston. I'm going to Boston,
Speaker 1: just like the most unreasonable person. And it's funny because,
Speaker 1: you know, this is nineteen ninety five. We didn't have,
Speaker 1: you know, cell phones with cameras and video recordings and stuff.
Speaker 1: Now you see this type of behavior. I mean, there
Speaker 1: was a period of time there, remember when the guy
Speaker 1: got ejected from what the United flight and stuff and
Speaker 1: just all of these like very notorious like ejections off
Speaker 1: of airplanes. To me, is right there? To me is
Speaker 1: one of these you know what would they call him
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five of Karen? You know, just like
Speaker 1: my needs come before everybody else's needs. I don't care
Speaker 1: what anybody else cares. This is my show. I am
Speaker 1: the main character. It brings that I am the main
Speaker 1: character energy to every single time he talks, he's just
Speaker 1: so entitled. I want a window seat. Why don't you talk?
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no no, why don't you talk to the ticket engagent?
Speaker 5: I only want to talk to you.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the only time he's calm is when he's
Speaker 1: back ripping pages in a magazine or a newspaper or something.
Speaker 1: Is just constant. That's the only thing that seems to
Speaker 1: soothe him, which of course we'll talk about more with
Speaker 1: Timekeepers of Eternity. But yeah, that's it's such a great
Speaker 1: little character trait or major character trait, and I love that.
Speaker 1: At one point, to kind of jump a little bit ahead,
Speaker 1: he's in an office and they're looking for him, and
Speaker 1: Albert comes in, and so does the Frankie fi Is
Speaker 1: on character and they look in and nobody sees anything,
Speaker 1: and then Albert sees the pile of shredded papers, and
Speaker 1: he's like, he's here. You know. It's like his tell
Speaker 1: that there's all those shredded papers.
Speaker 8: It's funny you should mention vampire actually because in my
Speaker 8: notes I wrote down he looks a bit like Bela
Speaker 8: Lugosi and I really really noticed it, of course in
Speaker 8: Timekeepers because it's in black and white and you can
Speaker 8: really see this like black hair. But in the Langoliars
Speaker 8: I also noticed as time goes on, he becomes more
Speaker 8: pale and more than everybody else. It almost looks like
Speaker 8: he just loses all sense of color. So yeah, I
Speaker 8: found that really interesting because nobody else seems to.
Speaker 1: I guess that kind of fits too with the whole world,
Speaker 1: kind of being sapped of everything in him, just getting
Speaker 1: more and more pale, because when he's on the plane
Speaker 1: and he's screaming his head off, he's turning almost purple
Speaker 1: at times.
Speaker 4: He's exhausted. By the time they get on the ground,
Speaker 4: he's got nothing left. You've got to recharge.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine being in on that set when he's
Speaker 1: doing that. I mean, it's just he as an actor,
Speaker 1: must have been exhausted at the end of every day,
Speaker 1: just screaming and carrying on.
Speaker 4: I've read a funny story about that. Actually, I don't
Speaker 4: know how you know method d Bronson Pinchot is, but
Speaker 4: I guess he was, you know, in the dressing room
Speaker 4: whatever he was rehearsing, he was getting into character.
Speaker 9: And and he.
Speaker 4: Got really angry because he could hear people outside talking, chatting.
Speaker 4: They were being very loud, they were disrupting his process,
Speaker 4: and he was in he was in trying to get
Speaker 4: in character as Craig Jumy.
Speaker 9: So of course he's.
Speaker 4: Angry and very big and entitled in all of this.
Speaker 4: And so he leaves the dressing room and goes out
Speaker 4: to you know, chastize everyone. Uh and and everybody's kind
Speaker 4: of crowded around this guy who's, you know, the center
Speaker 4: of attention, and so he decides, this is this is
Speaker 4: who I'm going to scold because this is clearly the problem.
Speaker 4: The guy turns around and it's Stephen King. So he
Speaker 4: was very humbled by that and probably slipped out a character.
Speaker 4: They're like, you know, I imagine that was a moment
Speaker 4: where he went more back into like, you know, Balki
Speaker 4: Bartacamos instead of Craig Jumy.
Speaker 8: Yes, you were both saying, I wish we got more
Speaker 8: of the other characters, perarticularly Laurel, because she's so grounded.
Speaker 8: She has that maternal instinct, especially in regards to Dinah.
Speaker 8: She starts taking care of Dinah, and I think that's
Speaker 8: a really nice counterpoint to Toomey's mania. So I wish
Speaker 8: we got more of that, like more of that balance,
Speaker 8: I guess, because yeah, Joe, as you're saying, it's it's
Speaker 8: very much so the Toomey show throughout.
Speaker 1: I was so confused when Patricia Weddig showed up on screen.
Speaker 1: I was just like, oh, I didn't know Edie Falco
Speaker 1: was in this, And every time she shows up, I
Speaker 1: keep thinking it's Edie Falco. She just looks like such
Speaker 1: a dead ringer. And I guess it helps that I'm
Speaker 1: watched doing a rewatch of the Sopranos, but every single
Speaker 1: time I'm just like, oh God, is that caramel. Nope,
Speaker 1: that's not Edie Falco, that's Patricia Wedding. And Yeah, her
Speaker 1: story in the book is interesting, this whole thing of
Speaker 1: like her exchanging letters with somebody that she doesn't really know,
Speaker 1: and she basically is just trying to cast off her
Speaker 1: whole life. I mean, she and Toomey are kind of
Speaker 1: similar in that way of going for it, and to
Speaker 1: me is on this path of literal self destruction through
Speaker 1: this entire story. It's interesting how they externalize that. At
Speaker 1: the beginning in the airport, when there's the guy chasing
Speaker 1: after him and he's just like, you lost all this money,
Speaker 1: He's like, yep, I know, and just kind of marches off,
Speaker 1: and his whole thing is And I love the metaphor
Speaker 1: that King uses in the book of the fish that
Speaker 1: are so deep that any sort of like change and pressure,
Speaker 1: like as they get closer to the surface will just explode.
Speaker 1: And he basically is looking forward to going to Boston
Speaker 1: and exploding, And I don't know if that means that
Speaker 1: his whole life is over or his whole life under
Speaker 1: his father's thumb is over, and if he can finally
Speaker 1: become his own person. I don't know what his endgame was,
Speaker 1: but I really appreciate that he just kind of wanted
Speaker 1: to be different and was on that path of coming
Speaker 1: to the surface and imploding.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I also saw to me as a bit of a
Speaker 8: opposite to Dinah as well, because they're too They're both
Speaker 8: in the same place, and how they're reacting to it
Speaker 8: seems polar opposite.
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 8: Dinah believes in the langueliers. She believes in getting them
Speaker 8: out of this situation where he just completely panics and
Speaker 8: doesn't think there's a way out. So I would look
Speaker 8: at them as as polar opposites personally.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: I like the way their characters are married too. When
Speaker 1: he starts to see, we see as the audience what
Speaker 1: he sees through his eyes of everyone else on the
Speaker 1: plane basically being monsters, and you get his head snapping
Speaker 1: from place to place, and then you get Dinah's head
Speaker 1: snapping the exact same way in the foreground. That's probably
Speaker 1: one of my favorite bits in this whole mini series.
Speaker 8: I was surprising too. I remember I had to rewind
Speaker 8: as well because I've was not expecting it to look
Speaker 8: so scary, truly, that that was more scary than the
Speaker 8: actual Langeliers of course.
Speaker 1: And Joe, I love what you're saying when you made
Speaker 1: a reference to Hitchcock earlier, and I think you were
Speaker 1: making it more in terms of Carrie Grant, but now
Speaker 1: that you're saying that this has very much that dynamic
Speaker 1: of a lifeboat, and you know, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about this a lot as this episode goes on. But
Speaker 1: this whole idea of like a group of characters trapped
Speaker 1: kind of but like into an enclosed place, and Lifeboat
Speaker 1: is such a great example of that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think we're aiming more for Lifeboat, but I think we're
Speaker 1: ending up more as Rope, like you're saying, as far
Speaker 1: as like the playlike feel of this, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: help Rope that it's all you know, the quote unquote
Speaker 1: one under interrupted shot, which is definitely not There are
Speaker 1: cuts as you go along, and then of course I'm
Speaker 1: not even talking about the back of the jacket kind
Speaker 1: of thing, Like there's a couple like literal cuts in
Speaker 1: the movie, this whole idea of all of these disparate
Speaker 1: characters being brought together. I mean, I just watched the
Speaker 1: film Identity two nights ago, and I'm just like, what
Speaker 1: are these all aspects of mister Toomey's personality? You know,
Speaker 1: But no, it's not. They are very real quote unquote characters.
Speaker 4: It's the minimal sets too, And I imagine that must
Speaker 4: have been part of what was appealing about adapting this
Speaker 4: was that it can be so you know contained. I mean,
Speaker 4: you really just have like the plane set and then
Speaker 4: you have I guess technically you have two airport sets,
Speaker 4: but I think they were both shot in bang Or airport.
Speaker 4: The end doesn't look like Lax. I can't imagine they
Speaker 4: shot that. They just got some exterior shots of Lax.
Speaker 4: And then even like the you know, the shots of
Speaker 4: the plane in the sky or just cgi. So I
Speaker 4: mean it's really contained. And you know, again I go
Speaker 4: back to like watching it in nineteen ninety five, and
Speaker 4: what a contrast that is to the stand which was
Speaker 4: shot you know, all over the country, had so many
Speaker 4: you know, different locations and moving parts. And then and
Speaker 4: then the Langoliers is you know, it's just so kind
Speaker 4: of small and and light by comparison, and and you know,
Speaker 4: and and where did the budget go? Because obviously these
Speaker 4: these big Minnix Stephen King miniseries that were getting these
Speaker 4: ratings that were like the you know, the kind of
Speaker 4: you know, the big moment in in sweep Sweek back
Speaker 4: when sweeps Week was a thing. Uh, you know, where
Speaker 4: did the money go on this one? Did it really
Speaker 4: go to the to the c G. I is that
Speaker 4: what happened? And I'm curious actually because you did so,
Speaker 4: did you both read the story before watching the mini series?
Speaker 4: Because I'm curious then what you pictured the Langoliers like
Speaker 4: in your head? Did you have an idea of what
Speaker 4: they would look like before seeing the mini series?
Speaker 8: Do you remember in Spirited Away the little black flofs,
Speaker 8: So I imagined it as them, but instead of having
Speaker 8: their cute little faces, it was just teeth. So I
Speaker 8: imagine them is very fuzzy with feet, because I think
Speaker 8: Toomey says at one point that they have feet, or
Speaker 8: his father told him that they had feet, But I
Speaker 8: didn't imagine them as I don't even know how to
Speaker 8: describe them when we actually see them. There these like
Speaker 8: floating balls with mouths.
Speaker 4: So certainly not that in the book. Isn't there a
Speaker 4: description that's like bowling balls with teeth?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think it might have been tempered. I
Speaker 1: might have seen the CGI. I might have that might
Speaker 1: have been somewhere in my head. Like I mentioned, they
Speaker 1: reminded me of critters. When I was thinking of them,
Speaker 1: they reminded me of fiz Gig from the Dark Crystal.
Speaker 1: And also they reminded me as far as like the
Speaker 1: mental picture I had, now this is way out there,
Speaker 1: it reminded me of the testicle monsters that were on
Speaker 1: Rick and Morty. I think it was the Time Cops episode.
Speaker 4: You still a Time Fraezing Crystal from Testical Monsters. I
Speaker 4: would have been happy to pay for it summer, but
Speaker 4: they don't exactly sell them at Costco.
Speaker 1: That's what I pictured in my head was like kind
Speaker 1: of a combination of all those. I definitely pictured them
Speaker 1: having like little legs running along, and it was just
Speaker 1: a matter of like how little those legs were, because obviously,
Speaker 1: like fiz Gig, I think you maybe see Fate, but
Speaker 1: he just is pretty stationary. But yeah, those testical monsters
Speaker 1: I think moved around pretty well.
Speaker 8: It brings the question what would it look like today?
Speaker 8: You know, like could this ever be done well and
Speaker 8: actually have them be scary?
Speaker 4: I was thinking about this what I might want, trying
Speaker 4: to come up with a frame of reference from what
Speaker 4: they could look like, or it's something that had worked
Speaker 4: for me, and sort of two things popped into my head.
Speaker 4: One was the silver Spears and phantasm. You know, it's
Speaker 4: a very simple kind of practical effect, but that always
Speaker 4: worked or out it was terrified and those things when
Speaker 4: I saw phantasm as a kid, and yet it's so simple.
Speaker 4: And then the other thing, because they're basically eating reality.
Speaker 4: The other thing that conceptually popped into my head was
Speaker 4: the Nothing from the.
Speaker 9: Never Ending Story.
Speaker 4: So I was just like, oh, if you could combine
Speaker 4: those two, sohow then it would work for me?
Speaker 9: And I think, you know, a lot, with.
Speaker 4: A lot of the reviews at least kind of sayings,
Speaker 4: what we end up with instead is sort of these
Speaker 4: like pac Man Digital, you know, cgi pac Man. Apparently
Speaker 4: they even when they were designing them, initially they had eyes,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean they had like a full face,
Speaker 4: and then they ended up just going with the teep,
Speaker 4: but eyes would have definitely, maybe even more pac manish,
Speaker 4: I think. So it's probably good they didn't go that route.
Speaker 8: I don't think anything could have prepared me for seeing them,
Speaker 8: because I'm a firm believer and I don't like watching trailers.
Speaker 8: I don't like spoiling anything, especially visually. So yeah, once
Speaker 8: I saw them, I just I was speechless. I'm still speechless.
Speaker 1: I can see why people didn't talk about this movie
Speaker 1: that much other than the CGI. That was the only
Speaker 1: thing I was aware of. Like, I even kind of
Speaker 1: got this mixed up with I don't know what the
Speaker 1: plot of the Tommy Knockers is, but I kind of
Speaker 1: got that mixed in here where I was just like, well,
Speaker 1: which one is this? Is this the Tommy Knockers, This
Speaker 1: is the Langoliers. And I think it's just because they
Speaker 1: have both have kind of silly titles to them, and
Speaker 1: you know, Lengoleers is just such a made up thing
Speaker 1: made up by mister Toomey's father. Yeah, one of these
Speaker 1: has bad CGI and I don't know which one it is,
Speaker 1: and I don't know which has an airplane in it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, when I finally got to see them in
Speaker 1: C two, as I'm watching this and they yeah, just
Speaker 1: keep building up, building up, building up. I was just like,
Speaker 1: my god, the people in nineteen ninety five must have
Speaker 1: been so disappointed when they have waited for one night's
Speaker 1: worth of thing and they come back the next night
Speaker 1: and tune in on ABC at nine o'clock or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then these things show up. I just can imagine America,
Speaker 1: you know, uproariously laugh at these things because they were
Speaker 1: just so pathetic. You know, this is like worse than
Speaker 1: asylum level creature effects. And you know, you mentioned the
Speaker 1: cgi of the airplane. I was like, well, that looks decent.
Speaker 1: That looks decent enough, you know, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: how you know, in some of these older things like
Speaker 1: the Twilight Zone, it's like some of those shots pretty
Speaker 1: laughable some of them. But yeah, the plane here looks good.
Speaker 1: But man, oh man, once those things come out and
Speaker 1: they just do not look like they belong in this
Speaker 1: world in this movie. They just look like they're slapped
Speaker 1: on like a It's almost like a JibJab cartoon or something.
Speaker 1: They just have these things in here. It's like, wow,
Speaker 1: I can see why people don't go, oh, did you
Speaker 1: ever see the langol ears?
Speaker 4: It was a bummer for sure, since we're talking about
Speaker 4: the CGI. I mean, obviously the Langoliers is kind of
Speaker 4: the big obvious thing, but what about the time rip
Speaker 4: at the at the very end, because that's that's sort
Speaker 4: of the other big thing that I imagine they invested a
Speaker 4: certain amount of money in and had a lot of
Speaker 4: discussions about what the time rip is gonna look like
Speaker 4: at the end the end of the film when they
Speaker 4: passed through it. I don't think that's as offensive as
Speaker 4: the the le Angeliers, you know, but it's also feels
Speaker 4: to me like they're going for you know, two thousand
Speaker 4: and one of Space Odyssey and really trying to conjure
Speaker 4: that sense of awe and wonder, and it's just it's
Speaker 4: okay CGI. I mean, it's undercut too, but again the
Speaker 4: fact that they lean so heavily on dialoge. You've got
Speaker 4: these characters going through this thing that's supposed to inspire
Speaker 4: all in wonder and they're going, it's so beautiful, I'm
Speaker 4: so happy. I mean, it's like, wow, wait a step
Speaker 4: on the moment. Guys, you really didn't trust the quality
Speaker 4: of the CGI here. You were just like, we've got
Speaker 4: to explain to the audience what they're supposed to be feeling.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 8: It didn't bother me as much.
Speaker 9: Honestly.
Speaker 8: I think it's the fact that I saw the langue ears,
Speaker 8: and then anything that comes after that is fine in
Speaker 8: my books, So I don't even remember what that time
Speaker 8: war looks like. Actually, now that I'm trying to recall it,
Speaker 8: it's all just langoliars.
Speaker 1: By the time we got to the end of the film,
Speaker 1: I was just like, Okay, at least these aren't the langoliers.
Speaker 1: It looks fairly decent. It just reminded me of like
Speaker 1: a big amaloni shell or something. I almost wish that
Speaker 1: it had been a little bit more organic somehow, having
Speaker 1: a little rip in time and space in the air.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what I'm picturing like when
Speaker 1: I read the book or listened to the book, mister
Speaker 1: Dafoe described it very beautifully and it sounded great, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I was definitely a little bit disappointing when I saw
Speaker 1: it on screen, but it was not nearly as egregious
Speaker 1: as anything else. I think the shots of the airplane
Speaker 1: flying away from it and flying into it, and you
Speaker 1: just have like that very crisp, clean airplane and then
Speaker 1: kind of the colorfulness of the rip just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it doesn't look good, but it wasn't laughable.
Speaker 9: At least serviceable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the serviceable is a great word.
Speaker 8: Actually it looked And I know we may talk about
Speaker 8: this film later, but I watched Flight World War two
Speaker 8: last night, and the CGI and the Langoliers is actually well,
Speaker 8: not including the actual angeliers themselves, but the outside shots
Speaker 8: of the sky and everything the time where that was
Speaker 8: a lot better than Flight World War Two, which came
Speaker 8: out in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 9: I think very brave of you.
Speaker 1: I felt so bad for Faran to hear to be
Speaker 1: in that movie. I was just like, I like that guy.
Speaker 1: He was such a great villain and iron Man. He
Speaker 1: was so great in an escape plan? What are you
Speaker 1: doing here?
Speaker 4: I couldn't watch it because when you brought it up,
Speaker 4: you know, of course, I always think of the Asylum
Speaker 4: as like, all right, we're doing the poor man's version
Speaker 4: of big budget blockbusters, and it's like, okay, do you
Speaker 4: want to watch the poor man's version of the Langoliers. No,
Speaker 4: the Langoliers is the poor man's version of the Langoliers.
Speaker 9: I'm good.
Speaker 8: I watched Stalker the night before, say, I mentioned that
Speaker 8: to both of you. So going from Stalker Tarkovsky Stalker
Speaker 8: to flight World War two with something else in a way,
Speaker 8: it was almost nice to have my brain just have
Speaker 8: that break, that mental break, and just absorb everything that
Speaker 8: is the asylum.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was amazing to do research on this
Speaker 1: and to read so many, like actual papers about time
Speaker 1: and time travel, and because it's almost like the time
Speaker 1: travel takes a side step when it comes to the
Speaker 1: Lengoliers because it's basically just this we somehow slipped into
Speaker 1: the between time, the liminal space between days, and as
Speaker 1: a I don't necessarily know how this works because it's
Speaker 1: like as one day goes away, the next day starts,
Speaker 1: and the Lengo leaders come in and they eat the
Speaker 1: previous day. Is what I'm picturing. Is that what you
Speaker 1: guys have in your heads as well?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I saw them as like a janitorial service.
Speaker 1: I was reading so much much about time travel and
Speaker 1: this idea of like what happens when when day ends
Speaker 1: and the next day begins, and then of course being
Speaker 1: in the air, and you know, time just is so
Speaker 1: different when you're moving faster than you know, the earth
Speaker 1: is rotating and this whole idea I always, you know,
Speaker 1: joke with my wife whenever we take an airplane trip.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, Okay, we're traveling in time. We're going
Speaker 1: to be there, you know, an hour before we actually
Speaker 1: left or something like that, or like this whole flight
Speaker 1: is only going to take us an hour, but of
Speaker 1: course it takes like five hours with the time zone
Speaker 1: differences and everything. Oh yeah, well we're leaving it one.
Speaker 1: We'll arrive at two in California. I mean, obviously it
Speaker 1: doesn't work that way, but so yeah, this whole idea
Speaker 1: of time.
Speaker 4: And just that you have to think of time in
Speaker 4: an abstract way. It's been a long time since like
Speaker 4: you know, basic Western philosophy. But it's like permenodying being
Speaker 4: where everything kind of flows together. And then you know,
Speaker 4: this is kind of like the theory behind the Langelaer
Speaker 4: seems to be a bit more like kind of like
Speaker 4: the film strip version of time, or each moment is
Speaker 4: kind of discreete and separate from the moment before in
Speaker 4: the moment after, So it's like each discreet moment has
Speaker 4: its own life, and you know, whatever the clean up
Speaker 4: crew has to come in when that moment is done,
Speaker 4: clear the way.
Speaker 9: For the next one, whatever parton.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is where like you have again, it's
Speaker 4: like the dialogue in the story. I think it's the
Speaker 4: writer who gets to kind of explain all of this
Speaker 4: conceptually to people, which I don't know does that I mean,
Speaker 4: it's interesting, it's really interesting conceptually. Is it scary or
Speaker 4: is it just sort of you.
Speaker 9: Know, mind mind boggling.
Speaker 4: Does it pull you into the story or does it
Speaker 4: pull you out of the story to get this abstract.
Speaker 1: Once the Dean Stockel character brings up time travel, I'm
Speaker 1: just like, well, is it time travel? Because not knowing
Speaker 1: the story whatsoever, when I'm listening to to tell it,
Speaker 1: like when they land, is it going to be prehistoric times?
Speaker 1: Is it going to be the future? Like what actually
Speaker 1: is going on?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 1: Below? Because I know when they are trying to raise
Speaker 1: other people on the radio, like there's a mention like
Speaker 1: maybe they had a war down below? Like who knows
Speaker 1: what's happening?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the most famous rapture stories
Speaker 1: that we have in twenty twenty five is the Left
Speaker 1: Behind series where yeah, half the population or however many
Speaker 1: people disappear and our main character is Oh god, he's
Speaker 1: got that amazing name like Steel or something. Is is
Speaker 1: his first or last name? The Nick Cage character or
Speaker 1: if you prefer the Kirk Cameron character, I guess if
Speaker 1: he played the pilot anyway, that is, you know, what's
Speaker 1: happening on Earth and then does that happen in the
Speaker 1: sky as well, because yeah, the pilot gets raptured and everything.
Speaker 1: So I'm just like, well, what's gonna happen, What's going
Speaker 1: to happen when they land? And then it's just this
Speaker 1: kind of weird between time. I'm just like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: well that's interesting. But I was really picturing something a
Speaker 1: lot bigger when they landed on that plane.
Speaker 8: I mean, it worked better like reading King than it
Speaker 8: does on camera. But I find this idea of being
Speaker 8: stuck in slightly the past just so terrifying, so much
Speaker 8: more terrifying than traveling back in time, you know, to
Speaker 8: prehistoric time or any other time. And there was that
Speaker 8: who is it by? It's by Daniels. I think it
Speaker 8: is what happens to the present when it becomes the past.
Speaker 8: It's an argument of the moving spotlight theory. And I
Speaker 8: think King really describes that well, it's Daniels argues basically
Speaker 8: that the Langaliers follow a philosophical model known as the
Speaker 8: moving spotlight theory, where all moments exist but think of
Speaker 8: it as like a police spotlight, so only what's being
Speaker 8: shown is the now, and everything else is still there,
Speaker 8: but it's just not I don't even know how to
Speaker 8: explain it. You're right, Joe, it's hard to explain. But
Speaker 8: the theory itself, that the way that makes the most
Speaker 8: sense to me is the moving spotlight and what's shining
Speaker 8: bright is is is the now.
Speaker 4: That's what I was talking about earlier, when I was saying,
Speaker 4: like the film strip version of TI, which I think
Speaker 4: was something that I first read that Ingmar Bergmann maybe
Speaker 4: was talking about that, like you know, it's you know,
Speaker 4: the light's only going through kind of one frame at
Speaker 4: a time, and that's you know, that's the spotlight. That's
Speaker 4: what you're talking about, and everything else doesn't exist because
Speaker 4: the light's not on it.
Speaker 1: Everything that happens now is happening now.
Speaker 5: What happened then? Pass it? When just now? Wear it now?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 5: Go back to then? When now?
Speaker 1: Now? Now?
Speaker 5: I can't why we missed it? When just now? When
Speaker 5: will then be now soon.
Speaker 4: Story wise, I like the ending, and to me it
Speaker 4: it sort of does feel like, you know, Stephen King
Speaker 4: grew up reading a lot of science fiction before he
Speaker 4: became a horror guy. I think he was, you know,
Speaker 4: was a very voracious sci fi reader. And there's a
Speaker 4: kind of like traditional sci fi optimism almost in that
Speaker 4: kind of sense of wonder and all at the end
Speaker 4: about like reality being born.
Speaker 9: I like that.
Speaker 4: I think that's maybe for the story, that's what kind
Speaker 4: of elevates it a little bit above just a Twilight
Speaker 4: Zone episode, because the Twilight Zone episode would leave you
Speaker 4: hanging with kind of a twist, and this actually does
Speaker 4: feel like, you know, a story that kind of comes
Speaker 4: full circle.
Speaker 9: And you have an idea of where it might end.
Speaker 4: Up based on where you've been, and it tries to
Speaker 4: take you somewhere completely different and sort of thwart your expectations.
Speaker 4: It's really hard for me to remember how surprised I
Speaker 4: was when I read the story as a whatever, twelve
Speaker 4: year old, but I remember really liking it, So I
Speaker 4: feel like I probably was surprised by that ending and
Speaker 4: kind of gratified by that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd like that whole idea of them catching up
Speaker 1: to time, and especially in the book where we get
Speaker 1: to see or hear about the way that color is
Speaker 1: kind of coming back into the world and that they
Speaker 1: can hear things before they actually see them, and it's
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, being brought into it. And the one
Speaker 1: little kid who's just like, Oh, it's the new people,
Speaker 1: and they're like, is that us? Are we the new people? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're the new people. This is great. And there is
Speaker 1: a day New Mall in the book that I don't
Speaker 1: think that we definitely don't get in the movie, and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember exactly how it goes, but it
Speaker 1: is more kind of wrapping up the whole Nick Hopewell character.
Speaker 1: Nick Hopewell is the British assassin that's played by Mark
Speaker 1: Lindsay Chapman. He and Laurel they fall in love in
Speaker 1: the period of the story, and he kind of wants
Speaker 1: to redeem himself. There's this whole thing about how he
Speaker 1: had murdered some children who were throwing potatoes that were
Speaker 1: painted like grenades or something, and he needed to her
Speaker 1: to go back to someone and kind of like explain
Speaker 1: what had happened, and we don't get that at all.
Speaker 1: I think that's perfectly fine for this mini series to
Speaker 1: not have that denu mal in there.
Speaker 4: But that could be the fourth hour of the mini series.
Speaker 1: Yes, it could, like her looking up the person and
Speaker 1: going to visit and all that stuff. They wrap it
Speaker 1: up really quickly in the book, and it was just like, okay,
Speaker 1: I could have actually done for a little bit more
Speaker 1: of like and here's what this like almost like a
Speaker 1: you know, animal house type ending. And then this person
Speaker 1: went here, and this person went here, and this person
Speaker 1: did this, you know, and this person was killed by
Speaker 1: his own troops, those kind of things.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the way the film ends was just I couldn't
Speaker 8: believe it. That freeze frame of them all jumping.
Speaker 1: I was surprised that I didn't do a naked gun
Speaker 1: thing and like everybody else moves, but they're frozen in
Speaker 1: time kind of thing. I guess that's an opposite of
Speaker 1: a naked gun ending.
Speaker 4: They went for the after school special ending.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Marto, you mentioned the idea of stalker, and
Speaker 1: I was curious how you see stalker and time relating
Speaker 1: to the lingual.
Speaker 8: It made more sense to me when you compare Tarkovski
Speaker 8: to King's story. Langoliers on paper and also timekeepers of
Speaker 8: eternity less so when you're watching The Langoliers. But let
Speaker 8: me see if I can fumble my way through this,
Speaker 8: I guess. But thinking about Stoker while I was reading
Speaker 8: The Langoliers really helped me take a step back and
Speaker 8: look at the story in a more abstract sense, because personally,
Speaker 8: I've always been drawn to how different artists, either through
Speaker 8: writing or film, deal with fears that's around the passage
Speaker 8: of time, and so with the Langoliers in Stoker, I
Speaker 8: see them both circling around how people behave when the
Speaker 8: laws of time stop making emotional sentence. In particular, so
Speaker 8: with Tarkovsky's Stalker, specifically, characters try to surrender to look
Speaker 8: at hope, while while King's characters and the Langlaars they strategize.
Speaker 8: So it's different cultures answering the same sort of existential question.
Speaker 8: Tarkovski he always said cinema was sculpting in time. He
Speaker 8: has his book as well, called Sculpting in Time, and
Speaker 8: he seems to treat time like clay, so something that
Speaker 8: still holds fingerprints. And in Stalker, that's why I rewatched
Speaker 8: it to see if I could make sense of this.
Speaker 8: There's so many interpretations with that movie, but to me,
Speaker 8: time seems to slow down when they enter the zone,
Speaker 8: so memory has weight. There's something in that silence that
Speaker 8: you can feel. The zone itself, it's filled with decay,
Speaker 8: but that decay kind of feels sacred. You have that
Speaker 8: water that's constantly dripping, that abnormal fog rolling in like
Speaker 8: it just feels otherworldly. And so there's a moment when
Speaker 8: the Stalker and the two men they first enter the zone,
Speaker 8: and this really struck me. They say how the flowers
Speaker 8: are so beautiful, but they have no scent, that they
Speaker 8: look alive, but something essential is gone. And that's that
Speaker 8: same uncanny feeling, as we were saying, runs through the langoliers,
Speaker 8: where what is it? The sandwich tastes strong, the beer
Speaker 8: is flat. It's the same thing where if things feel
Speaker 8: or look intact, but they aren't. So these are both
Speaker 8: worlds that are haunted by absence. Let's say by this
Speaker 8: idea that beauty and reality can survive in form but
Speaker 8: lose its essence. So what fascinates me is about how
Speaker 8: each world, the world in stock or the world's languliers,
Speaker 8: how they react to that loss. So Tarkowsky's characters they
Speaker 8: try to slow down, They try to find hope or grace,
Speaker 8: which you could even compare it to what Dinah does.
Speaker 8: Where King's panic, especially to me, he's that corporate embodiment
Speaker 8: of Western time anxiety. So he's wasting We're terrified of
Speaker 8: wasting a single second. So when time stops for him,
Speaker 8: this thing that he's obsessed with, it breaks his world.
Speaker 8: You The way I see it is there are two
Speaker 8: sides of the same coin. Here what King's trying to
Speaker 8: say in Tarkovsky, they're both trying to survive a moment
Speaker 8: when time refuses to cooperate, but they just look approach
Speaker 8: it from opposite ends of the spectrum. Stalker zone is
Speaker 8: this cathedral where time echoes and gives us hope. Langs
Speaker 8: is what's the opposite of a cathedral, like a warehouse
Speaker 8: where the echo doesn't exist right, And then you look
Speaker 8: at the langoliers and visually how everything looks I guess
Speaker 8: quote unquote cheap or the flat lighting. All of that
Speaker 8: kind of fits because the world's supposed to feel unfinished,
Speaker 8: and the most haunting thing isn't the monsters, it's the
Speaker 8: ambiance of the empty airport terminal and where everything's kind
Speaker 8: of present, but not truly alive. So when I think
Speaker 8: about it, if you think about Tarkovsky and King with
Speaker 8: these works of art, they're both just artists wrestling with
Speaker 8: the same fear, which is that time might abandon us
Speaker 8: before we figure out what it was for you look
Speaker 8: at that and bring in the other element, which I
Speaker 8: know we're going to talk about with Timekeepers. But what
Speaker 8: Timekeepers of Eternity does. It makes that passage of time
Speaker 8: literal again. So the paper tearing and folding actually sculpts
Speaker 8: time the way Tarkovsky described. So that's kind of the
Speaker 8: bridge between the two. You have Tarkovsky's metaphysical patients kings
Speaker 8: anxiety brought to life in Timekeepers. So that's kind of
Speaker 8: what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: I think that's great. Yeah, and I love the whole
Speaker 1: idea of the flowers not having the smell and the
Speaker 1: things not having the taste, and yeah, you get into
Speaker 1: And that's the thing I love about Stalker is there's
Speaker 1: not a real clear reason. I know in the book
Speaker 1: there's more about the aliens that have come in and
Speaker 1: them trying to get alien artifacts and things. But I
Speaker 1: think Tarkowski memory serves it's been a minute since I've
Speaker 1: seen it, but he doesn't necessarily play that up. If anything,
Speaker 1: it's more just like there's something wrong here and he's
Speaker 1: not exactly outward about what's going on, and you know
Speaker 1: what happens in this place, and the mystery becomes the
Speaker 1: reason why I want to see what's in there. And
Speaker 1: it's so minimal as far as like, I don't remember
Speaker 1: very many special effects other than a water glass moving,
Speaker 1: but it freaks you the fuck out.
Speaker 8: I just keep going back to Tarkovsky's obsession with time
Speaker 8: and how he plays around with it and tries to
Speaker 8: slow it down, and also just just faith as well.
Speaker 8: It really made me think about the Langaliers in terms
Speaker 8: of faith and Dinah and why her arc is so
Speaker 8: moving to me is she's the one character who senses
Speaker 8: something otherworldly or I guess we could say holy for
Speaker 8: the sake of this conversation in the emptiness. That's similar
Speaker 8: to me to Stalker, the character of the Stalker himself
Speaker 8: and his faith of the zone and the room in
Speaker 8: the zone.
Speaker 4: In the novel too, Stephen King really does sort of
Speaker 4: present her as they sort of angelic figure. You know,
Speaker 4: there's there's definitely like a transcendent quality to her, not
Speaker 4: just for Toomey, but kind of in the way that
Speaker 4: King describes her.
Speaker 8: Joey, you obviously know a lot more than I do
Speaker 8: about that. But the whole thing about children is truth seers, right, Yeah,
Speaker 8: Dina's Dinah Dinah. Her blindness turns that idea inside out.
Speaker 8: She can't see the world, but she perceives its soul.
Speaker 8: Third eye that King talks about.
Speaker 4: All the children characters in his and his work in general,
Speaker 4: tend to have that, you know, sort of a purity
Speaker 4: that the adults never have.
Speaker 1: And that she has a connection with. To me that
Speaker 1: she says, you're gonna need him, We're going to need him.
Speaker 1: Don't kill this guy, and actually makes Nick question himself
Speaker 1: and not outright gank to me, and then is able
Speaker 1: to see the world through Toomey's eyes, through this madman's eyes,
Speaker 1: and that for her is beautiful. She's never been able
Speaker 1: to see before, but now she can see through this
Speaker 1: person's eyes and can see the people that have been
Speaker 1: helping her. And like you said, that that mother figure,
Speaker 1: she can actually see her and I have that connection,
Speaker 1: which she wouldn't have been able to do without. To
Speaker 1: me and his I think his madness is the key
Speaker 1: to her entry through his eyes, and I think we
Speaker 1: just see that, Like I mentioned, the whole idea of
Speaker 1: the head turning and those kind of things, seems to
Speaker 1: be the moment of them really making that connection. Though
Speaker 1: she can. We see little shots of her like kind
Speaker 1: of twisting her head, tilting her head when you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this person passes by, it's almost like she knows what
Speaker 1: they're thinking, or knows this person is going to be
Speaker 1: important in my life pretty soon.
Speaker 9: I think you gotta be careful here.
Speaker 4: This is turning into a really, really interesting and thoughtful
Speaker 4: conversation and people are going to hear this and say, oh,
Speaker 4: I should really go watch The Langoliers. It sounds like
Speaker 4: a very smart movie. And then then what will you
Speaker 4: have done?
Speaker 1: All right, we're going to take a break and we'll
Speaker 1: be back with an interview with the writer and director
Speaker 1: of The Langoaliers, Tom Holland. It's kind of a rough
Speaker 1: quality interview. I tried my best to make sure that
Speaker 1: it sounds pretty decent. Hopefully you'll be able to hear everything.
Speaker 1: Mister Holland gave some great insight to the making the film.
Speaker 1: And we'll be back with that right after these brief messages,
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Speaker 1: dot com and rediscover the wonders of physical media. So
Speaker 1: you had just done the temp in nineteen ninety three
Speaker 1: and then Langaliers, when does that project come to? Is
Speaker 1: that ninety four?
Speaker 5: I think the Stab, which was not a great experience,
Speaker 5: and I did Thinner, and then I got Bell's falsey
Speaker 5: on dinner and you have me do a doctor right away,
Speaker 5: and I decided that business was trying to kill me.
Speaker 5: I'd had walking pneumonia on Fatal Gunity. Fatal Beauty had
Speaker 5: a lot of night shots in it, and it went
Speaker 5: back reports every week between staying up. They say a
Speaker 5: five day week, but a five day weekended on Saturday
Speaker 5: morning at dawn. And I did that for half a
Speaker 5: longer payment Beauty and I got weird and ship within
Speaker 5: the monument then when I died Bell's palsy. It was
Speaker 5: just at the start of dinner. I did a couple
Speaker 5: of names before starting seen and they had me set
Speaker 5: up for the cinematographer up in Toronto. They had a
Speaker 5: private plane waiting when I walked family and I have
Speaker 5: a knack my pace and got around my kneecass. They
Speaker 5: didn't want to lose the money they spent to the
Speaker 5: private plane. We didn't get me to a doctor. They
Speaker 5: took me up to Toronto instead, and that was a Saturday,
Speaker 5: so I didn't give him to see a doctor until
Speaker 5: a Monday. They get in your shot of something to
Speaker 5: take down the swelling and the two god damn the lake.
Speaker 5: And after that I decided the business is going to
Speaker 5: kill me. But I kept on doing it, and I
Speaker 5: said to hell with it. I basically was tired. I
Speaker 5: want the correction of short sponge ball domestic behindre. I
Speaker 5: thank untold Tales. And then I wrote The Fight Night
Speaker 5: and I have a new Fight Night novel coming out
Speaker 5: with mado Habrn.
Speaker 1: Have you met Stephen King before you made the Langoliers?
Speaker 5: No, I haven't. I only met him because I shot
Speaker 5: in the Bangor, which I since Morrispeaks is trying un
Speaker 5: warmth in the main. He came down and playing a
Speaker 5: small party when Eman Believers, and that's when I met him.
Speaker 5: You know, I don't have the picture anymore. Oh. One
Speaker 5: of the funniest things I ever saw was why he
Speaker 5: was waiting. He was sitting in a chair and reading.
Speaker 5: But he's the local newspaper. And I looked at what
Speaker 5: who was reading. It was Neil Bits. He's a very
Speaker 5: nice guy. By the way. He's a high school language
Speaker 5: changer from my nineteen sixty eight. That's a lot of
Speaker 5: them who happens to be brilliant and all his storytelling.
Speaker 5: But anyway, Lang Believers was a novella and they were
Speaker 5: the first story in a book that he have was
Speaker 5: to bunch of short stories and not that another name.
Speaker 1: I think it's four past midnight, thank you.
Speaker 5: That was there, and I thought it was terrific as
Speaker 5: a material. And what we had done was we havn't
Speaker 5: written Thrones. It was more instructured like the screenplay, the storyline,
Speaker 5: and he told them throws that new structure was laid out.
Speaker 5: I thought it was very strong for n shirt. He
Speaker 5: putte how many hours were do you remember I think three,
Speaker 5: three or four. Anyway, it was a huge amount of work, Yeah,
Speaker 5: because that was helped a banger in the nactual airport
Speaker 5: in the bed of summer, of the height of terrest season,
Speaker 5: and it was supposed to be a totally abandoned the airport,
Speaker 5: so I was shooting him around the nassive summer crowds
Speaker 5: coming into the gold folks of Maine during the summer.
Speaker 5: The one I went to avoid domin getting sound getting
Speaker 5: dialogue with difficult till but I have turned the sound
Speaker 5: people for uphant job. It was easy to adapt because
Speaker 5: I thought the story was so strong when I had
Speaker 5: read it, and initially I couldn't put it down, and
Speaker 5: I don't have that reacting to very much. So it
Speaker 5: was with gung hold of doing it. There's a gret
Speaker 5: chance for comedy and also for character to a moral tale.
Speaker 5: So now that seems like an episode out of Tales
Speaker 5: of the Trips when I look at it. Getting Meddle Lenande,
Speaker 5: he has a features a Laurel tale moral Joey Fitz
Speaker 5: gets slopped at the end. The one that I really
Speaker 5: loved was letting the leaves and then what happened was
Speaker 5: I thought it was three weeks the perfect until the
Speaker 5: very end with the lango is and the CGI was
Speaker 5: just coming in and Tom Barrow I think was the
Speaker 5: name of the fellow.
Speaker 6: Who did it, and he is desperate to make them
Speaker 6: seem like they were in the plate. You know, your
Speaker 6: teaching the shot of the scene and then you put
Speaker 6: the monsters in. But the way that that was done, Martins.
Speaker 5: Weren't turning up so was obviously to be on top
Speaker 5: of the piece of film, and the producer, Tom barrm
Speaker 5: begged him to give him another day the minute to
Speaker 5: journey it up to make it more like it was
Speaker 5: in the singing, and the permissioners to him cheat to
Speaker 5: do it, and that was another God help me. So
Speaker 5: if you get involved with the studio, he got a
Speaker 5: better chance of not being beaten up for money when
Speaker 5: you begin an independent production. From that was Law Entertainment
Speaker 5: the snow Are Outfit. When they were shooting as out
Speaker 5: I had a look at cast. We reversed. I don't know.
Speaker 5: I remember that this was just when OJ was running
Speaker 5: down the freeway in the white front or whatever. It
Speaker 5: was reversing all of us the running end of the
Speaker 5: TV to see we're going to happen the oja on
Speaker 5: the freeway, and I had a great cinematographer, all maid Bone.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of work. They don't realize that they
Speaker 5: walked me out those planes and moving outside the actual
Speaker 5: goddamn planes. I mean that you know how big they
Speaker 5: are and I'm sitting here trying to direct them. I
Speaker 5: think they will be fall but those trucks that grabbed
Speaker 5: them to take them under the yielding dog. It was
Speaker 5: a very difficult in top time and sauce. Ind but
Speaker 5: I was very happy with the accept where the langueliers
Speaker 5: he get very young.
Speaker 1: How was it working with David Morrise?
Speaker 5: I terrific. David is a sensational actor. I don't know
Speaker 5: why he hasn't gotten I guess everybody knows who he is.
Speaker 5: But he's so talented. He would have thought that he
Speaker 5: can put my bigger names, though I don't know what
Speaker 5: the story of. He's also huge. He's like sixty two
Speaker 5: or sixty three, and I was always intimidated by his size.
Speaker 5: All of them, I thought all of them were very good.
Speaker 5: I had been able to rehearse for a good week.
Speaker 5: On a rehearsal, he was already working and dramatically. I
Speaker 5: didn't have to pay for it too. I knew what
Speaker 5: I wanted to do drammatically. He learned how to direct
Speaker 5: light it. He answer a lot of those quick things
Speaker 5: before you get on the floor. I think it was
Speaker 5: very successful or no on TV and its see if
Speaker 5: they're hoigh rating and then I feel what they disappeared.
Speaker 5: I don't know if it's ever gotten the four kay.
Speaker 1: I don't think it has yet now well yet if
Speaker 1: that was.
Speaker 5: Ninety four, hell, I'm sure he had spent twenty five
Speaker 5: thirty five years ago. I don't think it's going to
Speaker 5: happen or shout factory now that you need them. Hey,
Speaker 5: Bob Emmer, right out there, Bob, Bob Emmer is a
Speaker 5: very nice man. In LUNs in Felts Learnshell.
Speaker 1: How was it directing so many people all at the
Speaker 1: same time, those compositions and just maintaining with all of
Speaker 1: those actors all at once, because it felt like you
Speaker 1: had that entourage of people in front of the camera
Speaker 1: so often and gived universals.
Speaker 5: I told them what I was going to do. It
Speaker 5: doesn't mean I was able to because everything so much
Speaker 5: of what I was doing is determined by avoiding the crowds,
Speaker 5: so I couldn't see it that way, but I'd be
Speaker 5: shooting in the corner, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 5: a lot of work, but I've really tuned together and
Speaker 5: be living with it. Or a younger guy and I
Speaker 5: were dealing with a live airport and was supposed to
Speaker 5: be totally deserted. I was out on the run where
Speaker 5: finding a planes go this wayter that way, and here
Speaker 5: I was one small human being but two or three huge,
Speaker 5: a seven part of seven gaving around and I wasn't
Speaker 5: doing now. But it's a lot of fun. Then I'm
Speaker 5: so happy about and you're asking about Land and r
Speaker 5: He've been very badly and I feel like I did
Speaker 5: burn along the ends finding see and then I see
Speaker 5: what it's been forgotten.
Speaker 1: What's a terrific adaptation. What you chose to leave in
Speaker 1: and what you took out and what you added. It
Speaker 1: all just plays so perfectly, and it's such a tight story.
Speaker 5: The story was strong to begin with, I remember and
Speaker 5: focusing it and I bought myself a fan that I
Speaker 5: could put a book on, and her glasses and then
Speaker 5: my computer and I've got walked out it that way.
Speaker 5: All the cat Froch. They re rehearsed it so they
Speaker 5: see if you rehearse it, and it's a lot quicker
Speaker 5: to shoot. You don't have to spend as much time
Speaker 5: with the actors because you walk down a lot of
Speaker 5: the leunatic problems along the way. And I remember that
Speaker 5: I ran that in reversal, the whole thing all the
Speaker 5: way through, and it played like a plane. We think
Speaker 5: you've been on the stage. You couldn't stop watching it,
Speaker 5: Strongty Centurion stevie k.
Speaker 1: I mentioned those rehearsals helped a lot too when it
Speaker 1: came to all the interiors in the airplane, just because
Speaker 1: that must have been very difficult unless you had more
Speaker 1: room than it looks like, because it's such a confined
Speaker 1: space that set.
Speaker 5: You know they brought I've an old plane when playing
Speaker 5: Graveyard in California, which is somewhere else. That's right, you
Speaker 5: see it it's spectacted by thousands of planes. Well, they
Speaker 5: had a point that they brought out from there to
Speaker 5: ben Remain in a hangar, all iron number and I
Speaker 5: can't live a house. The floor was flywood and if
Speaker 5: I tried to move on it, I mean, dolly, it shocked.
Speaker 5: I couldn't move the camera because I didn't have a
Speaker 5: steady floor. Every shot in that plane had to be
Speaker 5: fixed and then they had got movement handheld once but
Speaker 5: it was living lining limited, so much of it was
Speaker 5: limited mid in terms of the Frameman because of the
Speaker 5: wide airport, huge planes moving outside. Firewood for in the
Speaker 5: plane was not used for two of them. He's very
Speaker 5: strong and I think to catch this ricum.
Speaker 1: I always love to see Bronson Pinchot, and just the
Speaker 1: intensity of his performance was wild.
Speaker 5: I haven't seen him Blossom being nourishment, but I loved Boson.
Speaker 5: Now the wrap on Bronson, it's a little bit true.
Speaker 5: Blossom is such a Gnomy relative and so fallo it blossoon.
Speaker 5: It is brilliant and I haven't seen him for the years,
Speaker 5: and I was him bring an active. There's a brilliant
Speaker 5: person and he's a collector. Glosson and give his personas
Speaker 5: to working is excellent and then even keep on going.
Speaker 5: So there's a problem. Water was helping him get to
Speaker 5: the point where he was little be terrific, and then
Speaker 5: it was grabbing all of him and saying stay here
Speaker 5: because we went too far. It came over acting and
Speaker 5: I saw him in New York and then I lost
Speaker 5: truck to him. But we alsoon collected antiques, and he
Speaker 5: knew we had many interests, and he knew deeply about
Speaker 5: all of them when you all are the near or
Speaker 5: less or aesthetic out of the day. So I have
Speaker 5: a great news you. And I saw that he was
Speaker 5: doing some TV show many years ago when it was
Speaker 5: going on and were having houses or something. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: didn't remember. I liked to be a whole lot and
Speaker 5: fun John.
Speaker 1: And then of course I love seeing Dean Stockwell and
Speaker 1: he oh, he's so solid.
Speaker 5: He had been doing it for so long. I couldn't
Speaker 5: get him a fill up for reboseness. And you know
Speaker 5: why he wanted to play golf. He was a gol fanatic.
Speaker 5: That's all he thought about whenever he was in the
Speaker 5: front of the camera and he was trying to find
Speaker 5: him your golf course. That's what he was like them.
Speaker 5: And I mean, if you don't look at his career
Speaker 5: and if he started as a boy with the green hair,
Speaker 5: how old was he then? Eight nine years old? My gosh,
Speaker 5: what a career. When I was editing, whenever I got
Speaker 5: stuck for a reaction, I went to Dan because he
Speaker 5: was such a pro. But if I had a group,
Speaker 5: sat a swing shot or a fourth dot, and they
Speaker 5: will all listening to somebody else, somebody actors. You said,
Speaker 5: gone but not giving me reaction shots and added because
Speaker 5: he knew and I would have done sally d in
Speaker 5: the editing room and be destined to get a reaction shot,
Speaker 5: cut away or whatever. And he was bos alive and reacted.
Speaker 5: We never went I'm not in this. I'm not speaking
Speaker 5: that out in doing anything. You'd never liked that. You
Speaker 5: never about to Bob where you have ensemble's and Bland
Speaker 5: Nurse was a non solvit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very solid performances from everybody, including the little girl
Speaker 1: that was blind.
Speaker 5: She had been the leave I think in the Secret
Speaker 5: Garden just before that, I think directed by agues Holland
Speaker 5: my name, No, I don't know why I'm thinking that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could be in Jessica Holland.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but that's where she came from. She had just
Speaker 5: come in through a very big movie. She was very talented.
Speaker 5: And then it costs Steven's book. See when she's dying,
Speaker 5: she's popping her blood. So I put love in another
Speaker 5: lips when the network adc. Absolutely, we had a bit
Speaker 5: that I had taken a girl that young and like
Speaker 5: one on the list and run and die. I remember that.
Speaker 5: I don't be thinking how horrible it was they took
Speaker 5: they went in, and they went in. It's sieging and
Speaker 5: tried to brought out the fox and bought on our lips.
Speaker 1: I don't like after the legalise you did Thinner. You
Speaker 1: were talking about that earlier with the Bell's palsy. Bet.
Speaker 1: I was curious how that project came to you. Was
Speaker 1: it okay, I like doing the Stephen King stuff or
Speaker 1: how was that?
Speaker 5: I think it was And I think it was because
Speaker 5: lears came out so well, they're going to be shot
Speaker 5: so well, which I think, and musing experience for Laurel
Speaker 5: Entertainment and she why about the CEO dance said ductually
Speaker 5: they didn't tales and you know they didn't sales the
Speaker 5: dark Side maybe yeah. Then but then the meeting when
Speaker 5: signed that found Finner, but Thinner was not a success.
Speaker 5: I'm never quite industry live. And I think I thought
Speaker 5: it was the ending it was the moral of the
Speaker 5: story was more. The moral of the story was that
Speaker 5: that moral jelly that Pigman good Tennis going on to
Speaker 5: switch to the end which is Billy Howard. And I
Speaker 5: had Robert John Burke blind Bobby Burkings, the lithing actor,
Speaker 5: and he had at the public runs in Cinderground, Oceanside, California,
Speaker 5: and oh, I don't know from years ago, and he
Speaker 5: had a a cast screening and that came out. It
Speaker 5: was just a lifing, uh. And that's when I realized
Speaker 5: the film now looks to me like the lip seeing
Speaker 5: the extended Doncha of Tales of the Trip. In other words,
Speaker 5: it's a moral of story, but the the purpose of
Speaker 5: the story at the very end. And it feels like
Speaker 5: that now. During the time, there was the first fat
Speaker 5: suit story ever done, and I have yes, the great yeah,
Speaker 5: the greater frets and started ear he did the exorcise,
Speaker 5: he did he over the broken the ECC and he
Speaker 5: had done the fat seat and the guy was bringing
Speaker 5: up you now won an Academy Award for Robin Williams
Speaker 5: movie Wilson, where he played a woman.
Speaker 1: Okay, missus Ducar.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was the challenge about you was doing the
Speaker 5: fat seat, which was the first one done, and hiding
Speaker 5: the seams because that was all fatting, but it was
Speaker 5: made to look like it was part of the body
Speaker 5: and especially around the neck. He stress me in those
Speaker 5: days the heavy lighting was an MVD lighting, and you
Speaker 5: be sweat and the heads just to start to peel up.
Speaker 5: And that was the biggest technical bobble. No, my god, anyway,
Speaker 5: I don't know. I survived it.
Speaker 1: I just have one more question for you, and that
Speaker 1: was about your co writer on that, Michael McDowell.
Speaker 5: How was he to work with Michael McDowell. Is me
Speaker 5: somebody who was not credited him enough? He was wonderful.
Speaker 5: Paul Clive book when asked about McDowell, he was really talented,
Speaker 5: He was really nice. He wrote, I think I've done
Speaker 5: more Marcal McDowell, since you's hat anybody else, And he wrote,
Speaker 5: be tails of the script. I did the first one,
Speaker 5: love I tom happening. I think this is I did
Speaker 5: three of them. Four sighted Triangle, by the way, which
Speaker 5: I didn't go rote. I think just to rip it.
Speaker 5: And I think that's the best of a three. Michael
Speaker 5: loved that. He loved I don't. He wrote betle Jeeps
Speaker 5: and nobody remembers legs was an original. It's a spec script.
Speaker 5: No I And he did that. He did that, I
Speaker 5: did that, He that he Britain. I did what hell
Speaker 5: the dinner?
Speaker 1: And did he write the amazing stories that you did?
Speaker 5: He did? That's it, So I think that that makes
Speaker 5: me the explorer. I'm Michael McDowell. He was a lovely,
Speaker 5: lovely man and he was big, he was gay, and
Speaker 5: he was a motorcycle guy. He had all the Chaine
Speaker 5: no letter on all the rest of her noother oh
Speaker 5: no no. But he was really talented and really nice.
Speaker 5: And then I think he got it. I remember when
Speaker 5: I did Dinner and they're not what I did Finner
Speaker 5: write in Fright Night. It is eighty four, and it
Speaker 5: started with nobody was really talking about it, and two
Speaker 5: or three years later when I give Child's play, everybody
Speaker 5: was talking about it because everybody was dying. And in
Speaker 5: my generation and the generation you had a generation below,
Speaker 5: it wiped out such a huge percentage of talent and
Speaker 5: eighty people. I counted it up once and I had
Speaker 5: almost twenty people that I knew they had They got
Speaker 5: it and in those days of children and then then
Speaker 5: they don't how to keep me going? But you didn't
Speaker 5: want to live that way anyway. I have too many
Speaker 5: friends who were in the drugs, but that was like
Speaker 5: something somatic during all of this that was going on
Speaker 5: was going on, what I was doing and dinner.
Speaker 1: I was wondered if there was a little bit of
Speaker 1: the AIDS crisis in Thinner, just with the way that
Speaker 1: the lawyer keeps wasting away, because I saw so many
Speaker 1: AIDS patients just waste away.
Speaker 5: I think what was looking before as that's why. And
Speaker 5: I don't know what my consciousness about how conscious I
Speaker 5: was with ADS when I get Thinner, I would have
Speaker 5: been by that time, because by the late eighties that's
Speaker 5: like not Holley. I listened to myself talking. I think like,
Speaker 5: oh my God, is such a Bible world. But I've
Speaker 5: lived through so many somatic experiences. When they're going through it,
Speaker 5: I mean, just find a survived. Can you make a
Speaker 5: living those finger and difficult years in your show? I
Speaker 5: kept living. I think everybody did. They have seen it.
Speaker 5: It certainly can shut back for Hollywood until I dimissed.
Speaker 5: I can't now, but back then I couldn't do believe
Speaker 5: the names, and I was nothing good.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the Fright Night book. I'm curious what else
Speaker 1: you're up to.
Speaker 5: I wrote Fright Night origins with Jack Goett and then
Speaker 5: destively very successful out. Sure you can find it on Amazon.
Speaker 5: I think all these things are on thingbo. Now I
Speaker 5: combined with the Olympic writer for Michael Harbor. On By
Speaker 5: the middle of October, the book I wrote with Michael
Speaker 5: Harbor will be coming out and it's called Friday Night
Speaker 5: and Friday Night What that's always the dud damn question. Please,
Speaker 5: what's up fall? Let's see, let's see what the fun
Speaker 5: out Friday Night hell Bound and Michael Harbron j R.
Speaker 5: D R O N and Tom Holland. And I'm thinking
Speaker 5: how to spell that? So this fright Night and spelling
Speaker 5: out like in two weeks and I know it will
Speaker 5: be on Amazon, and I know it will be on
Speaker 5: canful because that's all try to learn the digital world.
Speaker 5: You already got requests for it. But then there's a
Speaker 5: lot of requests in self Covered and the collectors want
Speaker 5: a hard coup, which I would sign hopefully before I
Speaker 5: slip out of this world. I've got so many stories
Speaker 5: that so many of them are grimmed. I don't want
Speaker 5: to go into it. I want to I want to
Speaker 5: be that. I want to be possible. I want to
Speaker 5: encourage young filmmakers. I don't know how I got this
Speaker 5: far in the business. I started death for years. I
Speaker 5: don't know how anybody does it, but they do a
Speaker 5: few do. But I can tell you so many don't
Speaker 5: like the creating art systems, to taficult way to make
Speaker 5: a living, for to be the great community, to kilken
Speaker 5: Bridge too. There's irony in this, call this somewhere, but
Speaker 5: I'm not still out of theirs.
Speaker 1: If you figure it out, please let me know.
Speaker 5: All right, Pleason, do figured it out. Let me know.
Speaker 5: But I'm glad I did it all. And at this
Speaker 5: point it gives me a certain satisfaction. I'm older at
Speaker 5: this point and we have to look back, and they
Speaker 5: have you asked me and other people asked me about.
Speaker 5: It's wonderful. It makes me feel like I did accomplish
Speaker 5: something with my Life's not all the more good that
Speaker 5: what films it did work, And that's what I told you.
Speaker 5: Nobody ever asked me about they will do it until you.
Speaker 5: But everybody asked me about Pride Night and Child's Player Forbes. Yeah,
Speaker 5: my frainded Chucky. I only know I'm one.
Speaker 1: Mister Allen. Thank you so much for your time. This
Speaker 1: has been great. Thank you, Mike.
Speaker 5: I appreciate it. In fact, they're not interested ending your
Speaker 5: talking today. And God, bless real man, God bless mate.
Speaker 1: Where is everybody We've done?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: God, across the boundaries of.
Speaker 5: Time, may day, may day. This is American Prize Fight
Speaker 5: twenty nine. There's your emergency aid.
Speaker 1: Something is waiting for you to arrive.
Speaker 3: Understand, they are predators.
Speaker 13: They're gonna jul the eyes right out of your head.
Speaker 1: They are relentless.
Speaker 5: They're coming for you, and they are very, very hungry.
Speaker 13: They will meet you alive, alive.
Speaker 1: Right, all right, we're back and we were talking about
Speaker 1: the Langueliers, and before the break, I promised that we
Speaker 1: were going to talk about a movie that I feel
Speaker 1: is better than The Langoliers, but would not exist without
Speaker 1: the Langoliers. How do you like that sentence? It is
Speaker 1: Timekeepers of Eternity, which I mentioned before, is using footage
Speaker 1: from the Langoliers, but manipulating it and using it in
Speaker 1: such a different way. And we're gonna hear from the
Speaker 1: director of that in a little bit as far as
Speaker 1: his actual process, which is fascinating to me. But just
Speaker 1: know that this is essentially an animated film, taking a
Speaker 1: live action movie and making it animated by printing out
Speaker 1: every single frickin' frame of the movie and manipulating every frame.
Speaker 1: Though it's only an hour long, and I have to
Speaker 1: say an hour really suits this so much better than
Speaker 1: the three hours because we just cook cook through this.
Speaker 1: And I talked about how this movie is like the
Speaker 1: Mister Toomey Show, this becomes the Mister Toomey movie, and
Speaker 1: I really appreciated what Aristotle Moragakos was doing with this
Speaker 1: and just taking something and transforming it so fully into
Speaker 1: something that's so similar but yet so different. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not just that he changed the end of the movie.
Speaker 1: He made it into his own thing, which I found
Speaker 1: to be just wonderful.
Speaker 8: I was completely blown away by this one. I mean,
Speaker 8: as you're saying, just the concept itself of what he
Speaker 8: did with printing it frame by frame and all the
Speaker 8: rips and the folds. But I also thought it was
Speaker 8: really brilliant seeing a movie that's devouring itself, which is
Speaker 8: kind of the perfect near to what King's story is about,
Speaker 8: and specifically with those physical wrinkles and tears that we see.
Speaker 8: It's not just creative for the sake of it. It's
Speaker 8: to me, Psyche unraveling and every crinkle is another breakdown,
Speaker 8: and I thought that was really really effective.
Speaker 4: The storytelling itself is really strange and disorienting, and that's
Speaker 4: kind of what we were talking about earlier, like how
Speaker 4: do you take the emotional you know, quality of the
Speaker 4: story and convey that in a different medium and you
Speaker 4: don't just sort of use the words that were there,
Speaker 4: you know, to say, hey, this is strange and disorienting.
Speaker 4: You have to actually do something in the new medium
Speaker 4: that throws the audience off, that does that. Because I kept,
Speaker 4: you know, so many of the transitions, and and just
Speaker 4: the way things were framed, you know, frames within frames
Speaker 4: within frames. It's you know, it was jarring. It was
Speaker 4: just jarring watching it, and it's it's it's kind of
Speaker 4: emotionally destabilizing. And I had moments where I was, you know,
Speaker 4: I guess it's sort of like what I was saying
Speaker 4: about about Bronson Fincher earlier. It's like, is this pulling
Speaker 4: me into the story more? It does when it has
Speaker 4: an emotional effect, but then sometimes it's it's also like
Speaker 4: it's pulling me out of it. I'm seeing the artifice
Speaker 4: of it, but you know, it's it's fascinating. There's obviously
Speaker 4: a whole lot more going on, I think, than there
Speaker 4: is in the original mini series. It's much more interesting
Speaker 4: to engage with, and I think obviously that it's shorter.
Speaker 4: I also just love the black and white. Black and
Speaker 4: white can cover a lot of problems, and it kind
Speaker 4: of covers the blandness in a way of the original
Speaker 4: mini series and sort of changes your your expectations. I mean,
Speaker 4: it puts you kind of in a different headspace, like,
Speaker 4: am I watching you know, a nineteen fifties monster movie
Speaker 4: here instead of you know, a nineteen nineties mini series.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, this was something that Frank Arabot
Speaker 4: I think did with The Mist as well, where there
Speaker 4: was like a different cut that was in black and white,
Speaker 4: and it it changes your expectations. It changes especially the
Speaker 4: way that you judge, you know, CGI and monster imagery,
Speaker 4: because again it's I'm more accepting of, you know, something
Speaker 4: that may not look particularly realistic if it's in black
Speaker 4: and white. There is something about that that I'm more
Speaker 4: accepting of. And so, yeah, this was much more interesting
Speaker 4: for me. And I'd never heard of this, you know,
Speaker 4: so I'd certainly never seen it before. Mike brought it up,
Speaker 4: and I think in a weird sort of way, it's
Speaker 4: maybe even you know, kind of truer to the origin
Speaker 4: of what Stephen King was doing, which was sort of
Speaker 4: telling a twilight Zone story and having that, you know,
Speaker 4: the Timekeepers has a sharper, bleaker ending, and I think
Speaker 4: that's you know, it's more of a horror movie ending.
Speaker 4: It's more of a Stephen King ending. I think in
Speaker 4: a way, you know, even the twilight Zone episode, the
Speaker 4: specific Twilight Zone episode that I think he was kind
Speaker 4: of drawing on for inspiration, I think has a much
Speaker 4: more similar end into Timekeepers of Eternity than to the Leangoliers.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I much preferred this ending to the Langoliers, the bleakness
Speaker 8: of it. I'm actually surprised that this wasn't the ending
Speaker 8: that King went with himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is surprising that everything works out. Okay. Of course,
Speaker 1: we do lose a lot of people along the way,
Speaker 1: including Dinah, that symbol of purity, but we have quite
Speaker 1: a few survivors and they're so being chipper at the
Speaker 1: end of the movie, and it's like, yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: love that he reframes it as the message from Dean Stockwell.
Speaker 1: Doesn't get through, you know that they're just like ignore
Speaker 1: the person who figures out that last twist. You know,
Speaker 1: we've had so many little twists of like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we'll take the beer back on the plane and it's
Speaker 1: going to regain its fizz, and the sandwich will regain
Speaker 1: its taste and all these things. But really I guess
Speaker 1: it's two twists that they remove the whole idea of
Speaker 1: you have to be asleep to get back out, you know,
Speaker 1: get through the thing. And then also David Morse figuring like, oh,
Speaker 1: we can use the pressure and that'll knock us out.
Speaker 1: Because they go through several things, they're like, well, we
Speaker 1: can take drugs to do this, So we don't know
Speaker 1: how long those drugs will last. We're not pharmacists. We
Speaker 1: don't know how what type of dosage, what would kill us,
Speaker 1: what would knock us out for the appropriate amount of time.
Speaker 1: They go through all of these different things, and then
Speaker 1: David Morse like again like you're talking about the beginning
Speaker 1: of the story, which is something had happened to him
Speaker 1: on a flight from Japan. I believe it is, and
Speaker 1: they talk about it quite a bit in the short story.
Speaker 1: In the novella, I should say. And that's finally what
Speaker 1: triggers it, where he's just like, oh, we lost cabin pressure.
Speaker 1: We could have been knocked out, and now we need
Speaker 1: to be knocked out, so let's use cabin pressure. And
Speaker 1: I think it's so effective. The shot at the end
Speaker 1: of Timekeepers where you see I believe it's like the
Speaker 1: air mask or whatever like drops and it's just like, nope,
Speaker 1: they all disappeared, they were awake, they all disappeared. It's
Speaker 1: not just Nick who disappears, it's every single one of
Speaker 1: them disappears. And then you see that slow descent of
Speaker 1: the plane going down, and that's how the movie ends.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, that's perfect. I love that. I love
Speaker 1: how bleak and dire that ending is that honestly, these
Speaker 1: people didn't have any right to survive. They went through
Speaker 1: this rift in time. Yeah, they really probably shouldn't ever
Speaker 1: make it out of that.
Speaker 4: It's that bitterly ironic Twilight Zone ending that they've gone
Speaker 4: through all of this and then it's like kind of
Speaker 4: a slip of the mind that dooms them. And it
Speaker 4: makes me think, what is the Twilight Zone episode where
Speaker 4: the guy just wants time to read and then he
Speaker 4: ends up in this post apocalyptic world whether with a
Speaker 4: big stack of books and he's like finally, you know,
Speaker 4: time and f last yep. But then he breaks his
Speaker 4: glasses and he can't read, and it's this is sort
Speaker 4: of like the Twists. It's like oops, you know, just that.
Speaker 9: Cruel irony at the end.
Speaker 1: He does such a smart thing when it comes to
Speaker 1: mixing what's in the lengal Ears with other parts that's
Speaker 1: also in the Lengoliars, insofar as like one of the
Speaker 1: first times that we see mister Toomey freaking out when
Speaker 1: it's on the airplane, we get little tears in the
Speaker 1: paper and the way that we tear through Bronson Pinchot's
Speaker 1: head and see his father and it's like his father's
Speaker 1: living underneath that skin at all times. And you see
Speaker 1: at one point the paper tears another way, the screen
Speaker 1: you know, splits, and we've got him as a little
Speaker 1: boy kind of looking up at the current mister Toomey.
Speaker 1: It is so smart the way that they're doing this,
Speaker 1: and Joe I kind of, you know, like you were
Speaker 1: talking about, like I see the seams at times, and
Speaker 1: it's like, yes, I see the seams a lot. And
Speaker 1: at first I was worried. I was just like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: is this just going to be one of those things
Speaker 1: where you can tell that the filmmaker was kind of
Speaker 1: getting bored and it's just trying some different things.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: That's always been my complaint, And I know this is controversial,
Speaker 1: but that was always my complaint about brom Stoker's Dracula
Speaker 1: the Francis. For a Coppola film, there were times where
Speaker 1: it felt like Copola is like, I'm kind of bored
Speaker 1: with this. I'm just going to try some fucked up effects,
Speaker 1: and like the way that he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: messing with time and everything in that movie, and I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, yeah, I'm bored too, Francis, and this
Speaker 1: isn't entertaining me. Whereas with this, I felt like everything
Speaker 1: had a purpose. It didn't feel like it was just
Speaker 1: I'm the filmmaker, I'm going to fuck around. It just
Speaker 1: felt like, oh, there are actual reasons for this stuff.
Speaker 1: And occasionally it's like little reminders because sometimes the film
Speaker 1: just runs quote unquote normally and it's just the black
Speaker 1: and white version of it with this kind of jitter
Speaker 1: motion that gets introduced because of the different frame rates
Speaker 1: and everything. And then also the imperfections of the paper
Speaker 1: and the process itself. I love that. And then you'll
Speaker 1: get like transitions will be like tears going across the screen,
Speaker 1: or they might come up from the bottom.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 1: There's one point where somebody's on the ground and they
Speaker 1: like are tapping the ground with their finger, and you
Speaker 1: see where the paper is moving when they're they're tapping
Speaker 1: their fingers. It's just like, this is fantastic. And I
Speaker 1: it kept me entertained, and it didn't it didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: do that thing that you were saying as far as
Speaker 1: like taking me out of it, because I made aware
Speaker 1: of what he was doing throughout so much of this.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I was like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is great. Oh that's really smart. Oh that's very clever.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just like, oh boy, here he goes again
Speaker 1: with some other sort of effect. It felt like everything
Speaker 1: had a purpose.
Speaker 4: To it Thematically, it works, you know, but also I
Speaker 4: think there's a kind of like there's a unity of
Speaker 4: effects too. I mean, it like establishes a mood and
Speaker 4: you know, again I feel like I'm repeating myself, but
Speaker 4: it's you know, if the goal of the story is
Speaker 4: to kind of keep us off balance, keep us nervous.
Speaker 4: I mean, you think it does that pretty consistently. One
Speaker 4: of the things just popped in my head as I
Speaker 4: was watching it. And I've seen this movie in years,
Speaker 4: so I don't even know what the connection is here,
Speaker 4: but I was watching it thinking.
Speaker 9: Oh, I really should rewatch Pie.
Speaker 4: Darren Aronofsky's Pie, Like there's just something again, like the
Speaker 4: unity of effect, just like a tone, just just a
Speaker 4: kind of dread filled tone, and we're just going to
Speaker 4: carry that through and and I don't know, it's been
Speaker 4: so long since I've seen that, But I don't know
Speaker 4: what the connection is there, except that it made me
Speaker 4: want to rewatch.
Speaker 8: That makes more sense than Stalker, I'll tell you that much.
Speaker 13: I don't know.
Speaker 1: You pulled it out, Marta. You pulled it out, that
Speaker 1: paranoia of Pie and also the repetition of images. I mean,
Speaker 1: how everything for him is in that Fibonacci spiral, no
Speaker 1: matter what it is, whether it's the cream in his
Speaker 1: coffee or you know, the patterns of things, and it
Speaker 1: kind of I've never seen did it end up being
Speaker 1: a comic book? The whole thing about ants that Aeronofsky
Speaker 1: put together. I mean, it's just, yeah, he's got like
Speaker 1: patterns in nature and how patterns come up. And that
Speaker 1: was the first movie that ever introduced me to afhex twin.
Speaker 1: With the the sefless bouncing ball and the use of
Speaker 1: like a bouncing ball as such an organic thing mixed
Speaker 1: with the generated sounds of AFX twin, I was like,
Speaker 1: I love this marriage. It shouldn't work, but it works
Speaker 1: really well. And that whole movie felt to me like
Speaker 1: a marriage of natural patterns with the artifice of the
Speaker 1: actual film itself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great soundtrack and a great sound design too.
Speaker 4: I wonder if Timekeepers could have probably pushed that even further.
Speaker 4: Almost seemed like so much of the material, the audio
Speaker 4: material was taken from the mini series, and I wonder,
Speaker 4: you know how radically different it could have been if
Speaker 4: you just said we're we're going to go with completely
Speaker 4: different music and really sort of change the tone, you know,
Speaker 4: even more dramatically.
Speaker 8: Was there any original music and Timekeepers? Because I also
Speaker 8: only remember hearing what I heard from the Langeleiers, But
Speaker 8: I remember when the credits rolled it's said that there
Speaker 8: was a composer attached to Timekeepers.
Speaker 1: I think there is, but with something like this in
Speaker 1: here did he put that together? Because it wasn't the
Speaker 1: era which we're in today, where you could kind of
Speaker 1: run things through, you know, AI and have the music
Speaker 1: dropped out and just keep the you know, the audio
Speaker 1: of the character speaking. Obviously didn't have access to any
Speaker 1: of the original materials or anything, So yeah, I could
Speaker 1: see I could see a full replacement of everything, or
Speaker 1: like even enhancements of things. Like you said, it's so
Speaker 1: talky that there's very little time for music.
Speaker 4: Recut the Langeliers with the soundtrack from the Blair Witch Project.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the whole idea of like just that mister
Speaker 1: Toomey's one thing that he does to relax himself is
Speaker 1: tear paper, and to use that as like the whole
Speaker 1: premise of the movie, to make that your experiment. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so smart, so so smart, and too often when
Speaker 1: I watch experimental movies, it's just like why are you
Speaker 1: doing this?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 1: What is the what are you trying to say to
Speaker 1: me with this? But with Timekeepers of Eternity, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you are really enhancing the story with the experimental nature
Speaker 1: rather than just distracting.
Speaker 4: Clearly a product of personal obsession I love obsessive people.
Speaker 8: So glad you brought up Toomey's dad, Mike, because I
Speaker 8: love that as well. And it's something that I really
Speaker 8: picked up on, and I was like, man, this is
Speaker 8: this is so smart is seeing his face, Toomey's father's
Speaker 8: face pop up in front of Toomey when he's having
Speaker 8: that meltdown, because it almost seems like a physical representation
Speaker 8: of inherited time, you know, and the anxieties he had
Speaker 8: had as a kid just shown to us like the
Speaker 8: past consuming the present literally with those rips in the
Speaker 8: miniseries Toomey's I guess we could consider him more so campy,
Speaker 8: but here everything we see is tragic, and I think
Speaker 8: that's thanks to the texture and the paper that we're
Speaker 8: seeing being just this sort of breakdown of all of that.
Speaker 8: The papers is as anxious as he is, So I
Speaker 8: think that's really effective and completely changes the tone.
Speaker 4: Look it makes makes us of at the time, the
Speaker 4: theory of time isn't just linear, you know, it isn't
Speaker 4: just before and after.
Speaker 9: It's layered.
Speaker 4: You know that even the present moments as texture has depth,
Speaker 4: has you know, different layers.
Speaker 8: We were mentioning that spotlight theory or the film strips.
Speaker 8: It's literal here is it not? Yeah, which I think
Speaker 8: is cool because it just takes it a step further
Speaker 8: to King's idea.
Speaker 1: All right, we're going to take another break and we'll
Speaker 1: be back with an interview with the director of Timekeepers
Speaker 1: of Eternity, Aristotle Morakos, right after these brief messages.
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Speaker 1: Before we start talking about Timekeepers of Eternity, I want
Speaker 1: to know a little bit more about you and how
Speaker 1: you got interested in filmmaking.
Speaker 7: I think, like everyone did, the mistake to watch too
Speaker 7: many films when I was young, but in my actual
Speaker 7: path was after school, I started architecture and through studying
Speaker 7: architecture find my way towards filmmaking, towards animation, and then
Speaker 7: I went on to study film, worked for a bit
Speaker 7: as a production designer, and then moved on to directing.
Speaker 7: I directed the commercials and making my own films, so
Speaker 7: like short films, and that slowly moved into different things.
Speaker 1: So where did the idea for Timekeepers of a Turney
Speaker 1: come from?
Speaker 7: The languages was playing on Greek television when I was
Speaker 7: very young, quite often, like for the span of a
Speaker 7: couple of years, and it was the first kind of
Speaker 7: a film that I asked my parents can I stay
Speaker 7: up late with my sister and watch it. I was
Speaker 7: quite young, and in Greece it didn't play. It played
Speaker 7: as one, so he didn't play in two nights until
Speaker 7: it started, and with the commercials, the break for the
Speaker 7: news and all that it went on for five six
Speaker 7: hours was so late. But it was incredible because I
Speaker 7: remembered as the first kind of scary film that I
Speaker 7: stayed up to watch, and it was very scary to me.
Speaker 7: It was very ingrained in my head growing up. I
Speaker 7: would used to talk about it, but I hadn't seen
Speaker 7: it like a decade later or and I revisited and
Speaker 7: it wasn't the memory that I had of it. So
Speaker 7: the timetepers came by, can I figure out the memory
Speaker 7: that I had, the emotion or reaction I had of
Speaker 7: the film? Can I reproduce it? Can I find it?
Speaker 7: Can I like an archaeologist? Can I discover it within
Speaker 7: the footage? So that was the initial thing and the
Speaker 7: technique the experimentation just came out of the plot of
Speaker 7: the Languelaers came out of the character of mister Toomey,
Speaker 7: who is obsessed with time but also calms himself down
Speaker 7: with ripping paper. He was the most vivid memory that
Speaker 7: I had of it, and the film was centered around him,
Speaker 7: but also gave the materiality that the Timekeepers have.
Speaker 1: What was your memory of the movie. How was it
Speaker 1: different than what we see in the longer version of it.
Speaker 7: As a child, you watch films and the impact you
Speaker 7: in different ways. The emotions are heightened, or you're more
Speaker 7: engaged with the details that become more important. And it
Speaker 7: is a plot heavy story, but it's the pace of it,
Speaker 7: the pace of telling the story and where it focused,
Speaker 7: and how it distorts in the enseample of characters, the
Speaker 7: narration of it, the way you tell the story. I
Speaker 7: found a bit scattered, basically didn't. I didn't have the
Speaker 7: same emotion watching it. And I'm not saying the Languladers
Speaker 7: are bad, that Languladers are great. I loved it as
Speaker 7: a twelve year old and I gave it so much
Speaker 7: time just getting into it. There is something there. I
Speaker 7: think it's great and the Timekeepers, to me, is not
Speaker 7: an alternative. Is just something different, something that I made
Speaker 7: and luckily had. The very was perceived very well from audience,
Speaker 7: endre audience, Stephen King fans, so it had a life
Speaker 7: of its own, which is great.
Speaker 1: How did you actually do the film I want to understand.
Speaker 1: Those are print outs of the different frames, and you
Speaker 1: animated it frame by frame.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So first I edited down to from the three
Speaker 7: hours to a tighter story that was centered more around
Speaker 7: mister to me, and then I did it linear. I
Speaker 7: was printing out the frames in black and white, which
Speaker 7: is cheaper paper, the cheapest paper, the cheapest ink, and
Speaker 7: from that I would animate the paper and then take
Speaker 7: a picture of it. Each frame is like a collage
Speaker 7: that I made in reality, take a picture, put the
Speaker 7: pictures in order. I also worked on it in a
Speaker 7: linear fashion, so I started from the beginning and finished
Speaker 7: at the end or in the majority of it, and
Speaker 7: then I didn't go back to correct I did it blindly.
Speaker 7: Although I can do digital animation and follow with onion
Speaker 7: skin follow what I'm making, it was a bit more
Speaker 7: old school that I wasn't checking what I'm doing. I
Speaker 7: was doing sequences, and the process was for me need
Speaker 7: to inhabit the madness of mystery, to me to be
Speaker 7: overwhelmed by the amount of paper that I have to control,
Speaker 7: holding the narration, the visual narration within my head, having
Speaker 7: small stacks of paper. So each shot and then I
Speaker 7: would stare at them for a while, for a long time,
Speaker 7: longer than you think, and then eventually I would have
Speaker 7: it in my mind what I need to make, and
Speaker 7: then I get to making it, and hopefully because I
Speaker 7: get because you spend that much time, I get better
Speaker 7: as an animator. Towards the end of the film. The
Speaker 7: film kind of benefits from it. So it starts more
Speaker 7: simplistically simple in the ideas that it can do with
Speaker 7: the material and how it interacts with the plot, and
Speaker 7: it goes more and more.
Speaker 1: Complex, even just the printing out of all those frames.
Speaker 1: Do you export all that in Photoshop and then print
Speaker 1: out each frame that way?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: How does that go?
Speaker 7: You break down the film into frames and then you
Speaker 7: print frames. I've printed so many. I used to print
Speaker 7: in batches. I was doing my PhD at university, so
Speaker 7: I was using the facilities there, so I had like
Speaker 7: major discount and then getting big boxes. The process was
Speaker 7: getting the boxes. Then I would stamp them with a handstamp,
Speaker 7: so like a rotary stamp, so everyone had each one
Speaker 7: has a number, so if I lose them, I can
Speaker 7: put them back in order. And that would get me
Speaker 7: my first kind of looking at the material, and then
Speaker 7: separate them into shorts and start making the sequences, which
Speaker 7: changed a lot. The edit was mainly just to get
Speaker 7: the material that would I would use as grounds, but
Speaker 7: then on the actual animating process, it would change a
Speaker 7: lot the way to tell the story.
Speaker 1: And then are you doing thirty frames a second twenty four?
Speaker 7: No, I was doing the animation's twelve frames per second. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so it's twelve frames per second, and I think I've
Speaker 7: used all of the shots that mister Toomy is in.
Speaker 7: And that was the soft rule. If the broken pincher
Speaker 7: is in it, I'm going to use it, and then
Speaker 7: the rest would resolve around them.
Speaker 1: And what are you actually shooting with?
Speaker 7: It's just this it's a simple DSLAR camera. So it's
Speaker 7: like a very simple setup of basically photographing books. So
Speaker 7: when with two lights and a camera at pop shot
Speaker 7: camera and I use my table to make whatever collasses
Speaker 7: I'm making and then take a picture.
Speaker 1: The result the effect is just amazing, And I love
Speaker 1: how you've got different I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: call them movements, but there are different techniques that you
Speaker 1: use throughout the whole film. There's one section where you
Speaker 1: start to I imagine put yourself in the film where
Speaker 1: we can see your hands actually manipulating things. I love
Speaker 1: when it breaks down into that particular area.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, And again that has to do with mister
Speaker 7: Toomey manipulating broken pincher manipulating paper, So my hands manipulating
Speaker 7: paper with a reflection of that, and me as a
Speaker 7: creator or mister to Me as inhabiting his own mind space.
Speaker 7: It all has to do with creating this a nightmare
Speaker 7: or in a way making the terror of the Langoliers
Speaker 7: more real.
Speaker 1: And then I really appreciated the end of the film
Speaker 1: where you pretty much redid the effects.
Speaker 7: It's infamous for its effects, although I never really minded
Speaker 7: the three d Langoliers, but because for me the paper
Speaker 7: was so important the resolution the beast of the story,
Speaker 7: but also the resolution of the story had to be
Speaker 7: directly linked with the paper as material.
Speaker 1: I went for it. And then I love that you
Speaker 1: actually changed the end of the film as well.
Speaker 7: At the end was the toughest for me. I did
Speaker 7: many tries. It was the hardest decision, different tries of
Speaker 7: because it's a question that can you resolve what happens
Speaker 7: when they go through the rift awake? And can you
Speaker 7: give that space, and I did try something different, and
Speaker 7: then it was restarting the film. They were going into
Speaker 7: a different space, and then we're going to a different film,
Speaker 7: and the plot didn't need that, so I gave them
Speaker 7: the what I thought was the more fitting ending for
Speaker 7: the travel.
Speaker 1: And then I love the effect that you give it
Speaker 1: with the slowdown of the frames and just showing us
Speaker 1: a few as it counts down.
Speaker 7: Almost almost the same words come from Dean Stockwell's character
Speaker 7: where time counts down, weaving down, I'm interpreting what's in
Speaker 7: the story. I'm reading it and then giving it my
Speaker 7: own explanation visually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing is it feels so personal and
Speaker 1: it almost feels like I'm looking in on your thoughts
Speaker 1: as I'm watching your version of the film.
Speaker 7: That's great to know, and hopefully from a point onwards.
Speaker 7: It's not that I wasn't trying to make an experimental film,
Speaker 7: so it ended up being a longer film. Usually these
Speaker 7: kind of experiments for films are like short films ten minutes,
Speaker 7: twenty minutes, because after a while you're tired of the technique,
Speaker 7: or the technique doesn't have anything else to offer for me.
Speaker 7: The technique isn't use to tell the story. So the
Speaker 7: important thing for me is that you engage with a story.
Speaker 7: You can engage with what I'm making as a technique,
Speaker 7: as a craft, but the more important thing is that
Speaker 7: you engage more with mister to me that you feel
Speaker 7: the weight of time and the langulae're chasing and all that.
Speaker 1: Once you've got everything in the camera, how much adjustment
Speaker 1: did you have to do for the soundtrack itself?
Speaker 7: You're editing through shots and I never had like an
Speaker 7: open soundtrack for the dialogues. Everything is mixed down what
Speaker 7: I had, what I was using. So then I worked
Speaker 7: with a sound editor and a musician that are good friends,
Speaker 7: and I would try to reinterpret that and mix it through.
Speaker 7: And Amulets wrote the music. He's really good. He's working
Speaker 7: with tape loops and cassette tapes and so very analog
Speaker 7: looping and understanding, you know, repetitions of time, and that's
Speaker 7: his craft and he understands it more than me. And
Speaker 7: I thought that was fitting interpret the story that's trapped
Speaker 7: within time, and he got it at once. We didn't
Speaker 7: have to discuss much and he engaged with the material
Speaker 7: as it is as a soundtrack and added layers to
Speaker 7: it that I think give it this depth but also
Speaker 7: a very entertaining and the process was the sound design
Speaker 7: also for me because it was the time where I
Speaker 7: had company. I was working with someone else. Everything else,
Speaker 7: the visual part is just me, and then towards the
Speaker 7: end with the music and the sound design, I just
Speaker 7: had a bit of company, which was nice.
Speaker 1: When did you actually start the project and when did
Speaker 1: you finish?
Speaker 7: It took a couple of years. We premiered in twenty
Speaker 7: one so in Fantastic Fest and I think it was
Speaker 7: at least twenty half years. But it wasn't my only
Speaker 7: thing I was doing in life. It did overlap with
Speaker 7: the pandemic. All these things gave time, but for me personally,
Speaker 7: it overlap with having a baby at home, so put
Speaker 7: the baby to sleep and then you can work for
Speaker 7: what time it is work nights, and then go back
Speaker 7: to work and other things. But I worked on it
Speaker 7: intermittently for at least Yeah, it must be three years.
Speaker 1: Sure, that's amazing. Yeah, I was wondering if this was
Speaker 1: your pandemic project, but it only overlapped a little bit,
Speaker 1: I imagine.
Speaker 7: Yes, it wasn't the pandemic project, but it did overlap
Speaker 7: with pandemics, all the ending, all the langueliars when they appear.
Speaker 7: That was all pandemic to me, which was more labor intensive,
Speaker 7: and it was great because I had more time to
Speaker 7: do it.
Speaker 1: As a person who has used bound footage and repurposed
Speaker 1: footage before, did you have any problems with rights or
Speaker 1: anything around repurposing somebody else's material?
Speaker 7: I didn't have problems, But the timekeepers of itarnity exist
Speaker 7: within fair use of copyright or within that. The Langue
Speaker 7: Layers have been online on YouTube forever. No one cares.
Speaker 7: It's a piece of forgotten and no one cares of
Speaker 7: the people that made it, of the producers that might
Speaker 7: still have the rights. So it's I knew it existed
Speaker 7: out there. But also working with fand footage for artists
Speaker 7: is you take a stance towards material, whether you make
Speaker 7: something new, whether you repurpose something, whether we need something new,
Speaker 7: or can we find stories and importance and meaning in
Speaker 7: things that are already out there by changing them. I
Speaker 7: never looked for the rights. My purpose was to make
Speaker 7: it without waiting see for trouble or for success.
Speaker 1: So the purpose of it was just to make did
Speaker 1: you ever hear from Tom Holland.
Speaker 7: No, I've heard from Bob Broswe Pinchow, which he's really nice,
Speaker 7: and that's the only one that worked on the film
Speaker 7: that I've heard from, and no one else has contacted
Speaker 7: me or I've tried to contact them. To be fair,
Speaker 7: what I've made is from admiration for everyone's work. The
Speaker 7: Timekeepers exist because there is something important for me in
Speaker 7: the original material, in the performances, in everyone's work, in
Speaker 7: the craft that everyone in the crew has put into it.
Speaker 7: So I appreciate that and I tried to elevate it
Speaker 7: into something new.
Speaker 1: Were you able to attend the premiere.
Speaker 7: No, that was pandemic. Unfortunately, I wasn't in a fantastic
Speaker 7: fest so I couldn't do much traveling while it was premiering,
Speaker 7: So unfortunately didn't travel with the film, had to meet everyone,
Speaker 7: and that's the same. On the other hand, I got
Speaker 7: really many messages of love of people that worship, which
Speaker 7: was indeed great to know that there are peers out
Speaker 7: there that they can filmmakers, but also audiences Stephen King fans,
Speaker 7: which was the first kind of audience because it premiered
Speaker 7: within kind of a community of this Honor, then moving
Speaker 7: to larger audiences and getting distributed. It has distribution from
Speaker 7: Mikfar in the States, and then it had kind of
Speaker 7: weeks here and there where it plays the cinema, and
Speaker 7: it did really well in festivals, so I'm not complaining.
Speaker 1: Did you ever get to see it with an audience, Yes, but.
Speaker 7: Only in Europe. Yeah, they don't sit with an audience,
Speaker 7: and it's great. I love it because they have reactions
Speaker 7: of finding something funny and something fine series which in
Speaker 7: my mind can be different, but you follow the vibe
Speaker 7: of each screening and that's great. I never had a
Speaker 7: kind of complain of an audience not being engaged with it,
Speaker 7: which is what really makes me happy.
Speaker 1: Where can people actually see the film?
Speaker 7: The freeze of the film is available online now for
Speaker 7: free like I'm not It's on femeals on YouTube. And
Speaker 7: because I had many messages of making some kind of
Speaker 7: physical medium out of it, because as we discussed copyright,
Speaker 7: Blu ray DVD woulden't cut it, I've gone the more
Speaker 7: bootleg kind of a way of having something which is
Speaker 7: vhs all VHS tapes, timekeepers on end as part of it,
Speaker 7: and then you watched the rest of the film was
Speaker 7: the originally.
Speaker 1: I think that's really a smart idea, and especially the
Speaker 1: degraded quality of VHS, I imagine adds to the experience
Speaker 1: of seeing that animation in that way.
Speaker 7: I cannot tell the first time I made it and
Speaker 7: I watched on a CRTTV because it's so close to
Speaker 7: how I watched it originally. I think it's the best
Speaker 7: way to watch like it's great and the cinema is
Speaker 7: great to see with more people, but for my twelve
Speaker 7: year old self, VHS and CRT is the better way.
Speaker 7: But of course I understand most people don't have VHS's.
Speaker 7: Most people don't have any more of these type of screens.
Speaker 7: That's fine. Luckily there's a lot of people that collect
Speaker 7: things or that's still within the VHS community, which is
Speaker 7: quite large. They like to see things like that, so
Speaker 7: it's an option that is out there if anyone is interested.
Speaker 7: For me, it's interesting that I can also get the
Speaker 7: ripping of the paper into the ill world because each
Speaker 7: VHS comes with the case, and TC comes with a
Speaker 7: paper case, or the power come with a kind of
Speaker 7: a plastic case. I can play with the original covers
Speaker 7: and my cover of the time Tippers and kind of
Speaker 7: Each of them has tears in it, which I think
Speaker 7: is also good.
Speaker 1: Is this version closer to the one that you had
Speaker 1: in your brain as a twelve year old?
Speaker 7: I don't know. I think try to find the closest one.
Speaker 7: Was the beginning of kind of the adventure then when
Speaker 7: you engage with it. I obviously engage with it as
Speaker 7: an adult, as an artist, as some of it makes things,
Speaker 7: and then I invest myself at that time, and that's
Speaker 7: the best version I can create at the time. If
Speaker 7: I could time travel and go back and ask myself,
Speaker 7: there would lie the answer. But we have to be
Speaker 7: cautious of time travel. As a Languliers teach us today.
Speaker 1: What have you done since Timekeepers?
Speaker 7: I've made a few shorter animations. One is called Kafka's
Speaker 7: Collection of Porn, which is again a fictional take on
Speaker 7: Kafka the author. I've completed my first normal feature, which
Speaker 7: is like a fiction with actors, so you did play
Speaker 7: with everyone, be with a bigger crew, which is doing
Speaker 7: festivals now, which also great a completely different experience. And
Speaker 7: a million other projects in process, and hopefully I will
Speaker 7: have some of them that engage more with paper and
Speaker 7: kind of designer will catch up and soon I can
Speaker 7: spend more time with myself ripping paper.
Speaker 1: What was it like working with actors for you?
Speaker 5: It's great.
Speaker 7: Each story requires a different to me, at least it
Speaker 7: requires different approach and different styles. The Timekeepers are a
Speaker 7: paper animation found fulls because that's what the story required
Speaker 7: for me. The story that I have which called Bitchcommer
Speaker 7: the film, which is a completely different story, it required
Speaker 7: me also to open up and work with the crew,
Speaker 7: and that was also great and fun. Each of them
Speaker 7: is fun in a different way and at the same
Speaker 7: time also a nightmare, like a nightmare that you engage
Speaker 7: with in a stressful but very creative kind of an.
Speaker 1: Arm Where's the best place for people to keep up
Speaker 1: with you in your work.
Speaker 7: You can find me on the website on my website
Speaker 7: which ISOs dot com, which is my name, or find
Speaker 7: me on Instagram, or there's a website for the time
Speaker 7: Keepers on the HS. You know, you can find me
Speaker 7: online and text me and email me and I'll respond
Speaker 7: or I'll try to respond.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time. This was so
Speaker 1: nice talking with you.
Speaker 7: Thank you for your time.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back and we were talking about the
Speaker 1: Langue leaders, and we've made several references to the Twilight Zone.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm a big fan of the Twilight Zone
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty and there was an episode of that that
Speaker 1: this reminded me of. But science fiction story set on
Speaker 1: airplanes not a new thing and probably is almost as
Speaker 1: old as air travel itself. I don't know, but for
Speaker 1: sure it was very ripe for science fiction and very
Speaker 1: ripe for TV science fiction. So yeah, there is quite
Speaker 1: a lot that we can talk about as far as
Speaker 1: inspiration for the Lengoliers, and I think the most obviously
Speaker 1: one is the nineteen to fifty nine Twilight Zone episode
Speaker 1: the Odyssey of Flight thirty three, which has a airplane
Speaker 1: going back in time and some amazing dinosaur effects. I mean,
Speaker 1: at least time Keepers of Eternity kind of fixed the
Speaker 1: Lengalier effects with what they were doing, but I don't
Speaker 1: know there's any fixing this effect. But it's so quaint.
Speaker 1: I love this whole idea of these claymation dinosaurs that
Speaker 1: we see in the you know, but it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun
Speaker 1: going back watching a lot of these movies and TV
Speaker 1: shows that I felt kind of inspired The Langaliers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder if King sort of famously terrified of flying,
Speaker 4: and I wonder if that comes from watching early Twilight
Speaker 4: Zone episodes and you think about like the you know,
Speaker 4: William Shatner and the you know, the something on the
Speaker 4: wing Man. Actually, the other side of the fog is
Speaker 4: directly referenced in the novel in the Langalires, because one
Speaker 4: of the characters talks about, you know, that old Twilight
Speaker 4: Zone episode where they where they see the dinosaurs down below,
Speaker 4: and I think that, yeah, I mean, King would have
Speaker 4: been at the right kind of impressionable age certainly when
Speaker 4: that aired. There's a story that he wrote of it's
Speaker 4: never it's never been published. I mean, it's basically juvenilia,
Speaker 4: but it was written I think between nineteen sixty and
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty three that he wrote this collection of stories
Speaker 4: with one of his neighbors and friends, and the collection
Speaker 4: was called People, Places and Things, And these were some
Speaker 4: of the first stories that Stephen King wrote. And if
Speaker 4: you read them, they're basically like you can tell what
Speaker 4: he was watching on TV. You know, you can tell like,
Speaker 4: all right, well, there's there's an episode of The Fugitive
Speaker 4: and there's a Twilight Zone, and you know, you can
Speaker 4: kind of see all of this in there. And there's
Speaker 4: one story that's called The Other Side of the Fog.
Speaker 4: It's a really short story, it's like.
Speaker 9: Half a page.
Speaker 4: You know, he was young, and he's just kind of riffing.
Speaker 4: I think probably just on the Twilight Zone episode, there's
Speaker 4: this character caught in a fog and wondering if he's
Speaker 4: the last person alive because he can't see anything. And
Speaker 4: he comes out of this fog bank and sees like
Speaker 4: a vision of the future, like a futuristic city, and
Speaker 4: you know, he freaks out, runs back into the fog.
Speaker 4: On the other side of the fog bank, he sees
Speaker 4: an angry broadasaurus. So you know, this is clearly the
Speaker 4: Twilight Zone inspiration. And so it goes back into the
Speaker 4: fog and the story kind of ends. Stephen King, you know,
Speaker 4: young whatever he would have been, ten year old. Stephen
Speaker 4: King's ending is sort of to end on like the
Speaker 4: sound of the footsteps of this guy running through the fog.
Speaker 4: And so if you hear the footsteps, help the poor
Speaker 4: guy out. I think it's the last line. I definitely
Speaker 4: think that he saw that episode of the Twilight Zone,
Speaker 4: the Odyssey of Flight thirty three, and just kind of
Speaker 4: stored that away, you know, for years and years and
Speaker 4: years until he until he sat down and finally wrote
Speaker 4: the Langoliers.
Speaker 8: It really is interesting to me how similar they are
Speaker 8: and how mundane the horror is. It starts with just
Speaker 8: competence and you know, pilots reciting numbers, trusting their instruments,
Speaker 8: and then everything unravels. But when it does, they're still
Speaker 8: just thinking about the fuel gauge, not any sort of
Speaker 8: philosophical questions. It's just that sort of procedural anxiety, like
Speaker 8: the Langoliers, where people who are trained to control what's
Speaker 8: going on suddenly realizing that time doesn't play by their rules.
Speaker 8: So I thought, in that sense, it's a perfect little
Speaker 8: ancestor to the Lnglers.
Speaker 1: I was really happy watching a film from nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: one called The Flight That Disappeared, because well, first off,
Speaker 1: it's got that great atomic age thing where you have
Speaker 1: these two scientists, three scientists on this flight and they're
Speaker 1: all going to the Pentagon, and you know, oh, we're
Speaker 1: coming up with this better bomb, and oh, because you've
Speaker 1: got this part and I've got this part, we could
Speaker 1: combine these things and make this amazing bomb and you know,
Speaker 1: wipe out everybody. And the flight itself is hijacked by
Speaker 1: basically aliens, right or people from the future, I think
Speaker 1: it might be. And they're like, don't know, don't make
Speaker 1: that bomb. Nope, you're not going to. We're holding you
Speaker 1: here until you agree to not basically but that. We've
Speaker 1: got the guy who jumps out of the plane or
Speaker 1: all out of the plane, and then his blind wife
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, okay, this is interesting. We've
Speaker 1: got this whole thing where she's like, where's my husband,
Speaker 1: Where's my husband? I'm like, okay, this is Dinah. This
Speaker 1: is the origin of Dinah, and this whole thing of
Speaker 1: like the people on the ground are just like what
Speaker 1: happened to this flight, which is totally different from the langulayers.
Speaker 1: We never get the ground control because they disappear, you know,
Speaker 1: because they they aren't with them as the flight disappears.
Speaker 1: And with this flight they are gone for what is it.
Speaker 1: They land on a Wednesday, but they were actually supposed
Speaker 1: to be arriving on a Tuesday or something, so they
Speaker 1: have a whole twenty four hours of missing time, and
Speaker 1: only these three people seem to realize that something bad
Speaker 1: had happened. And I'm trying to remember if they even
Speaker 1: remember what went on, because I know for sure in
Speaker 1: the there's also an episode of The Outer Limits that
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that the people didn't remember what happened
Speaker 1: while they were like in this period of missing time,
Speaker 1: which also always reminds me of the X Files and Moulder.
Speaker 1: I always ask, did you experience a period of missing time?
Speaker 1: But yeah, I thought that was It was great. And
Speaker 1: it's one of these like hour and ten minute movies,
Speaker 1: sci fi dangers of atomic war type of thing. Looks
Speaker 1: really good in my opinion, so super serious. It's not
Speaker 1: quite zero hour serious, but it's still pretty darn serious.
Speaker 1: And I just I was tickled watching this film.
Speaker 8: I'm sad. I fell asleep at one point watching this,
Speaker 8: I know, not for too long, because I remember it
Speaker 8: was they were on the plane and then I fell asleep,
Speaker 8: and next thing you know, I was like, is this
Speaker 8: twelve angry men in a wormhole? Like what's going on?
Speaker 4: But that's just like the characters were. The oxygen deprivation
Speaker 4: got to you and knocked you out. You know, if
Speaker 4: you're not a nuclear physicist, you cannot be awake for
Speaker 4: what happens.
Speaker 8: Speaking of that, the lack of oxygen, I thought that
Speaker 8: was also another similarity to the langueliers, albeit in the
Speaker 8: langoliers it's done on purpose, intentionally, we're here, they pass
Speaker 8: out due to a lack of oxygen, but still it's
Speaker 8: it's there.
Speaker 1: I love the image of the old scientist guy hanging
Speaker 1: out by the open door of the airplane and they
Speaker 1: just have this calm conversation by this open fucking door.
Speaker 1: It's like, we're not going to talk about pressurization whatsoever here.
Speaker 8: This one was also just a treat for me to
Speaker 8: see just the interior of a plane in the early sixties,
Speaker 8: that cushy lounge area for drinking and smoking.
Speaker 1: Everybody smoking. That was the thing I loved about the
Speaker 1: Odyssey of Flight thirty three as well. The pilot's just
Speaker 1: smoking up in the cockpit, like all right, cool.
Speaker 9: They needed that ad revenue.
Speaker 8: Also those tables too. I'm kind of upset that we
Speaker 8: don't have those today because instead of being on the
Speaker 8: seat in front of you, they kind of attached there.
Speaker 8: They look like those little laptop tables that you can
Speaker 8: sometimes bring.
Speaker 1: Having a lounge area. Oh yeah, what a luxury? Why
Speaker 1: are things worse now than they were before? You wouldn't
Speaker 1: you think we'd go the other direction and just it
Speaker 1: would be so relaxing to be on a flight rather
Speaker 1: than just crammed in like sardines. Did you get a
Speaker 1: chance to watch the Premonition from the Outer Limits?
Speaker 10: Me?
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, yeah, Oh I did. I thought that one
Speaker 8: was also just again a great ancestor to the Langliers.
Speaker 8: It makes me wonder. I mean, I would say King
Speaker 8: was probably inspired by it. I don't know, Joe, what
Speaker 8: do you think?
Speaker 4: I'm trying to So I watched a few of these
Speaker 4: a few weeks ago. I'm trying to remember which one
Speaker 4: the Premonition was.
Speaker 1: The Premonition is the one where it's the test pilot
Speaker 1: and his wife and they both kind of slip out
Speaker 1: of time. They wake up and everything in the entire
Speaker 1: world is frozen and.
Speaker 4: Right, but it's moving forward in little increments small.
Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. It takes almost like an hour for a
Speaker 1: second to pass or something. They go back to the
Speaker 1: base and they see their daughter and they figure out
Speaker 1: that she's going to be run over by a truck
Speaker 1: unless they figure out something to do, or one of
Speaker 1: them can sacrifice themselves and stay behind. And then there's
Speaker 1: also that weird creature that is a person that was
Speaker 1: also affected by a time slip in the past and
Speaker 1: he's been stuck there for I don't know how long.
Speaker 1: I was surprised that that didn't come to more. And
Speaker 1: that was the thing. I've never been a big fan
Speaker 1: of the Outer Limits. I always felt like they missed
Speaker 1: the mark, especially compared to the Twilight Zone. And the
Speaker 1: thing that didn't help for me is exactly what you
Speaker 1: mentioned when we first started recording this is the Outer
Speaker 1: Limits were a lot longer than the Twilight Zone. So
Speaker 1: when the Twilight Zones got to be an hour, they
Speaker 1: dragged like crazy. Outer Limits most of the episodes that
Speaker 1: I've seen, I'm like, God, if this was half as long,
Speaker 1: it would be twice as good. But I thought that
Speaker 1: the Premonition actually moved pretty well.
Speaker 4: The most interesting part was that that sort of limbo man,
Speaker 4: you know, like, what was the story there? You know,
Speaker 4: that's the real sort of you know, horrific tragic. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, sounds a little you know, callous, but it
Speaker 4: was much less invested in whether or not they were
Speaker 4: going to save their daughter. Then what what is the
Speaker 4: deal with this This guy who's basically like you know,
Speaker 4: trapped in in purgatory is the only reason that they
Speaker 4: don't get trapped the torment. You know, it's like a
Speaker 4: you know, like a story of characters being caught in
Speaker 4: a time loop. You know, just conceptually, that's so terrifying,
Speaker 4: you know, the idea of just there's no escape. I
Speaker 4: think they even say in the episode there's no death,
Speaker 4: you can't die here. That's probably the scariest thing in
Speaker 4: the episode. I wanted equivalent of that in the Langele Years.
Speaker 8: This feels like the most literal interpretation of that idea
Speaker 8: of the film strip and and time is as a
Speaker 8: physical medium. So yeah, I agree with you there that
Speaker 8: that is the scariest part of us.
Speaker 1: With that character who is lost in time. It reminded
Speaker 1: me a little bit of the disappearance of the flight
Speaker 1: that disappeared, and the idea of like somebody else being there.
Speaker 1: It is so scary to me when that guy in
Speaker 1: the flight that disappeared kind of walks out of the fog,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about the fog, walks out of the fog,
Speaker 1: It's just like, yeah, hey, I'm not going to let
Speaker 1: you do this stuff, and you know, here I am
Speaker 1: judging you. And I thought, for sure, like this guy
Speaker 1: that was showing up in the premonition was something similar,
Speaker 1: and this whole idea of I don't know why he's
Speaker 1: afraid of fire, especially because you said he can't die,
Speaker 1: but he's afraid of fire, and like, oh, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: like this lighter and it's going to scare you away.
Speaker 1: I felt like maybe if they just went to the
Speaker 1: base one time, it would have been a little bit better.
Speaker 1: But they go back twice, I think, and it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can move this a little bit. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought it was pretty solid. And yeah, like you say,
Speaker 1: I would really like to explore more of what this
Speaker 1: guy's thing is and why didn't you, you know, try
Speaker 1: to attack the guy and take his place and so
Speaker 1: you can come back out of that time loop.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a whole other story there for sure, where
Speaker 4: the like the shades in Hell and Dante were they
Speaker 4: afraid of fire? Is that or am I just conflating
Speaker 4: Dante with like Richard Mathotson.
Speaker 1: You might be right? Yeah, one other that I thought, well,
Speaker 1: of course, I thought about Legete and the whole idea
Speaker 1: of time and time travel and everything with that, and
Speaker 1: also that it takes place at an airport on a
Speaker 1: runway some of it, and that for me, Legete, God,
Speaker 1: it's just so beautiful. It's almost for me, let almost
Speaker 1: seems to speak more to timekeepers of eternity with this
Speaker 1: whole idea. You know, we're talking about captured time and
Speaker 1: this idea of using still photographs to tell a story
Speaker 1: in a medium that is essentially about moving pictures, but
Speaker 1: you're using still pictures to tell this story. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to be able to properly talk about Legette in
Speaker 1: a few minutes time, because I could probably dedicate like
Speaker 1: a few hours of nowadays to just to discussing it
Speaker 1: because it's so great. And then you get into things
Speaker 1: like Twelve Monkeys and other things that have taken from
Speaker 1: Leete and it's just like, oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: so great again a David Moore's performance and Twelve Monkeys,
Speaker 1: it's great that he shows up in that. It's almost
Speaker 1: redemption for his Lengoleer's character. But yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: love that film and I love the way that it
Speaker 1: again plays with time and time travel and this whole
Speaker 1: idea of fate, the fickle finger of fate hits harder
Speaker 1: in Timekeepers than it does in Lengo Leers because really,
Speaker 1: like I was saying, there shouldn't be an escape from
Speaker 1: this stuff. Everybody should die. It should be more of
Speaker 1: that cynical Twilight Zone ending. And Legete like it's very
Speaker 1: much like it occurrence at Owl's Owl Creek Bridge, you know,
Speaker 1: French film that gets translated like directly, you know, just
Speaker 1: picked up and taken into the twilight Zone. Certainly almost
Speaker 1: could have done the exact same thing with Legete.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm so happy you included it here, and same
Speaker 8: as what you're saying. That was the the first thing
Speaker 8: that struck me is how much it reminded me of Timekeepers,
Speaker 8: of eternity mark or phrasing time Marago's shredding it. They're
Speaker 8: both just kind of confronting even cinema's morality itself, because
Speaker 8: you have those It's photographs, it's frozen, and then you
Speaker 8: have the blink, which is my favorite moment of the
Speaker 8: entire film. It's the moment that time remembers itself. And
Speaker 8: I remember the first time I watched Logite was I
Speaker 8: gasped at the blink, I couldn't believe it. And now
Speaker 8: this time on a rewatch, I thought to myself just
Speaker 8: how cruel it is because I knew how the story
Speaker 8: was going to end, and it just reminds you that
Speaker 8: that illusion of motion is just that, it's an illusion.
Speaker 8: I love this film. I could also talk about this
Speaker 8: film for hours still.
Speaker 4: I mean as a romance, it just it pales in
Speaker 4: comparison to the romance between Nick and Laurel, or the
Speaker 4: romance between Albert and Little Bethany.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess you're right, say whatever, who cares? And
Speaker 1: then I was really glad to Martin when I brought
Speaker 1: up goke Body Snatcher from Hell that you just vibe
Speaker 1: with that and You're like, oh, yeah, any chance I
Speaker 1: get to talk about that movie? And I was like,
Speaker 1: fuck yeah, because I only saw that recently for another
Speaker 1: podcast that I was on. I was just like, been
Speaker 1: waiting to see this, finally had the excuse to see it.
Speaker 1: Was so happy when I got to see it. And
Speaker 1: the only reason really why I brought it up was
Speaker 1: the idea of these people kind of again select group
Speaker 1: of people trapped on an airplane or on an airplane,
Speaker 1: weird shit happening, you know they I think they talk
Speaker 1: about like a big flash or like the Aurora. Kind
Speaker 1: of like the Aurora, how they talk about that and
Speaker 1: the lengo leers Again, any excuse I get to talk
Speaker 1: about this movie as well.
Speaker 8: It's incredible.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I watched it for the first time last year and
Speaker 8: immediately I watched it again the other night, and I
Speaker 8: think that where the languel ears has that quiet unease.
Speaker 8: This is just a moral meltdown. It's just the off
Speaker 8: the sky is bleeding red. That's even commented on. Also,
Speaker 8: I read somewhere that that's where Tarantino got the idea
Speaker 8: of what is it from kill Bill?
Speaker 11: Is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? The airplane?
Speaker 8: Right, I heard that it comes from this, but that's
Speaker 8: an aside. But yes, you have the sky bleeding red.
Speaker 8: The passengers themselves to me all looked like stand ins
Speaker 8: of corruption. So you have the politicians, the arm dealers,
Speaker 8: the profiteers. I think there are as well, just like
Speaker 8: a pressure cooker for humanities wrought And in that sense,
Speaker 8: it actually kind of reminded me of Japan's Wild cousin
Speaker 8: to the Flight that disappeared. They're similar in that sense
Speaker 8: for those characters as well, we're also morally corrupt, and
Speaker 8: they're being judged by these higher powers. I don't know
Speaker 8: what they are in the flight that disappeared, maybe also
Speaker 8: aliens or yeah, I don't know what they are, but
Speaker 8: in Go Okay they are aliens. But it's also kind
Speaker 8: of a judgment that comes from within the characters too,
Speaker 8: because the aliens go into what is it there foreheads
Speaker 8: and they kind of become the person. I think it's
Speaker 8: an inverse of the Languliers, That's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 8: I think instead of a dead world drained of color,
Speaker 8: this one is too alive, hysteria, color noise. Also like
Speaker 8: a very very apparent anti war message as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, especially at the end when they kind of
Speaker 1: go away from the one big set that well, they've
Speaker 1: got the set of the airplane and then they've got
Speaker 1: this cliff that takes so much of the rest of
Speaker 1: the action. But when they get away from that area
Speaker 1: and you see what the rest of the world has become,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like I was saying, as they're flying,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, what if there was war, you know,
Speaker 1: what if something was happening on the ground and here
Speaker 1: stuff is happening on the ground, like there's this whole
Speaker 1: idea of, you know, an alien invasion. Oh and just
Speaker 1: for the record, Kirk Cameron played Buck Williams and Brad
Speaker 1: Johnson played the role that Nick Cage played Rayford Steel,
Speaker 1: So what you cannot get a more manly name than
Speaker 1: Rayford Steal. And then for me, one of you know,
Speaker 1: my favorite shows was The Twilight Zone nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: We did a whole podcast series on that called Dreams
Speaker 1: for Sale, and it definitely was diminishing returns as the
Speaker 1: series went on. But one of the better episodes, which
Speaker 1: I think was an early episode, was one called A
Speaker 1: Matter of Minutes, which was based on a Theater Sturgeon
Speaker 1: short story called I Think Yesterday was Monday. It might
Speaker 1: have a longer title. About yesterday was as a man
Speaker 1: who wakes up he's gone to bed on a Monday
Speaker 1: night and he wakes up on Wednesday morning because Tuesday
Speaker 1: was skipped over. This is the short story. Tuesday was
Speaker 1: skipped over because it wasn't built in time. And so
Speaker 1: rather than it's kind of again the inverse, it's the
Speaker 1: inverse of the Langoliers in so far as we get
Speaker 1: to see the people who build the world rather than
Speaker 1: the creatures that tear apart the world. And we get
Speaker 1: to see Adolph Caesar as like a foreman who's in
Speaker 1: charge of building the world. And we see you know,
Speaker 1: Alan Arkin waking up and I can't remember who plays
Speaker 1: his wife in this and they get to see like
Speaker 1: this half finished world and it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: I was talking like main character vibes, right, it kind
Speaker 1: of feels like the whole idea of like everything in
Speaker 1: this world is built for me. Everybody else are just
Speaker 1: like stand ins and players and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It feels like, oh, yeah, I'm going to leave my
Speaker 1: house and I'm going to see the people that are
Speaker 1: actually building the world that I'm about to enter into.
Speaker 1: You know, nothing exists, you're talking about the spotlight effect.
Speaker 1: Nothing exists except for what I see. And here's Adolph
Speaker 1: Caesar like building all of these things with his crew
Speaker 1: just in time for you know, Alan Arkin to you know,
Speaker 1: come downstairs and see his living room or go out
Speaker 1: to work and see his car and those kind of things.
Speaker 1: It's kind of great because they're all dressed in like
Speaker 1: these blue suits. You don't see their faces, they're just
Speaker 1: blue head to tell. It's a simple premise. But that
Speaker 1: was the thing I liked about Twilight's Only eighty five
Speaker 1: was a lot of those segments were odd times. This
Speaker 1: is sixteen minutes, just perfect amount. Don't give me any fat,
Speaker 1: just give me all the meat.
Speaker 5: So you're saying that each minute of time is a
Speaker 5: different place, that's right. Why why what? Why does time
Speaker 5: work like this? Because that's the way it works.
Speaker 4: But we've been so hard on the CGI langaliers. You're
Speaker 4: really being very lenient with the Blue Man group. Guys
Speaker 4: in Blue Spandex as our langoliers just pulling that out.
Speaker 1: Okay, I will cop to it. I agree, but it's
Speaker 1: it's a simple premise.
Speaker 4: See did you see the episode when it aired in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty I did, yes, So see, you're probably at
Speaker 4: a more impressionable a and you're not as a baby
Speaker 4: judgment of the cheap visuals. Blue Spandex is dazzling well.
Speaker 1: And then Adolph Caesar's a foreman. You can tell because
Speaker 1: he's dressed in yellow instead of the typical blue, and
Speaker 1: he even gives like a little computer guided presentation as
Speaker 1: to how time works. So yeah, I thought that was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Yeah, it worked for me.
Speaker 4: Are they blue men in the in the Theodore Sturgeon story.
Speaker 1: That I don't know. I've never gone back and read
Speaker 1: that story.
Speaker 9: Why blue?
Speaker 4: I wonder if that was just well, it's in the story,
Speaker 4: so we have to do it, or if it was
Speaker 4: just well, we got all these blue spandex suits lying
Speaker 4: around from some other shows, so let's just utilize that.
Speaker 8: I just can't believe that was Alan Ork And when
Speaker 8: you said that, Mike, that blew my mind. I didn't
Speaker 8: even realize I was watching Alan orkin the whole time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is pre him in Northern Exposure, wasn't he
Speaker 1: in that with like the long hair and the cap right.
Speaker 8: Did not recognize them at all, And I was probably
Speaker 8: too focused on the blue Man group.
Speaker 1: And I did start to watch Into the Night the
Speaker 1: other night, the Netflix series, which I am now after
Speaker 1: watching the first episode, I'm pretty sure that I'm going
Speaker 1: to watch the rest of it, or I'm at least
Speaker 1: going to try to track down here's another pronunciation, the
Speaker 1: old axel Latto that's like the Little Creature right.
Speaker 9: That was actually about this.
Speaker 1: Twenty fifteen Polish sci fi book that it's based on,
Speaker 1: and it was an interesting concept. It's this whole idea
Speaker 1: of the sun. Now, I'm not spoiling anything because it's
Speaker 1: the first episode and they set this all up. The
Speaker 1: sun is killing everyone. So basically, this Italian guy hijacks
Speaker 1: a plane and they're just in the boarding process. So again,
Speaker 1: limited amount of people, small group on this plane, all
Speaker 1: from various backs, you know, backgrounds and everything, and he's like,
Speaker 1: we need to go west. Like I know, we're supposed
Speaker 1: to be going from this is set in Belgium, We're
Speaker 1: supposed to be going from Belgium to Moscow, but no,
Speaker 1: we're going to turn this plane around and we're going
Speaker 1: to go west and we have to stay in the
Speaker 1: dark as long as we can because the sun is
Speaker 1: going to kill us. That's like the first episode is
Speaker 1: them going from Belgium. They try to land in Iceland,
Speaker 1: they see absolute chaos on the ground. They backtrack to Scotland,
Speaker 1: which I know is going the wrong way, but they
Speaker 1: still land before the sun comes up, and basically that's
Speaker 1: where the episode is ending. They need some Scottish guys
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, oh, I don't trust these guys.
Speaker 1: I don't trust why they're still there. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: very curious where this is going to go. But that
Speaker 1: was a very fascinating concept, and again one of those
Speaker 1: where I'm just like, Okay, group of people on a plane,
Speaker 1: great premise, set up, and I'm just excited to see
Speaker 1: where they go with it.
Speaker 8: You may have sold me on this. This was when
Speaker 8: I didn't get a chance to watch next to all
Speaker 8: these other ones, but yeah, I want to check this out.
Speaker 8: I think this whole exercise has taught me that I
Speaker 8: enjoy watching terrifying things happen on planes on TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, only on TV, not in real life place.
Speaker 4: You've given us a lot of recommendations for in flight
Speaker 4: viewing for our next trip.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, didn't they used to cut stuff out
Speaker 1: the scene from Fight Club the customers? Yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a audible version of this
Speaker 1: in English. There definitely is one in Polish, but yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully I can find a nice English translation of the
Speaker 1: old Axel Lodel. And then yeah, I'm glad that you
Speaker 1: made you bit the bullet and watched Flight World War two,
Speaker 1: which as soon as I heard the title and saw
Speaker 1: the premise, I was like, what was that whole thing like?
Speaker 1: Back in the eighties where we kept doing time travel
Speaker 1: with boats, like the Philadelphia Experiment, and there was another
Speaker 1: one with like Martin Sheen, I think, where a battlecruiser
Speaker 1: like went back in time and prevented Pearl Harbor. I
Speaker 1: was just like, that was a that was a thing, right,
Speaker 1: Like are we now doing movies of planes going back
Speaker 1: and preventing World War two or fighting in World War Two.
Speaker 1: I didn't make it that far into it because, like
Speaker 1: I said, I saw Fronta here and I was just like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to see him in a movie this bad.
Speaker 1: Because I think I also saw the Asylum logo and
Speaker 1: I was just like, yeah, no, I'm good, I'm good.
Speaker 8: I was trying to think, how can you possibly connect
Speaker 8: this to all these other things that I watched. I mean,
Speaker 8: I guess you could say, obviously, it's it's on a plane.
Speaker 8: The Bermuda Triangle is mentioned, as it is in Malnca years.
Speaker 8: That's that's kind of it. The last Asylum film I watched,
Speaker 8: I think it was actually Sharknado, don't I don't think
Speaker 8: I've seen more than that. It was bad, it was
Speaker 8: it was entertaining, though, I mean, nothing could have prepared
Speaker 8: me for the halfway point where you'd hear, let's hijack
Speaker 8: the plane and kill Hitler Verbatim.
Speaker 4: So it was shocking. I just remember watching their whatever
Speaker 4: their Pirates of the Caribbean ripoff was, because I was
Speaker 4: I was working on a book with Lance Henrickson and
Speaker 4: he was in it as a pirate, and it was
Speaker 4: it was pretty bad.
Speaker 8: As I mentioned, the CGI was at some points worse
Speaker 8: than it was in the Lngliers. So that's saying a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is saying something. Plus you have to have
Speaker 1: the period costumes and oh boy.
Speaker 8: Well lot not actually a lot. That's what I found
Speaker 8: interesting is they're not interesting. Just I don't even know
Speaker 8: what I thought. But ninety five percent of the movie
Speaker 8: is on the plane, and then whatever is on ground
Speaker 8: was maybe just two costumes or three costumes, get two
Speaker 8: from the Allied forces and then one man that was
Speaker 8: manning the telephones or tapping into all of that. But
Speaker 8: he was a member of the Gestapo, which I mean,
Speaker 8: why would he be specifically doing all this low level stuff.
Speaker 4: It was funny, It was funny. What was it was
Speaker 4: like ninety percent of it digital too, that there were
Speaker 4: like the props and everything that's because this is what
Speaker 4: I remember Lance telling me that they showed up on
Speaker 4: a beach and it's like the actors on a beach
Speaker 4: with a few pieces of wood and he's like, well,
Speaker 4: where's the boat. Oh, we're going to see gi that
Speaker 4: in later.
Speaker 8: It was bad and everything is I mean, if you
Speaker 8: see the Nazis, it's not one small flag, it's like five,
Speaker 8: just in case you miss it, to make it very clear. Yeah,
Speaker 8: So thank you for that, Mike. I think good palate
Speaker 8: cleanser for me.
Speaker 1: Quite a difference from Tarkowska. I'm sure. Final thoughts around
Speaker 1: the Lengeliers before we wrap up.
Speaker 8: I guess cgi aside, I thought there was something oddly
Speaker 8: charming about this, but I think that's also in part
Speaker 8: due to how much I love the story King's writing.
Speaker 8: I think if it wasn't for that, I probably would
Speaker 8: have gone into this liking it a lot less.
Speaker 5: Jo.
Speaker 4: How about yourself, I bring way too much baggage to
Speaker 4: any Stephen King adaptation, or I've spent way too much
Speaker 4: time thinking about adapting Stephen King and writing about adapting
Speaker 4: Stephen King.
Speaker 9: And I don't know.
Speaker 4: I guess one of the questions that was sort of
Speaker 4: popping in my ears. I was thinking about this is like,
Speaker 4: is the Langaliers the worst or among the worst of
Speaker 4: the Stephen King adaptations, because some of the other ones
Speaker 4: that I think about, like DreamCatcher is terrible, you know,
Speaker 4: on a really big budget with some really you know,
Speaker 4: significant actors.
Speaker 1: Horrible story though too it is.
Speaker 9: It's a bad book.
Speaker 4: It's like to watch it crash and burn is kind
Speaker 4: of more fun, I think in watching The Langaliers, Stephen
Speaker 4: King I remember referring to the original fire Starter as tasteless.
Speaker 4: You know, they thought it was a really bland movie,
Speaker 4: and he said it was like eating cafeteria mashed potatoes.
Speaker 4: That's kind of how I feel about The Langeliers.
Speaker 9: That's my final thought.
Speaker 1: All right, we're going to take a break and we'll
Speaker 1: be back with a preview for next week's episode. Right
Speaker 1: after these brief messages.
Speaker 2: Banned since nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 7: She answered only with her initial.
Speaker 2: Submit to the passion. What we have to do is
Speaker 2: get tears under, submit to the pleasure.
Speaker 3: You remain constantly in the disposition of anyone who wishes
Speaker 3: to use you any way he wants.
Speaker 11: Whenever he wants.
Speaker 2: Submit to the story of the first ever screening on
Speaker 2: British television now showing exclusively on You Direct Films.
Speaker 1: That's right, We're going to be back next week talking
Speaker 1: about this story of Oh. Until then, I want to
Speaker 1: thank my co host for this episode, Marta and Joseph. So, Joseph,
Speaker 1: what is the latest with you, sir?
Speaker 4: Since I just invoked Lance Hendrickson, I guess I gave
Speaker 4: myself a little segue here. The biography, the authorized biography
Speaker 4: that that I co wrote with Lance many years ago,
Speaker 4: which I think we talked about on the Projection booth
Speaker 4: many months ago.
Speaker 1: You even brought Lance along with you.
Speaker 4: That book has just been republished. It was a limited
Speaker 4: edition that came out in twenty eleven and then sort of,
Speaker 4: you know, disappeared and can only be found for high
Speaker 4: prices on eBay now, except that Harker Press has just
Speaker 4: put that book out again, so that is out in
Speaker 4: the world. Ironically, I just got back from Bangor, Maine
Speaker 4: a few days ago doing some research on the third
Speaker 4: volume of adapting Stephen King, which will cover adaptations of Kujo,
Speaker 4: The Dead Zone, fire Starter, and Christine. Hopefully i'll have
Speaker 4: that out next year.
Speaker 1: You are right there in that Golden Age as opposed
Speaker 1: to the Golden Years.
Speaker 4: That is cinematic brand Stephen King established right there. But
Speaker 4: because all those came out within like you know, a
Speaker 4: six month time period or something verdictuous.
Speaker 1: And Marta, how about yourself, what's new in your world?
Speaker 8: I just wrapped up coverage on the Vancouver International Film
Speaker 8: Festival October twelfth, and then I dove straight into this.
Speaker 8: But recently I published an essay on Paul Vechiali, a
Speaker 8: French filmmaker who's been largely forgotten in the West until
Speaker 8: Radiance Films recently restored Rosella Rose I feel Publique. So
Speaker 8: that was a real labor of love to highlight his
Speaker 8: work and career because interestingly enough, there's barely any information
Speaker 8: on him online in English, no books published in English either.
Speaker 8: So that's live on rewind and revive dot com. And
Speaker 8: now I'm toying with the idea of seeing if I
Speaker 8: can pitch a screening or multiple screenings of his work
Speaker 8: here in Vancouver. But in the meantime, Rewind and Revived
Speaker 8: it's my main home, both publication and podcast, and that's
Speaker 8: all focused on film history and physical media.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much, guys for being on the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everybody for listening. You want to support physical
Speaker 1: media and get great movies in the mail, head over
Speaker 1: to scarecrow dot com and try Scarecrow Videos incredible rent
Speaker 1: by mail service, the largest publicly accessible collection in the world.
Speaker 1: You'll find films there entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get what you want,
Speaker 1: when you want it, without the scrolling. If you want
Speaker 1: to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check
Speaker 1: out some of the other shows that I work on.
Speaker 1: They are all available at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially
Speaker 1: to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
Speaker 1: visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we
Speaker 1: get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
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