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