Time After Time - SPOILER

Oh, why the hell did you have to resurrect this thread? If my girlfriend ever needed proof of my insanity/failing memory.....this is it!

i remember saw this in the theater but that was the last and only time i saw it.
i have the dvd but havent watched it yet.

i dont remember the photo in the movie, only because it was so long ago since i saw it.

I'm not sure about the scene in question. But I just recently watched this movie for the first time in years.

I really like this movie, it is good, fun entertainment.

But one thing bugs me, and this happens a lot in time travel movies. Wells seems to forget he has, or can get, access to his time machine. Things haven't been going too well, girls have gotten killed. He has learned where Jack is staying. Go back in time again and nab Jack right away.

Also, he feels he has to rush out of his house in the machine. He could have taken 2 weeks to get ready, get plenty of money out etc., and still gone to the exact date and time Jack went to.

I think that may have lowered the suspense factor a bit.

I guess I'll enter this thread & say that I have a vague memory of a picture too.

Um, oh yeah, I thought it was there too. The first time I saw this movie was from HBO in the early eighties. Had it recorded off of there on Beta for about 20 years, but I'm sure it has hit the trash by now. Besides, I have nothing to play it on.

I'll let you borrow my Beta player Ric!

Interesting thread, just discovered it.

This is a witty and fun film. I think the first time I saw it was on network TV. I do not recall the photo. But I was so curious by this thread, I had a possible theory. The people who have this memory of the photo of HG and Amy at the end of the film I believe saw it on TV, not in the theater. My thoery was that because it was seen on TV, they saw the pan and scan version. And with the P&S version, a photo could have been in the shot and due to the P&S process, it was artificially taking prominence in the frame.

So I just took a look at my DVD and failed to prove my point. I thought if I used the zoom feature on my new TV, I could sort of simulate P&S. It just stretched the image vertically. I could see a photo hanging on the wall on the left side of the screen during the coda and ending credits. The photo does depict what looks to me as a portrait of a woman with her 2 children in front and below her head. That's about all I could find without taking the time to watch the whole movie!

Nelson

I just read this post to my wife, as we're both SOMEWHERE IN TIME fans. She doesn't recall such a scene in that movie, but suggests that such a picture exists at the end of another time-travel movie, KATE & LEOPOLD with Meg Ryan. I've seen that one far less often and can't swear to it myself, but my wife has a good memory for these things.

Harry

Just looked for that old beta tape, it's nowhere to be found! I probably tossed it once I bought the movie on VHS and then DVD. The mystery will continue!

Love the movie. Some of it was filmed right around the Embarcadero Center where I now work.

I remember seeing it on Showtime when I was little. There was never a picture of them at the end.
Wrong movie.
Maybe you are thinking of The Girl, The Goldwatch and Everything?

I vaguely remember that on HBO in the 80's that at that moment the pic. went from pan and scanned to a VERY squished compressed perspective to get att the credits shown. (Nowadays they just usually letterbox at this point.) Whatever was in the background behind the machine just stayed there but the perspective changed and there was no cut in the shot. I don't have the dvd, can someone who does confirm if there is a cut?
HBO used to just show films (granted non-oar) the way they were in theatres but networks sometimes had different versions, (Jaws, Superman, Two minute warning for ex...) but would the network as opposed to HBO version of this actually bother to just alter one shot? And if Meyer doesn't say anything about it in the commentary than I believe it is simply a case of a false memory and then everyone else going, "Oh yeah....!!!"

Interesting idea, those who remember it, describe the specifics of the photo with spoilers then let's compare...
Use spoilers otherwise it will color everyone else's memories...

d

I recall a scene where H.G. Wells meets his old friend Biggs who had just returned from Oxford University, and Biggs told H.G. that he was planning to defect to the United States and rebel against those Imperialistic Brits. Anyone else remember that one? Hmm?

All this conversation and not one mention of the fine score by Miklós Rózsa. It was hearing the score on my local public radio station (back when it was actually good) that put this film on my radar. Glad it did because I really enjoyed the film.

This would be a good question for Roger Ebert's "Ask the Answer Man" column. He'd probably be able to directly contact the filmmakers for an answer.

I was looking at the IMDB hoping to find info about the photo, no luck, but found the above item there. Oh lord, would that have ruined the film if she got the role. However, you gotta respect her for not taking advantage of her relationship with the director.

BTW, went over to Ebert's site and found he has these rules about sending in questions to the Answer Man:
Those are just the rules I thought pertinent. Would this question violate any of them?

I've never seen this movie but after reading this thread I'm definitely putting it in my blockbuster queue. However, every Sat. night on "The Big Talker" 1210 AM, Steve Friedman aka Mister Movie has his call in show. He's a wealth of movie info, I'll try to call in and ask.

bob i started this about 3 years ago.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...899#post469899

Wow - quite an interesting thread.

I can chime in here and definately say that I too remember the final shot with the photo. I saw the film three times in New Orleans on its original theatrical run. After just reading this thread, I finally threw in the DVD to check out the ending and that red coda feels totally new to me. There has to be two different cuts of this.

And before everybody starts calling me senile and throwing other movie titles at me, let me just make it 100% clear that I am specifically speaking about TAT. I have never even seen BTTF3 or any of those other films bandied about here. My memory is specifically about TAT and the ending I remember it having - not some other film, so please don't waste your time thinking of similar films to toss my way.

It appears that no home-video or taped-off-tv copy has the 'photo ending', at least from what we've seen here. Thus, it makes me think that some or all of the original theatrical prints contained the photo ending. That would most likely be where I saw it, because I don't believe I've ever watched it on video or tv all the way through. No one here has a theatrical print handy?



I know an early poster said he used to own a print, but that doesn't verify this debate either since he no longer has it so that also just comes down to another person's memory. And for all those who never saw the film theatrically, how can you say that the photo wasn't there? And for those who did see it theatrically and don't remember the photo, maybe it's just your memory at fault? Or possibly after seeing the altered version so many times over the years on video and tv, you don't remember that the theatrical prints originally ended with the photo. See, it can work both ways.

Maybe a revival theater will scrounge up an old print someday and someone can check that out. Just revive this thread in a few more years or so. Maybe this mystery will be solved eventually - or maybe not.

And, finally, if that photo ending never does show up in any form ever again and can never be proven to exist, than I solemnly agree to check myself into a mental hospital. Because that photo WAS there, dammit! I'm absolutely sure - I think.

I just posted the question to Roger Ebert's site. I even included a link to this thread. Keep your eyes peeled for it there.

I have to smile when I see terms such as "senile" and "Altzheimer's patient" thrown around when talking about this subject. No such condition is meant or even implied, of course. It's simply an acknowledgement of the fact that any typical, clear thinking, rational person can have an imperfect memory. Objective evidence is known to contradict eyewitness testimony in court trials, for example. So there's no need to be so defensive about simply being human, which is all that people asking for objective evidence are saying.

Man, if we only had some type of machine that would let us go back in time to see this in the theater again.

TIME AFTER TIME AFTER TIME...

In fact, eyewitness testimony is often the worst kind of evidence in a criminal investigation, and it tends to get worse as time goes on. There's a tendency to "fill in the blanks" when we try to remember things, especially things seen only in passing or when we were under stress. The classic example of this is the fact that fully half of the survivors of the Titanic reported that the ship sank in one piece, while almost exactly the same number reported that it broke in two on the surface before sliding beneath the waves. The same split appeared in the initial witness statements and in statements given weeks or months later at the inquests. Just about half of those witnesses had to be wrong, but the members of both groups were equally adament about what they "saw" and the matter wouldn't be settled until Ballard's expedition finally discovered the wreck. If not for that historians would still be unable to say definitievely what really happened. They'd simply have to report what people had said.

Similarly I think a lot of people who read the text coda and who later saw other, similar films have simply manufactured a memory of a shot that never appeared in the film. B5 fans once vocally attacked TNT on their website for cutting a wedding scene from the rerun of an episode. There was no wedding scene. There never had been. Not only was no such scene ever shot, no such scene was ever written - it wasn't in any of the drafts of the script. (The fact that a wedding had taken place off-screen was mentioned in the dialogue.) There were hundreds of such posts on the TNT B5 web forum, and this came up only about 8 months after the episode had its first run airing on broadcast TV. People described the scene in detail in their posts. (Although no two of those descriptions really matched.)

That's just how human memory works (or doesn't) sometimes.

Regards,

Joe

I personally am not suggesting that the "picture scene" is an absolutly a fact or, if indeed it ever did exist, that it was in the theatrical version. The only thing that I think it could possibly have been in was a Network airing (CBS-NBC-ABC) that included cut footage as they did with other films such as Aliens, Superman, Jaws or The Keep.

Jeff....

I can assure you that this "photo" ending never appeared on the 35mm theatrical release print.

I ran the film for 8 weeks straight and owned a 35mm print for ten years and viewed it often.

When this film was released in theatres, test screenings were not common, so I have to bedunk this claim that it appeared in theatres.

As for "broadcast" there is the possibility, as we all know that the networks made common practice to extend the runtimes to fit a time slot.

Dugger

I was initially in the "picture yes" camp, but after the post on BTTF 3 I started thinking about it and I'm certain that's what I've transferred to Time After Time. Memory is a funny thing, and not at all to be relied upon.

Except that this one still during the closing credits is hardly "footage". The films you cited re-instated scenes that were cut for pace or for time from the theatrical release (generally with good reason) to pad the film out to fit a given block of time. (The alternative would have been cutting the film to fit in a shorter window.) Sometimes such extra footage is put back in to make up for more objectionable stuff that has to be cut from the TV version. (I believe Blazing Saddles is an example.) Finally a theatrical film may have a few minutes added to its running time so that the TV networks can advertise something "new" when they air a film which - less face it - has already been released on DVD and/or VHS, seen on airplanes and in hotels, been on pay-per-view and aired on at least one premium pay-cable channel before it is ever broadcast.

The difference between these films and Time After Time is that there is a compelling reason to add several minutes of previously cut footage. There is no similar reason to add a few seconds of a still photograph to the closing credits of Time After Time. It simply doesn't make any sense for anyone to take the trouble (and spend the money) to insert that single shot which in no way improves the film as a piece of network television programming or helps it fit more neatly into a 2 hour or 3 hour broadcast window. (Which is why the other films were altered for broadcast.)

Regards,

Joe

I just googled Nicholas Meyer hoping to find some contact info to email him. I found a site with a plot synopsis with the following quote: What history records that the two marry? I can only think of the photo.

BTW, here's the link for that site.

Gotta go with Joseph on this. Why would they go to the trouble for one shot?
Also, even if people had never seen BTTF3, they might have easily seen a promo, preview for it with Steenburgen and that might have planted a false memory.
I think everyone who remembers it should type in a description of the photo using the spoiler feature and then we can objectively compare. What outfits? Hats on or off? Standing or sitting? Right or left?
Might be enlightening?

d