Time After Time - SPOILER (1 Viewer)

[Tino]

Oh man, this thread is just waaay too funny!
I bet that even if someone posted that they had a copy of TAT recorded off network(!) TV, and this "scene" wasn't there, there would still be some that swear that it exists somewhere on Earth.
Yeee...ikes!
C'mon guys, ya gotta admit that so far, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of this scene never existing. And this is all very lighthearted so no need to take offense, right?

 

[Johnny Angell]

I'm old enough to have seen this movie in a theater. This genre has always been a favorite, so while I cannot remember the specific instance, I believe I saw it in the theaters.

I know I haven't seen in it years. Its possible I saw it on tv, but I hate watching movies on tv with the cuts and interruptions and the pan and scan.

So what does all this mean? Well if forced to testify under other oath I would say this: "To quote a famous American: 'what, me worry?'"

I really to think this scene was in the movie and am heartened to know I'm not the only one.

The suggestion of contacting the director was a good one. How would I go about doing that?

 

[Kevin M]

You know, it's funny, my Dad's birthday was last night and at the party I asked my brother if he remembers a picture in the end of Time after Time and he said "Yeah, after Jack buys it and they leave they show a picture on the wall of them two together". He also said that when he & his kids watched it on cable a few years ago the picture wasn't there.
Now I didn't describe the scene to him in any detail except to say "Do you remember a picture" and he doesn't have a computer in order to see this discussion, so why are so many people having the same memory of something that "clearly doesn't exist"? Memory can certainly play tricks on you but IMO there is more to this then you guys think.
I could be wrong though, at least I can admit that.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Dave:
I don't think anyone is trying to insult anyone else, or say that there is something "wrong" with those who (mis)remember seeing the item in question. I've seen the film numerous times on cable, VHS and broadcast and have never seen this item. I have seen the text coda every single time. I suspect that said coda calls up a mental image, and that is what everyone "recalls". That more than one person has this recollection is not evidence that it is true. I can think of two examples right off the top of my head in which numerous people recalled something that was simply, factually, incorrect, and all remembered it the same way.
Famous example first: nearly half the survivors of the Titanic sinking gave sworn testimony that the ship sank in one piece. The others all swore that it broke in two, with the stern sinking after the rest of the ship. Which group was right couldn't be determined until Ballard's expedition finally found the shipwreck. Nearly all of the contemporary "artist's conceptions" of the disaster showed the ship going down intact - which is why all films prior to Cameron's showed the ship sinking in one piece.
Silly example, but closer to the present case: TNT picked up the reruns of Babylon 5 in 1998. When they reached a particular episode in the fourth season, which had only run once in first-run syndication, dozens of messages appeared on the TNT B5 Forum protesting cuts the network had made. Everyone was very upset that they had excised a scene depicting the wedding of two of the characters. That scene never existed. It was never shot, it was never even written. The executive producer deliberately had it take place off-screen rather than devote an entire episode to it (as he inevitably would have had to.) He discussed this decision in a moderated usenet group devoted to the show at the time the episode originally aired.
And yet there were arguments for days, with people swearing left, right and center that they had seen this wedding, many of them even describing the scene in detail. (The fact that no two of the descriptions matched up was further evidence that it was a false memory.) In the present case we're dealing with a single image, and no one has attempted to describe anything (clothing, for instance) in any detail, so I wouldn't expect similar evidence to emerge from this thread.
But this business of our minds "filling in the blanks" is a well-known and well-documented phenomenon. It is one of the reasons that eye-witness testimony in court is often unreliable. I would not be at all surprised to learn that many people had constructed the same false memory based on the content of the film and that last title card. (Our minds could easily reconstruct a believable "image" just from our knowledge of what old photographs look like, and how the characters involved appeared in the movie. If I had to guess the "template" most people unconciously used for this, I'd suggest Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid rather than anything from TAT or other films involving McDowell and Steenburgen.)

Given that as many people seem never to have seen the item in question as did in this thread, and that it does not exist on the DVD or VHS versions, I'd say the "burden of proof" is on those who saw it (or think they did), and that evidence of its existance needs to be produced to settle the argument in favor of "it was there." Absent that the default position should be "it wasn't". Because it is often impossible to prove a negative (can you prove that Mars isn't inhabited by intelligent, cave-dwelling psychic frogs who breath carbon dioxide?) those who are making the positive assertion need to provide the proof. Those taking the other side can't, because their position is based on the lack of evidence.
Regards,
Joe

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Oh no, I am falling into a 'video legend'!
I also 'remember' this picture in the movie.
But it's worse!
I remember enjoying the fact that the picture of the two of them 'proved' the story was true.
Yikes!

 

[Johnny Angell]

I disagree. This is not a court of law, we can all express opinions or beliefs without having to provide proof. BTW, the negative assertion could be proved by finding an authoratative resource, such as the director. The director might go either way, but he could prove the negative.
I just want to have fun discussing the movie. Here is one thing I can say with conviction: I don't know for sure that the photo was there.

 

[Douglas R]

I'm old enough to have seen this movie in a theater. This genre has always been a favorite, so while I cannot remember the specific instance, I believe I saw it in the theaters.

I saw the film several times in theaters and the scene was not there. This thread is similar to the recent one where swarms of people swore that they saw a "To be continued" title card at the end of theatrical showings of BACK TO THE FUTURE until the filmakers themselves said there was no such end title on theatrical screenings.

 

[Johnny Angell]

I went to the WB web site and found a link to send email to your favorite star. The text box for the star's name is just that, a free-form text box. No pull down list of stars.

So I entered Nicholas Meyer and asked the question we are wanting answered. Maybe in a couple of years I'll get a reply. If I do, I will post it here.

 

[Justin Doring]

Okay, I'll participate in this debacle. Now I can't say I’m 100% certain, but I’m pretty sure I remember the picture that people are talking about being in Time After Time. Call me crazy, but I do recall this moment in the film. That said, it doesn’t make or break the film.

Even doubters must find it curious that there are a few people who remember the same “phantom picture.”

For the record, the new DVD excepted, I've only seen Time After Time once, and that was years ago on a P&S VHS.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Even doubters must find it curious that there are a few people who remember the same “phantom picture.”

I vaguely remember a couple of things I read (speaking of faulty memory) in a book about how the mind process data.

One dealt with facial recognition. It turns out we don't recognize faces based on our perfect recollection of them. If we perfectly remembered faces, we wouldn't be able to recognize them - because nobody's face ever looks exactly the same way from day to day, much less from year to year. People with certain kinds of brain injuries can't visually recognize people they know because they lack the ability to "reconstruct" a face from a stored outline that the rest of us depend on. (But they often can recognize people by their voices, since that uses a different memory subsystem, located in a different part of the brain.)

The other was, I believe, a description of an experiment. Subjects drove down a country road. Among the things they passed was a family picnicking in a field just off the road. After a couple of miles they stopped and were asked a series of questions about what they had just seen. The picnicking family was part of the experiment. The folks asking the questions knew exactly what they were wearing and what items they had. Under questioning, which was designed to press the subjects for as much detail as possible, the subjects kept coming up with exact descriptions of items that you'd typically take on a picnic, but which this family didn't have.

The subjects, travelling in a car moving at around the speed limit, had glimpsed enough detail to recognize that it was a picnic, but not enough to recognize individual items on the blanket or in the basket, or even to accurately describe them. Yet when questioned they provide abundant (incorrect) details. False memories. Their minds were providing details based on their own previous experience of picnics, not on what they had actually seen. But every one of them could have passed a polygraph examination about what they "saw". The mind is a funny thing.

I'm not saying that this is necessarily what happened with regard to the subject of this thread. But I am saying that it is a distinct possibility, and similar things are neither rare nor improbable. It is at least as good an explanation for what everyone is recalling as there actually having been something in the film that so many others never saw, and that no copies of the film that anyone can lay their hands on include.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Robert Crawford]

Please, let's get back on topic and save the psycho-analysis discussion for another thread in a more appropriate forum.
Crawdaddy

 

[Ric Easton]

Hmmm...

No offense, but I don't see anything wrong with the way the discussion is going. As a matter of fact I'm finding it very entertaining.

And I don't remember any such photo, but if I did.. He was standing she was sitting, dunno about hats!

I guess what I'm saying is, even thogh I'm sure I never saw it... I can still almost picture it. Weird, huh?

Ric

 

[george kaplan]

I hope this question is on-topic.

For those of you who remember this photo (I do not), who was on the right and who was on the left?

 

[Tino]

Can someone please post the picture of Mary Steenburgen and Christopher Lloyd
from the end of Back To The Future III?
I think perhaps that may help clear up a few memories.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Yes, Tino, my thoughts exactly. But, if they do, they should use Photoshop to put in McDowell in place of Lloyd. Wanna bet how many people say "That's it!"!

 

[Johnny Angell]

I've only seen the first of the Back to the Future Movies so this recollection is not from that. I think Amy was standing to the left, perhaps behind Herbert who was sitting a bit to the right (directions as seen by the viewer).
To paraphase Dennis Miller, thats just my opinion, I could be wrong.

 

[Jodee]

You know, the funny thing is, while watching this movie again recently, i was struck at how similar the ending reminded me of Kate and Leopold, however TAT succeeds where that movie failed.
Didn't Kate & Leopold show a picture at the end? Not sure if that could be part of it.
I don't remember a picture at the end of Time After Time(only the text coda) and I first discovered this film on TV. However, when I close my eyes, I can imagine a picture of them, so I guess I agree it could it have been a nice touch. Maybe it's wishful thining?

 

[Dave Mack]

Just my 2 cents... I saw this a few times on HBO back in the 80's and I do not recall the photograph. It DOES sound an awful lot like a BTTF 3 mixup since Steenburgen was in both films.
D
Good Luck hunting!!!

 

[Alan Benson]

I can say this much: when the museum's old-time photos were briefly shown mid-movie, I fully expected one would be shown again at the end, as a romantic "button," just as people above have described.

Was this based on my childhood memory of the film? Or rather, my knowledge of typical movie conventions? I suspect, in my case, the latter.

 

[Chris Dugger]

Well? After all this "Time"... does anyone have an answer?

Dugger