I recently went to see a Q&A screening of “Time After Time” with Malcolm McDowell as the guest speaker. This took place at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California on April 8, 2014. Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols was the special guest moderator (sort of). Another person (don’t remember his name) took care of most of the moderating duties. I think the special guest part is what Ms. Nichols basically fulfilled since she really wasn’t herself doing much moderating. All the same, it was good to see Uhura.

Malcolm McDowell is certainly a lively one. He definitely doesn’t hold back. The man is full of energy and seemed as if he was having a great time. The whole session only lasted about thirty minutes which was much too short. I was hoping to get some insight into the making of “Time after Time” but he had spoken more about various stories throughout his career. Not that they weren’t interesting but I had wished the topic was more focused. I will say that I didn’t realize that he was married to Mary Steenburgen at one point. They married in 1980 (a year after the release of this film) and divorced in 1990.

Actually, I take it back. There was one good story about the making of the film that Mr. McDowell had mentioned. He said that he wanted to be accurate in his portrayal of H.G. Wells so he got a hold of some voice recordings of Wells in order to emulate his voice. The problem was that Wells spoke in a very high pitched tone with an awkward accent. This clearly wouldn’t work for the role so he chose to speak in his own voice.

If you haven’t seen “Time After Time” the story centers around a fictional version of H.G. Wells and his pursuit of Jack the Ripper who has stolen Wells’ newly built time machine and escaped to the future (which happens to be 1979).

As for the movie itself, I remember really liking it years back when I saw it originally. I’ve actually seen it a few times over the years, but as I get older it just doesn’t seem to hold up as well. It is a very over-dramatic film to the point of almost levity. The audience I saw this with was laughing at parts that really weren’t meant to be humorous. Let’s just say that Mary Steenburgen has come a long way in her acting abilities since this role.

Ultimately, the movie was very much a product of its time. I still enjoy it, but if this was released today, it would get hammered in the reviews. It’s still a fun concept and as much as we tend to cringe at remakes today, it is a film I would very much like to see remade into a better film. This movie is the reason remakes should exist.  But instead they exist just because studios don’t want take financial risks with newer properties. Ah, but I’ll save that conversation for another time.

So I just basically really wanted to throw up a few pictures from the event. Not great quality but I wasn’t up close and the lighting wasn’t fantastic.  I know – excuses, excuses!

Theatrical Trailer