The Sticky Fingers of Time (1997) | filmmakers Q&A

thrilled to be part of this program and thank the Getty for its generous support in making this project possible all of the archive screenings in the Wilder are free thanks to a gift from an anonymous donor and we are grateful for their support we would like to thank Our Community Partners on tonight's screening Sundance Institute UCLA International Institute and queer film in Los Angeles many thanks to our colleagues in the Film School of theater film and television who collaborated with us not only in supporting this public program but also the faculty who contributed to the forthcoming anthology of original scholarship accompanying the series and big thanks to the entire archive staff for all the work they do to make our public programs a success so each night of the series has a theme and tonight the theme is time travel but maybe not time travel as you expect it from a Blockbuster movie or a 1980s comedy adventure um but that's the point of this series to skirt the edges of the standard conventions of Science Fiction we start our evening with the classic film of the French New Wave Le by Chris marir some of the more well-known names from the movement such as gdar and truo were considered the right Bank while Chris marir and his more experimental col colleagues like Elan Renee and Agnes V varda were considered Left Bank with interest in modernism and left-wing politics so this is a film or a photo montage really um created on a shoestring budget using still photo photographs set in a postnuclear world has been the inspiration for a number of filmmakers with its story being the basis of Terry gillams 12 Monkeys following Le is a short film from 1988 Barbosa directed by George fortado and Anna Louisa azavedo that has been described as Brazil's Le um the disaster here to be remedied is not nuclear war but Brazil's loss of the 1952 World Cup football match a national tragedy Brazilian critic Michelle gut villan writes the trauma of the 1952 World Cup is first and foremost a trauma of the image of the Uruguay goal Seen On TV of the infinite repetition of the ball surpassing the goalkeeper and entering the net no strangers to the theme of time in 2000 the two filmmakers created another film centered around time 3 minutes about decision made in three minutes that can change the course of a life directed by azavedo and written by Fado it was nominated for the Palm Door for short short film at the can film festival our F our feature tonight begins with the image of another iconic trauma the atomic bomb blast we're coming back to nuclear weapons where we find there is no safe distance in the Sticky Fingers of time we move from the 1950s to the 1990s and back when one of the film's heroins Tucker Harding becomes unstuck in time as Kurt vonette would call it in slaughterhouse 5 after observing a test of the hbomb the plot unfolds in nonlinear time with Tucker and engaging with other time freaks including our '90s heroin Drew and 50s scientist Isaac there is no time machine or special effects used the film plays with genre conventions with some fish out of water moments but manages to subvert expectations from the First on screen kiss for my favorite review on IMDb in all caps 12 Monkeys without the money with more plot um so made with only $200,000 he was shot it was almost shot on video in director Hillary brooker's apartment until additional funding came through from the production company good machine um the actors were um pretty much unknowns James oranc is the most recognizable as he's gone on to have a strong career as a character actor most recently an Oppenheimer also nonlinear um fortunately with the funding the film was able to be shot beautifully on super 16 mimer cinematographer Ethan Mass used several different film stocks black and white and color depending on the time period um in the film so for the restoration the 35mm blowup color interp positives and 35mm blowup black and white pan chromatic Masters were scan in 4k at the F stoa film lab thank you to V aleran for doing the scanning edit and conform was done by Ross Litman of crop Corpus fluxus color correction and digital restoration were done by illuminate Hollywood a special thanks to colorist Andrew drain audio restoration was done by engineer Brian Jensen at Deluxe media audio services from from a 35mm mag track transferred by NBC Universal um thank you to KJ ralth Miller for the original suggestion of restoring this film I think I saw it come in thank you to writer director Hillary brocker cinematography Ethan mass and producer is Robbins for their feedback and notes you'll get to hear from them um as well as producers um Susan Stover after the screening so don't go anywhere um and now it's my honor to introduce Hillary brocker up to say a few words about the Sticky Fingers of time thank you it's really exciting to be here with this movie it's been a few decades um you know it's absurdly hard to make movies just ridiculous how much time money just luck hard work whatever it takes and then it's it's absurdly easy for them to get lost in the in the spokes of you know capitalism uh vaults corporations companies buying other companies time things to do bills to pay um and then somewhere in between is a whole lot of hard work that goes into saving a film like this and and making sure that it can be seen on a screen uh so we're super grateful to have the film time travel to 2024 in the hands of the UCLA archive and all their Partners who came together for this um it's been really wonderful and heartening to meet this team at UCLA um you know from May Maya who's going to host Todd who we've been emailing about this forever Jillian and Nicole and I think probably a bunch of people I didn't get to meet here tonight are some of the people who helped me make this film and maybe help me is the wrong word maybe I help them I don't know but we did it together and we couldn't have done it without each other um you know Susan Jean castelli these are tremendous producers Eisen Robbins another tremendous producer here in the house Ethan Mass um who's collaborated with me on so much our cinematographer um I know Sam Buck is in the house the the wonderful brilliant filmmaker and actor Sam Buck is here tonight and um maybe Julie Anderson is here yes yes okay and um really happy they're there there might be some other surprises so I'm just glad the family is coming back together and I just really want to thank you for turning up in person a movie isn't really a movie unless somebody watches it and um so you're making it a movie again and thank you very very much for that enjoy professor at the MFA program at Columbia University School of the Arts Ethan Mass a cinematographer is also New York City based in addition to his work with Hillary on Sticky Fingers Ethan has collaborated with filmmakers such as Maria batty Carol sheim Abigail child Lyn saxs his most recent collaboration is with Hillary on South Mountain I Robbins is the co-founder of intrinsic value films he has produced over 45 features that have received global distribution and numerous Awards and some of his diverse filmography includes feature films five pounds of pressure the bi biopic Tesla and in 2015 the experimentor starring Peter sarsar and Winona Ryder and Susan Stover veteran produc and of producer of independent film has worked with numerous uh outstanding independent directors including many that have been showcased at Sundance um as well as other International Film festivals including welcome to the dollhouse uh Kelly reichart's River of glass sorry grass and um also Stover has produced uh two Lisa Lisa chenko films Laurel Canyon and high art which the archive has recently restored and which we'll be screening here next week so a little cross promotion all right so this is our yeah so thank you all for joining I know you all travel from New York and we're so happy to have you here the film look yeah I know travel is like easy for you all maybe or or harder um the film looked beautiful I want to just thank and acknowledge Jill you're still here Jill borders our head of preservation wonderful wonderful work um what was how did you pitch this film I mean what is the what is the short description the elevator pitch um well you know if I think if I had an elevator pitch it would have been a very different movie um I was trying to remember the Genesis and a big part of the Genesis is our exec producer Jean castelli who really um help helped me learn how to screenwrite and with this idea and I was trying to remember the Genesis and it was something about being intrigued by old book covers the subtext of 50s Noir and trying to make a movie out of what we have which was New York City Williamsburg specifically at that time wasn't what Williamsburg is now um and this idea that we could maybe shoot an inexpensive film in New York City and the special effects would be editing and and so out of all that came came this I wanted to do something kind of whimsical and you You' asked me before at dinner you know kind of what is this film about and and what I think I realized working with Jean and Eisen and everybody else as we slowly developed the script or as I developed the script not knowing if it would ever get made was that I was sort of interested in making a film about a young person who didn't know if they belonged create you know creatively or to the world they didn't know if they had a place they weren't sure of themselves so not a film about creative block necessarily but find the finding a comfortable place to be creative and present and so I thought well what better to way to get through this idea of what it is to be present than to play with the idea of time travel and of course yeah we didn't have money for lots of effects so it became about creating a a riddle you know a little puzzle box for people and then a lot of the conventions Grew From there I'm sorry I did not answer your your question elev still don't I don't have I don't have an elevator pitch Eisen might have an elevator pitch sorry to use the word the term elevator PCH no I I should you really should everyone one should have these things Hillary showed me a piece of paper and it was there were two sentences on it and one was time traveling bisexuals and there was a little more and I don't remember what it was and then the other one was um kids in a farmhouse with psychedelic killer mushrooms something like that and there were these two sentences that became like and we had to pick one to go make a movie and we're going to go make a movie um this is a little bit ear yeah this is true um no M yeah yeah yeah yeah and um oh I guess we could still make that other one I voted for time I I voted for the mushroom film and then Hillary we made this film there's something that seems inherently intergenerational about time travel films I mean maybe that's obvious but in seeing uh the characters of Drew and and uh Tucker that they look so similar there's a mirroring there's attractive uh that there's this pull so they're attracted to each other and um and then also just the way that that that has similarity but difference links these two different eras the 50s and the '90s so um what talk to us a little bit about that and how you you sort of imagined these two characters all right well the um I mean I I wasn't alive in the 50s um although my parents were but you know but there was a big kind of weird Resurgence and interest in in the 50s in the 80s um and I think we continue to be fascinated with that era I'm I'm not the kind of academic who could really speak intelligently as to why but it it seemed to be a definite before and then something shifted and what's interesting is looking at this I look at the 90s and that's before that's before but it's not that different the 50s was still more different um but I think we we decided that the 50s would be uh the the atom B would be the loss of Innocence moment and so the 40s 50s kind of became the area that I I was targeting as a like you have to you know the mirror has to be somewhere like you need that horizon line for a time travel movie where you kind of everything shifts so we we chose that moment and also Williamsburg before it is really cute and trendy you know it kind of looked like it looks in the movie like we could shoot the 50s 40s 50s very inexpensively there um I think a volunteer car club came in oh Wendy Chuck is here our costume designer is here boy does it look good looks so great Wendy it does it does so anyway I think I've gotten lost in the weed sorry New York time New York time I'm it's going to happen all night was the question I was just gonna say it's thank you it's so beautiful I mean it was giving Wendy's work Justice Ethan's work Justice um tresa Master Piero who was our production designer I'm just I mean I was kind of Blown Away by it I mean not that it wasn't pretty before but it was just is as good as it it's just yeah it was kind of astounding to go back and see something that you made almost 30 years ago and just see it much bigger and maybe understanding it a little bit the veter I mean as funny as that sounds when you live with something it's a complicated story it's time travel there's a lot going on but just having some distance from it um how it kind of resonated in a way that I'm I'm not even sure what it is and it was also just kind of fascinating to look at New York in the 90s compared to New York in the 20s in the 2020s um seeing Domino just there were a lot of nostalgia in it for me even looking at which is also it's a time travel thing yet we've traveled on I think we're Beyond even what the future was and and sticky I don't know I'm just um it looks amazing and I really appreciate the work that went into it it it is U Ethan can you talk a little bit about how um so this is I mean usually we associate science fiction and time travel with big budg bugets that's sort of the focus or one of the focuses of this series is then to think of these genre films um if we want to call them genre films on the margins so for this film where you have these really complica narrative structures that you have to sort of think of cinematic devices that are going to be clear to the audience when there are these shifts in time Ethan how did you uh think through through the look of the film I mean of course in collaboration but let's start with um what you were shooting on and and just sort of your visual mapping well we shot the film on super 16 which was forgive me was kind of the the entrylevel way you could kind of make a movie at that time uh the video options were very very uh primitive and so once there was the budget to shoot super 16 uh there there were a lot of it it really opened the door for a lot of films at this scale to kind of reach an audience and to get made and reach an audience so we we knew and they without getting too technical about it they're sort of um uh there there's certain things that degrade that image in the process of going from your what goes through the camera to what gets onto a screen and so we we were trying to be mindful of that and and our biggest challenge was how to present the the 50s material um we we decided kind of early on that we were going to go along with the I guess the Trope of the the past is the black and white but we really wanted the black and white to not feel um like newsreal material because if we had shot uh kodc had been really improving all of their materal their films up until through the 90s the black and white was really left to sort of you know nobody was shooting black and white at the time so the only black and white film available was essentially newsreal film and we knew that if we shot that in super 16 and then we had to blow it up into 35 and it would buy all this extra contrast it would it would start to it wouldn't look the way we wanted to it wouldn't look like a film made in the 50s we wanted to make it look we just we really wanted the 50s to feel present that was right kind of ining and sensual so that that I just and to feel like a film made at that time rather than a memory of that time and so we were fortunate because shortly before we we shot this Kodak had introduced a color film that was uh intended to be a very low contrast Color Film so we experimented with shooting so the film was actually all shot with color film and the the black and white material is that particular color film desaturated and that allowed us to get this sort of fine grain feel as if we had shot you know in in with black and white that was as modern as our color films were I guess but in terms of you know beyond that I think we we we knew that we were going to be using whenever we stumbled on things like moments to catch actions in mirrors or moments to sort of twin uh characters or actors we tried to take advantage of those things but on a schedule like this a lot of that is sort of obviously a lot of it is planned out in advance but you you you sort of are always uh trying to stay open to happy accidents and things you stumble upon on set and you realize oh here's an angle that we wouldn't have we didn't think of earlier but now that we are standing here in the space on the day with the characters or the actors and so on you know so we we were pretty open to those kinds of moments I think as as long as it again but as she said the editing was so critical to making the story work that there was a Fairman of discipline that had to be maintained I remember when we shot the moment where uh uh uh Drew peaks in at Tucker uh after the the scene in the Poconos and it was It was kind of at the moment we shot that that I kind of realized what was going on like like I story in the story that that that that that we were making this movie and then I was said I I I remember I I kind of I think I even said it out loud you know on set we shot the scene I was like oh this is the moment where she does the thing and it was like oh my God and it and it and it all kind of came together you know but sometimes you just have to live through it for that to happen thing about about making movies is you shoot them out of order so we're actually anybody who's been on a film set and gone through the ordeal of okay we're gonna we're gonna shoot you know Maya on Tuesday and then we're gon to shoot Susan on Wednesday and then Ethan on Friday and we're all going to somehow cut together and make sense um you know you shoot the end first then the middle and sometimes scenes are so we it's funny it it's part of I I don't think I was thinking about that when we were thinking about it but we do get to have those moments on set the location you two were Whispering do did you have a comment or realization or did you finally understand what the we're in class is and Susan what are you talking like to share with the class um I was talking we were kind of just recalling the whole discussions behind um not shooting on actual black and white film and then I was gonna ask Ethan what was it the vision 500 was that what was that the film spot it was it was a 320 as I mean 3 okay it's it's so insane to try to remember this stuff because the tools available to filmmakers now are so I know I mean you look at the ceiling here and it's like oh it's like that's the hyperspace animation it's it's it's oh it is you know we you had you had two color films to choose from when we were working you had the I'm going to read the note that we were passing which is that we understood the film better this time also I confessed to that I said I understood it also thought it was funnier it was it landed better with this audience humor-wise than I I REM remember it Landing um um and I feel like time has been very good to our time travel movie I think it's I think I think it's like wine you know the soy mil joke is is pretty funny it's nostalgic is very funny or putting the DVD I mean the CD player on that I don't think they knew what soy milk was in the 90s apparently we did it's a time capsule so it is I know it's I know it still feels new you'll get used to it what's um what's challenging about making a a time travel film or what's freeing about making a a time travel film where you have permission to have a nonlinear narrative or well the the scripting took forever because um and and I think the the challenge of any science fiction is to balance Exposition you know the science and the and the intense Ru making and Rule following um it it's I don't want want to say OCD in a clinical way but it's you know you people really know if you break the rules or something's not clear and they they feel indignant and then they can't be emotionally invested um so you know that's a whole lot of it and that's what you struggle with is how do you make that sense of time travel and understanding the puzzle but make it emotional make it physical make it sensual make it scary um so how to keep the science fiction part really linked to the heart that's like the big challenge of sci-fi I think and it's the reward because the fun thing is if we get caught up in our imagination figuring out the time travel or the murder mystery then suddenly we're feeling free and I wanted this audience I I wanted the audience for this film to feel sort of creatively awakened the way Drew is I know that's sappy but it's a very sappy that was the intention was to to make Drew feel okay being creative and being herself and I wanted the audience to have that feeling and to sort of know oh I did that I figured that out for myself uh so trying to provide that for them so that the time travel isn't just escapism although that line landed heavy with me this time oh yeah we're I'm still an Escapist but you know we got to stay here and be accountable if if not now then never we're going to be in L um my God but um but but you know it's so so it's a it's it's hard to do this kind of film I think I don't think I could write one now my brain isn't applied enough but at the time all I had was my brain I didn't have money I didn't know what the hell I was doing um so I spent a lot of time figuring out this riddle hoping other people might like the riddle and then lots of practical challenges which thank God for producers oh my god well yeah that's that's exactly what I wanted to know the practice iCal side so I and Susan do you have were there certain struggles in there was no no struggle like it was all struggle um we took I think we started making it in 95 or is and we were shopping it everywhere and we went to the independent film week this was like a moment I realized yeah we would go there and there were people in cow costumes and we pitched and put up flyers and got people to come to the read our screenplay and I remember I worked so hard to get buyers and powerful people to read the screenplay and they had a list of people read the screenplay and there was no one who had read the screen playay so it was really hard to get it to happen and um we just pushed and pushed and started finding little chunks of money um from friends and family literally family family and um Hillary is developing a larger movie with good machine um which was Ted Hope and James shamus's company at the time um and they were they had a set of investors um who were going to you know make some relatively large money from and one of the leader of them was a an esus lawyer who who Crystal yeah Crystal pictures I really never thought it was had a different opinion on what Crystal it was um and they put a big they threatened to put a big pull of money and Ted and James and a man named Steve manin who um unsung hero of this film um who brought Crystal films um they put some de they were beginning to threaten to put some development money and and then Jean costelli who also slaved over the script with Hillary and help shape it um then gave us a little bit of money and we we just did not see the end we just saw the very beginning and and just got enough money into a bank account to start shooting and get to the end of week one and we started shooting oh man is I'm sorry yeah was really hard I I I think we I think we had the money committed for the production by the time we went into week one I I I I I have a slightly different memory which where all those people did come together but there was a certain amount of money that had been put up to make films directed by women um Hillary and Beth b and was it Alice who was the third person um I'm not sure but it's gonna come to me like in five minutes I know I know so I I kind of New York City based women filmakers Nancy Soka or it no it was I don't know if it was G to be it was I can't why can't I think of the third person um it it wasn't but that's a good guess whoever that's that's that's that was a good guess um they gave some develop so they Ed a little development money velopment money and we ran with it the $250,000 that did not come into for a little while no it didn't come in until like three weeks before we two weeks before we shot because a lot of people ended up doing prep for free and they weren't happy about it I remember that and it was like this is what we've got this is let's go do it Sean do you wanna you want to weigh in on this oh um yeah I mean there's definitely you know different versions but I think that kind of reflects making a film of that budget where really they're just so many little pieces that it really is hard to tell a full story because you know if you're standing on either end you know there's different pieces that keep going in so I think whatever here even with the contradictions yeah and I don't mean to contradict you I just I because I do think we started when we started shooting we did have I think most of the production budg I remember we did it was we did we did we we did we didn't raise we we did we did we did we did we we we had an office they wouldn't have let us do that without money that was well it so it happened and and yeah it happened I mean I know you have yeah one thing I I do just want to add though is that regardless of how much money was in the bank that you know I had been this was the second feature I had shot and then I had shot a handful subsequent to this in New York and the the feeling of inspiration and commitment that came from the the people who were sort of doing the boots on the ground work on the film was very palpable and that you know nobody I mean certainly people were everyone wanted to get paid more paid or paid more but I think everyone felt that they were involved with something that was going to you know I that that that they were going to be proud to have been part of and I think that feeling was you know came from the top down but I I definitely remember feeling that from the bottom up terms of the the people who were involved in making it yes and it was only just a couple of people I think who had been working on it long like production designers but it was fine and no one went away because they all believed in it it was amazing story and Hillary was amazing and it was amazing time to make films in New York City being kind of the independent boom yeah the Golden Era we all had fairy dust in our eyes at the time about Cinema and we still love Cinema but no more fairy dust something else is in our eyes now there was a review from filmmaker magazine a really uh a wonderful review that came out around the time of the release of the film and the reviewer called the film uh meditation on Destiny and sexual politics which sounds tantalizing um as as the film uh you know lives up to that so there's a lot of layering obviously of shifting of time um and then interpersonal relationships so how how were you thinking about that relationship between between time and romance or the impact of romance on time I'm really glad Eisen reminded us of this piece of paper because I completely forgot it um completely um but I do think you know one you know obviously there's a lot of homage to Noir and kind of wanting to go deeper particularly with the female characters you see in Noir or the archetypes or the mysterious bad girl or the mysterious good girl um or the Pokerface girl or whatever whatever is happening but one thing I think I did know is that these characters were very fluid and their who they were attracted to and um and I think it was because they were time freaks I was like well of course they're all going to be attracted to each other you know they're all trying to cleave back and find each other and gender doesn't really matter in this country well they're also curious about where they are in time so they're just staring at each other these like longing looks but you can't it's like a mix of sexual attraction or just like can you help me where I'm lost in time yeah there's yeah I can't is this about identity is it about family is it about sex I don't even know anymore but but that cleaving and Nostalgia and longing is I mean I think in all three of the films we see there's an intense play on Nostalgia and I think some Nostalgia and sex I don't know why but I think they have some of the same same DNA you know and and so that it wasn't as a really political idea although I did feel like oh this isn't a coming out movie per se but it's it's time you know we should have characters you know who who aren't all straight all the time in science fiction why not you know and so so that was sort of a decision that that we were going to keep it kind of like you know teasy like can't be precode films were were sort of seductive but really this is about the fun of the science and the longing and the weirdness um but that these characters all could be very fluid it also gives it such a human element um of what you were talking about of just making sure that um in a science fiction film in a time travel film that the audience is connected to the characters in a personal emotional way and that there's so many scenes that are punctuated by a kiss whether it's trigger trigger which is sort of a grounding moment o you know throughout the whole film where you're wondering as an audience member what is happening and then the two do the most human thing which is to kiss yeah I think actually other than actual references I look at this movie now and it's kind of like a kid watching movies they're too young for and just sort of seeing the kisses or seeing seeing the looks or seeing it's like it's all made out of like sexual shrapnel and it's just the sort of like subtextual Steam and it it's kind of it's kind of cute that way it's like I look at it now and I'm like I think this came from a very young part of myself even younger than I was I mean at the time 20s something you know um let's take some questions or comments from the audience yeah and if you can just wait for the mic so in the back oh oh my [Applause] goodness than didn't mean interor um the glasses here thank thank you so much um this is like a really small question mainly about development and like the ideas that you were thinking of when coming up with this concept um so the H the a bomb the hbomb is that what you say that loss of Innocence you said earlier um but I'm kind of wondering there's so many movies that touch on that that have their own reactions to that moment in time and I'm wondering if there were any ones that you used as like a comparison or inspiration when you were thinking of that moment well well at the time you know I mean it's also been the sort of um you know that's what launches all the superhero movies that were still even watching you know this idea that someone was mutated by the atom and I think I just kind of got on board I was like oh that's that's the peer there it goes um you know it seems sort of an obvious before after I mean now I can think of so many other losses of technological and cultural innocence that it could have been but at the time it seemed right and also to do this 50s drama it seemed like the thing that actually could have gotten Tucker is exposure to it but you know I as much as I think I you know I'm very moved by the idea of like Hey we're still being poisoned by deleted deleted depleted uranium and you know they're charging up the nuclear power plants again and there's you know whisperings of War you know all that is very real I think when I was thinking about the bomb I was thinking about oh how did it shift our idea of who we are what we could become that all of a sudden we're thinking about superheroes but we're also maybe thinking about being time Freaks and sexually fluid and traveling through time so so I think it did seem like a a very obvious place to divide to to launch these these time freaks Ethan you were gonna say I was just gonna it just occurred to me that in in Tucker's time period it did it didn't become a launching pad for superhero until until 10 or 15 years later but what it was a launching pad for in fiction was Monsters it was you know the 50s you know was all about the terrible monsters Godzilla and the giant ants and all the stuff so it was really it was it was you know the thing that was getting other questions up here in the back uh can you talk a bit about casting were these film actors were these stage actors did they I mean the cast was really excellent oh yeah I think so too what kind of a choice did you have well this was a non sag film you know we didn't really have a sag budget stop it Isen okay stop okay um so but there's an excellent pool of of actors based in New York and we just set up shop and started casting um and Sam is here yes who you know we got early career from Sam buck and um you know Tumi actually was a dear friend of Jean's that's how I met terumi um and uh you know she's just kind of extraordinary Nicole is a an actor but also a a sound artist and musician and does a lot of different things and I can't remember how we found her but there was a lot of sort of traditional casting but also like hey hey do you know here's a person who's really interesting and and it kind of pulled together from kind of who would nobody flew out as far as I can recall so this is kind of who was in New York who felt right and honestly I could have cast three more movies out of everybody that we saw for this film it was you know it was really fun casting it actually we had casting directors right Susan shopmaker um worked real hard and brought a lot of people and then we kind of moonlighted with an goulder who lived in the apartment that we shot the Sticky Fingers of diamond now which I now live in we've been occupying that apartment for decades in one way or another this haunting it film yeah um other questions does anybody have a a question about the story or the plot I was actually curious was it clear is it clear who knows but um I don't know if I could answer any questions at this point about it I think you just have to kind of make up an answer if something doesn't make sense yeah I guess one question was that I was thinking was did they did they solve the problem of Tucker's death yeah because she stole her well the idea is she stole her airline ticket so she couldn't go to Nevada so she basically got herself stuck in the past and and she probably won't be able to travel anymore she'll be the anomaly and then we didn't worry about it like would she go away in a poof of smoke or something we just said no no that's enough so she probably did end the time freak line or did she I don't know or maybe she shifted it to a different time freak line yeah yeah there's always alternate universes I was thinking in the TV series she's um the billionaire owner of right of a of a major sports franchise that's I'm not sure I need a writer um any anybody else yeah if you could just wait for the mic it's coming down to you um there were a lot of really interesting shots and I was just wondering what your process was with coming up with a shot list or if you had a really gosh wish I could remember I know there were certain shots we were very clear about and certain shots that we weren't I think I'll speak very honestly I'd made shorts um actually some with Ethan but you know I was completely sort of uh flat you know I guess steamrolled by working with a large crew and this even wasn't even that large but but again it's all relative so um we had our shot list there were certain things we had strong ideas about like the way some of the stuff in Tucker's apartment would look and then we thought well the East Village we're just going to handhold it and blah blah blah but you know we develop some language over time and um I think really what you might be seeing is me and me and Ethan both kind of loving the New York spaces that we were in and really wanting to get something heightened out of them yeah and and I think at at at the with the kind of resources that we had available to us that you you can I think you can only really be successful by planning to X degree that you have to leave open the opportunity to for discovery that as she said that there were there were certain visual sequences and ideas that were were part of the production from the beginning but again you know there were times where we need car needs to get from point A to point B and what are we seeing now that this is the this is the time we have to shoot it it's this time time of day because that took too long to shoot and it's now it's going to rain and now we have to shoot it and you have to be flexible enough to be responsive to changes in your environment and so there's really a gam of very highly designed stuff like her in her underwear in the hard light coming through the window so it's it's both like yes we have to get the shot of her and her underwear and we have to get the hard light through the New York City window um you know that were really conventionally thought of and and lit and then some other sort of Happy accidents that came into it but the the sequences we also had to really highly design are the things you're going to see a few times from different perspectives so obviously there's match cuts and then there's I and I think I could have taken the subjectivity a lot further you know you look at a movie 30 years later and you're like what if only I knew how to make films um but damn there it is but we did have to think about okay but there's a lot of you know peering at things those are very subjective scenes that had to be sort of tightly thought of but then a lot of the rest of it was really trying to infuse wherever we were with a sense of nostalgia and I think that's a great thing for a filmmaker to sort of you know think about when you look at a place you know how do you see it so that it sort of Sears into your heart right yeah and and for example the when we revisit ailia and Tucker in in that living room uh and now it's covered in in close-ups whereas it had been in wider shots earlier that that may have been designed that way but or it may have simply been this is we're shooting all this coverage and then it's going to kind of get jigsaw puzzled together as part of the edit yeah there we go hi uh in watching it again I haven't seen it since 1997 I was wondering about what the decision was where you going to put let's call it the exposition right in many science fiction films the question is how do you inform the audience at what point do you tell them so so-called what's going on right in the original Night of the Living Dead it's very surreal until they're all watching a TV newscaster explaining sort of what's Happening whereas in Blade Runner it begins with an a definition of what a replicant is right it's not until relatively far into the film that the Isaac character gives an explanation of what time freaks are right did you think about putting that in different places why did you decide to put it where you did in the film um well you know I I don't think I was aware that I was doing this but but of course when you're dosing out that kind of rule making you have to think okay how much can an audience take in at a given moment you can't throw it all at them right away um and honestly I probably did throw too much at them so um because you know we have the fingers we have the time has these five possibilities and then the article comes in but jean was really a huge like we just had ridiculous amount of discussion about where had we told the audience what and one of the most helpful things was actually uh going back to um Alice and Wonderland and the White Rabbit it kind of gave us a I know you know a a very loose but somehow core understanding of the journey we're going through and of course that's not a book that's full of plot but the idea that we were taking a journey and that we had to measure the SFI with also that sort of poetic surreal experience that emotional experience and honestly yeah we were trying to put the exposition in places where it's emotional because that's where people care what a Time Freak is if you know you tell them in the first five minutes why would they care you know but if they've gotten attached to a character her and they'd like her to not be dead then they're going to pay attention and say oh I better figure out what the filmmaker is saying about the rules so I think the trick with Exposition is you have to marry it to emotion and make the audience give a that they're going to hear it that's why we cry when we watch Blade Runner while they talk about science well I think we're out of time but that also is a kind of interesting way to end the conversation about Blade Runner I don't think I've ever cried in Blade run but thank you what's his name cries thank you Hillary Ethan thank you so much thanks everybody for coming thank you all