Time and Again Jack Finney Movie
FILM
FILM; Is the Fourth dimension Finally Ripe for 'Fourth dimension and Once more'?
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March xx, 1994
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OF ALL THE CONTEMPORARY novels to have piqued Hollywood's interest, perhaps none has tantalized -- or exasperated -- actors, directors and producers as much as Jack Finney'due south hauntingly romantic tale of time travel, "Fourth dimension and Again."
Over the years, the novel -- blending science fiction, passionate love, mystery and detailed history of Old New York -- has captivated and entranced some of the biggest names in the flick business. Its spellbinding story tells of a young homo enlisted in a secret Authorities experiment who is transported from the mid-20th century to New York in 1882. There he falls in love with a beautiful woman and ultimately finds himself forced to choose between living in the present and living in the past.
The book, beginning published to favorable critical reaction merely modest sales in 1970, went on to achieve a vast cult post-obit, as dogeared copies accept been passed along repeatedly and enthusiastically from onetime readers to new.
Now comes word that, near quarter a century after information technology was first published, "Fourth dimension and Once more" will go a film. Robert Redford has said he plans to produce, direct and probably star in a film version for Universal Pictures.
"We are going frontwards into full-scale, fast-track development," he said in a contempo phone interview, calculation that negotiations are under manner with a writer to do the screenplay. He declined to identify the author just predicted that filming could brainstorm inside a year and a half.
Many efforts accept been made to turn the book into a movie or a television mini-series, only to bog downward in contractual red tape, studio budget worries, creative differences and competing projects. Such travails are non uncommon in the movie business, fifty-fifty for best-selling books. Some never make information technology to the screen. Some accept years. And some, like "The Bonfire of the Vanities," do brand it, simply to air current upwards as critical and commercial failures.
Still, with "Time and Once again," in that location is considerable enthusiasm. As ane veteran of the development battle, Tom Thayer, president of Universal Television (similar Universal Pictures, an MCA subsidiary), said: "In my stance, it's the best unproduced volume e'er written. It should be a movie. It should exist big. It should be rich. Information technology should have a wonderful director and a wonderful cast. I retrieve the manner it's existence done at present is probably the all-time style it could be done. Redford is obviously a brilliant director, and it'south plainly a labor of love. I remember the studio is going to get behind it in a very big way."
Having been on the roller coaster for nearly a decade, Mr. Thayer should know better than about, since he tried three times to turn the novel into a network mini-series. None of the scripts was always filmed.
Mr. Redford, who said he himself had tried three times previously to go a flick made, said he had been haunted by "Time and Again" for more than 20 years, ever since he was introduced to the volume by Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and their producing partner, John Foreman, who together held the starting time selection on the rights. Over the years, Mr. Redford said, he was intrigued by a "Fourth dimension and Again" movie because it offered the chance to blend "the two best halves of our industry -- the high-tech office that can return magic through technical means and a wonderful, pure, romantic love story."
Discussion OF MR. REDFORD'S recent reinvolvement has stirred upwardly something of a frenzy in Hollywood. "I have never been involved with a project where we've gotten so many calls from writers, and so many calls from talent," said Rachel Pfeffer, who will co-produce the moving picture with Mr. Redford and is president of Wildwood Enterprises, his Santa Monica-based film company.
"Time and Over again" tells the story of Simon Morley, a young Manhattan advert illustrator who agrees to participate in an experiment that enables him to break the conventional constraints of fourth dimension and place and transport himself 90 years into the by. By ensconcing himself in the fabled Dakota apartments, across the street from Key Park, and practicing a kind of cocky-hypnosis, Si embarks on his journey. Along the way, he uncovers a bribery scheme, escapes from a spectacular fire, learns the truth about a baffling death, becomes the object of a wild police hunt and falls in love with a young adult female who in reality is some fourscore years his senior.
Mr. Finney, an advertising human turned fiction writer, started the novel in the late 1950's, inspired by a lifelong fascination with old photos, prints and paper manufactures. But, according to Don Congdon, Mr. Finney's literary amanuensis, the writer became so blocked that, at 1 point, he abandoned the effort, then started "Time and Over again" over over again with a completely retooled plot.
Mr. Finney, who is said to guard his privacy vigorously, declined several requests to be interviewed for this article. Reached by mail and asked if he is confident that Mr. Redford will, in fact, make the film, he sent back a terse response: "No."
For readers, the pleasure of Mr. Finney'due south literary confection comes not simply from its surprising plot twists just also from the minute details depicting New York and New Yorkers in the 1880's. Besides bright descriptions of the style, dress, talk and cuisine of the times, the author adds to the verisimilitude by inserting into his fictitious text real photographs and newspaper illustrations -- equus caballus-drawn sleighs dashing through a snow-carpeted Key Park, smoke-belching trains chugging atop the old els, shawl-covered immigrants arriving at Battery Park, the behemothic arm of the as-yet-uncompleted Statue of Liberty.
"Time and Over again" was published to mostly favorable reviews but no unusual fanfare. Nevertheless, its fans are legion. Every bit Mr. Redford put it, "You could be talking to somebody at a dinner political party, and they'd say, 'Oh, "Time and Again!" That'due south the greatest. I desire to make that. I want to see that as a movie. I dear that book.' "
Other signs of the book's enduring involvement have been evident.
* While the novel sold 27,000 copies in hardcover and flopped every bit a mass-market paperback, it has gone on to sell some 200,000 copies as a large-sized trade paperback and continues to sell a brisk 10,000 copies each twelvemonth, co-ordinate to Mr. Congdon.
* Mr. Finney has completed a sequel, tentatively titled "Fourth dimension and Time Again," which Simon & Schuster plans to publish next fall.
* "Fourth dimension and Once again" walking tours, highlighting points of interest mentioned in the novel, are still pop effectually Manhattan.
* Before this year, 125 fans of the novel attended an invitation-simply "Time and Again" banquet at the Terrace Restaurant at Columbia University. To replicate the feel of the 1880's, the restaurant was decorated with oil-burning lamps, tassels, ostrich and peacock feathers, and artificial snow on the windows. The menu featured a 19th-century-style dinner, including porridge of smoked turkey Vanderbilt and head-to-toe roasted salmon. Many guests came in menses dress, including the meridian hat and Prince Albert cutaway worn by Mr. Congdon.
* A Broadway musical based on the volume is beingness developed by Tom and Jack Viertel and their producing partners, Richard Frankel and Steven Baruch and the Jujamcyn theater chain. Workshops of "Time and Again" take already been held at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn.
For many of the book's fans, the question remains why information technology has taken so long to turn it into a movie, particularly since 6 of Mr. Finney's other published works have become films -- "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (three times), "Five Against the Firm," "House of Numbers," "Assault on a Queen," "Good Neighbor Sam" and "Maxie."
According to Mr. Congdon, the first to hold the moving picture rights to "Fourth dimension and Once more" were the Newmans and Mr. Foreman. They even asked Mr. Finney to retrace his steps along lower 5th Avenue and Broadway and pinpoint old buildings that all the same looked sufficiently turn-of-the-century to serve equally backdrops.
The Newman-Foreman team interested John Huston in directing and Warner Brothers in financing, said Mr. Congdon. But no screenplay was ever written, and according to him, "Warner Brothers lost involvement."
After, SEVERAL independent producers took options on the book, including Gabriel Katzka and Edgar Scherick, said Mr. Congdon. Another producer, Irwin Allen, who had fabricated a proper name for himself with disaster movies like "The Towering Inferno," appeared eager to have an pick. "He kept pestering me for three, four, five days," said Mr. Congdon, "but he wouldn't proper noun a toll."
Finally, in 1977, Universal bought the volume outright for $100,000. The deal included a complex rights arrangement that gave the studio an unlimited period of time to plough it into a mini-serial but placed a x-yr limit on the correct to do it as a feature flick and/or a television receiver series.
For his part, Mr. Redford said, he tried unsuccessfully over the years to interest a number of directors in the movie, including Sydney Pollack, George Roy Hill and Steven Spielberg.
"A lot of people were afraid of it," Mr. Redford said. "It was too big, too huge."
In the stop, Mr. Redford said, his initial efforts to brand "Time and Once more" stalled considering of the predictable high toll of filming and the fact that two other movies with similar stories came out first. One was Mr. Spielberg'due south ain hugely successful 1985 time-travel movie, "Back to the Future," which he produced. The other was "Somewhere in Time," a 1980 Universal release, which starred Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour and fared poorly with critics and audiences alike.
"I lost interest," Mr. Redford said.
As enthusiasm for a characteristic motion picture waned, the emphasis shifted in the late 1980's to trying to plow "Time and Again" into a mini-serial. According to Mr. Thayer, Universal Television set developed three unlike mini-series. "The scripts were ever O.One thousand.," said Mr. Thayer, "but never great. So much of the magic of the volume is Finney's narrative about what the past was similar -- the experience, the tone, texture. He really puts the reader back there, which was a very hard sense to convey in a screenplay."
For a while, the projection made headway at NBC, where Susan Baerwald, and then a vice president, ardently championed the idea of a mini-serial. A screenplay was done by Albert Ruben, a veteran New York writer who had many television and characteristic films to his credit.
Mr. Ruben turned in what Ms. Baerwald described every bit a "wonderful script," simply Brandon Tartikoff, so head of NBC entertainment, ultimately decided not to put it into production. "All of the women loved it, and none of the men did," Ms. Baerwald said. "I call back the women related to information technology because it was romantic.
"There was not a great groundswell of support amid the mostly male upper management at the place where it went," added Ms. Baerwald, who is now a producer. "Maybe if there's a woman calling the shots somewhere, information technology will go done."
In 1987, when the 10-year rights to a characteristic motion-picture show and episodic television series reverted to Mr. Finney, producers began bombarding Mr. Congdon almost daily with calls about the rights. "Merely as presently as they found out that Universal had outset refusal," he said, "everybody would fold up."
Invariably he encouraged these suitors to put together a package -- a producer, a managing director, a screenplay -- and piece of work out financing with Universal. "They'd say, 'Well, gee, that sounds too hard.' Then, six weeks later, I'd terminate up explaining the aforementioned situation all once more to somebody else."
Several times Mr. Finney himself discouraged would-be producers, Mr. Congdon said, either by "demanding a ton of money" or insisting that the book be done only equally a feature picture.
One producer who did get serious about trying to nail down the rights was Joel Argent, who had done the hugely successful "Die Hard" and "Lethal Weapon" movies. Warner Brothers opened negotiations on his behalf last autumn and made a formal offer, said Mr. Congdon. But Universal still had the correct to match information technology. And so, with Warner's offer on the table, Mr. Congdon went back to bargain once again with Universal. Mr. Argent declined to annotate on the negotiations.
Past now, Mr. Redford had begun to express renewed interest in the project. He had recently brought in Ms. Pfeffer to run his company and discovered that they shared a passion for the Finney novel. And, in the backwash of "Jurassic Park," he had begun to delve into the newer and more than cost-effective computer engineering available to film makers. In the finish, he said, "I came to the conclusion that 'Time and Again' was now practice-able from a price factor."
So, he continued, "I got ambitious almost trying to work it out with Universal." Last December, with Mr. Redford now eager to direct and star, Universal negotiated a new understanding for the moving picture rights that includes a six-figure payment to Mr. Finney, said Mr. Finney'southward agent, Mr. Congdon.
Mr. Redford best-selling that major challenges remain. Because the book is "such a rich canvas of and then many unlike things," he said, great care must be taken not to weigh downwards a screenplay with too many elements or allow special effects to overwhelm the central beloved story. In addition, Mr. Redford said, if he does play the main character, Si Morley, who appears to be in his tardily 20's in the novel, "some adjustments would take to be made now because of my age."
Executives at Universal Pictures were reluctant to annotate on their plans for a movie. Tom Pollock, chairman of the MCA Move Picture Group, which oversees Universal Pictures, would non talk over the projection, and Bruce Feldman, Universal's senior vice president for marketing, said it is studio policy to pass up to comment on pictures in development.
Asked why it had taken and so long to get the project off the basis, he denied that the studio had mishandled it, adding: "It takes an awful long time to bring nigh projects to fruition. It'south nothing unusual in the course of Hollywood. It's very difficult to develop textile, get the right script, the correct cast, the right director, at the right price, and to get it to that indicate where everything comes together."
Some years ago, in an interview, Mr. Finney told a reporter: "I console myself. I say if they made a pic, they'd probably exercise a lousy job of it."
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