Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 Is time travel possible. You know,
Speaker 1 00:00:03 It made me tear up in all the same places and the, it made me long for my wife.
Speaker 0 00:00:13 Hi everybody. I'm John ravey. Welcome back to the only podcast about somewhere in time, called call back yesterday, I'm celebrating the 40th anniversary of this unique movie, which I saw filmed on Makena Island, 41 summers ago, by digging into its themes and long conversations with people who are smarter than I am. This episode is less sexy than episode one. That was the teaser. And I wanted to give you a taste of everything. You'll be getting over all the episodes. So we had voiceover by George Takei, gratuitous nudity and my amazing audio production, but it also had an appalling lack of in depth conversation about the main themes of somewhere in time. Love loss, longing Makena Island, and time travel. My guest this time is Tim cogs shell, an LA film critic, documentarian journalist friend, air force, veteran, and widow for, I asked Amanda the show. I thought Tim had talked out a lot of this stuff already, but I'm starting to think something special happened during this podcast. You'll be the judge, Tim Cox show. Welcome to call back yesterday. And
Speaker 1 00:01:22 That is an absolutely fabulous name. I just loved the name of your show.
Speaker 0 00:01:26 Thank you. It comes from Richard. The second, uh, the line is, Oh, call back yesterday, bedtime return. And then, uh, I think it's Earl Salisbury says, and you shall have 10,000 fighting men, but we thought you were dead. So there's no fighting men. They went off and you're screwed Richard the second. Sorry, no fighters.
Speaker 1 00:01:45 It goes down that way sometimes. And Alex Beard just does,
Speaker 0 00:01:48 Uh, but bedtime return was the original name of Richard Matheson's book and the original name of somewhere in time. But bedtime return.com was not available. However, call back yesterday.com was available. So,
Speaker 1 00:02:01 Oh, that's it. And it really is funny though. Cause it's yet, that's really a terrible name for a podcast, bedtime return, but call back yesterday is a really great name for a podcast. Yeah. Richard Mathison, most people don't know that somewhere in time, you know, official novels like ourselves. No, but they wouldn't think of that as a Richard Matheson sort of screenplay. But if you look at it closely, it is in a whole bunch of different ways. What do you mean? Well, for one thing it's about enduring love
Speaker 0 00:02:27 A story of two people in low two people out of time, two people whose passion, bridges, history, Richard
Speaker 1 00:02:37 Madeline wrote about that a lot actually, probably because he was, he was in an enduring love. He was married to the same woman until he died. So I think that it was a subject get the top of his mind because he experienced it
Speaker 0 00:02:50 Other reasons. Well,
Speaker 1 00:02:51 I wrote about real people in real situations. You know, as much as we think of him as a science fiction writer, all that Twilight zone and all that kind of stuff. If you look at of that stuff, there's really nothing particularly fantastical in any of it. There's there are no monsters really or anything like that. This is time travel. And because he was actually writing about real people in the, in the, in the things that actual real people go through, he came back to notions of loss and love and sorrow and all of those subtle, real human emotions. Cause he couldn't, he wasn't depending on you, a monster to come out of the wings. What do you think of somewhere in time? The movie, I always liked the movie. Now I romanticize this movie ridiculously and it came into my life before I became a professional film critic too.
Speaker 1 00:03:34 So the movie is 1980, my wife and I saw the movie for the first time in 1981, we got married in 1981, July 25th, 1981. And she, I was in the air force and she, she, she moved with me to this air force base where, where I was living and we got cable television for the first time, uh, like, like, you know, nascent, HBO or whatever. And back then they would run movies over and over and over again. So, so, you know, they, they probably got like a a hundred title library. So we saw tuck everlasting, like 50 times and somewhere in time. And even the first time we saw it, we loved it because we looked at it and I think we saw ourselves in it, just married and bananas and love and passionate about each other, the way they are in the film. So that colored what I felt and thought about this movie, my entire life watched it again recently because I knew I was going to be talking to you.
Speaker 1 00:04:29 Thank you. And it, you know, it made me tear up in all the same places and the, it made me long for my wife who I lost in 2013 to cancer. And I, you know, I don't, I don't know if I've ever sent you a picture from my wife, but as I, as I looked at that movie, I kept thinking to myself how much my wife looked just like Jane Seymour in 1979, only black, but otherwise all of the sort of same features. And I didn't look at anything like six foot Christopher Reeve, CIM, where we're basically like on the radio, this is an audio podcast. Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I'm looking at the black version of Christopher Reeve. Oh. But if that were true,
Speaker 2 00:05:15 I'm Bridget Morrow and I'm one of the producers of North Hollywood. Me
Speaker 1 00:05:19 Just for the record, Tim is a perfectly good looking man, but Bridget was awesome. I'd never met her, but he sent me a YouTube link to this short film that he made the idea in it is that Bridget is searching their neighborhood for the elusive North Hollywood man. But really he wrote me. It's just me following my wife around with the camera like I did for 45
Speaker 2 00:05:39 First. He told me he went in to make a film about a black strippers in the hood. You know, I like black strippers and we don't go to the hood nearly enough. But all he ended up doing was spending money on lap dances and freaking out all the strippers with the camera. So then he got the idea that he wanted to make a documentary, the black porn industry. I decided that we should make a film about somebody. I like to call the North Hollywood man.
Speaker 1 00:06:05 Bridget is a natural on camera. She never looks at it, but she plays to it the whole time. She knows how good she looks when she's driving left leg casually up on the car seat or when she's just telling us where North Hollywood man isn't, you can also tell that she trusts and loves Tim.
Speaker 1 00:06:28 Yeah, there, there are more pictures of my, I was photographer for a long time. And my favorite subject was my wife, but my wife was also a model for a long time. She was a model of when we were, when we were little kids, JC penny and Woolworths and all that kind of stuff. So she would let me take pictures of her all the time. And it's, it's a, it's a wonderful thing that I did. I have gigantic photographs of my wife all over my part. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can, you can call back yesterday anytime you want. Exactly. I, I literally can not look in any direction and this is on purpose. This is not by happenstance and, and you know, people who come to my apartment, uh, you know, they see this and make note of it, but I don't want there to be a place that I can look in my apartment and not see my wife.
Speaker 1 00:07:10 There was, there was not a space in my life from the time that I was six and she was five when I could not see her, but I fell in love instantaneously. And she ignored me wholly and completely until, until I was a junior. And she was a Southmore. I mean, we were in all kinds of stuff together, but you know, I was always trying to be your boyfriend. She was get away from me. But when I, when I became a junior that gave me some sort of clout or something, plus I had a car, nobody else had a car, nobody else had a car. I think it's really beautiful. The way you talk about your wife, you, you speak of her in the present tense much of the time. And that's actually the, when I, when you first mentioned her, this is five years ago or whenever, when I was still doing my off-ramp show.
Speaker 1 00:07:54 And you mentioned your wife and you were talking about her. And I don't think I found out until the next conversation that she had actually passed away. Cause you talk about her in the present tense. I do, you know, and people have mentioned that to me. Um, and I don't know that I knew that I did that specifically, but I do know that I, that I definitely think of her that way all the time. I don't, I don't think of her as being, uh, not in my life any more than I, than I ever did. Like, as I was saying, you know, she's always been a fixture in my life and, and we did have this sort of thing. She and I, my wife is a Buddhist. I'm not particularly religious at all. I'm not, I'm not really, I'm not remotely religious at all. And my wife said that I'm not, I'm not, there's something there.
Speaker 1 00:08:36 And I believe in quantum physics, you know, and in this very sort of odd way, her Buddhism in my belief, in the science of the universe, sort of overlaid with each other, there's this idea of quantum thermal dynamics, the second law of thermal dynamics, nothing can be energy, be destroyed. It can only be changed. And in a certain sort of way in her abuse, Buddhist interpretation of that, it meant that nothing dies, which is a sort of way that I always thought about it too. Nothing dies. It just sort of changes and becomes something else. And if you want to think about it like that, I don't consider that she has died at all. I considered that she has gone on her Trek to become the other.
Speaker 0 00:09:19 It really fits in with that quotation. I love from Paul Auster, which is one of the guiding forces of this podcast, which is reach a certain moment in your life. And you discover that your days are spent more with the dead than with the living.
Speaker 1 00:09:34 That's exactly the sort of idea. I mean, we talked, I talked to you about bridges. I, I consider them, I think about my dad the same way my dad quote, unquote died back in 2000, but I, when I'm talking about my dad, I talk about my dad in the present tense, because I think about my dad all the time. So yeah, my wife is eternally present with me. And if you look at the end, when you think about the end of somewhere in time, that moment when he drifts into the light and she's there and he walks to her and they hold hands in the film, just subtle dissolves from that, that sort of permanent forever together sort of notion. And I love that. And I know my wife loved that and that's sort of the way I think about it.
Speaker 0 00:10:16 My parents are gone, the died 25 plus years ago. All their friends are gone almost. And I'm an atheist, Hey brother. But I have reserved a, like a, a S a space in heaven where they're all together having cocktails. And maybe my dog, Kara is there too. And my dog Connor is there too. And I make that exception in my atheism. Do you, do you wish, is there a part of you that like wishes you could walk hand in hand with your wife again, for real. And I've like, uh, you know, the heaven type ending of somewhere in time?
Speaker 1 00:10:50 Well, you know, with the notion of the sort of religious elements, not so much, but there is this sort of an idea that's inside that movie queer, when he's talking to the professor that he goes back to see his whole philosophy professor and his philosophy, so says, you know, it's mostly here and he points to his head. And I think that's the notion where I live with that if I decided, so then why isn't it? So,
Speaker 0 00:11:12 Yeah, uh, I did an interview once with Alan first, who's the writer of the, of the, uh, spy thrillers set in the 1930s, early forties. And, uh, he was talking about all this, you know, I'll, I'll, he sets these thrillers, uh, in Paris and Romania and all these, you know, romantic places, Budapest and all this. And there's a particular brasserie that he writes about in Paris. And I, so I said, you know, do, do you wish? And he rides the Metro and he eats it. The, you know, it's all very romantic and evocative. And I said, do you wish you could time travel? And he says, I already do,
Speaker 1 00:11:47 Uh, that idea that if you can, if you can have sort of imagine it, and if you can imagine it deeply enough, then, then yeah. It sort of exists in a certain sort of way. Is it mathematical? Probably not. But again, if we're talking about the human mind, these ideas than I, as far as I'm concerned, they're completely substantial. When I close my eyes, I think of my wife for a moment that we were together or, or when I'm sometimes in the car and something strikes me as funny. And I, and I voice out loud of what I think about it to her, those moments, all register inside my mind is real today, as it would have been in 1986, when we were in the car riding around someplace,
Speaker 0 00:12:28 Do you have a friend that you only see once every couple?
Speaker 1 00:12:30 Yeah, my buddy gene who knew my wife every 10 years or so, we bumbled into each other.
Speaker 0 00:12:35 So in those 10 years, did it matter whether he was alive or dead? You saw him at the end of 10 years, he could have been dead for 10 years and come back. It's a re it's a really weird distinction that we make because, you know, my parents had been gone for 25 years, but what if it was, what if they weren't? And I just saw them at the end of the 25 years. It's a very, I think we put a very odd kind of precondition on that whole notion to get on my am I making any sense?
Speaker 1 00:12:59 Absolutely. So for instance, if for the last 25 years, you have been walking around, uh, thinking of your parents as present. Right. But over there, you know, what, what difference would that have made in your existence over that period?
Speaker 0 00:13:12 Right? Or I didn't know that they had died. Yeah. So still there they're alive inside of me and it doesn't change the way I act one iota. I just think we have, we have very odd rules about that.
Speaker 1 00:13:23 Well, you know, it depends. It's really funny. Cause you know, a couple of years ago that movie Coco came out, uh, and one of the things that I love deeply about that movie Coco is the way it's presented the sort of Latin American, Mexican American notion of death and the dead. And I love the way they hold on to those who are gone in their family, holding complete shrines and everything. Yeah. I have little shrines to my wife all over the house. I love the notion that it is our responsibility to hold onto them. That that's, what's keeping them alive in the quote unquote afterlife, but here with us too. And very often as you notice in that movie, the folks who talk about, you know, they're, they're gone relatives in the present tense, they would do it all the time. I used to love the way, the way a Fritz Sanford red Fox on Sanford and son, uh, every, every now and again, he grabbed his heart and he starts screaming.
Speaker 1 00:14:16 I'm coming up and he's just, you know, he walked around talking to Elizabeth all day, right. And, and in all of that resonates with me. So I love that in that movie, Coco and I loved that, that, that movie was so big and you know, the sort of the rescue, it wasn't just a Latin movie film. I'm hoping that those ideas sort of drifted into the Western culture a little bit, you know, in the black community, the debtor did, but more often than not, the dead are dead. You have your big, beautiful wake and you have those big, wonderful funerals that we have. Even those even down South in new Orleans, you know, those first lines and all that kind of stuff. We do all of that. But once they go on the ground, very often, we don't think about them very much anymore. Grandma comes up in conversation whenever she happens to come up in conversation.
Speaker 1 00:15:05 And I'm not really sure why, why that happened in the black community. Maybe it was because you never knew who was going to survive and you didn't want to be holding on to all of these spirits forever you before long that Paul Auster thing would become true. Really true when you're just walking around with all these spirits. Yeah. You know, because, and a lot of my friends say things to me like, well, you know, you'll get over or you'll do this. You'll move on the you'll move on. Aside from thinking to myself, you absolutely did not know my wife. You definitely don't understand that the way we lived in the world, we're not mover honors. You know, we didn't say that till death do us part in our wedding vows at all. We didn't say that stuff at all. Yeah. Very, very, very present. And I liked that about that movie somewhere in time, they're going to be together forever.
Speaker 1 00:15:58 They are right now in my mind. Did he time travel in the movie? Again? I come back to that thing within the mind, um, uh, that his philosophy professor said now, did he, did he time travel in the movie? No. You can't time travel. Mr. Einstein figured that one out for us name getting the bug because you can't go faster than Sweden. If you can't. If you're my friend, his name was in the book, I'm Adela tot, I'm a complete development of physics, a butcher down. I know just enough to get myself in trouble. So, so, so, so you know, and this is what I love about that. This is what the time-travel amounts to in that film. He, he, he falls asleep and the lighting changes on his face. He's time traveled. That's all, that's all that happens in the film, the lighting changes and he wakes up and he's in 1912.
Speaker 1 00:16:51 Um, and that's about as deep as it goes so far as it tries to make. And, and I, and I liked that about the movie. No one tries to do, do that thing where they explain you are the, at the end of being John Malkovich, I love, I love Charlie Kaufman. Let me some Charlie Kaufman, right? He's only made one movie that ever pissed me off done. One thing in one movie that ever pissed me off. I mean, all of the wacky Charlie, Charlie Kaufman movie on Netflix right now. Um, but at the end of being John Malcovich, he explains it attempts to explain, do you remember the thing that the book would Orson bean and they opened it up and they show all this stuff and he tries to explain it and how we ended up in the head. And I'm like, I remember thinking to myself, don't do that.
Speaker 3 00:17:38 This is all silly. Pu if you try to explain it, you know, it just, just let it go home. I'm dad. We're good. The movie is good.
Speaker 1 00:17:46 Everything's fine. I've had a fabulous time. If you try to explain it, you're gonna ruin it. Uh, and he's never done that again, by the way, silly, pu silly poo. It's a whole silly poop, you know, unless you just let it go. His name is in the book and the register. Yeah. So he time traveled. That's all it takes for me to just accept that it happens in the movie he time. Well, because you could argue, you could argue it's all a dream in the movie, or you could argue that he really did time-travel in the movie. And I think the name of the book tells us that he time traveled in the movie. Yeah. He, he's doing a lot of projecting in that movie, Richard to character, Christopher Reese care and he's, and, and he's, he's, he solid, willing things to happen in his mind, but that's what it's all about. Isn't it? Uh, you know, there are these moments where it looks like it might not happen and he just thought a wills it to happen. Um, but you know, I dunno. Um, did he actually time travel in the movie? Hi, everybody. John ravey back with you on call back yesterday. I am not done grilling Tim Cox shell about whether or not Christopher Reeve really did time travel in somewhere in time. But I did want to let you know what's coming up on the next episode of call back yesterday. And that is an in depth conversation with the director Genoese bark. And one of the things I asked them about is the story that Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour had an affair while they were making the movie.
Speaker 4 00:19:18 I had a very serious talk with Jane. I said, Jane, this is going to get in the way she says, what have you told me about? I said, you went and, and Chris having an affair. Oh, we don't have it. Nobody knows about it. I said, what do you mean? Nobody knows we don't want a location. This is a film crew. Everybody knows everything. I know. At what time you get out of this room this morning.
Speaker 1 00:19:42 So that's coming up on the next episode of callback yesterday. We go deep with Genoese bark. Now let's get back to me, arguing with Tim cock shell about time-travel. What if Jeno told you he time traveled in the movie and he's the one who made the movie then do you have to accept it? The person who I would actually depend on and turn he made the movie, but again, adapted from that Richard Madison's book. Right? So I think I would have to depend on him now. Mathison would say, no, there's no such thing as time travel because he was this ridiculously practical person. That's what he would say. No, I, I, it's just, I just made it up and it's all made up. It doesn't, it's relevant. What's relevant with the human emotions that, uh, that's what he would say. Um, uh, because he's just that sort of practically, it's like the reverse of HB love craft Mathison. And he would, he would, he would tell you, it was just all meet up, man. What are you talking about? That's what he would say. Is it wrong for me to say that he, they time traveled in the movie? In other words, it's mine. This is my interpretation of the movie. Do I get to have my interpretation separate from yours? Oh, absolutely. And this, this would be true, you know, just over and over and over again, no matter what we're actually talking about here. And, and Richard Matheson
Speaker 0 00:20:48 Would probably be okay with that too. Um, I, I don't think he would force you into his sort of interpretation of these things. So, you know, did he, so did he time travel in the movie for you? Absolutely. He can have time traveled in the movie for you. For me, it was, it was, it was a mind sort of thing. And, and, and, and, but, but, but I call it equivalent. Uh, I don't want to distinguish between the two that his physical body moved from here to there. If you can get your mind to go there deeply insincerely enough. I just think it's the same damn thing. You know, that I grew up in upper Michigan and I was there when they filmed the movie. Yes. You've told me this. So that happened, which I find fascinating. So, so, so that's how you first came to the film in the first place. I mean, exactly. You were literally there when they were in it. What is this? 1978, 1979. I was there. I was there. Um, yeah, 1979. It was a golden summer. It was really cool. It was the first time I'd ever seen a holiday with a Hollywood production. If you, you know, you've been on movie sets and watched house stuff happens and often it's not like really happy. This was a, this was a happy shoot. Everybody says this was a really happy shoot.
Speaker 5 00:21:57 Main street, September 22nd, about 1130.
Speaker 0 00:22:07 And Matt, have you been you're from the Midwest Mac? Have you been to Mackinac? I have not been the Mac. It sounds like an interesting place. I know that there are no vehicles, no cars and only bicycles. And when Chris wakes up, you hear a clip, clip, clip, clip, clip, clip, clip, clip. That's how we know that he's traveled back in time, back in time, he, um, Janelle resisted any sort of special effects, like the lightning bolts that carved the commandments in the 10 commandments that he was like, no, we're not, we're not doing that. That's
Speaker 5 00:22:37 Elise McKenna started in a play in the hotel theater. When was this play done? 1912.
Speaker 0 00:22:43 Bill Irwin is the only person in the movie that I got to know. Some, he was like only him. He was a spring chicken. I'm like 60 or something when he made the movie and he came here, he made friends with my mom and dad, and he came and stayed at our house in Sioux, Saint Marie for a night or two with his wife. That's amazing. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Actually. When, when you, when you were watching the movie being made, how old were you and what, and what did you think about it that you care anything about the subject of the movie or was it just the Hollywood stuff? I just thought it was all kind of fascinating the way they changed things in grand hotel. I was 12, how old? I was 1979. I was born in 66. I was 13. My dad worked for grand hotel.
Speaker 0 00:23:24 The big hotel that they filmed at, which was the stand in for the hotel Del basically. And they changed everything overnight. They would, they would put up all the, you know, the Brown paint on the pillars to make it look like old times and lay down rugs on the floors. And then it would be gone the next day that that kind of stuff was really fascinating. And it was fun to come to Christopher Reeve or to glimpse Jane Seymour I somewhere. And I can't find it. There's a photo of me sitting at Christopher Plummer's feet with a bunch of other kids. I think, I don't know where that photo is and I can't find it, but we went to see him do that one man play at like the Mark taper a few years ago. And I realized then that I was, at that time, I think I was 50. I was the age that he was when he made somewhere in time. And I thought he was so ancient when he, when he made somewhere in time.
Speaker 1 00:24:20 It's funny the way that happens too. Yeah. You seem to catch up with all the old people that all the people that you used to think were old. So, so one of the movie you went to the movie come to matter to you as, as, as, as a movie in terms of its subject matter and what it was actually about, you said, you thought it was, you know, kinda malarkey.
Speaker 0 00:24:39 I did. And I did for a long time. I think it's been over the last year or two as I've started to think about the anniversary that the movie has started helping me to process my parents' passing. So I went a long time without really liking it. And then I saw it again and with new eyes or with, with old eyes. Um, and then it started making more sense it, then it really affected me. Then I cried. Then I believed in all the, you know, all the emotions in the movie. Um, and then I also started thinking about this time travel thing, you know, cause my parents are buried on makin Island in a grave that says life is a grave matter for real. That's a very particular sense of humor. I love that. Yeah. So I think I subconsciously, uh, must've figured out that I needed to work this stuff out with the movie.
Speaker 1 00:25:28 I don't know.
Speaker 0 00:25:30 I'm very German in a lot of ways. And I will realize a week later, Oh, you had an emotion. Oh, that's what this is about. It wasn't until I had done, frankly, until like two weeks ago, when I had done the teaser for the podcast, my husband, Julian listened to the first or second draft. And he's like, John, there's no through line here. There's no explaining why. You're why you're doing this podcast. He's like, so he's like, why are you doing it? Why are you doing it? And I'm like, I guess I'm, I think it's helping me process my parent's death. That's it? Whoa. So I'd been doing this, I've been doing the thing. I've been doing this since last October or earlier, like setting up the trip to Mackinaw, to tape stuff and did all this thing, all this stuff. So I've been doing it like a year and I finally realized what the hell I'm doing, what the reason is for this.
Speaker 1 00:26:19 Th did it, did it change anything about the way you saw the project decided to do the project?
Speaker 0 00:26:24 I think for me it gives it more heart. We'll have to see whether it works as a podcast. Whether whether listeners like to hear me processing my parents' death, I'm just assuming since everybody grieves and everybody goes through all this stuff, it's going to help some people. And some people like to hear people talking honestly about loss and memory and nostalgia and all that stuff, but we'll have to see
Speaker 1 00:26:46 No, I, well, I, I would listen, obviously it's helping me. Um, and, and, and, and, and frankly at the, at the moment, I think it might, I think, I think I might've stumbled into a bit of therapy of my own, uh, accidentally by, by, by being a guest on this podcast. This is not the kind of stuff by generally speaking, just talk about for 45 minutes, you know, you don't know. Not really. Um, it's it's I went to therapy for a little while. I I'm a vet, I'm a veteran Saul. So, you know, the VA has all these all great therapy situations. So, and, but I don't know it was, it was, it was one of those things of where the ideas that therapist had about grief and grieving didn't comport with the way I actually felt. And I just came to feel like, you know, I think I'll just do me.
Speaker 1 00:27:32 I think I'll just do me. And once I started doing me, you know, five or six years ago, a couple of years after my wife had passed away, then everything got better. And, and doing me, he came around to basically, meaning I'm just gonna, I'm not going to do this whole thing of where, where I have to move on. I just not going to do it. It doesn't work for me. And, you know, I enjoy myself better with, with her being extremely present all the time. And one might say the Christopher Reeve's character, Richard Collier, he just, he, he could not conceive of an existence without her. So maybe in his mind, once again, he's just simply decides to go to where she is.
Speaker 0 00:28:13 Uh, this podcast is like, is a shrine we're gathered in the shrine. It's like cocoa all over again. I had an 11. I had to miss my parents Memorial service. I was a kid. I just didn't have money to travel all the way back. I would have to go have gone from Philadelphia to makin Island. Uh, I'd had a good long visit with my father, like the month and a half before he died. We didn't know he was dying then. And I had already said goodbye to my mom in the hospital. So when they were eventually buried together on Mackinaw Island, I, I wasn't able to be there. I just couldn't do it. But on Saturday, I'm going to be talking with a couple of people who were there. And if the weather cooperates and their cell phones cooperate, we're going to tape the interview at their grave. Oh, they're going to be there. They're going to be standing there and they can tell me what the surface was.
Speaker 1 00:29:01 Yeah. Have you, have you, have you, have you never been there? Have you been there? I mean, like they're arguing.
Speaker 0 00:29:06 Yeah. I've been there now, like seven or eight times since they passed most recently in October of last year,
Speaker 1 00:29:13 Then when 25 years ago. And you couldn't and you couldn't do that. How did you feel about it at the time? I mean, at the time, because you were in what? In your early twenties?
Speaker 0 00:29:23 Yeah, I felt guilty. I had 'em because everybody else was going and I just didn't have the, I just didn't have the money to do it. I just couldn't take the time off and put more on the credit cards and all that stuff. Now I would just do it cause I have the, I have the dope, but I just, we just didn't have the dope back then. So I felt guilty and I felt like, uh, a little, like a bad son, but I have a reasonably thick skin. So I got over that.
Speaker 1 00:29:46 Well, do I got to ask him to say 25 years on when you think about, you know, young John ravey in that circumstance that he was in a, is it a situation? Maybe it's not a situation of where you need to forgive him, but instead a situation of where you can look at that guy back then and say, Hey man, you know, relaxed, homey, uh, your parents, the thing that your parents put on the gravestone. Yeah. Tell me that they simply would not have had any sort of issue. Uh, I could hear your mother saying what you got to put more on the credit card. Are you say,
Speaker 0 00:30:15 I know you were asking about me and I don't, uh, like maybe a week from now. I will know the answer to your question. I could check. I could check back in with you.
Speaker 1 00:30:26 So when Richard passed, her mother was here, was her mother and my mother-in-law and her, uh, were there at the hospital st. Joseph's hospital. And, uh, it was at Burbank, I guess it's a bourbon. And there were all these things that needed to be done, mortuaries and just, you know, all this stuff that has to happen. And I didn't do any of it. Her mother did it all. She would ask me, do you want me to? And I like, yes. And then eventually she just stopped asking and just, just did it all. So, so, so Bridget was cremated, uh, and there was the times you had to go to the memoriam and all of this stuff. And I was just, I had this I, and I just, and she's like, you don't have to go my mother. And I was like, God, bless you. Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:31:07 You know, I just can't even think about fat. I just can't, you know, sometime later I, I felt guilty about all of that. I should let you know my responsibility. I'm a husband and I put that burden on her mother. But on the other hand, I, I know that you Bridgette would have been like, uh, you're way too emotional to do these kinds of things. So just let my mom do it. My mother will take care of it. It was just insanely practical. And she knew me. She knew I was just a big old girl all the time. She's telling me all the time. You just, it just, you're just like you just like a girl. It's just insane. Just like I married a chick. I'm like, Hey, it's true. I can't help it up. I have the girliest girliest girl. He has it. But you know, it's also that thing I think, cause you know, I think it was the thing that she liked about me as much as she made fun of me. I asked my mother-in-law, I don't know, a couple of few years ago. I'm like you did all of that. And I didn't and she's like, Oh honey, Bridget told me a month before she died, you know, he's not going to be able to do shit. Right. And, and, and uh, and so she, they had already taken care of all of that. I just didn't have it in me, but they, they figured it out for me,
Speaker 0 00:32:16 Nothing wrong with that. I'm glad you're, you've let that go. Your head would have expired.
Speaker 1 00:32:20 Yeah. That's one of the things you said your parents were married for 40.
Speaker 0 00:32:23 Yeah. Bridget and I were married for 33
Speaker 1 00:32:25 And a half years. Dang, because we got married. So yeah. Right. It's I dunno. It's, it's, it's a thing. I made a little movie it's ostensibly about something else, but I know that it's 100% about her. Uh, and she's actually in, it actually figured out a way to actually get her into this movie that I made. And so it's like this thing that doubles over and folds, it was very Charlie, Charlie Kaufman, pretty much all of my life with my wife is in this, in this little movie. And you know, in a certain sort of way, it's my time traveling again. I figured out a way to do this thing and to bring her along with me because I just don't want to do it. If she can't come with me, if she's not there, she's not a part of it. It just matters less. So I always figure out a way to bring her along. You can't really hear it on the recording, but this is the point at which I started to cry.
Speaker 1 00:33:19 Stop. That's better son of a bitch. No, no. Actually when my parents died, I didn't use to cry when I'm parents died, the flood Gates open. Really? And I love it. It's he used to tell me, Oh, for God's sakes, man. Shoot, my wife would go back. I cry. Harry met Sally. We went, Oh there's no, I just, I just, I always been that. I started crying at like national guard commercials. That's great. But you know yeah. But I, yeah, I like, I suppose that I like all of that emotion in somewhere in time because it's, I live with all of that kind of emotion at my fingertips. Always, Tim, I think this is fine. I was going to ask you a bunch more stuff, but, uh, you were wonderful. So I think this is good, right? It was a great talk for me. This is very cathartic. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but you, you push me to, to like consider myself to like consider my motives and my thoughts and like that. And like I said, I'll get back to you in a week when I know what the answer is by J dot Tim conch shell, as a film critic and commentator for synagogues.com film week on KPCC the station I work at and can be CTV NPR and the BBC,
Speaker 5 00:34:39 The noon siren on September 22nd.
Speaker 1 00:34:43 This is something that always surprises the tourists, the Fudgies on Mackinaw Island every day, Call back yesterday, which is online. A call back yesterday.com is written recorded and produced by John Raby. That's me with additional sound recording by Ava, the lilac queen Savoy. Our theme music is performed by the van Dyke parks support from Bermudez projects in Los Angeles. Special. Thanks to Chris Greenspan, host of SGV weekly, your new second favorite podcast, graphic designer and punk legend. Michael Yulan cut. And George Takei he'll be back. And I hope you will be too for the next episode of call back yesterday. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 5 00:35:36 <inaudible>.
