You said that kids understood the narrative logic of “Time Bandits” better than adults did at the time. Was part of the project’s appeal making something that everyone could enjoy together – but the children especially would connect to?
Yes, I’ve just tried to reach a very broad audience. And it was also because of the way the studios were categorizing films. This one’s for a child; this one’s for an adult; this one’s for a teenager. I hated categorization like that! I just wanted to make something that might work on many levels, and I would have thought that people of different ages would perceive the film in different ways.
In the ‘80s, “Time Bandits” was among the first non-Disney products to make a film for the whole family, and it seems like no one is even trying that now. What do you think is lost without more entertainment for families and children that treats them like people, not just future consumers of intellectual property?
[Laughs] But Hollywood has always about been about promoting consumerism! I just want people to start thinking. That’s what it’s really about for me: to try to say and do things that joggle people’s minds, and possibly their view of the world, to see it in a different way than what is being sold to them day in and day out. I like entertaining people, but I also want to be saying things. I’m basically a follower of Mary Poppins — I want to provide a little sugar to help the medicine go down.
[...] how have children reacted to “Time Bandits” over the years?
They loved it; it seems to me! When we finished the film, the producers felt certain elements weren’t particularly good for the children. Especially the ending with the parents blowing up. I said, “Come on! The kids will be fine with that.” The boys certainly were, and the girls were more motherly. They were concerned about what was going to happen to Kevin now that his parents are no longer there.
That’s more or less the underlying premise of YA literature and film like “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent.” In all these series, there’s a world in which the kids are smarter than the adults and have to save a world handed to them in ruin. It seems to me like “Time Bandits” presaged the rise of a market for that.
I think that kids have to try to change and save the world, and adults are meant to keep them from doing that. [laughs] Right? It’s a battle going on. I love that line we have when the Supreme Being and the Time Bandits are heading back to heaven, and Kevin is left behind. Fidget says come with us, and the Supreme Being says, no, he has to stay here and carry on the fight, whatever that fight might be.
I couldn’t help but draw a line between the ending of the film, where adults don’t listen to the child and blow up their house, and the fact that you recently directed a production of “Into the Woods,” which features the line “Children may not obey / but children will listen.” It feels to me like a demented B-side, where “Into the Woods” says, “Children Will Listen,” and “Time Bandits” says, “Parents Won’t Listen.”
[Laughs] I haven’t thought about it that way, but you may be right! That song at the end of “Into the Woods” is about being careful of what stories you tell your children. That, to me, is I would rather be telling my children stories that are more complicated and difficult, that do not always have a rosy, happy ending. There is danger out there.
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[two questions I omit here were about working with Stephen Soundheim]
maybe that provides an opportunity for us to segue into the “Time Bandits” series that’s being made right now for Apple TV+. Has that experience played into your relationship with the show at all?
I have no relationship to it, simple as that. For years, Handmade Films, which owned it, was still in our control because that was George Harrison and Monty Python. But eventually, it was sold to other companies that moved on. In the end, I lost control over it. I loved the idea of Taika Waititi doing it because I love “Jojo Rabbit.” I thought this is the guy to do it. And all I can say is that in the course of its development, I suddenly realized there was a major problem. There is, as I call it, a shortage of dwarves in the production. There are no dwarves involved, which was central to Michael Palin and my version of “Time Bandits.” The way we’d set it up with this little kid being the main character, I thought there was no way he could carry the whole film. So, I surrounded him with a gang of people the same size as him!
And what was wonderful about it, all these guys who had made their life being in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves pantomime, being in Ewok costumes, or, in the case of Kenny Baker, inside a tin can of R2-D2, suddenly, they were out. And they were now action heroes. They were the leads of the film. It was so exciting to see how they rose to the occasion and how they proved their worth as actors. The whole film had a very special quality because nobody had ever seen that before. I think was central to the success of the film. However, in the TV series, that is not to be. I don’t know why, but there you go.
As much as anything, too, it’s practical because you’re able to film them at the same eyeline. There’s not an element of Kevin looking up to someone bigger than him.
We’ll see what it is. I don’t have any idea what it will be like, but that’s my concern at the moment. Jack Purvis, who plays Wally in our version, his granddaughter was on TikTok, and she had done a video. She, too, is a dwarf and said this is so wrong. After “Time Bandits” came out, I was kind of the patron saint of dwarves because I let them be real actors and real people! And she was very upset about what she heard that there weren’t going to be any small people in the show. It was a very touching video because, suddenly, they were being pushed back into the world of being these strange little creatures wearing funny costumes. And I hated that.
I’ve seen some reports that you’ve visited the set and stormed off. Is that true?
No, that’s a complete lie! I don’t know where that came from. I’m very disconnected from the whole thing.