So I have another leftover interview from San Diego Comic-Con, this time with IN TIME writer-director Andrew Niccol, who previously gave us GATTACA and LORD OF WAR, and also wrote the screenplays for Spielberg's THE TERMINAL and THE TRUMAN SHOW. I happen to be a great admirer of his work, but at the time of our interview I had yet to see IN TIME. But I have now…
The plot centers on a future where all humans stop aging at 25, but once they hit that age, a clock in their forearm is activated that goes for exactly one year. People can use time to buy goods, gamble, bribe; others simply take it from you, especially if you live in a "time zone" that looks a lot like a ghetto. Justin Timberlake plays Will, who is given more than a century's worth of time by a man about to commit suicide, which makes him a target in his neighborhood of both local thugs (called Minute Men) who simply take your time, and Time Keepers, who are more like police and keep the time poor separate from the time rich. There are some really interesting ideas at play with IN TIME, but it's as much a suspenseful chase film as it is big-idea science fiction. The film also stars Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Olivia Wilde, Alex Pettyfer, and "Mad Men's" Vincent Kartheiser.
As I said, I spoke with Niccol shortly after his Comic-Con panel with Timberlake (making his SDCC debut) and Seyfriend. Interestingly enough, his next slated project is an adaptation of THE HOST, Stephanie Meyer's non-TWILIGHT-related novel, starring HANNA's Saoirse Ronan. Please enjoy my quickie interview with Andrew Niccol…
Capone: Hello. It’s good to meet you.
Andrew Niccol: Hi.
Capone: I was in the IN TIME panel, so I have a clearer idea what the film is about. What was it that fascinated you about this concept and about the idea of looking young until you die.
AN: Well it's sort of a youth-obsessed society, so it’s just an extrapolation of today.
Capone: There’s obviously a class culture here that you’ve built within this scenario. Can you talk just a little bit about how that fits into the youth culture scenario?
AN: Well it sort of is an extrapolation of today, because people talk about the haves and the have-nots, and I think of the will haves and the will-not haves, because there’s the myth of the American dream. There are people who really don’t have a shot. If you are born into certain circumstances, you don’t have a chance. No one mentions that, but I do [laughs]. In a way.
Capone: Did you write this one? Is this original?
AN: Yeah.
Capone: So the idea of being able to buy more time, how does that work? You buy it from other people?
AN: Yes, you trade time, because the problem is, if everyone can live forever, there’s massive overpopulation. As one character says “We can’t all live forever, where would we put them?” So we trade time, and some people have… There’s a man with a million years in the movie. Cars cost time.
Capone: So it’s currency?
AN: Oh yeah, it’s currency. When Justin Timberlake’s character comes into time, he buys a Jag that cost him 59 years. It costs four minutes to buy a cup of coffee.
Capone: I love that you say “He comes into time.” That’s a new expression.
AN: Well I’ve co-opted the language, like there are Minute Men, but they are the thugs of this world, and they basically steal your minutes. There are time keepers, which are different; there are time people who live in time zones, which has nothing to do with geography, but everything to do with wealth.
Capone: More like “How much time you have” zones?
AN: Yeah, exactly.
[Both Laugh]
AN: There are poor zones and rich zones, and we can trade, physically we can trade by the pulse. So if you watch your clock and whoever has the upper hand is extracting the time.
Capone: It seems like its easy to do it, as in someone could steal it.
AN: Yes, when he’s asleep actually. He falls asleep, when he’s rescued this rich man played by Matt Bomer, and Will is asleep, and that’s when the guy, while he’s still sleeping, gives him 100 years, by delivering it to his pulse.
Capone: I feel like there would be some sort of safety device there to prevent that.
AN: [laughs] Oh, no. That’s why people really are concerned; you wouldn’t get too close to people. And that’s why with the rich, everyone has a body guard. They have armored cars that drive around at five miles an hour.
Capone: I was thinking about it watching the clips that you showed that by not knowing how old someone actually is by being able to look at them, it’s a disadvantage. You don’t know what to expect. You can look at someone who seems old and say, “Okay, I can’t fool this guy, because he’s much older and wiser than me.” We do make a lot of prejudgment based on how old somebody looks, which you have now eliminated.
AN: That’s true, but the way I got the actors to do it, because it was kind of fun is you might dress in a more refined way. So there will be little clues to how old you are, because even if you are very careful and you’ve lived for 75 years, you have probably fallen down the stairs once. So there are scars that you have, your sense of taste in things might be more refined, and the language--even a gangster like that one Alex Pettyfer plays, is quite articulate, because he’s lived with the language for 75 years. He plays a 75-year-old psychopath. So he’s lived with the language, so he’s well spoken. (Laughs)
Capone: Cillian Murphy, who does he play?
AN: He’s a time keeper. He is, as I like to describe him, a metronome of a man. He only cares about time.
Capone: It looks like he’s hired as... “Assassin” isn’t the right word, but something like that.
AN: He’s onto Will, yeah.
Capone: Justin Timberlake at this point I don’t think has anything to prove as an actor; I think he’s proven it. But was there any hesitation at the time when you cast him about using him?
AN: I was lucky, because very early on I had seen THE SOCIAL NETWORK and I had seen some other things and I had been sort of tracking him even since ALPHA DOG, where I thought, “Wow, this guy could maybe do it. He could be an action hero.” There’s a sort of everyman quality about him that I really like, and this character just goes to work every day--he works or he dies, and that actually is Justin. Justin has been working since he was 12 years old. He’s been on the run since he was 12 years old. [Laughs]
Capone: I think he said it too in the panel, but Will is an ordinary guy, everyman, unjustly accused of something. That’s classic Hitchcock stuff.
AN: I could also see him being in a Western or something, especially with the way I shaved his head and made a man of him.
[Both Laugh]
Capone: You’re the one? What is the backstory behind the body clock idea? Was it strictly a population control device?
AN: Yes, because you have to be able to trade time, otherwise everyone would live forever. So the irony of it is that even though immortality is possible, people naturally will die after 1,000 years. They’ve worked out in this society that it takes about 1,000 years--I don’t say this in the movie--but you should live for a 1,000 years without getting hit by a bus or doing something else that will kill you, choking on something. So people are going to die, and that’s why they're extremely cautious, the rich, but the poor actually live a shorter lifespan than they do. And the system is actually corrupted, because of these time zones that don’t have anything to do with the geography.
Capone: So LOGAN’S RUN had us all dying at 30.
AN: Did it? I haven't seen it in a while.
Capone: Yes. Every time you hear about an age stoppage plot device in a film, it always goes back to LOGAN’S RUN. I was going to ask you why you shaved off five years.
AN: 25, I should have found a way to put it in the movie, but I haven’t. There’s a scientific reason why it’s 25, and that is the frontal lobe of your brain doesn’t fully develop until around age 25, and it’s the frontal lobe that controls impulse and reckless behavior. So you wouldn’t switch off the aging gene any earlier than 25, because you would switch it off when a human being hasn’t fully developed. I guess you would want people to be fully developed before they switched it off. By the way, that’s why rental car companies won’t rent you a car in America until you are 25, because medically they know that you're crazy.
[Both Laugh]
Capone: You’re reckless.
AN: All of the crazy shit you’ve done before you were 25, you could have blamed on your brain, just so you know.
Capone: That’s a perfect defense.
AN: It is actually. I don’t know why people don’t use it. I’m serious.
Capone: “I’m sorry, I’m not 25, my brain isn’t fully functional.” What brings you back to science fiction? What do you love about the device of being able to tell a morality tale without sort of telling it directly?
AN: Well that is it. I’m always talking about now, even though I may be going into a future period. It’s much easier. It’s more palatable for people if you take them out of the world they're in, and I didn’t even really name the time. I say it’s “social science fiction.” The studio wouldn’t let me say that, though.
Capone: That’s right, because it basically looks like it’s here and now. There are no future cars. It’s not like GATTACA in that respect. Do you have any other scripts or any other things you are working on now?
AN: Always. [laughs]
Capone: Anything that looks promising? Anything you can talk about?
AN: The plan is to make THE HOST. It’s a really good idea. Saoirse Ronan is going to be in it. She’s great.
Capone: Right, she is. I panicked for a split second; I thought you were remaking the South Korean film THE HOST. But I remember that this is the Stephenie Meyer book. Do you have any kind of calendar for that?
AN: It’s supposed to go early next year. For release in maybe 2013. It feels futuristic just to say “2013.” [laughs]
Capone: I know, it sounds so far away. Andrew thank you so much. It was good to finally meet you.
