Spike Lee Wants to Make Time Travel a Reality
Posted by Nathan Deen (nathan@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 19, 2008
Director Spike Lee, who recently had only been in the news because of his statements against Clint Eastwood films, has decided to shut up and go back to doing what he does best: make movies. Variety reports that his follow-up project to the highly anticpated war drama Miracle at St. Anna will be Time Traveler. Lee has signed on to co-write and direct the movie, which is adapted from the memoir “Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality” by Ronald Mallet, one of the nation’s first African Americans to earn a Ph. D in theoretical physcis.
The book recalls Mallet’s struggle from poverty to a successful academic and scientific career. It also lays out Mallet’s ideas for a workable time machine, which became his obsession after his father died when he was 10-years old. He made it his goal to travel back in time to save his father. I’ll take a wild guess and say that’s the plot of the movie right there.
Lee described Time Traveler as a “fantastic story on many levels (and) also a father and son saga of loss and love.”
As for the film, it sounds interesting, although the plot sounds similar to the one in 2002’s disappointing remake of The Time Machine, although I don’t expect there will be much actual time traveling here. Lee is a more assured filmmaker than that. Like him or not, you have to give him that much. I think the title is a little lame though, and they should probably add the same subtitle from the book to the film.
Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna will hit theaters on Sept. 26.
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