Opening the Incredibly Strange section of the 2018 New Zealand International Film Festival, this crime comedy from Aotearoa follows a low-level crim in Thames who happens upon an ancient time-traveling device that gives him – and various other hims – the opportunity to get out of a difficult situation.
We posed writer-director Tim van Dammen (Romeo and Juliet: A Love Song) a couple of questions about the film.
FLICKS: Please summarise your film in EXACTLY ten words.
TIM VAN DAMMEN: Less frequent than LinkedIn invites but just as deeply moving.
Why Thames?
I’ve lived on and off in Thames since I was two years old. I was living there when I came up with the idea for Mega Time Squad. Thames seemed a fun counterpoint to the high concept of “time-travel” and when I began to flesh the idea out, the possibilities that Thames presented were too unique for me to think of the film being set in any other place.
How long had you been writing the script?
The Mega Time Squad script was part of a three-year grinding nightmare in which I tried to become a competent screenwriter, and it evolved over a few dozen iterations. It was probably a couple of years from first to final draft. Several screenplays on, it seems ridiculous that it took me so long to write Mega Time Squad, but I guess you have to put in the hours somewhere.
Did you ever tie your brain in knots trying to figure out the time travel stuff in the plot?
I drew a kind of map of the time travel and decided that the only “rule” was that when John time travels he moves in time but not in space. I was more focused on how to make time travel new again or at least address it from a less familiar perspective.
I felt like we’d seen enough time travel movies where we follow the same character going back over and over again so I wanted to show the story from more of a third person point of view. We travel with John the first couple of times but after that we follow whichever version of John is driving the story. It’s not really about time travel, it’s about a lovable idiot with a time travel device who thinks time travel is cool because he gets to hang out with earlier iterations of himself.
Did you shoot everything according to the script or did you allow yourself to get loose?
We shot the script but I also made a lot of time to play. My two favourite parts of the film are both results of ad-lib and muck-aroundery. The cast really embraced their characters and created some hilariously idiotic exchanges.
What lessons did you learn from making ‘Romeo and Juliet: A Love Song’ that you put into practice here?
Write for what you have available. Then rewrite with the cast. Then rewrite in the edit.
It turns out these industry clichés exist because they are the hardest thing to remember when making the thing. I’m going to guess that this is more the case when working in comedy because it’s a real bastard when a joke doesn’t land or when something written doesn’t work when performed or when you just have too many damn jokes and you need to get on with the story. There were a lot of constraints around the formal aspects of the film too because we had no money at all—no budget. So I needed to work around that with regard to camera movement, for example, while still being able to pace the film and give it a cinematic feel.
It was a challenge, and if Romeo and Juliet hadn’t taught me the limits of what I could pull off competently at this budget level, I probably would’ve felt that I’d bitten off more than I could chew.
What was your most memorable moment making this film?
When Anton says “…cos I’m actually from up Raumahunga ways”. Maybe it was because of late night hysterics but that became the line that everyone who worked on the production kept repeating to each other in response to any question asked on set.
What was the last great film you experienced?
I have a tendency to watch the same few dozen films on repeat. This week I re-watched Amadeus and The Good the Bad and The Ugly. I have a soft spot for melodrama and films that are very heavy on soundtrack … Magnolia? Last year’s NZIFF brought us Elle which was great. Anyhow – the best new thing I’ve seen was Ennio Morricone live at the ruins of some ancient baths in Rome. It was mean.
