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Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s television remake of the 1981 Terry Gilliam, movie Time Bandits is finally out this week. The Apple TV+ family show, about 11-year-old Kevin joining a hopeless band of time-travelling thieves led by Lisa Kudrow, takes some liberties with the source material but also expands on the universe of the original movie, which had its origins in the comedy of Monty Python – the film was written by Michael Palin and starred John Cleese as Robin Hood. It has endured as a cult favourite among fans who were kids at the time, Clement and Waititi included. The story of the film and how its remake became one of the biggest NZ screen productions in recent history is here. During Clement’s international publicity rounds for the show, the Listener was able to grab him for a 10-minute chat.
Do you remember seeing Time Bandits as a kid?
Yeah, it was in Masterton at the Regent cinema, which still exists – it’s the Regent 3. It’s got two more. I do remember it very well, because it’s so unique and funny and spooky. To me, the Robin Hood scene is one of the best comedy scenes in any movie. And the funniness of that scene is what I kind of always hope to achieve. That’s kind of a goal for me, trying to make something that is so unforgettable. And it was kind of a spooky ending for a family film – it divides people. When people have been discussing the remake, some have said, “They have to keep that ending” and then other people have been “I couldn’t watch that. I was traumatised by that end.” Very different opinions. But it’s one of the things that makes it unique.
When you were first asked about doing a remake, did you have an attitude towards remakes in general?
In general, I’m not that interested in them, and I’ve said no to other remakes, but this one – perhaps it was a mistake – but I just went back to that wish that I was Kevin when I saw the movie. I just wanted to be that kid going through time and that was the closest that I’ll be able to get, as far as I can see. Unless I find a magical wardrobe. Also, at the time I was asked, I was remaking our What We Do in the Shadows as a TV show in America, and I was in the second season. And while I am proud of that show, I was also thinking, “I cannot wait to not have to do this”. When Taika said, “What do you think of this?” I was really glad. I immediately wrote down an idea for it of what the TV show would be.
There are quite a few people who were involved in Wellington Paranormal, writing, directing or appearing in the show. Did Paranormal influence Time Bandits, in a way?
Yeah. I loved hearing from people who watched Wellington Paranormal with their families. It happened a little bit with Flight of the Conchords, but occasionally it would be inappropriate to explain what a threesome is, so couldn’t all be watched by families. But it was great to have Wellington Paranormal when we did make it a family show … it was really satisfying to hear that people would watch it together with their kids or with their parents. It has some scary bits and lots of jokes. And I guess Bandits is similar – some scary bits but lots of jokes.
This is a much bigger show, though there are probably quite a few zeros on the budget of Time Bandits. Was that intimidating? Or was having done What We Do in the Shadows in America a stepping stone
Well, Shadows is 10 times bigger relative to Paranormal and then this is 10 times bigger than Shadows. So yes, it was. It could be a disaster because at the time when we were pitching, people were making these big shows like Rings of Power and Willow. And then as we started making it, people were less excited about those shows than they were expecting. So, they were nervous.
Did you have any contact with Terry Gilliam?
No, unfortunately, but, well, maybe fortunately. I know that Apple talked to him, and we talked to Apple, but we never talked to Terry. We wanted to hear from him and were hoping to hear what parts of the world he’d imagine that he never got to put on screen. But no one ever offered that to us. And by the time we thought maybe we should just seek him out ourselves, we’d made up our own version of those other parts of the world. So, we didn’t want to make it too Terry Gilliam because it felt like plagiarising in a way.
When I’ve seen clips of the Shadows show after I’ve left and they’re doing something we did in the movie, I’m like, “Couldn’t you have come up with your own thing instead of just copying our thing?” We didn’t want to make it a thing where it was an imitation of him. So, we just took things that we could relate to from the film and liked and made our own version. We didn’t study the film too closely. We didn’t want to ruin people’s feelings for the movie. We’ve concentrated on the comedy aspects of it, and we’ve intentionally not tried to do a pale imitation of what I guess would be the Gilliam-esque visuals and things.
That said, Josh Thomson turns up as the giant, very much like the one in the film.
Yeah. That was one of the things where we were like “should we, or should we?” It’s so cool in the movie. It’s one of the biggest memories, not only of the movie, but perhaps of my childhood, seeing that boat rise out of the sea, and the whole thing you hadn’t imagined beneath it. That was one where we did copy.
The Time Bandits were dwarfs in the film, but they aren’t here. Why is that?
Well, at the time, there was a lot of debate – they had announced a seven dwarfs movie at the time and there was a lot of debate whether it’s a negative stereotype. I have some friends who have a daughter who is small. Even between the parents, there’s an issue of, is it good or bad to give this expectation to kids growing up that they’re magical creatures that they can’t possibly live up to, and they’ve been treated as other than human, in a way. We thought about that a lot, and we instead decided to mix it up and give it a mix with a cast in which some people are six foot and some are three foot.
Our first couple of little actors we asked to join the show said no, and then I wrote a part for another small actress, and the budget didn’t work out ... we couldn’t travel them in and out. We couldn’t afford it. So, for the first three little people, it didn’t work out and we thought we gave it an honest attempt. We tried. Guess it wasn’t meant to be. But then we had a reaction from the little community, especially the actors, saying, “you’ve left us out”. So, we wrote some new parts specifically for some little actors and we had them come in. We haven’t got to make those parts very substantial in the first season, but we’re writing the second season and building those parts out. So, we heard the protests and we listened.
So, you’ve got a second season?
They’ve ordered scripts. There’s a thing that I’m not used to – writing scripts where you don’t even know if anyone’s going to make it. That’s what we’re doing at the moment. We’ve got season two scripts, and depending on how the first season goes … if no one watches it, I can delete the folder.
Both you and Taika have roles in it as Pure Evil and the Supreme Being. Was that always the plan?
They probably thought if Taika makes it, he’ll be in it. I wasn’t in the Shadows show and I made sure not to be. I didn’t want to be because I didn’t want to be playing a vampire for 20 years. We had hoped for other people in those parts that Taika and I played. And again, it was the budget. We couldn’t afford to bring people in and out all the time. So, it had to be local. We were just there all the time and we’d both played characters like that before. When we finally agreed, pretty late in the show, part of the reason we are both wearing robes is because we didn’t know who was going to play which part. They were making costumes that would fit anyone. And we decided to play the other parts. I was going to play God, he was going to play the Devil character, but we swapped last minute to be more in line with what we’ve done before and I’m very happy as the prince of darkness.
Time Bandits starts on AppleTV+ from Wednesday, July 24.
