← The Currently Reading Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hi readers, welcome to Popcorn in the Pages. In this spin off episode series from Currently Reading podcast, we will be exploring book to screen adaptations and what makes them great or awful.
- [00:28]
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In each episode we'll tackle the book, the adaptation and the ways they complement each other. As always, we love a strong opinion and we definitely have them, especially with this book.
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A
I'm Katie Cobb, co host of the Currently Reading podcast and I will read nearly anything but mostly keep my screen watching to sitcoms and book adaptations.
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B
And I am Chad and I read exactly what I'm told to by Katie because she's the boss.
- [00:50]
A
I am the boss. That is true.
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B
Like Angela.
- [00:54]
A
Like Angela. Yeah.
- [00:56]
B
Who's the boss?
- [00:57]
A
Unlike our regular episodes, these ones are full of spoilers. We spill all the tea. So be warned if you have not read the book yet or watched the movie. This is episode number 12 of the series. But you can listen in any order, even if it's six months ago when we did our last episode. Today we will be discussing the Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Yay. Shad A. We're back.
- [01:20]
B
Yep. I love being back. This is great. It's like. It's like another season.
- [01:24]
A
Yep. It's only been six months.
- [01:26]
B
Yeah, Lots changed.
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A
Fine.
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B
Since then I have moved and got a new job.
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A
Wow.
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B
Yeah. Isn't that crazy?
- [01:34]
A
That's special. Yeah. It's been a minute, but we're excited to be back here. We're excited to get to record an episode together and we have a book and a movie to talk about that. That a lot of people have strong opinions about. Mostly positive. We also have strong opinions about it. And those are complicated.
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B
That's what we'll go with.
- [01:58]
A
We're going to say complicated. Let's talk about this book. So this section of the show we call the previews, this is all the background info. We're setting up the situation that we're about to encounter. Here's the setup in this novel. We follow Claire and Henry. The publishinger blurb notes that this is. Listen to this. A funny, often poignant tale of boy meets girl with a twist. What if one of them couldn't stop slipping in and out of time? That's what the publisher says about this book. That was the part that made me laugh the hardest.
- [02:30]
B
That's probably the. The only funny thing about it is the way it's described. I remember laughing at all.
- [02:36]
A
Here's the actual setup. Claire is an art student. Henry is a special collections librarian. According to Claire, they first met when she was only six years old. Henry showed up naked near the meadow where she played often growing up. But Henry first meets Claire when she is 20 and he is 28. She walks into the Newbery Library in Chicago and already knows seemingly everything about him and his chronological impairment. Their story spins out from there as we jump forward and backward in time, seeing how two people fall for each other when one of them is unable to stay still in the timeline, the publisher continues and says this book depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's marriage and their passionate love for each other as the story unfolds from both points of view. Oh, barf.
- [03:21]
B
Okay, yeah, that does sound like a lot.
- [03:24]
A
Like, I don't know if I. If I went solely off publisher blurbs to decide my own reading. I don't know if. If this one would have pulled me in.
- [03:32]
B
Well, yeah, I mean, that's a bit judging the book by its cover, though. Yeah.
- [03:36]
A
Okay. But, yes, that's how marketing works. They make covers so that we pick books up. They write blurbs so that we put books up. This is very. That's how it works. I. I did succumb to the marketing from this book, though.
- [03:48]
B
But this was a long time ago, though. I mean, this was 15 years ago.
- [03:52]
A
I was like a baby reader. I wasn't a baby reader.
- [03:54]
B
This was longer than that.
- [03:56]
A
Yeah, 20 some odd years ago. There's a lot here. And I am on record as loving time travel in my books. So this does. On. On paper, it seems like a book that would work for me, and it has in the past. Let's talk a little bit about the novel itself. So this book released in September of 2003. September. I want to be sure everybody knows this happened in September. September is very important in this book and in this timeline. It is one of the longest books we have done. It clocks in at 536 pages. It was Niffenegar's debut novel. And while sales were a bit slow to start, by the time the calendar turned on 2004, it was flying off the shelves. It sold more than 2 1/2 million copies by March 2009, and the film version released just a few months later. So that's the only, like, solid sales number I could find was March 2009. It had sold two and a half million copies. Is that a lot? Not necessarily, but it is a lot for a debut novel that had not yet made it to the theater. So because those. Those do tend to jump up in sales.
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B
Was this picked up by, like, any, like, book club or anything that helped the sales, or was it purely just based on word of mouth?
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A
No, because in 2003, the only book club we really had was Oprah.
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B
Oprah's. It wasn't there.
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A
I mean, there wasn't like Jenna and Today show and blah blah, like all these different. Reese Witherspoon was not doing a Sarah Jessica Parker. None of them were doing book clubs yet. And Oprah notoriously chose very like heavy, weighty novels for her book club. So this definitely would not have been kind of on her radar. In fact, it was nominated for a few smaller awards. It only notably won one win, which was the British Book Award for popular fiction in 2006.
- [05:42]
B
Is she. She's not British, is she?
- [05:44]
A
No. But it was eventually released in the uk.
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B
Okay.
- [05:47]
A
This book, however, is, as we've mentioned, passionately beloved by so many readers. I posted in the bookish friends when we were getting ready to record this episode. That's our group of Patreon supporters. I went to ask them on Facebook. I wanted to know how they feel about this book and about this movie. Mostly because I was worried that we were going to break some hearts as we discussed it. There were many respondents, so many respondents who said it was a lifetime favorite or a longtime favorite book of all time. Like, like saying I've read this book multiple times or I read this 20 years ago. I can't reread it because it's so like perfect in my heart, I can't even look at it again. Like that kind of effusive love for this.
- [06:32]
B
Yeah. Even Meredith.
- [06:34]
A
Even Meredith, who is my co host on the big show of currently reading. She said that this is one of her favorite love stories of all time and it left her sobbing on the floor. She adores this book. The Internet and booksellers seem to agree that this should be shelved in the sci fi romance novel section. I will be disagreeing with that later. Let's talk about the movie though. The movie which has the same name, the Time Traveler's Wife, released in September of 2009. September. It is listed as a romantic science fiction tragedy on Wikipedia, which I like. We've. We've veered a little bit away from the love story idea. It is a tragedy. It did not get nominated for or win any awards, but it was a commercial success even right off the bat. It opened third in the box office on opening weekend behind District 9 and GI Joe. The Rise of Cobra wow. Grossed 19.2 million right away. It was directed by Rob Schwentke who. Who has a few other notable credits under his belt, including some of the Divergent films. The screenplay was adapted by Bruce Joel Rubin. This is interesting because he has an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for writing Ghost. Mm. Mm. Another fateful love story.
- [07:55]
B
Sci fi romance. We'll say.
- [07:56]
A
There you go. This film had a budget of 39 million. It ended up earning a little over 100 million worldwide. So it was successful. While we will only be analyzing the film here, we will also note that There was a TV series adapted by HBO released in 2022 that was canceled after one season of six episodes, which only got us to Clare and Henry's wedding, which is about halfway through the book. And finally, there was a stage musical in the UK that ran from September to October of 2022 and then was transferred to the West End in February of 2023 and it ran for a year there, so. So 14 months of a stage musical in London. Interesting, right?
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B
Yeah. That's a lot of adaptation.
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A
When I asked the bookish friends for their opinions on the movie, they mostly agreed that it was horrible and they hated it. That the movie did the book an injustice. One comment in all caps says it's the worst book to movie adaptation of all time. And mostly as a group, they stated that the emotion of the book could not translate to the screen like they wanted more feels. I would like to propose a counter argument that both of these pieces of media are actually horror rather than romantic sci fi. And I'm basically going to spend the rest of the episode trying to prove my point.
- [09:15]
B
Buckle up.
- [09:16]
A
We're excited about that. We're excited. Okay. Those are the previews that gives us our context. Now we know where we are. We know where the bookish friends stand. Friends, if you are tender about this book.
- [09:27]
B
Yeah.
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A
Listen to me. Maybe join us for our next episode. That'll come out soon. And it's not gonna be about this book. It's gonna be about something else that you don't hold as highly.
- [09:35]
B
Listen and tell us why we're wrong.
- [09:36]
A
Or yes, you are absolutely welcome to argue with us. We do love to be argued with. Okay, our next section is the Cutting Room where we're gonna talk about pivotal scenes and different things that happen within the book, within the movie, and how they translated. So let's talk about some of those pivotal scenes. What stood out to you first, Chad?
- [09:54]
B
I think first and foremost, I mean, the most pivotal scene which was repeated was his actual disappearing when he traveled. You know, that was like the most.
- [10:03]
A
Pivotal element of it.
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B
Correct.
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A
How he disappears. Yeah.
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B
And it wasn't how the movie was, not how I pictured in my head. And in the book, I believe it was described more as a sudden thing. To me it was just kind of like a pop and he was gone. And they even talked about sometimes the sound that would accompany it or like it would like leave like a vortex of sound because of like him actually leaving. And in the movie he like dissipated. It was more of a gradual disappearing.
- [10:29]
A
It was like he was being dissolved by acid from the edges.
- [10:32]
B
Yeah. And yeah, towards the middle. It was not what I wanted. It was, I think, unsettling for me. I didn't like it.
- [10:38]
A
That is true. We mentioned this earlier, just person to person, because it seems like in the book Claire doesn't know when Henry's about to leave. Sometimes he'll say, I'm going. Or I can feel that I'm like slipping away. But she can't tell until he actually. Whereas in the movie, you know, it starts with the very first one. His fingers get really skinny and then they slowly disappear and then his clothes fall. And that was just. That was weird.
- [11:05]
B
Yeah. I also feel like in the movie he always knew when he was leaving. It was definitely something that felt like he was aware of when it was about to happen because he would almost prepare for it a little bit.
- [11:17]
A
Yeah. It doesn't help him any when he gets to where he's going because as we know, Henry always shows up naked when he travels through time, whether he's a 5 year old boy or a 43 year old man, he's always naked every time he gets there. And sometimes that causes problems because he shows up in places with no clothes on and he has to find clothing. He's often, in the book, he's often nauseous, he's very hungry. And those two also were kind of eliminated from the equation in the movie adaptation.
- [11:46]
B
What about for you? What did you think?
- [11:48]
A
The first scene that stood out to me, and mostly because the rest of us travel in a linear timeline, is when Clare first meets Henry. So this scene in the book and the movie involves a very young Claire. She's younger than my daughter. Meeting a naked, fully grown adult man in a field where she always loves to play. He wraps himself in a blanket after she throws her shoe at him very hard, apparently. Like, he whines about it for the entire rest of the scene and then he explains his presence to her. It's hypothetically a little funny, but mostly it's disturbing.
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B
Yes.
- [12:26]
A
In the movie, even more disturbing, Eric Bana has a weird accent somewhere between Arkansas and California, which doesn't track with anything regarding his background in the book or the movie, but it does track with the fact that he's Australian playing an American and probably learned how to do that accent by watching weird movies. Visually, seeing that age difference on screen did not make me hate it less. Correct. The idea of my daughter playing in a field with a naked man is so disturbing to me that I just can't.
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B
Hopefully your daughter knows better that regardless of what they're saying, it's not okay, right?
- [13:06]
A
Like, run, run, stranger danger. D Run and scream. There is no. And I have even told my kids, you know, that person should not know your. Like, I don'. Care if they know your name. Yeah, you don't even. Do not talk to that person.
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B
Although of all your children, your daughter would be the most likely to talk to a stranger.
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A
It is so true.
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B
Who knows their name?
- [13:28]
A
She makes best friends everywhere she goes, and she. She is definitely the one who would be most in danger of talking to a naked man in a field for no reason and for years. Okay, the next big scene for me that I was excited to see on the screen and. Okay, so I should clarify that for at least half of the movie, I was like, I don't think I've ever seen this before. And once we get to the end, and especially Henry standing outside on a cold winter night watching himself die through the window and then leaving the handprint on the window, I was like, oh, I have seen this. I do know this movie. That was like 80 to 90% of the way in.
- [14:04]
B
No, I think it was further than that.
- [14:06]
A
It was 95% of the way in. It was far. It was far. And so I've apparently wiped it from my brain. I did not remember. I did not remember watching this movie. So the next scene I really wanted to see, like, for the first time because I didn't remember it was the wedding. So in the book, this is in fact one of my favorite scenes because we know by this point that periods of high stress are likely to make Henry jump in time. So we have a lead up to the wedding that includes visiting his friend Ben Rip. We don't get to meet Ben in the movie. He is a drug dealer who can basically do his own, like, pharmaceutical blending at home. He's very smart. They try a variety of different drugs to get Henry to stay present for this very important day instead of leaving Claire at the altar, but none are really successful. He has a lot of, like, bad trips and terrible Vomiting and whatnot. And he disappears right before the ceremony, only to reappear as an older version of himself five minutes later and marry her. Anyway, this one worked relatively well on the screen, except they got rid of Ben's character. So it was just Henry saying he needed to take a Valium. And then before it even goes all the way down his throat, he disappears before he can swallow it down. So, I mean, this always happens, Right? We have a long book, we've got a short movie. We gotta get rid of some things. Why they chose to get rid of every single interesting character.
- [15:25]
B
Yeah. Literally, I don't know beyond me. I mean, we know. I mean, we know they cut characters, right. I mean, we've talked famously about how it always seems to be a story.
- [15:32]
A
It's almost always the sister, right?
- [15:34]
B
Well, yeah, more specifically the sister. But, I mean, there was definitely other characters in this book that got cut that I didn't think needed to be.
- [15:41]
A
Right.
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B
Yeah, we can get into that a little bit later.
- [15:43]
A
Yeah.
- [15:43]
B
The other. The other scene for me that I think was pivotal was the car crash that killed his mother, which in the book, it's definitely not the first thing that happens, but that's definitely. That's how the movie opens, is him in the car with his mother. And we will get into why it's wrong from a visual standpoint, but it just. I don't know, it didn't feel as traumatic in the movie as it did in the book, because it definitely shapes him.
- [16:09]
A
Yes.
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B
In the book, they talk about how, you know, these big events in his life, they have their own gravity, which is the reason he revisits them often. And that was definitely a pivotal moment in his life. And it just felt like a way to draw you in in the movie. Like it was just a plot point they had to get to. And so it was like, hey, let's do this at the beginning and we'll do it this way. And then it just didn't feel like it ever amounted to much more than that later in the movie or at all, when it's such a big part of the book.
- [16:34]
A
Right. Because they use it as expedition exposition in the movie rather than central plot. So I agree. I have a lot to say about that car crash scene, I think. Where did I slot that in? Changes from book to movie. Yeah, we've got some things to discuss there. The next thing I do want to discuss with regard to pivotal scenes and how they translated to the screen is the miscarriages. And I will caveat this with if this is a tender subject for you. Megan will stamp the time on the show notes where you can skip ahead to where I'm no longer talking about miscarriage. It affects one in three women. It's a prevalent part of the storyline. We're going to talk about it. So it should not surprise me. But it still did that a film written and produced by two men did not have nearly as much about Claire's miscarriages in it as the book did. Right. It becomes more and more obvious during the written version that this is physically dangerous for Claire. She bleeds a lot. Right. And we slowly determine that the baby itself is carrying this time traveling gene that Henry has. And the fetus will travel out of her womb and then travel back in. And it doesn't always land correctly. And that is dangerous for a mom. Right. A woman is supposed to carry a baby within a very specific spot in her body. And you can't just put it wherever you want. So the conversations around it are informed and impassioned and emotional. Especially after Henry wakes up in their bed with Claire holding a miscarried baby in the bed next to him. It's. It's a horrifying scene. And he calls it a monster. He says that she's holding a monster in her hands. It's vastly sanitized for the film version. One time we see Claire in a diner finding out that she's bleeding relatively early on in the pregnancy. But like in the diner, not in the restroom or anything, which is.
- [18:23]
B
Yeah. She's literally just sitting. And then like her hand, she pulls up her hand with blood on it.
- [18:27]
A
Like, gentlemen, I'm speaking to the gentlemen in the audience. The. The producers and screenwriters especially that might be listening to us today. No woman would do that in a restaurant. Just like tuck her hand into her booth. Her own booth. It's I just her lady booth. That's not. That's not a thing. No. They. She would be like, oh, I'm going to run to the bathroom. I'll be right back. Right. I think she's even wearing a white dress. It's a whole thing. The second time it's visually depicted, Henry wakes Claire up because he finds blood in their bed. And then it is only mentioned verbally to Dr. Kendrick. So there. It's just like, we're gonna make this as tiny as possible. Put it in a cute little to go box and then put that into the movie. But like never really talk about it. It cheapens the experience and all that is involved around that. Which is one of the Most emotionally poignant pieces of this book.
- [19:25]
B
Like, one of the most. The biggest pieces of Claire's story, I think, as well.
- [19:28]
A
Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's one of the few times that in the written version, she. She expresses her own agency because mostly she is just letting Henry kind of dictate their life. He's telling her, well, this is what happens. We buy this house, or we are going to take this money and we're going to do this stuff with it, or we are going to get married, blah, blah, blah. And she's like, okay, well, if that's what happens in the future. Whereas with the baby and the pregnancies and wanting to become pregnant, that's one of the few times that Claire is saying, no, I really want to try again. No, it's very important to me to have a baby that is both of us. No, I refuse to consider adoption because of this, this and this. And none of those conversations happen within the movie version.
- [20:10]
B
Yes.
- [20:10]
A
And then the last, like, pivotal scene is. I called it Henry's Final Months. So losing his feet to Frost by being shot and dying on the floor. This was all softened in every way. In the movie, he's injured. He's in a wheelchair. He has feet and legs. And then he gets a bullet wound on his side. He still bleeds out on the floor during a party. But in the book, both feet are amputated above the ankle. He shows up with a bloody wound. His intestines are also spilling on the floor. It's a horror story, right? He's been torn open by. Is it maybe a shotgun? Like, I don't understand what kind of bullet would do that.
- [20:47]
B
Right.
- [20:47]
A
And it makes more sense because he would have been on the forest floor during hunting season and unable to run. Whereas this one, he, like, in the movie, he's like, oh, a noise. I'm naked in the woods. He turns toward two men with guns and then takes a bullet straight on. Like, what, sir? And he's standing on both of his feet when he transported out of a wheelchair. None of it makes sense.
- [21:10]
B
It doesn't? No, it doesn't make sense. I don't know. And I don't understand why they couldn't remove his feet. I mean, there was CGI. This was 2009. That had been fine.
- [21:18]
A
Yeah. I think we already had the Phantom Menace from Star wars and whatever atrocities happened in that movie. So what?
- [21:24]
B
I think in the movie, he even tells Claire when she's freaking out, when she's running to the hospital. And he's had the frostbite that Dr. Kendrick tells her that his feet are going to be fine, but he just needs to be in a wheelchair for a little bit.
- [21:35]
A
Yeah, yeah. That's how everything's fine in the movie.
- [21:38]
B
Can we at least have them not be fine? And that is the reason he's in a wheelchair.
- [21:42]
A
Right. Well, but then he walks around in other periods of the movie after that. Yes, yes, he does, like, slightly gimply. Not even. He doesn't even look like he's in pain. And it's only one foot. It's a lot of softening that happened, which is interesting because the movie, they said it's a sci fi tragedy, but yet they did. A lot more softening of the storyline happened in the book. Yeah.
- [22:06]
B
What was this rated?
- [22:07]
A
It's a PG13.
- [22:08]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know why they would need to downplay any additional.
- [22:11]
A
Violence, but someone not having feet because of an injury is not violence.
- [22:17]
B
We'll talk about the gunshot wound or.
- [22:19]
A
You mean the guts. Okay.
- [22:22]
B
Yeah. Amputees are fine. They're not.
- [22:24]
A
That doesn't. That doesn't change the rating. Right. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. It's just. It was a lot. So there were a few things that I was really looking forward to, how they portrayed them on the screen. And I would say, without fail, I was disappointed. I would agree. Can't think of anything that went better. The wedding was kind of almost on par, book to movie.
- [22:44]
B
Yes, they did. I mean, they did editing. It was supposed to be at a church. It was at the house. There were different aspects of that, but, yeah, it just. I mean, to me, it felt a little rushed. Like, the gravity of Henry disappearing wasn't as heavy in the movie as it was in the book.
- [22:58]
A
Right. And in the book, they go to the justice of the peace the day after. So that Henry is still married.
- [23:03]
B
Yes. Like, current Henry.
- [23:05]
A
Yes. Real Henry instead of the one from eight years in the future. Five years in the future. Yeah. Okay, cool. Okay, so let's talk about changes from book to movie. And really, this is mostly. We're going to talk about the car accident here because. I know. I'm sure you do. The book is, again, 536 pages. Shad and I have agreed that probably between 100 and 300 could have been cut. The movie is one hour and 47 minutes, so everything is set at warp speed. There's gonna be changes, so we're gonna try and stick to the big ones rather than, like, his hair is supposed to be flowing locks. I mean, to me, That's a big one still. Because he looked like he had a mullet.
- [23:48]
B
He did. It was bad. No, I made a comprehensive list. And then I was like, we're not gonna have time for these little ones. I already edited a bunch of them, so.
- [23:55]
A
Okay, well, let's start with the car accident. The car accident with his mom. It starts the movie. All the gory details of that are removed, including that his mother is beheaded at a fast enough speed that her head rolls into the back of the.
- [24:08]
B
Truck in front of them that she runs into. That decapitates her.
- [24:11]
A
Yeah, because like a sheet of metal slides out of the back of the truck.
- [24:15]
B
The big one for me was that the accident. He was supposed to be in the front seat.
- [24:20]
A
Mm.
- [24:21]
B
And he's supposed to have, like, a scar on his forehead from that, like Harry Potter, where, you know, he leaped just in time, but he still got hit by the metal. And in the movie, he's in the backseat, so just all wrong there. They're supposed to be in rush hour traffic, right.
- [24:35]
A
There's cars all around them.
- [24:37]
B
Yeah. She's supposed to be pushed into the back of the truck by a car that rear ends them. In the movie, I believe she's by herself. And then she gets.
- [24:44]
A
She keeps looking in the rearview mirror to look at Henry and gets distracted. It is still icy. It is still cold outside. But then Henry time travels for the very first time as a six year old to see himself with his parents a few days before, two weeks before, I think is what we learned. And then travels back to the side of the road where he meets his older self. And that's the extent of his very first time travel.
- [25:07]
B
He watches his mother essentially explode in a fireball.
- [25:11]
A
Yep.
- [25:13]
B
Diana. Fiery inferno. That was her vehicle.
- [25:16]
A
Right. And so in the book, it is stated that Henry is missing from the scene for 10 minutes and 47 seconds. And that young Henry does not know where he went. He could have. He could have just blipped in and out of time. But in the current timeline, it runs for 10 minutes and 47 seconds. But he doesn't go somewhere during that time and then come back. Or at least he doesn't remember having gone somewhere as a six year old. However, his adult self is there like 65 times.
- [25:46]
B
Right.
- [25:47]
A
He's a. He's in another car. He's on the overpass. He's wrapping a blanket around his young shoulders. He's calling an ambulance. He's doing. Because he has come back to that situation over and over again.
- [25:56]
B
Yes. And then he does come back in the movie. He does appear on the side of the road and give Henry a blanket.
- [26:01]
A
Yes.
- [26:02]
B
As his older self. But yeah, it was just like I said. And it was the, the intro of the movie. I mean, it was what we introduced. We introduced Henry's time travel. It was the very start of everything and it was just completely wrong.
- [26:13]
A
Right. And it is used, like we said, like exposition in the movie. So Henry explains to his younger self, guess what? You're a time traveler. I know where you just went because I am you, and you're going to do this a lot. And blah, blah, blah. Like, he's like, hey, audience, here's everything you need to know about how this works and who this is and who I am.
- [26:33]
B
Like, like we have 530 pages to get through.
- [26:35]
A
It almost broke the fourth wall, but it almost broke the fourth wall. Yeah, it was weird.
- [26:41]
B
Yeah. Which leads me to my next change from book to movie. And it's almost. I mean, it's a left out as well, but it's how Henry time travels for the first time in the book. He time travels for the first time after his birthday into the Field Museum. And older Henry is there and does, you know, introduce himself and explain to him what's happening. He does it sort of as his tour guide. Henry does not realize that that is himself as an older man until later in the book. So, like, right away he doesn't even know. He just thinks that he's some guy that talks to him and shares Oreos. And it felt like a really cute scene and a cute way to learn about. For Henry to learn about this thing that he has and we got none of that at all.
- [27:22]
A
Yeah, that scene being eliminated completely when it's one of. It's one of the best scenes in the whole book.
- [27:27]
B
I agree.
- [27:28]
A
And it was sad, especially because as, as a fully grown adult woman, I would also love to go like behind the scenes in a museum and like open the drawers and see what kind of things they have hiding that are like not out on display. I think that would be so cool. And then it's the Field Museum in Chicago, which Shad and I have been there. We went for our 40th birthdays. Like, there's so much cool personality to that space. Yeah.
- [27:53]
B
It'd been great for them to film that.
- [27:55]
A
Yes. Yes. And like an older Henry has already gone to the gift shop and found a T shirt for younger Henry so that he has something to wear right away when he time travels for the first time. Like, it's Just so beautifully a way that he is taking care of his young self. I loved that. I loved it so much.
- [28:14]
B
And in that same vein, we are also missing from the movie just any semblance of older Henry teaching younger Henry what he needs to know. Because in the book he teaches them how to pick pockets, he teaches them how to pick locks, you know, teaches him the way to survive, you know, as he's going to be growing up into this person who has to survive like this. We get none of that in the movie, which also just felt like we got robbed of that.
- [28:36]
A
Right. On the flip side of that, we are also missing probably 90% of the visits between Henry and Clare at various ages, especially as we. I know mostly that's a good thing. Especially as we get into her teenage years and we start getting sexual tension in those visits. We've got, I think, only one scene of Claire as a teenager getting kissed by Henry, correct. Aggressively, when he's about to get a vasectomy. But otherwise there are two, maybe three scenes of him visiting her younger, like.
- [29:07]
B
As an actual child.
- [29:08]
A
As a child, as a 6 to 8 year old and then as a 10ish year old and then a 17 year old. So it's just, it's so few and far between. Which makes it feel like, well, why is Claire so obsessed with this guy? He showed up three times when she was a kid. Like, what's going on? But in the book, because we have 536 pages, we visit Claire, I don't know, 80 times if.
- [29:36]
B
Yeah, you can actually see why she may be, I guess we'll say in love. Obsessed.
- [29:41]
A
I don't know, Groomed.
- [29:42]
B
Groomed. That might be a word one might use someone.
- [29:46]
A
Yep. Stockholm syndrome, somebody might say.
- [29:49]
B
It makes more sense in the book. And it feels like it was just brushed over. In the movie. We don't get that. That rich backstory.
- [29:57]
A
Yeah.
- [29:57]
B
Is what we call it. Yeah.
- [30:00]
A
Yeah. It's more flavor and nuance. One of the other ones that I wanted to point out, and this is where I limited myself, I gave myself three big ones. Car accident visits between Henry and Claire, and then the relationship with Dr. Kendrick. The studies that he does on Henry are very different, including the MRI right out the bat in the movie that shows what happens when he time travels in real time and they completely eliminate the gene therapy side of things. And the mice that they, that they manipulate into being able to time travel as well, which is just such a fun. A. Mice are so cheap. Like put a mouse in the movie, at least just Like a tribute. Well, and then just go get a mouse.
- [30:41]
B
It also changed how we learn about the fetuses time traveling. Because in the book, Kendrick actually tells them, you know, one of the hardest things was having them carry to term because of the fact that the fetuses kept time traveling outside the mother. The mouse. Yes, yes. So Kendrick had actually learned it in the movie. It's Henry who says it and he just like says it as a suggestion, like, oh, maybe this is what's happening. And everyone's just like, oh, I guess maybe you're right because you're apparently smarter than the doctor of the genetics. Doctor. Geneticist. No, yeah, was not a big fan of that either.
- [31:10]
A
Also, as my 15 year old son pointed out, why wasn't Henry miscarried as a baby Right when he has this time travel gene as well? Like what prevented his mother from having this problem when he was the baby in her stomach? We can assume that his was a genetic or abnormality that then gets passed down to their. Their fetuses, their children, their. Any pregnancy that they have. But why didn't he time travel in utero and ruin his own chances of survival?
- [31:41]
B
Right.
- [31:41]
A
That part doesn't make sense.
- [31:43]
B
In the book, we learned that one of the reasons Claire is able to carry to term is because they. They realize that she needs. It's her immune system that's kind of causing some things as well. So they give her some immunosuppressants and we get none of that in the movie. It's just like, oh, I guess this one's going to work because I got impregnated by you from the past. Which we'll get to.
- [31:58]
A
Yeah. Yep.
- [32:00]
B
Yeah.
- [32:00]
A
Correct. Okay, what else you got for this section?
- [32:04]
B
For me, I wrote the relationship between Claire and Gomez because I feel like that is a big part of the book. It's brought up in the fact that they have had sex before she meets Henry after he dies. We learn in the book that Cerise is absolutely aware of the fact that Henry or Gomez is in love with her and is just, I guess, fine with it. So we don't get any of the infidelity, we don't get any of the Met love story. Or we get a little bit of him like just saying, like, don't be with Henry because he knows him from around. But I mean, I thought that was a big plot point that was missed. One thing that changed that was the whole end when you talked about like the last few months of his life. There is a point in the story, in the movie where they encounter Henry with his bullet wound on the floor of their home and then he disappears real fast. So it's like a foreshadowing for Claire. And in the book we get none of that. Like Henry is aware, of course, but Claire is not aware at all. So I didn't like that. And it felt like it robbed her of just that, not knowing when it was going to happen. Because in the book I thought that was more emotional because Henry knew and like he let her throw this party and he knew it was going to happen and it was just like at the end he was like, it's tonight. I mean, granted, she didn't know what was going to happen that night, but I mean, she still understood or should have at least that it was going to be by him being shot.
- [33:21]
A
Right. Because of the other piece that was left out, which is that Claire has an experience at age 13 when she hears Henry call her name from the meadow, but then she sees a totally fine Henry walking around with her dad and brother in hunting gear and she can't figure out kind of what happened there, but they do find blood on the ground. So she has that 13 year old experience to say like something bad happens at some point and he called my name, but then that was eliminated as well. So instead we get this weird flash forward where he shows up with a bloody wound on the kitchen floor or the what floor?
- [33:58]
B
There was a kitchen, I think.
- [33:59]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [34:00]
B
And there was other things. Like in the book he goes to have a secret vasectomy and then he time travels before it happens. And then when he goes back to his present, Claire correctly guesses and she gives him permission. In the movie he does it completely in secret and then she finds out later. It's like a thing to get mad about. You know, there's other little things like that, but I think we hit on pretty much all the big ones.
- [34:19]
A
Well, and I guess this is a change rather than a left out. But we have mentioned that their eventual baby that works out, Alba, is because Henry came from the past into the future. And he and Claire have sex. And in the movie he calls her cell phone, she goes and picks him up in a parking lot. And then they have car sex. In the book, time travels into their house, into their room, into their bed maybe, who knows? He shows up in their bed with present time Henry sleeping next to Clare and he has sex with his wife from the past. Well, his wife is from the future, but he is from the past with no vasectomy. And that is how she gets pregnant.
- [35:08]
B
Yes. The way I wrote it was they make the baby in the car and not while cuckolding present day Henry.
- [35:15]
A
I don't know if we believe if it's yourself. I mean, they have this argument, right? It's not cheating because it was you.
- [35:21]
B
Well, there was also. There was a couple of, like. Then. So they decided on the name Alba in the movie. He tells her, like, that he already met their daughter. And that's like, he knows her name is Alba. And that's why in the book, they do not. They actually pick it out of a name book where they're going through the meanings of different names and they settle.
- [35:38]
A
On it stemming off from the color white. And then, like Albanese. And it's like a. It's like a weird word. Yes. Yep. It's like a weird word play, word association game. They come up with Alba. That is actually a very prevalent theme within the movie, that there's so much that Henry knows from the future that then Clare just accepts, like, the house, right? He just show. He. He come. He says, claire, come here. Look. That's your studio. This is our house. Rather than in the book. He says, well, I've seen our house. I've been there. And she's like, great, I'm gonna go look by myself for a little while. I'm gonna. I'm gonna have a little. I'm gonna feel like I have a little control over this, even if that's what is gonna happen.
- [36:23]
B
Right.
- [36:23]
A
I'm gonna feel like it's me instead of you telling me. And that doesn't happen in the movie. She's just like, whatever you say, sir.
- [36:30]
B
If she could become more subservient from the book, they managed to make it happen.
- [36:36]
A
Stockholm syndrome. It's Stockholm syndrome. This is not love, y'. All.
- [36:40]
B
It's not. It's weird.
- [36:42]
A
Okay. All right, let's talk about what was left out that should have been included, because as we've mentioned, there's a lot left out that maybe shouldn't have been included because this book was too long. Yes, that's fine.
- [36:53]
B
We've touched on a couple of them already. I talked about Henry teaching his child self how to function and be prepared to time travel. We talked about Clare waking up after hearing her name and seeing Henry with her dad and her brother. We didn't get that in the movie. I think the biggest one for me is the. There was no amputation, which we've talked about already. I think one of the great things about the book and one of like, the cute sort of the way. I mean, it's the way it ends is him coming to see her when she's 83. And that was not in the movie, which I thought was just a missed opportunity because I thought that'd be really cute to, like in the movie that way.
- [37:23]
A
Do you think they just didn't have the budget for cgi?
- [37:26]
B
I don't know, because we'll talk about this when we get into casting a little bit. But could they have picked a younger actor? Because I feel like it'd be easier to age them up than to have Eric Bana looking 45 the entire time.
- [37:36]
A
Yeah, seriously. All they did was, like, sprinkle white stuff in his hair to make him look older.
- [37:43]
B
It's like, oh, does he have that weird mullet wig on or not?
- [37:46]
A
Okay. For me, it was the. So many characters. This is true of so many characters that are just completely cut. Ben, the gay drug dealer with hiv. Celia, the black friend of Ingrid, who is Henry's current girlfriend when he meets Claire in real time, who kills herself in front of him. Didn't I say Ingrid?
- [38:02]
B
Yeah, you said Ingrid. But I'm just saying that, like, we also have Ingrid.
- [38:04]
A
Ingrid. Yeah, we don't have Ingrid. We don't have Celia. We don't have a lot of the actual diversity in this story. We don't get to meet Ms. Kim or her husband. And Ms. Kim is Henry's childhood nanny. A pivotal part of his life basically mothered him from five years old on. She's also the owner of the building where his father still lives. So she's still very much a part of his life. She's kind of managing his father's alcoholism. She's pivotal. She's so important to Henry's story and how he became the man that he is going to be. No, she doesn't exist.
- [38:38]
B
That's on the flip side. You have Etta and Nell, who basically raise Claire. They are her family's housekeepers. I mean, Etta is also a person of color. She is, problematically, seems like the mammy figure. Right. She's the cook.
- [38:51]
A
Yep. The. The other one I wanted to point out was we had said, why include September 11th in the book at all? And then if you're going to, why not make it part of the story in the movie? Like, all of it's weird.
- [39:07]
B
Yeah. So in the book, there's this little short blurb about just they brought in the 9 11, and it's. I mean, it's something that happened. And, like, granted, I mean, it's going to happen in, like, real time or what have you. But it didn't need to be in the book. It was. It felt forced. And I think maybe it was just a product of the time because it had just happened. Right. This book was written in 2002, so it was a giant pivotal event for America.
- [39:31]
A
Right.
- [39:31]
B
I mean, maybe just didn't hold up. Well, I don't know. It was weird because you. You and I have talked person to person just about. I mean, if you're going to include that, like, there's other major events they would have gone through.
- [39:41]
A
Right. Well, and the. The ballsiness of her writing this story, releasing this book in 2003, but it goes through into 2009. Is that right in the book? I mean, it goes into 2052, but it goes into. I think 2009 is when Henry dies, which means she was already writing into the future. And she's assuming that even though September 11 just happened when she wrote this, that there's no other additional world events that they're going to, like, observe in this period of time.
- [40:09]
B
Nuclear war.
- [40:11]
A
Why wouldn't you just set it back 10 years before that? And then you never even have to touch big world events? I don't know.
- [40:18]
B
Well, there was no other bigger world events in it. It just felt like, why did we include this one? It doesn't need to be there.
- [40:23]
A
Okay, here's my theory, because I read a little bit about this, that there was, like, a bit of a scandal about it. So one of the biggest complaints people had about the book originally on its release is that Henry just, like, turns on the TV and is like, I just want the world to be normal a little longer. When he knows there's this huge thing that's going to happen, and it is already established that, like, he can't change anything. But he doesn't, like, go to New York and try to help people. He doesn't try and change anything. He's just like, you guys, let's just. Let's just watch. Let's just watch it on tv, you know? Sounds fun.
- [40:56]
B
We've already clearly established that he can't change things.
- [40:59]
A
Yeah, but, like, he just like people so much. Like, it's something to just, like, be a spectator sport about. Like, this was. This was the. The big critical thing with regard to this book. Not the grooming, not the joke. This was the big critical thing, not.
- [41:17]
B
The racist undertones and the Korean characters. That was fine as well.
- [41:21]
A
Yeah, the racism and the grooming are fine. All that we care about Was that he didn't. Is that Henry doesn't try and do anything about September 11th, this huge world event.
- [41:30]
B
Yeah, the only huge world event in the 40 years of his life.
- [41:34]
A
Okay. Was there anything added?
- [41:36]
B
Well, no. I'm somewhat left out. Well, we're going to have to represent my people, which. There was no gay sex in the movie.
- [41:43]
A
Well, there was no gayness anywhere in the movie.
- [41:46]
B
Well, yes, but there was a scene in the book where he does have some level of gay sex. We're not quite clear how much with himself when he is.
- [41:56]
A
Gay relations.
- [41:57]
B
Correct. And they completely just cut that out of the movie.
- [42:01]
A
I mean, that's the truest version of homosexuality. Right, right.
- [42:05]
B
Correct.
- [42:05]
A
Like, same self. Same, same.
- [42:08]
B
And I thought it was funny, too, in the book that she, like, made it a point for. He had to say, I, like, I'm not at all gay. Like, anyone else would do this, too. It's just like, oh, I mean, okay. Couldn't it just be a thing? Like, I don't know. It felt. It felt almost like an attack where she, like, made him say or point out the fact that he wasn't gay.
- [42:23]
A
Yeah. It is weird, right? Like.
- [42:25]
B
Like, why can't he be doing it?
- [42:26]
A
To posit the idea that any boy who met himself in time would also experiment with himself and also that that's definitely not gay. Like, let's make sure everybody knows. I mean, what an interesting choice that this author made with regard to that.
- [42:45]
B
This was 2002, though. I mean, gay was not as okay as it is now. Right. We've talked about this before, I think, especially. I think the last episode with the Perks of Being a Wallflower was that it was. It was a product of its time. You know, at that point, it was just becoming more mainstream. Will and Grace, Queer as Folk. You know, it was 2002.
- [43:02]
A
Okay. Anything else that we really, really need to. Okay. So was anything added to the movie that wasn't in the book?
- [43:10]
B
I have one thing. For me, the thing that I noticed was, and I wrote it like this, Henry's absence causing friction in their marriage. We've already kind of talked about in the book, that Claire just kind of goes along with everything. She's very patient. She's okay with the fact that he disappears. I think she knows what she signed up for in the movie, and maybe it was just to drive the plot a little bit further or to create a little bit of some drama. There's definitely, like, one key scene where he's gone for two weeks and he comes back and she's like, I don't have time for you. Like, my life doesn't stop just because you're gone. And there was, like. There was his absence, like, made her upset. And I definitely don't feel like we get that in the book at all.
- [43:52]
A
Yeah, yeah. She does only sometimes have a little bit more agency in the movie than she does in the book, where she's like, I'm a full person who you just expect to wait around for years and my entire life, whatever. Because in the book, as we've talked about, she does sleep with Gomez in the two years in between when she last sees Henry and when she meets him in real time. And then when she finally admits that to Henry and tells him this is something that happened when we hadn't even really met for you yet, she is so apologetic about it. It's terrible. And he is kind of icky to.
- [44:35]
B
Her about it when he's been like a man whore the entire time, the.
- [44:40]
A
First 28 years of his life. Just sleeps with anything on two legs. Okay. One of the things that I wanted to point for the. Added to the movie so we know that Henry's mom is a musician, that she sings, that his dad. It plays violin. They're a very musical family. That is a through line in the book that we don't really get in the movie. We know it in theory, but we don't get it a ton. The way that they added that was this recurring theme in the soundtrack, and I looked it up. It's called Es ist ein Rose in sprugen. It's an old German Christmas hymn which stands in for emotional scenes and emotional moments. We get it first in the car crash scene. We get it at the very end.
- [45:24]
B
His mother's singing it.
- [45:25]
A
His mother is singing it. Yes, we get it just various points throughout the movie. It replaces, you know, Claire going to the record store and trying to find something special for Henry. It replaces him going back and watching her concert, his mom's concert, before she died. It replaces all these different moments when his mother's voice and her music was so important to Henry by putting in this one song, which I'm told is actually Lo, How a Rose Air Blooming. There's a hymn in English that is similar to that. I didn't hear that when we were hearing it over and over again in the theme.
- [46:05]
B
Yes.
- [46:06]
A
But it also has a few pieces of musical score that are underlaid to certain horror scenes that make it feel like a horror film. Like there are. There are moments of music that Are like, oh, this belonged in the Exorcist. Like, what is this music doing here? And it's because the song, the soundtrack, who does that? Who does the music?
- [46:26]
B
What? I don't know what you're asking.
- [46:27]
A
Who's in charge of the music in a movie?
- [46:29]
B
The sound guy. I have no idea. The sound guy.
- [46:32]
A
It's because the sound editor knew that this was a horror movie, even though the director and the cinematographer did not tell him that. That's my theory here.
- [46:43]
B
Even this scene at the end, when you talked, you've already talked about this is what you remember, where he, like, leaves his handprint on the glass. Like, the heat of his hand, like, that is even taken out of context. Horrifying.
- [46:53]
A
Yeah.
- [46:53]
B
Because he disappears. All it's left is his handprint on the glass.
- [46:57]
A
This could be. You know those. You know that Instagram where they cut things differently, where they're like, music changes everything and they change like Harry Potter and they put in. Or like Dirty Dancing and they put in the Muppet Movie soundtrack or whatever, and you're like, okay, yes, the music matters. I. I'm telling you, it's a horror film. And then the other. The last thing I had here was the entire discussion with young Claire about how her parents aren't going to get divorced. This replaced a conversation where he accidentally reveals that her mom just died. So because they don't kill her mom in the movie, he doesn't have to reveal that her mom just died to young Claire. So instead they put in this one conversation, like a one off, where she's like, maybe they should just get divorced. And he's like, yeah, well, they don't. And then that's it. But it's like he has to show her that he knows about her future, maybe, or, like, show a little vulnerability of his own. I don't. Yeah, I don't understand the point of that. That's fine.
- [47:54]
B
I think that's definitely lacking too. Was in the book. She asks a lot more to know what's happening, and they take that out of the movie a lot that she doesn't. Doesn't seem to care as much that he knows everything and doesn't try to get it out of him.
- [48:07]
A
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay, we are already very far into this episode. We have a lot of words, even if they're not favorable. Okay, let's talk about problematic stuff. Is problematic stuff because it's old or because it's lagging something. Listen, this book is fully problematic. Sometimes we get to this section and I'm like, well, I guess I could reach a little and say that this could be construed as a problem. This whole book is a problem. It should just have problematic written on.
- [48:31]
B
The COVID That should be the title.
- [48:33]
A
The Problematic Time Traveler's Wife.
- [48:37]
B
The Time Traveler's Wife A problematic story.
- [48:39]
A
About a problematic Sci Fi love story or tragedy Subtitle Sci Fi Tragedy okay, yeah. Child grooming, obviously Claire's racist family, their house, help, their mammy, all of this. The only accented speech in the entire book is Miss Kim and her dialogue. And it's terrible and it's awful and I hate it.
- [48:58]
B
You and I talked about this person to person, like if that's how she speaks. But like, is it racist because Audrey Niffen nigger is white? Like, if Amy Tan wrote it, would we be more accepting?
- [49:09]
A
I think it would be one thing if.
- [49:12]
B
Because I think Amy Tan does write like that in her novels. Like when she talks about.
- [49:16]
A
Yeah, like the.
- [49:17]
B
The Joy of the Club when they're talking about the older ladies or in Kitchen God's Wife when it's her mother, you know.
- [49:22]
A
Yeah.
- [49:22]
B
But it's okay because she thinks that.
- [49:24]
A
Might be part of it is that if you're observing a culture from the outside and you're saying this is how that person sounds to me, so that's how I'm going to write it. That's different than let's say Alice Walker in the Color Purple writing dialect and saying this is how that person sounds to me because she was my mom or she was my aunt or she was my grandma. Right. That's different. So I think that is what makes it problematic. And also, she didn't have to be from Korea to be Korean. Right. Like she could have just spoken normally.
- [50:00]
B
Yeah.
- [50:00]
A
Eh, it's fine.
- [50:02]
B
Yeah. What did it lend to the story for her to be. Yeah.
- [50:03]
A
What did it make? It's not like there was a miscommunication because of this dialect that she's using or this accented English that she's using. And that added some pivotal plot point. I mean, it didn't. So why include it at all?
- [50:21]
B
I may not be liked for this next comment. Do we think Audrey Niffenegger hates women?
- [50:28]
A
So one of the comments in the Bookish Friends group said that sometimes you read a book written by a man and you say this man doesn't understand women and that's why he writes women so poorly. And this is for that commenter, one of the few times that she felt that A, maybe maybe this woman hates men and B, maybe That this woman hates women. Because, yeah, there's some things.
- [50:55]
B
Like, I have a couple, so. Well, I have that. I didn't like the way that Henry made an offhand comment about Charisse looking big after she'd had her third child. What was that for? Why was that necessary?
- [51:10]
A
And then, same with Claire.
- [51:11]
B
Right. I didn't like the whole. It's. So this is. This is something that got changed. In the movie, he proposes by creepily slipping a ring on her finger while she's sleeping. In the book, I went and looked this back up. He proposes to her the night it's. It's her birthday, and they have this entire conversation where he basically, like, gives her permission not to say no, to be able to say no to sex or, like, you know, they have a whole conversation about, like, he has to ask her, hey, do we have sex too much? She's like, yeah. And, you know, sometimes I don't always.
- [51:40]
A
Want what is happening right now. Yeah.
- [51:43]
B
Yeah. Like, she said she couldn't even sit down. I'm just like, what? And it just. First off, it felt gross. And I don't know what it did for the story, but it's just like. I don't know. It just. It put a bad taste in my mouth. It was just something else in this that was just like, ugh, what is happening right now?
- [51:58]
A
Yeah. God, that.
- [52:00]
B
Yeah.
- [52:00]
A
Everything about that was problematic as well. At least the book, problematic as it was, had some good diversity in it, had some good representation in it for the movie. Any diversity that the author had added to the book was eliminated. We don't. We still have Shareese, who is Filipina, but every other character of color or gay character was taken out of the story completely. They were like, you know, we don't need this. And they just didn't.
- [52:27]
B
We don't have time for this.
- [52:28]
A
Yeah. Which is what.
- [52:30]
B
And then I also went and looked this up, because once I'd seen it. So we. We've already talked. And it's funny because I Obviously, the age thing and the grooming, it's just. It's not right. And I actually thought to myself before I read it in the book, it was. I was like, this is. It's like Lolita. I don't know. And then at one point, her friend. I can remember the friend's name when she meets him at the party or whatever, she. She references Lolita. And I'm like, okay, well, that's probably not a great reference when you're writing a love story. And then also, like, he Kisses her for the first time. I looked up the ages. She's 15, he's 36. And the first time they have sex where it's. I don't know if it's. She's all excited and she makes it a whole thing. She's 18, he's 41, she's 18 that.
- [53:09]
A
Day, like the day before.
- [53:11]
B
And it's literally her birthday.
- [53:12]
A
Yeah.
- [53:13]
B
And I don't. I don't know the age of consent in Michigan, but the fact that you would even need to look that up to make this at all something you would want to be okay with is just not okay. I don't know. I hated it. I didn't like any of it.
- [53:25]
A
And there's scenes when he's tickling her and her legs end up on either side of his head that she's. I think she's 13. She was 13 in that scene.
- [53:33]
B
Yep.
- [53:34]
A
Why? Why? And how many times does young girl need to see a naked man? So many.
- [53:40]
B
Yeah. Well, apparently, I mean, I didn't mind seeing naked Eric, but yeah, I am not underage.
- [53:47]
A
Correct. We are consenting adults.
- [53:51]
B
Correct.
- [53:52]
A
Okay. Are we going to move to casting? Are you ready?
- [53:55]
B
Yeah. We are down to casting now. I only. There wasn't. So we've already talked about a lack of characters in this. I only did, I think the big three, obviously, Claire and Henry, and I think the other big character in here was Gomez.
- [54:08]
A
And these are really the only characters that got billing too, right? Yeah.
- [54:13]
B
So Claire was played by Rachel McAdams, whom I love. And this is right when she was, I mean, super big. Right. She'd done Mean Girls, she had done the notebook. Like, Rachel McAdams was everything. And from what I, what I found online, I don't really see that this was like, really presented to anyone else. Like anyone else had turned down the role. Like, it was kind of. She was a first choice and I'd accepted it. And I think she's great in it.
- [54:33]
A
Honestly, I love her.
- [54:35]
B
I do have a couple other options. And so we've talked about it. So Claire, obviously, she plays a gamut. They did cast, you know, a younger girl when she was a girl, but anything like 15 and beyond, it's Rachel McAdams. So she plays anything from a 15 to a 40 year old. At the time of shooting, she was about 30. And so I did do some, like, younger choices, like people who would have been 19ish at the time or people who were about the same age. So I did Kristen Stewart. She was really big at that time. Obviously, she had just started Twilight.
- [55:04]
A
Yeah.
- [55:04]
B
Don't know if she could have pulled it off, but I mean, she was a big name. Emma Watson was obviously another choice. She had done Harry Potter by then. I don't know if she could have pulled it off. Those are kind of my two younger ones.
- [55:13]
A
I would have had two non Americans trying to play Americans.
- [55:17]
B
Okay, well, if you don't like the fact that I also chose Keira Knightley. She was big at the time. She just done Pride and Prejudice. And then the other one I did was Katherine Heigl. She was big then. That was before she was problematic, which this book's problematic, so maybe been perfect.
- [55:32]
A
She has some. Some funniness to her that wouldn't have played well in this.
- [55:37]
B
Why? This is a funny novel, apparently.
- [55:40]
A
Oh, it is. I forgot. I forgot. The publisher told us that.
- [55:44]
B
Yeah. Obviously they know everything.
- [55:47]
A
They're trying to gaslight us into thinking it's funny. Okay.
- [55:50]
B
All right. So Henry was played by Eric Bana, who was fully, I think, 41 years old at the time that this movie was shot. Trying to play anything from 20 year old to, you know, 40, which is fine. And like, we've already talked about how I think it'd been a lot easier to age someone up than someone down because they didn't really do a good job at it. But the alternates that I have for this, I did a couple younger ones as well, and then a couple older ones. My younger ones. I did Robert Pattinson. I don't know why I'm old.
- [56:17]
A
My gosh, if you had Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.
- [56:22]
B
Didn't even think about that. I didn't even think about that would have been hilarious. Like.
- [56:28]
A
And now for something completely different.
- [56:31]
B
I also did. Shia LaBeouf was big at this time.
- [56:34]
A
Oh, my gosh.
- [56:35]
B
That was before he went crazy and then came back around Doofy. Yeah, well, but he was big. Then Sam Rockwell, who I love, I think he would have been great in this. And then I also did James Martin.
- [56:45]
A
Who did Jeff Goldblum.
- [56:47]
B
I wrote, like, who could Jeff Goldblum have played? He could have played. He could have played Kendrick. Right? Dr. Kendrick.
- [56:51]
A
Oh, yeah, totally could have.
- [56:52]
B
He could have played his dad.
- [56:54]
A
Henry's dad. Yeah, correct.
- [56:56]
B
Because at that time, he could have played Dr. Kendrick. I already thought about this. All right. And then for Gomez. So Gomez was played by Ron Livingston, which if anyone who knows anything about movies, it's like, oh, Ron Livingston. He's also Burger from Sex and the City. I think it's probably his Most popular role or office space. If you know him from that office space. He. Gomez is described as, like, this. He's supposed to be blonde, a greaser type. Right. He's supposed to be bigger than Henry.
- [57:22]
A
So he's supposed to be, like, revolutionary.
- [57:24]
B
Right? Like, I don't. They were just like, I guess Ron Livingston. He wasn't even, like, a huge name. But I don't even know, like, why they would cast Ron Livingston in this. It's weird. He didn't have the attitude, the look. I hated it. I didn't like it at all. I was just like, wow.
- [57:36]
A
No.
- [57:36]
B
Okay. So just going on the fact he was blonde, you know, Edward Norton, which we talked about person first when we were watching it, I think he would have been great as Gomez. I also love Edward Norton. And back then, that was coming off of Fight Club and all of that. This is when Paul Walker was alive. I think he would have fit that kind of blonde. He could have done a greaser role. I liked him for that.
- [57:55]
A
Yeah.
- [57:55]
B
Cam Gigante was big then as well.
- [57:59]
A
He.
- [57:59]
B
What do you know him from? He was in Twilight. He played James. He was the bartender in Burlesque. If you remember him from that. I can't think of anything you would know him from.
- [58:08]
A
Okay, that's fine. I'm sure other people are yelling at me right now. It's fine.
- [58:12]
B
And then. Well, the last one, no one's gonna know. Alex Pettifer, he was big at the time as well. He was in the movie I Am Number four. It was a movie. Had the. The actress who plays Quinn in Glee. It was. I think it was based on a book as well, but those are the ones I chose. That's it. Goldblum could have been Kendrick.
- [58:28]
A
And then, I mean, just because he was part of, like, that period of time in my head, I'm gonna put Guy Pearce in there. Blonde. He was in Memento. Right. He has that, like, roughness to him that I feel like would have worked for Gomez. Eric Bana was not good at being Henry. I like Eric Bana. He was great in the Drive and we've talked about. This is one of the. I think this is the only one so far where we've had the same lead actor in two different popcorn in the pages movies. But he was really good in the dry. And he was not good at being Henry. That accent was a horrible.
- [59:08]
B
Yeah, he was completely out of place.
- [59:10]
A
Oh, my gosh. It was so bad. And then he just. He. He had. He was so flat all the time. He didn't feel emotionally affected by anything that was happening around him.
- [59:21]
B
Yeah. Which is funny because when I was looking up casting and things like that, and there's like, we're getting to some more questions where I was like, what was so great about this? People talked about how the casting and the chemistry between the two was one of the great things of this movie.
- [59:34]
A
I was just like, maybe if it's a horror movie.
- [59:40]
B
I was like, okay, well, I guess they talked about, like, the emotion that they. Like, it was just like, I don't. I don't. Emotion that I got all of that.
- [59:47]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, let's talk about what we did get from this. We're gonna move to our award season section, our MVPs. And we always start low and go high, and sometimes that's a struggle and we're gonna do it anyway. So let's talk about the worst parts of the adaptation. And you only get to choose one. That's the rule.
- [60:06]
B
Okay. Well, mine, it's kind of a twofer anyway, so I like it. Oh, I said the storytelling. I said the storytelling from a couple different aspects. One being that the book is written definitely in like a dual narrator format. Right. We get Claire's story. We get Henry's story. Even sometimes at the same event, right. They'll, you know, this was Henry explaining this. And then it's like they flip it to Claire and like, how did she feel about it? The same thing. We didn't get that. Which I understand would probably have been really hard to translate onto a screen anyway. And then I also just felt that the movie itself, and like, we've talked about this before too, is that we've already read the book, obviously, so we know the source material. If we watched it as a standalone movie, I think it felt disjointed. I just didn't feel like you would get everything that was, like, really happening, you know, it like. The big thing with me was, I think a big part of the book is that her dad and her brother shoot Henry. And I think in the movie I was just like, oh, did he get two of these people? Was that her dad? I can't remember who they cast as her dad. Like, what? Because it was like two older men. So it definitely wasn't her 15 year old brother that shot him. I don't know. Like, it was just. And I guess maybe that wasn't. No one cared. It was just the fact that he got shot and he's dying now. Well, I just.
- [61:13]
A
I mean, the brother almost didn't exist in the movie. Anyway. Yeah, the sister. We never realized that that's her sister. So.
- [61:20]
B
Yeah, she never gets introduced, like, as her sister.
- [61:23]
A
Yeah, right.
- [61:24]
B
She got. They kept her, though, because they didn't, you know, disclude her.
- [61:29]
A
Yes. I. I kind of said the same thing I said the way it was watered down. Like, of course this always happens, right? We have so much source material. It has to fit into this tiny package.
- [61:39]
B
How many pages was it?
- [61:40]
A
536. They settled on the most banal version of events to spoon feed the watchers of the book. Right. So they took the book material, they gave the watchers of the movie the most banal version of events. For example, we already talked about this. The very first scene where Henry explains time travel and his entire life to his younger self. He's like, I hope you're paying attention, watchers.
- [62:08]
B
You're sick.
- [62:10]
A
Because this is the entire movie right here. Here's everything you need to know about what's about to happen. It's just, you know, and all the elements that were actually either exciting or emotionally resonant in the book became this like. Like tablespoon of flavor added to a soup that was just water. It was like the stone soup of books. It was just not. It was not good.
- [62:36]
B
I should put that on the COVID.
- [62:39]
A
Of our newly emblematic time story. Time travel, like the tragedy. That's my blurb. They put like, blurbs from famous people. Yep, yep. That's what we've got. Okay. Okay. What about Shad? I'm so excited to hear about your best part of the adaptation.
- [62:59]
B
That's a little backhanded. The best part for me was that there weren't as many scenes between older Henry and young Claire. So I wrote taking out the creepiness of her being obsessed with a man in his 40s, specifically not showing the scene where she's 13. And in the book, we literally get Henry talking about how she just hit puberty and she has breasts and hips and then he's tickling her and her legs end up on his shoulders and he's like, oh, no, this is getting too sexual. Yeah. You think like, what? What?
- [63:25]
A
Yeah.
- [63:26]
B
First off, you're like touching a child.
- [63:27]
A
You showed up. This was too sexual.
- [63:30]
B
So I wrote that was the best part, was that we didn't have those big scenes in the movie. What about you? What do you got?
- [63:37]
A
My best part of the adaptation was every time we saw Eric Bana's butt, because it certainly wasn't the words coming out of his front. So anything that was on his back Was great. Anything from the front was not so great.
- [63:48]
B
And to be fair, we also saw Rachel McAdams butt in this, so it was equal opportunity here.
- [63:52]
A
Oh, yeah. Just like the lower cheeks.
- [63:54]
B
Just the bottom. Yeah.
- [63:57]
A
Huh? Yeah, yeah. Like if she was wearing a shirt, that skirt that was too short or a shirt which is what she was actually wearing. Correct. Yeah. So I guess mine is also back handed, but really it's just backsided. That's my best part of the adaptation. Okay, worst actor, who do you have?
- [64:17]
B
Let's see you go first this time.
- [64:19]
A
Ron Livingston. He's so Office Space. He cannot pull off a countercultural revolutionary to save his life. He is just milquetoast. Meredith says soup sandwich. So I mean, we're going to keep the soup theme here. He's a soup sandwich. You can't even bite into this. It's disgusting. I did not like him as Gomez. I thought that was such a disappointment. And really I didn't like Eric Bana.
- [64:44]
B
Well, for me I also picked Ron Livingston and I think because he was just miscast, but also if you've seen him in anything else, I don't know, maybe because Office Space was his breakout role. I don't know if that's true, but it's the one that everyone remembers him from. And so it's like he's just that person and everything he's in now. Right. Like, it's just like he can't be not the guy from Office Space and in this movie he's the guy from Office Space again. And it's just like.
- [65:06]
A
Yep.
- [65:07]
B
Yeah. I also put. I put him as well.
- [65:10]
A
Yeah. That's disappointing. That's a bummer. How about best actor, Rachel McAdams. Rachel McAdams? Yeah.
- [65:16]
B
Because I mean, first off, it's Slim Pickens and secondly, she's just great. I mean, I want to be pretty like Rachel McAdams. Gosh, she's gorgeous.
- [65:26]
A
Grow up and be Rachel McAdams.
- [65:28]
B
Yeah, I think that's the goal for everyone.
- [65:29]
A
When was she born?
- [65:30]
B
Is she close to 79? I believe when I looked it up earlier.
- [65:33]
A
Okay, yeah, I do. I want to be Rachel McAdams when I grow up. She's just, she's so great, she's so gorgeous, she's funny, she's witty, she's kind. I hope she's like that in real life. I mean, me too.
- [65:46]
B
She has to be like, what if she's awful? I don't want to live in a world where she's not like that in real life.
- [65:51]
A
Okay, fair.
- [65:52]
B
Yes.
- [65:53]
A
Agree. Okay. Worst character in the book.
- [65:57]
B
I put both of them, but probably more Henry, because, honestly, Claire's not great either. She's not written well, and I don't think that's her fault. I think it's Audrey Niffenegger's fault because we've already decided she hates women.
- [66:12]
A
It's not her fault. Like, she, like, Claire, the character, had her own agency, and she chose this life.
- [66:18]
B
Well, that's the thing. It's just that, like, I mean, I guess, like, it is her fault because she did choose this life, right? And so. But, like, the fact that she's just okay with it. She doesn't have anything. It's just like, oh, she's just gonna always be fault. It's. It's Stockholm syndrome, is what it is. Like, she's just like, Henry's this great love, and, you know, she sleeps with one other guy one time. She doesn't get heartbroken. Like, she doesn't get experience anything else, and she's just okay with that. And it's like, why? He's not that much of a prize because. You know what I mean? I just. But no, Henry's definitely worse because he, like, grooms a child, and then, like, we've already talked about the conversation where he, like, gives her permission to have sex or to not have sex and just. I don't know. There's the comments he made about Therese after her third baby. And it's just, he's.
- [66:59]
A
I. I can't with him and everything. With Ingrid. 100 of the relationship with Ingrid.
- [67:04]
B
Well, yeah. Which we didn't really get into because she wasn't in the movie. So. Yeah, I mean, like, obviously, he's not a great person. Gomez tries to warn Claire about it, but she's just like, oh, but you don't know the Henry I'm apparently gonna fall in love with who's not that guy.
- [67:19]
A
But he really is the mature Henry. That's what she keeps saying is like, well, I know Henry when he's older and he's grown into, like, better behavior.
- [67:28]
B
Right. And, like, why?
- [67:29]
A
Although that Henry, the mature Henry, is the one that kicks the guy's ass and leaves him tied to a tree that assaulted Claire as young. We didn't get that either as a teenager, and we did eliminate that also entirely. But that, I feel like, is further evidence that she hates her women characters. Audrey Niffenegger. Correct. I did say that Claire was the worst character in the book. I think maybe I was gaslit. I agree with everything you just said. But Claire is just such a pushover. I think it's because I hope for better from her, whereas Henry feels like, well, I guess this is just one of those guys that's like this, you know, like. Like, I shouldn't expect better from him. No, we should not. No, we should not. But she is, like, she's simpering. She's always apologizing for parts of her past, like, and things that he is allowed to and was allowed to do. She feels bad about for herself. It's just gross. I hate it. It's like a thing, the way she is. Yeah, a lot of it's gross. Okay, how about the best character in the book?
- [68:39]
B
The best character. So I had a hard time with the best character because I was just like, everyone's kind of awful in a little bit of ways. I settled on Shareese, but even then I was just like, isn't she kind of awful? Like, she. We learned that she's fully aware of the fact that her husband, who she has three children with, is in love with another woman. Granted, she doesn't, as far as we know, know that they have had sex.
- [69:01]
A
One and a half times have ever acted on it. Yeah.
- [69:03]
B
And she's just, like, okay with that. And I'm just like, yeah. But, like, I. I can't. I don't know, like, of. Of the characters that we had. I mean, she's not overtly awful like the rest of them are. So that's why I settled it. I also wrote Kimmy, question mark. Like, Kimmy's great.
- [69:18]
A
Oh, see, I do like Kimmy. Yeah, See, and I. I landed on Ben. Yeah. Ben was great, too, because he's smart and he's loyal and he's constantly working. Like he's such a tiny side character. But helping. He's trying to help Henry. He calls him on his shit. He tells him, like, this isn't a good idea. I love the final scene that they have together at the New Year's Eve party. That's. For me, that was such a loss that, like, that scene is why. It's such a loss that he was eliminated from the movie entirely because Henry is so adamant that he will never reveal anybody's future to them. But he gives Ben this tiny gift for helping him for all these many years, and I just think that's so special. Like, that was the part that got me closest to crying in this book is that small conversation between Henry and Ben. So I loved him. Yeah.
- [70:09]
B
But he was like, that's what we have to go to. Like, that small, tiny character I know.
- [70:13]
A
Like somebody that was in there for like a page and a half of 536 pages.
- [70:17]
B
What does that tell you?
- [70:19]
A
That's terrible. Okay, we are in our book flick energy section. We are going to score the book and the movie. So first we're going to talk about the book. I will give some stats because ours are going to diverge. So on Goodreads, this book has an even 4.00 out of 5 stars with 1,852,000 ratings. Like, this is not like, a few people said it was great.
- [70:46]
B
Yeah. And to be fair, Katie, when you look back at your Goodreads, what did you have it ranked at or rated as?
- [70:52]
A
Yes, I did originally give this book four stars on Goodreads. I did join after I read it, and that was part of my quick rating binge. When I joined in 2009, I did not give it four stars this time.
- [71:05]
B
When we had picked this book to do. We had both read this previously. I don't know. I can't remember seeing this movie. You couldn't remember it until the very end. But we didn't think of it poorly. I remembered this book fondly. I didn't. I don't know if it was just a different time for us because, like, I mean, obviously you did as well.
- [71:26]
A
Well, and so many people on that thread in the bookish friends said, I loved this so much when I read it in the past tense. And so many said, I don't know if I would read it again. And the people who had a lot of them said, while there were a very few number of people who said, I have reread it, I still love it. It's just. It was. Of Those, like almost 100 comments, there were like maybe two. It wasn't. It was not very many. So.
- [71:58]
B
Yeah.
- [71:59]
A
So, Shad, where are you landing with your rating for this read of the Time Traveler's Wife?
- [72:06]
B
For me, I gave it a one I think is fair. Why? Is that bad?
- [72:12]
A
No, that's amazing. I love that you haven't given a one to anything, right?
- [72:15]
B
No.
- [72:15]
A
There's not been anything else that you, like, hated?
- [72:18]
B
No, I don't think so.
- [72:19]
A
I. Well, okay, so Shad notoriously rates A, lower than I do, but B, he's never given anything five stars because he feels like those books don't exist.
- [72:30]
B
No, they do. We just have not done them yet.
- [72:32]
A
We just haven't done any of them. Not even Jurassic Park? Not even Red, White and Royal Blue? It's fine. Whatever. I landed because storygraph allows quarter stars. I went with 2.25.
- [72:44]
B
Wait, are we. Is that even an option for us? Are we.
- [72:49]
A
I can round down to two. Like, two can. It can be two. I really hated it.
- [72:55]
B
What's a one for you? Like, what would be a one? Like, I did not finish a one.
- [72:59]
A
No. I don't rate books that I did not finish. A one would be. And really, we were close, so maybe it should be a one. Like, physically throwing it against the wall and just being. Just angry every time I picked it up. The. The thing that bumps it up to a 2 from the lowest rating is that it was 536 pages. I'm gonna say it many times. Yeah, but just, like, remember when we had the population of. Of Iceland, and we, like. We were like, there's gonna be a quiz after 536 pages, guys. Okay, so it did feel long. It felt long, but it wasn't, like, hard to read. It wasn't like a slog to read it. It was like, okay, I'm moving through, like, every time I picked it up to read it, I could easily get through 40 to 50 pages without feeling like I spent two hours getting through 40 to 50 pages.
- [73:53]
B
To be fair, when she would start going off, like, when she was talking about, like, where they were driving, and it was like, oh, we took this road. I was like, I could just skip entire sections of the book. So, like, yeah, it was easier to read because I literally skipped 10% of it.
- [74:05]
A
She did really want us to know about her, like, extensive knowledge of the.
- [74:08]
B
Chicago area and then also, like, papermaking when she would get into those. I mean, there was literal sections. I was just. I could skip to the next paragraph, and it's just like, okay, we'll skip again. And I don't feel like I missed anything.
- [74:18]
A
Yeah, all that stuff she put in her blender, I was like, how are you gonna make margaritas, girl? Like, it's really bad. Yeah, I hated. I hated a lot of it. I thought nearly every character was deeply unlikable. And I'm sure it was that younger Katie, I don't know, maybe had easier access to her emotions. I was sure. I was like, you know, I'm hating this so far. I'm sure I'm still gonna cry at the end. I did not cry. I just wanted it to be over. I like that catharsis, but, well, it's. I mean, it's sad to lose your feet. It's sad to die in your lover's arms on New Year's Eve, like, those are sad things objectively, but they just didn't have the emotional punch that I wanted.
- [75:02]
B
Yeah, because we weren't invested to into like, them as characters.
- [75:05]
A
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I just wanted Claire to be able to go live her damn life. And then she finds that letter in the drawer. Yeah, no, that we know she's not doing that.
- [75:14]
B
I forgot that we haven't talked about that part yet. Where he literally writes her this letter after her death and tells her in it, like, you're free now. Like, you don't have to be waiting for me anymore. Like, I don't want to think about you having to wait for me anymore. Oh, by the way, I see you when you're old. Okay.
- [75:29]
A
By the way, I'm going to be back when you're old.
- [75:31]
B
You know, sometimes between now and I don't know when. So I guess just live your life until then. No, like, what? She's absolutely going to be waiting for you still. I forgot about how mad that made me.
- [75:42]
A
How did I forget about that? Okay, how about the movie? Here's some good news on Rotten Tomatoes. This has a 38% critics score on the tomatometer. The popcorn meter, which is the audience score, is a. Is a 59%. It's mostly hated. Strangely, on IMDb it got 7 out of 10 stars. So I don't know. I don't know what happened there.
- [76:07]
B
Nobody knows.
- [76:08]
A
Movie was not good either. Where are you going to rate it? I didn't even put a rating on here, you guys.
- [76:14]
B
Wow.
- [76:15]
A
This is out of ten.
- [76:16]
B
It's a four.
- [76:19]
A
Oh, I was just about to type a three three into my notes. Okay, well, hey, I finally rated something lower than you. Yeah, actually, I feel like that has happened with movies. It just doesn't happen with books. I'm gonna give it a three. I stick with it.
- [76:35]
B
First, Rachel McAdams. Love. We had Eric Banabut. Great. I mean, there was some things that were not horrible.
- [76:42]
A
Okay, okay. It lacked all the emotionally resonant stories from the book. It lacked to any and all emotional depth to their relationship. Makes it. Makes it look like. Because there's no depth, it makes it look like she agrees to marry him because she knows she's going to.
- [76:58]
B
Yeah.
- [76:59]
A
None of that says love to me. This is not a love story. It's a horror movie. I'm gonna beat this drum twice.
- [77:07]
B
Sci fi, Tragedy.
- [77:10]
A
Sci fi, Tragedy. Horror. Okay, well, that was delightful. Everything about that was delightful. We had so many words about that. We do have our leftover kernel at the end of the episode where we get to ask a question of the other person. Hopefully this adds a little fun and levity.
- [77:26]
B
Oh, mine's a little deeper.
- [77:28]
A
Actually, mine's not very fun. Just kidding. Scratch that. No fun, no levity. We hate this. Okay, great, great. Shad, what is your question?
- [77:40]
B
Mine is how much do you believe in fate and free will?
- [77:44]
A
Oh, gosh. I.
- [77:47]
B
What do you think?
- [77:48]
A
This is not. This is not like a quantifiable answer. I believe in. In free will. I don't think that there is a story that's already been written for all of us and that we just have to play the role and act it out the way that it's been written. And I'm also a Christian and there's all this predestination stuff in the Bible, depending on which version of Christianity you are a member of. Subscribe. And I just don't. Yeah, I was gonna say subscribe. That felt weird too. I just don't think that's true. I think that we all get to live our own story. So I don't know. What about you? Like, do you think we were fated to meet each other?
- [78:36]
B
I think that there are events in your life that are faded and I think that there are things that are like the non consequential stuff can just be like. And so it's like, I think there's like a line and you can deviate from it a little bit. But like, I don't think you can like branch off. I think that like a lot of things in your life are already decided for you.
- [78:57]
A
Decided by whom?
- [78:58]
B
I don't know, because I don't. I'm not a huge like, man in the sky sort of person.
- [79:03]
A
Interesting. So I believe in the man in the sky and I don't believe in the line that you can't deviate from. And you don't. And you do believe in the line. Interesting.
- [79:12]
B
This is why we're great together.
- [79:13]
A
Where's the Venn diagram of that? Okay, well, first I went like, kind of like deep. Reveal your secrets. And I was like, oh, let's not do that. So let's pretend. If you time traveled to pivotal events in your own past, where do you think you would show up over and over again? But I'm like, gosh, am I going to be like, please reveal your trauma?
- [79:32]
B
And then I said, no, you're going.
- [79:33]
A
To have to think of another question, Katie. Okay, so new question. Let's pretend you met a guy who had a story like Henry's, one that makes him seem legit insane, right? He tells you he has superpowers or he time travels or he can teleport things with his mind, but he shows you that he can do it. Oh, are you gonna date him or do you run the other way?
- [79:53]
B
How old am I?
- [79:55]
A
You're an adult.
- [79:56]
B
Well, a 20 year old me and a 40 year old me are very different people.
- [80:00]
A
Okay, well you choose then.
- [80:03]
B
20 year old me would probably. I think 40 year old me is just not in the mood for any of time for that.
- [80:11]
A
You're like, listen, I, I don't have time for nausea.
- [80:14]
B
I've got two cats and a job that where I work from home. I'm good. Like, save that drama for someone up. But then, But I have that choice if it's already been foretold.
- [80:22]
A
I know it's been written in the stars.
- [80:26]
B
We can't change the future. So that's only if it's a time traveler like you said there was other examples there.
- [80:32]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We could have some other kind of superpower, like if he could fly maybe.
- [80:37]
B
Yeah, well, we've already talked about. I'm not like a happily ever after, lovey sort of person. I was back then, so like in 20s I'd have been like, yeah, this is great, we're gonna end up together forever. And now I. It's like, well, what, what is this direct? How is this directly affecting my life? Is it. If it's a good way, sure, you can stick around.
- [80:52]
A
Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work.
- [80:53]
B
If it sounds like a lot of work, I'm good.
- [80:55]
A
You know what if he used his teleportation to travel into a bank vault?
- [81:01]
B
See, like if we have a direct benefit on my life, great, I'm all for it. I can put up with some in order to live a better life.
- [81:10]
A
This is like the heated reality I.
- [81:13]
B
Am at this point. Listen, what about you?
- [81:16]
A
I have four.
- [81:17]
B
What you're asking is like, are you still a romantic? I think that the root of this question maybe.
- [81:22]
A
I have four children. That's not happening. I would be like, okay, but are you gonna be back in time for dinner? Like, do I have to come up with dinner tonight or what's the plan here?
- [81:31]
B
We have kids in baseball, so yeah.
- [81:35]
A
There'S like at least three baseball games this week. Like, are you gonna be around or what's going on? Like, I think I would just be super annoyed.
- [81:42]
B
You don't need them to be around because you handle all that on your own. It would just be.
- [81:45]
A
I do handle all of it on my own. But it feels like another child. Like, it feels like more things to manage. And I already have so many people's things to manage.
- [81:54]
B
Yeah, see? And I have no things, nobody's things to manage. And I like that. I don't want to have to take on your. Yours is because you already have too many. Mine is because I don't need it and I don't have it, and I'm not going to add it to my life.
- [82:06]
A
All right, y', all, thanks for sticking with us. That was our discussion of the Time Traveler's Wife, both the book and the movie.
- [82:13]
B
We absolutely want to know how your opinions differ. If you agree with us, we definitely want to know that as well.
- [82:18]
A
I mean, you probably don't, but that's okay.
- [82:22]
B
You probably don't. And that's. That's fine. That's why we do this. Our next episode will focus on the Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osmond. Super excited for that. It's been on my Netflix to watch, and I'm like, I know we're gonna do it, and I can't yet. So it's gonna be a new experience as I just spoiled it. Is available on Netflix. It's the movie adaptation from 2025.
- [82:47]
A
Yes. But that episode probably won't come out until 2026, so it'll then be backlist. Very exciting. We hope you had a great time, even if you disagreed with us. Just letting you know that our show is produced and edited by Megan Putam Evans. She put up with a lot of nonsense here, folks, so go thank her on Instagram at most of Megan's readings.
- [83:07]
B
That's all behind the scenes, though. You don't get to just take our word for it.
- [83:10]
A
Yeah. That this episode went from right now an hour and 45 minutes to whatever you're actually listening to. So she did a great job.
- [83:17]
B
She did.
- [83:17]
A
If you want more bookish content, we'd love to have you join us every Monday for the currently reading podcast where I get to chat with Meredith Monday Schwartz to talk about everything we've been reading lately. You can find the show at currently reading podcast on Instagram. I am ootesandbookmarks and Meredith is at Meredith Monday Schwartz over there as well.
- [83:35]
B
And for me, you can find me in my house with my two cats working from home, as we've already discussed. But online, you can find me in the bookish friends group on Facebook.
- [83:44]
A
We can't wait to hear what you thought and to chat with you next time on Popcorn in the Pages. Until then, may your popcorn, be hot.
- [83:51]
B
And salty, and your book would be better than the movie.
- [83:54]
A
Happy reading, Shad.
- [83:56]
B
Happy watching, Katie.