You travel back in time and kill your grandfather before your parent is conceived. That means you were never born. But if you were never born, how could you have travelled back in time to kill him? Terminally bored scientific genius Tim Travers sets out to solve the time traveller’s paradox by building a time machine and attempting to kill his younger self. The result? A chaotic, brain-bending sci-fi comedy that keeps you guessing the ultimate fate of Tim until the very last minute. Writer/director/actor Stimson Snead sits down with STARBURST to discuss Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox…
STARBURST: What first drew you to the idea of a character travelling back in time and confronting their younger self?
Stimson Snead: I actually came at it by accident. I’d watched another time-travel movie and really didn’t like it, because I felt it was focusing on all the wrong things. It ignored the ideas that I personally find interesting. One of those ideas is very simple: what happens if you kill your younger self? That’s a real thought experiment in physics – the time traveller’s paradox. So I decided to build the entire narrative around that single question. There’s a lot of interesting stuff about time travel, but the depressing reality is that the interesting stuff is exactly why time travel doesn’t work, can’t work, and probably never will. Which is terrible news for the sci-fi nerd in me – but the upside is that I get to write fiction about it.
The film opens with a character so convinced of his own brilliance that he ignores every warning. Was Tim conceived as a satire on genius?
No, I originally conceived Tim as a role I thought I’d be great at! My ego was such that, while writing it, I thought, Who’s the most brilliant man who ever lived? Well, obviously… me. But thankfully, I came to my senses and found the absolutely amazing Samuel Dunning instead. Another idea behind Tim as a character is that people are always telling you your character has to be sympathetic. I’ve always been firmly against that philosophy. A character needs to be entertaining—they don’t actually need to be good, or even particularly likeable. Tim is an awful human being, but if he can learn to embrace himself, then anyone can. There’s a strong moral to be had there.
There’s a strong whiff of nihilism beneath the film’s comedy. Ultimately, is it suggesting that free will is just an illusion?
I am definitely not saying that. If anything, the film speaks to the contrary. Without getting too far into spoilers, you actually see more than one version of this character, and it only takes a few hours for each of these versions to become fairly distinct individuals. I’ve always pushed back on the idea of free will being an illusion. It’s one of those philosophical questions I find fascinating, even if it’s completely untestable. Even if free will were an illusion, it’s still irrelevant – because from our subjective perspective, we still have to make choices. That’s why I’ve always thought the notion of free will as an illusion is kind of a moral cop-out, often used to excuse oneself, as if to say, “I’m not responsible for my actions.” But, well… you kind of still are.
If Tim Travers existed in another timeline – one where he never built the time machine – do you think he’d be happier, or just destructive in a more conventional way?
Oh no, I think he’d be extremely unhappy and just as destructive, but in a different, unconventional way. Tim is the kind of person who, if he didn’t find a way for a time machine to destroy him, he would invent something else. He’d never do the usual self-destructive things, like getting on social media – he would always find a creative way to utterly annihilate himself. One way or another, he’s going to find a way to do it.
At its core, is the film really about self-discovery and learning to love yourself?
Absolutely. It’s about learning to love yourself – even if you’re an absolute bastard.
Do you have any favourite memories from making the film?
Oh, tons of them. Danny Trejo was wonderful to work with – he was having so much fun. I was convinced I was going to get him killed. We were shooting his outdoor scene, and if you look closely at the ears of the actors around him, they’re all bright red because we were freezing to death. I was basically reading the Wikipedia entry in my head: “Idiot filmmaker kills beloved character actor Danny Trejo with frostbite!” I also loved working with Keith David, who played the Simulator. He’s a voice I grew up with. When he was asked to appear in the film, he called me, and I almost crashed the car because I didn’t realise it was him. The second he spoke, I recognised the voice, and it took me straight back to my childhood – Gargoyles, Disney, everything. But I have to say, the real hero of this production was Felicia Day, who plays Delilah. She’s been our strongest promoter and an incredible producer to work with. She’s a friend, an ally, and someone I can’t recommend highly enough. And then we have Samuel Dunning as Tim Travers. The list of things he had to do in this movie – and how far he had to push himself – is insane. I remember saying to the other producers, “If we don’t have Sam, we don’t have the movie.” There’s simply no other actor who could have played that role. He’d played the character in an earlier short version of the film, so we’d already seen him in action.
What other projects do you have lined up?
I’ve got several features that we’re shopping around right now, and we’re chasing funding. I’m working on a kids’ family film aimed at Hocus Pocus and Monster Squad lovers – a horror film for kids. Joel McHale is attached to it; he was also in Tim Travers. I’ve also got a documentary coming up. It focuses on the recent history of Claymation studios and what’s happening with the people trying to keep the art form alive. The film will look at figures such as the legendary Phil Tippett and the team behind Robot Chicken.
TIM TRAVERS AND THE TIME TRAVELER’S PARADOX is on digital platforms from January 26th.
