Time Travel With Michael J Fox Documentary (VHS Capture)

[Music] [Music] [Music] carrying us into the future one second after another and on and on and on and this is a time machine - designed by writer HG Wells to transport us to a very frightening future and for magic right into a happier path there's this time machine over here something very top-secret something built today to recapture yesterday or explore tomorrow whichever you choose [Music] is there really such thing as a time machine we can just hop into roll-off through the cosmic calendar in any direction no well not yet maybe next year maybe in a thousand years no one knows but what if we had one right here now imagine all the amazing things are waiting for us out there between all the ticks and tocks of time [Music] [Music] hi I'm Michael J Fox for the next one twenty-fourth of a day for the next 3600 seconds for the next 60 minutes for the next exciting hour you and I are going to go time-traveling together we'll turn the pages of some timeless literature and will we live some famous clock stopping moments from the movies too in the hour ahead we'll examine what time is how we measure it and why a genius named Albert Einstein changed our whole concept of it everyone looks up to Einstein and no one understands them we'll talk time travel with science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury and Robert Silverberg a small change in the past might have colossal consequences in the future before we're done we'll travel near the speed of light to slow time down and plunge into the theory that black holes in space might be used as gateways to other universes and other times there's nothing in the theory to tell us that we couldn't in fact then travel in time that's what that space and time inside the black hole does it provides trips if you like to funny places you meet dr. Edwin Crump from the Griffith Observatory and astronomer Carl Sagan and the imaginative movie makers behind the newest time-traveling science fantasy action comedy adventure Back to the Future executive producer Steven Spielberg and director Robert Zemeckis I hope they don't think it's a movie about clocks maybe we've about time well the last what was left possibly would have made a profit and who knows I just have enough time left after all that to sneak a peek at what's really under here sound interesting [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] it's all wood every day time is it only goes one way toward the future kind of slow at that bad news for anyone who's inching to get moving and travel to where we're headed or to where we've been if only there were a machine that could kick the clock into high gear if only there were a couple of knobs to turn our buttons to push so we could speed up time in any direction we want it anything wrong was away that caffeine mr. Peabody merely changing the fan belt driven I guess we won't be going back into history dan hurt on the contrary my boy but also today the Senate Paris in the year 1874 was all due respect to mr. Peabody & Sherman fans a clever dog was not the first genius to create a time machine that distinction belongs to a clever man HG Wells the famous British writer way back in the 1890s well short story The Time Machine sparked the imagination of readers and other writers too HG Wells is I'm certainly the true father of modern science fiction I think if HG Wells hadn't existed one heck of a lot of other time machines would never have been invented you too and IQ fascinating well is it there's only a small experimental market carry a man a larger it is unique carry on man we're in the pasture of the future this is a time machine in the story wells Hiro is surrounded by friends who refuse to believe he's invented a time machine I think he's kidding George is playing crazy even though he sends a test model into the future right before their very eyes what amazing places does HG Wells take us to on his machine you'll see for yourself a little later on but before we time travel anywhere we've got to understand what time is no that's not as easy or as obvious as it sounds time is all around us every second of every day we literally live our lives by and yet we can't see it we can't touch it and truth be known we can't even comprehend it except in the simplest symbolic terms we speak of time as though it's something real the kind of thing that you can package and promote and put out in some kind of physical way but in fact time it is really an abstraction at the concept it's an idea that our brains use in order to do something much more fundamental and that is deal with the real things that confront us those are events it's events that we find happening around us and we organize those events in sequence according to a principle that we happen to call time I think of time gentlemen I'm referring to the fourth dimension if you don't mind George would you refresh me on the on the fifth three dimensions suppose you explain it doctor Oh suddenly well example when I move in a straight line forward or backward that's one dimension and when I moved to the left or right two dimensions and when I move up or down three dimensions guess what is the fourth dimension no well that's it no that's me a theory no one really knows what the fourth dimension is or even let it exist if time truly is the unseen fourth dimension then when did it begin many scientists say time started with the Big Bang the awesome explosion that created the universe billions of years ago that's a lot of history to look back on which is exactly what we do when we gaze into the nighttime sky everything we see up there is a delayed image from the past it takes a second for light to go 186,000 miles so clearly it takes light some time to get here from anywhere the farther away things are in fact we're looking farther back in time so I think the Andromeda galaxy we're seeing that as it looked 2 million years ago we see the Sun as it looked eight minutes ago and the moon about a second and a third ago so an instantaneous view that we have of the entire universe of the nighttime sky is really a collection of all these objects that wants all at different distances and therefore all at different times what is time what is time time is amount that is what to teach everything from happening all with one okay so the concept of what time is can really be a mind-blower and no one can truly define or describe it for measuring time I sort of exploit although it did take a thousand years to get our timekeeping act together which thing we did with our clocks without lectures we couldn't have evolved at all as we we would collide with each other this man has no time keeping everything would happen all at once we plant crops in the middle of the dry season and we go hungry we've all died out somewhere about a million and a half years ago before the dawn of civilization primitive man's first timepieces where the Sun and the moon in the very earth itself I tell you I have the vision sometimes of something that looks an awful lot like a chimp you know just watching the moon go up there it goes once again there it goes once again and somewhere deep in the human past somebody noticed for the first time that event follows event follows event and that there is pattern and order and cycle met challengers came first to mark the seasons for planting for harvest for religious rights then clocks came clanging along in the 14th century and set the gate for human progress as we got more complexed so today one thing though as good as our modern clocks are they can never ever be absolutely correct that's because time itself is an absolutely consonant changes in the strangest ways a man named Albert Einstein make sure that I am talking about traveling through time in a machine constructed for that study cup if the notion of traveling through time and machine seems impossible to you to stop and think for a moment I think I've always come traveling through space and machines we said probes pass Saturn's rings and on to distant stars we've worked in orbit above the earth setting the stage for men exploration of the solar system we've even left our footprints and tire tracks in the dust of the lunar landscape now just imagine how impossible all of that would have seen 80 odd years ago when movie audiences that wide-eyed watching a movie called journey to the moon [Music] at the same time moviegoers were wrestling with far-fetched ideas of space travel a young German math whiz was already leaping lightyears ahead toward time travel he was Albert Einstein and his special theory of relativity completely changed our view of how time works if you leave Earth at the speed of light he said if you race out into space near 186,000 miles per second and time will slow down for you not just a little but a lot they journey to another star conducted at a speed just below the speed of light would seem to those on board to be taking only a week or two or a month while in fact anywhere from four to five thousand years may be going by and what did Einstein have to say about traveling at or beyond the speed of light would it stop time throw it in reverse no way said be good doctor nothing can go faster than light it's not as though some police officer has put up a sign and said you know speed limit 186,000 miles a second the reason that we say you can't go faster than the speed of light we don't see anything going faster than the speed of light and we look and you look all over the place for things that could possibly exceed the speed of light and so experimentally we don't find anything Einstein's special theory of relativity only permits time travel into the future but what about going backward as well as forward well some scientists believe the two-way time travel is possible inside one of the greatest mysteries of the universe inside black holes nobody's ever seen a black hole but evidence is they do exist there's stars but it burned themselves out and collapsed inward to create a center so dense and gravity so strong that nothing can escape not even light now Siri says that a black hole might be like a cosmic drain sucking up whole chunks of our universe and shooting them through two other universes and other if we could figure out a way of moving into a particulars owned in this black hole and coming out again there's nothing in the theory to tell us that we couldn't in fact then travel in time that's what that space and time inside the black hole does it provides trips if you like to funny places clearly we're dealing with some very exotic physics and some very extreme circumstances and some technology that is well beyond anything that we can practically imagine now whether we use black holes someday or machines or whatever you know what I may have to wait a while before we can actually physically travel back and forth in time but that's okay because we already have another easier way to visit any part of time we like whatever we like no not inside this machine inside this one imagination I think there is no limit to the imaginative speculating mind that's the wonderful thing about really good science fiction that it takes you to the limits of the universe and beyond right on through our own bodies our time machines that carry us from one moment to the next but our minds can imagine times that are far in the future and times that are far in the past modern science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury Robert Silverberg and made time travel a permanent part of our literature but they were the first to journey in and out of the pages of time some of history's best authors have done their share of time traveling to like Washington Irving with Rip Van Winkle and Charles Dickens with his classic story a Christmas carol the time-travels of Ebenezer Scrooge can find on Christmas by his long dead partner Jacob Marley get ready for ghost Marley warns they're coming to show you the evils of your past present and future and the worldly mind do you believe in me or not completely right to question the drifting back in time to look at what happened in to see what mistakes were made that's essentially a science fictional concept I leave the side of the things that must be how the only shed is a ping decison [Music] in the end it's a ghostly visit to the dark future not the distant past it turns old Scrooge around one look at his own tombstone and suddenly it's mr. nice guy generous thankful to be alive worthy of a second chance in the world of the present spending ahead understand denied a peek at the future it's almost everybody's dream in Charles Dickens knew it it is all good fiction writers feel there's only one thing we ever talk about every day every hour of the day every minute of the day that's the future isn't it but you're going to have for lunch with the after dinner you meet a future who are you going to fall in love with who are you going to marry how many children you're going to have always in future that's all we ever talk about so no wonder science picture is important of all the writers who set our imaginations free to wander through time one still stands apart from all the others our old friend HG Wells and let's face it he gave us the original literary hardware back in 1895 and it hasn't worn out yet [Music] when Herbert George Wells first wrote the time machine he hated it he didn't like the style the concept or the characters so he did the whole story over again and in the process he gave human imagination a way to break through all the barriers of natural law right on into the fourth dimension of the mind but he is 14 15 16 and then suddenly the light was gone what had happened in the air of 1917 I stopped ha ha ha ha ha you look rather silly without your moustache old man you think Mesa silly it's Georgia well I'm up there I expected a little more enthusiastic agree ting I think you're confusing me with my father Sir yeah there was quite a resemblance when you friend of promise yes he was killed in the war a year ago I was I think 10 when I came upon this book and I had learned by then I wasn't going to live forever I was not going to see the 23rd century let alone the year 40 million wealth handed it all to me HG Wells view of the future was grim and the time machine reflected his hero crash-lands in the year 800,000 and finds that mankind has become a timid ignorant tribe the world is ruled from underground by ex avid cannibal monsters called Morlocks there's no happiness ahead for the human race said well none at all in the end it love the pretty picture depth immediately it was a revelation the book itself was a time machine and I wanted more of that I wanted to see everything I wanted to to visit the future if HG Wells hadn't existed one heck of a lot of other time machines would never have been invented I think each one of us as we grew older has tried to do a variation on his time machine in the turn of the 20th century yawn no one needed a crystal ball to predict that HG Wells writings would have a lasting impact on the world any came as no surprise when time travel in books soon let the time travel in the movies [Music] one of the most imaginative and appropriate films is time after time Malcolm McDowell is young HG Wells himself off to the future in his own time machine in fictional hot pursuit of Jack the Ripper it's an action thriller that finds wells 80 years out of think it's smack in the middle of a museum exhibit about himself I'm in control again honey man Jason come away he probably works here are you get away from that exhibit where do you think you are Disneyland huh what a charming idea at the young age Jiro actually has a time machine and uses it to come into our era and then of course to go chasing around after Jack the Ripper it was a all manner of things tied together beautifully how wonderful for HG Wells who have had a chance to see the 20th century of our time what what a glorious gift to him is that we could own the event Big Mac an order of fries small coke is ugly give me a Big Mac fried unti to go see come back with me yes back to 1893 during his stay HD falls for bank teller Mary Steenburgen lady far more liberated than anything he's used to I'm a 20th century woman I have a career and a mind of my own be reasonable I'm not going to make it in 1893 in 1946 Jimmy Stewart jumped in the time-travelling of a far different time in the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life the story of George Bailey a small-town banker facing jail save from suicide on Christmas Eve by Clarence is guardian angel yeah so you still Frank killing yourself would make everyone feel happier right I wish I'd never been born you mustn't say things like that you wait on it wait a minute that's an idea Clarence arranges for George to see the future as it would be if he'd never existed and of course everything is different the once sleepy little town is suddenly gone all wrong and it's warm hearted people have turned his coldest filling because without the good nature George around the world is a far less happier place to live in well Molly what do you want this is Georgia I thought sure you would remember me Georgia George Bailey's trip through time is only make-believe but the lesson you learn from it is as real as real life itself changes each man's life touches so many other life when he isn't around it leaves an awful hold at me these are powerful mythic concepts the notion of finding out what what had happened while we weren't looking what happened in places that we never could proceed we never will perceive as that questing notion of moving through the universe moving through space and time to see what we don't see before our noses there's just no limit to the fantasy ways movies used to travel through time sheer willpower and self-hypnosis through the trick for Christopher Reeve and somewhere in time geez Richard 1970s playwright in love with the picture of a 1912 actress Jane Seymour totally obsessed by her beauty Richard decides to project his mind back in time to meet her because he dresses the part and casts away all signs of present-day and he locks himself in a hotel room to think his way into the fourth dimension and into the arms of his long ago lady love thing I intend to commute already done the second day men buy you a new suit understand nobody seems like my suit how can you blame number women I think my terrific going back to 1912 is hard to do but staying there is even harder all it takes to break the magic time-traveling spell is an unexpected reminder of where our hero came from oh yeah this is the best part is a special coin Department for emerging [Music] we could [Music] Richard would have been much better off with a time machine and more reliable the except of course the one the Buster Keaton got stuck in his head during a side trip in a TVs Twilight Zone the helmet was supposed to take Buster to a quiet and restful destination in the future but instead don't zoom in a modern world it was too busy making progress then noise and pollution ever let anybody relax back to the drawing board Lester what kind of time machines are movie makers building to send audiences of the 80s into the fourth dimension this is it right here [Music] the movies called Back to the Future Hollywood's latest time-travel fantasy and comedy and action adventure all rolled into one the story of Marty McFly a 1985 teenager accidentally propelled back to 1955 where he winds up in high school with his parents before they were his parents when he writes science fiction stories get out of town I didn't know you did anything creative I just think the movie is so rich and story and also rich man sort of occurrence it's just got everything in it no it's like somebody brought a big dumpster with good ideas and backed it up and pour them all through my window back to the future to me is like the greatest leave of the beaver episode ever produced it's got all of those great beaver isms you know it's got all those great situations it is so much of an excursion into the ultimate imagination if Marty McFly looks kind of familiar you're right it's me back in the fourth dimension years before I was even born and how does our hero get to where he's going in time in this he was fantastic flashy four-wheeled time machine in the history of movies when they might even make HD wells green with envy in back to the future the time machine is a homemade brainchild of dark brown Marty McFly's eccentric adventure friends behind the scenes though in real life it's the modified DeLorean sports car the creative work of some of moviemaking best special effects people one of the large projects that we've had to do here for Back to the Future has been the DeLorean time machine we were provided with three DeLoreans and we immediately pour into them tearing them apart during the bridge decks altering the engines out changing the tires adding all sorts of electronic parts glowing bands of neon that dim and brighten we've got all sorts of LED readouts on it on the speedometer we've just a fire that comes out two tires we've got large exhaust that comes out the vents all this work is to provide a very interesting vehicle for the characters in the movie to go back and forth in time we thought if we can build a time machine it should be mobile so the obvious thing if you can fit it into would be to build it into a car seemed like a particularly American idea given our love affair with the automobile we went out and brought pots and junkyards and said that you know attach them to the car and that you're at looks go to back up a little I like to put them right here it's very important for us to have it look like dr. Brown actually built it in his own garage and that was the kid that I wanted to look homemade so when you see the time machine there's soldering weld marks on it wires are taped on stuff is just really kind of done together with spit and sealing wax which is the way real inventors throw things together the whole idea was to make Doc Brown's DeLorean look a little dangerous even though it really wasn't I mean we're talking movie magic here and blasting back thirty years through time is supposed to be a very serious risky business or is it okay here's what I want you to do now I want you to look like you're really nervous so you look out that way see Emily that's right that's right you're looking out there and your motivation is that you're about to go back in the time got that okay good okay here we go [Music] [Music] one of the trickiest things about making back to the future was recreating the same single town in two different decades thirty years apart it meant that a whole movie company had to transport itself and it's collective imagination through time in both directions at once so much has changed we start going back 30 years that it took a lot of construction and of course the obvious things like period cars and wardrobe and things like that but I think the fun in our movie is that you'll see everything in the 80s and you probably won't be paying a lot of attention to it and when you go back you'll see everything but it's all been changed you know we're 16:40 rivers you want to order something cute yeah you mean you mean have yeah I can't give you a tablet all the time like you may have test you free if you want to pepsi powder you're gonna pay for it why the movie without a period you know a period in history that before my time the sort of Ike subtly get educated by things and you say wow they didn't yeah I could say they really didn't have sweet and low and my God look at that you needed a bottle opener to open up a bottle of Pepsi you know and it was like that was the kind of thing that you forget about in that we're you know hopefully we'll repeat younger audience about and the older audience always sort of have a nostalgic sort of memory of that my job would be is to show to design the contrast into the show to show very strong differences between the 1985 look and the 1955 look because of weather will you do luggage details it takes a lot of time and a lot of experience last when the overall ambience is there it detentions the flavor and feel of the period the fire since all Your Majesty this aside and bring us at the heart of Back to the Future is the old and bewildering question and that is if we can go back in time can we also change the shape of things to come once we get there I just bring back my entire crime my god suppose the modern US Navy aircraft carriers even into a strange magnetic storm and suppose that storm sent the carrier back in time back to December 1941 directly into the path of the Japanese fleet on its way to attack Pearl Harbor now if you were the skipper would you think the Japanese and completely change history or would you move aside and let Pearl Harbor happen right on schedule that's the classic time-traveling dilemma Kirk Douglas James Farentino and Martin Sheen confront in the sci-fi adventure movie the final countdown every man on this ship knows that we have radar and visual contact with the Japanese fleet approaching Pearl Harbor on December the 6th 1941 now what do we do about it skipper what we do about it is blow them out of the water the USS Nimitz declares war on the Japanese Empire that's what we've been doing but they have an attack Pearl hour yet the only evidence we have that they intend to is in the history books it opens up some amazing possibilities into the firepower of the USS Nimitz back in 1941 what kind of possibilities mr. Weisman possibilities for the future mr. arms think of is history in the next 4 years could a time traveler really alter history either on purpose or somehow by mistake well that's a question is puzzled scientists writers and movie makers for a long time astronomer Carl Sagan recently showed us just how hard the answer is to come by on his TV series cosmos we traveling for the future although slowly all the time but what about the past could we journey into yesterday many physicists think that this is fundamentally impossible that there is no way we could build a device which would carry us backwards into time some say but even if we were to build such a device if we can do as much good we couldn't significantly affect the past for example suppose you travelled into the past and somehow or other prevented your own parents from meeting why then you would probably never have been born which is something of a contradiction isn't it since you're clearly there talk to a kid in Back to the Future Marty McFly faces dr. Sagan of time paradox making sure his parents get together in high school in 1955 so that he himself will be around come 1985 so we get lucky we all right I'd like to meet my good friend George McFly I surely a pleasure to meet you how's your hair good why oh I'm still worried about you I was 15 then off the other night I okay [Music] . she didn't even look at boss Jerry applause apparently our mother apparently is saturated with you instead of your father whoa wait a minute are you trying to tell me that my mother has got the hots for me precisely small change in the past might have collateral consequences in the future and the time' shades in parable sharing the small changes leading to great changes through tinkering and passes valuable thing for us to and to know and to ponder your brother Harry Bailey broke through the iron was ground at the age of nine I saw why Harry Bailey went to war he got the Congressional Medal of Honor he played the lives of every man on that transport every man on that transport died Harry wasn't there to save them because you wouldn't dare to take hurry you see Jordan you really had a wonderful life if you see what a mistake it would be to throw away a movie version of Mark Twain Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court a little tampering with the past save some valuable heads for the future Hank the time traveller played by Bing Crosby has been sentenced to execution and so was King Arthur but being in the king aren't dead yet not as long as they've got a Farmers Almanac from Hanks home base in time the early 20th century suppose you thought would expected another miracle for my brother London take an awful big stunt to get us out of this I think it's about the biggest well if I remember right what day is this 21st day of June in the year 528 I think then I have your miracle now listen all of you unless the King and I and the rest of these prisoners are free to mediately I shall blot out the Sun and it will never shine again all right very well you asked for it then now with a few well-chosen words I shall sing for me it's obviously everyone's fantasy to say boy if I could go back in time I could really rule the world I know everything that was going to happen and I could do anything I want I could set myself up as a God knowing what history is before it happens can go a long long way towards saving your skin when you travel through time and back to the future prove them in 1985 monument slide takes this skateboard for granted but when bullies are out to beat them up thirty years earlier it's a different story skateboards don't even exist yet until Marty discovers he better invent works in fast [Music] Oh [Music] you [Music] we're a pretty smart bunch we human being we've learned how to cross space with our math and our engineering and slowly but surely we're learning how to move across time as well first with our minds our imaginations our books our movies and our dreams the ones we share with the HD Wells and Einsteins of the world dreams that might one day give us a real machine to tame the fourth dimension and all the dimensions beyond it of course it doesn't much matter how we travel through times as long as we do it to keep the past present and future and proper perspective and what will we find on the other side of the time barrier nothing much the most incredible adventures you could possibly imagine that's all and all the time in the world to live hey I had to know [Music] Oh [Music] we coming back [Music] [Music]

Channel: 2ombieboy's VHS Vault

Views: 153,255

Rating: 4.9215117 out of 5

Keywords: delorean, time travel, 1980s, sifi, Michael J Fox, H. G. Wells, vhs, betamax, vintage, retro, blackhole

Id: AHVLVyG8re4

Length: 44min 7sec (2647 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 21 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

This is heavy stuff.