The Wizard of Speed and Time

You’re not alone if you’ve never heard of The Wizard of Speed and Time. This low-budget independent effects opus was in jeopardy of even seeing the end of its problem-plagued shoot. After barely surviving the kind of four and a half year production nightmare usually reserved for Terry Gilliam pictures, it was salvaged virtually single-handedly by its first time director, who then could only watch helplessly as it was doomed to obscurity by Universal’s The Wizard, also released in 1989. That unfortunately-titled (and far inferior) feature-length Nintendo commercial overshadowed what would have been the world’s formal introduction to fx wunderkind and eccentric iconoclast, Mike Jittlov.

The plot is a fairly routine portrayal of a little-guy-verses-the-corrupt-system, but what makes this movie really stand out is its relentless celebration of the creative spirit. The film’s frames are overflowing with inventive tributes to the joy of self-expression, and must have been a labor of love for director, star, and cult hero Mike “The Wizard? Jittlov. It’s easy to see why Sam Raimi and the Brothers Coen worshipped him as a god in the Church of Cinematology, this guy’s seemingly inexhaustible energy and resourcefulness are evident throughout, and his do-it-yourself-mentality is indy filmmaking personified. Making Robert Rodriguez look like a slacker, Jittlov not only acted as writer, director, star, co-producer, composer, and editor, he claims to have set a record for most jobs worked by a single man on a feature production, which approached (according to him) over two hundred positions, including casting, doing his own stunts (of which there are quite a few dangerous ones), and personally creating every special effect in the movie, which was made prior to the advent of computer generated imagery. Ever the renegade innovator, his hyperkinetic stylistic flourishes make today’s MTV’s editing look downright glacial at times: he meticulously packs each scene with superimpositions, rear projection, motion control, robotics, subliminal messages, claymation, time lapse, life-size stop motion, lip-sync pixilation, hand-drawn animation, rotoscope, kinestasis, and practically every other conceivable violence that can be committed to film stock. Aside from these blink-and-you-miss-it optical effects, a few of which he demonstrates how to do, he even pulls off a Houdini-worthy act in a swimming pool that will have you wondering to yourself “How the hell did he do that?” yet again.

The movie is based on a short film of the same name that Jittlov made while taking his first animation class at UCLA. His teachers were so impressed that they entered it into the 1969 Academy Awards, where it was a finalist. The story picks up with a starving visual effects artist as he tries unsuccessfully to peddle his demo reel around to various disinterested Hollywood moguls, so he can help chip in with mom’s rent money (Mom: “Did you find a job today?” Mike: “Almost, I sold my car,”). He gets what could be his big break when a dream job comes his way via fraudulent producer Lucky Straeker (in a surprisingly effective turn by Steve Brodie, probably because he was a fraudulent producer in real life- in fact, in the movie a real-life actress plays an actress, and a low-budget director plays a low-budget director). Predictably, the gig turns out too good to be true when Mike discovers that he was hired only to win a bet, but he delivers a movie anyway. The plot’s curious parallels to Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure extend a bit further - both Tim Burton and Mike Jittlov were former Disney animators who split to finance their own directorial debuts. However, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure enjoyed more than a three print-distribution in the North American market, which was all that was afforded The Wizard of Speed and Time, further cementing the underground status of this lost gem.

The film is by no means perfect - the redundant satire of the hypocrisy and absurdity of Hollywood unions, which is obviously cathartic and born out of personal experience - becomes a bit heavy handed (but then if Hollywood could make this happy-go-lucky guy a cynic, then damn.) The characters are also generally broad and two-dimensional, which may or may not be a side-effect of studio rewrites. And the whole thing is more than a bit self-indulgent (but then again so was Adaptation, which turned out to be an advantage). Ultimately, though, it might seem that given its limited release, which was evidently sabotaged by Brodie, the producer-playing-a-producer (sweet irony!), The Wizard of Speed and Time failed to live up to its own idealism. Yet despite Jittlov’s valiant efforts to fight off the studio’s attempts to abort his baby, only to have it yanked from his hands and thrown out the hospital window after birth, The Wizard of Speed and Time is a survivor. It transcends its low budget and wins the moral victory by remaining a technical and emotional triumph, each of its hundreds of throw-away slapstick gags and infectiously silly songs an ode to the underappreciated effects guys who give Hollywood its sparkle. So say what you will about his film, but it’s hard to deny that would-be auteur Jittlov is an inspiration to the struggling artist in each of us.

-Andy Gately, Dec. ‘04