It's just such an
endlessly-Entertaining myth,
And it has a little bit
of modernized aesthetic to it.
But it really is just satisfying on
the level of "jack and the beanstalk"
Or Ulysses fighting
a Cyclops or something.
It's just sort of a bunch of
neat shit to happen to a kid.
Ray Bradbury once said that
Coming up with an idea is like
trying to behead the Medusa.
If you face the problem straight-On,
you get turned to stone.
But if you let it just kind of
sneak in by the corner of your eye,
You might just snag it.
That "back to the future" would be
considered a quote-Unquote classic.
It just was sort of one of those that
melted into the beauty and perfection.
Just... It was
that magic something.
This is gonna sound like hyperbole,
and I don't mean it to.
But it's almost a perfect movie.
It's a flawless film.
It's perfect.
You can't change a thing...
can't improve a thing on it. It's perfect.
It's a masterpiece.
There's really nothing like it.
This tone that they did,
The comedy,
the suspense, the drama...
you just care
about the characters.
It really is
kind of unparalleled.
It was beautifully cast.
It was beautifully directed,
beautifully written.
The writing and the acting
was so good,
And the editing was so good,
and the timing was so good.
Every thread that Bob gale laid down
to be picked up later got picked up.
They really cared
for that film so much,
And it's just
so very, very well-Written,
Well-Produced, well-Acted,
And, of course,
they picked the right song.
You got a booming soundtrack by
Huey Lewis and the news, okay?
You got a delorean
for crying out loud,
And you have these very defined,
quirky yet compelling characters.
Stir it all together in the soup.
Look what you got.
It really is, for me,
Inarguably the greatest time-Travel
movie ever put on film.
Bob Zemeckis and I had always
wanted to do a time-Travel movie
For years and years,
since the '70s,
And we'd never really been able to
figure out what the hook for it was.
We had tentatively titled it
"professor brown visits the future."
And that was
pretty much all we had.
Who knows if they've got
cotton underwear in the future?
We were never able to really come up with
anything every time we kicked it around
Until, uh, I was visiting my
parents in St. Louis, Missouri
Over the summer of 1980,
Came across my father's
high school yearbook.
My father had gone to the same
high school that I'd went to,
And I discovered he was the
president of his graduating class.
And I'm looking at this picture of my
dad looking very straight and serious.
"President mark gale."
And I'm thinking about the
president of my graduating class.
And I thought to myself, "gee, was my dad
one of these ra-ra, school spirit guys
"If I had gone to high school with my dad,
would I have been friends with him?"
Which one is your pop?
That's him.
Okay. Okay, you guys.
Very funny.
You guys are being real mature.
So when I came back
to California after that,
I'm telling Bob about this,
And he's loving it,
and he's thinking to himself,
"Yeah." Says, "what if your mom
went to the same high school?
"What if it turned out
she was, like, the school slut?"
Do you mind if I sit here?
No, fine. No, good.
It just started
going, and going, and going.
And pretty soon,
we had the germ of this idea
About a kid
who goes back in time
And ends up in high school
with his parents.
George, buddy,
Remember that girl
I introduced you to, Lorraine?
We eventually worked
the thing up into a pitch.
We were at Columbia pictures, because we'd
just made a movie called "used cars."
I'd produced their film
"used cars"
Over at Columbia with them.
I really believed in them
so much.
Bob Zemeckis brought me
a USC short film he had made
Just before I went off
to direct "jaws" in 1974.
It was called "field of honor."
Stop, or I'll shoot!
And I came back from "jaws,"
came back from that experience,
And we began hanging around,
and we were friends.
Bob gale, Bob Zemeckis, we used to go
shooting skeet and trap with John Milius.
And we were sort of... it was Milius,
and me, and gale, and Zemeckis,
And that was the team
for a long time.
Frank price,
the head of the studio, loved "used cars."
And he told us when we had our next idea,
please... he wanted to hear it first.
So we went in, and we pitched frank,
and frank got in immediately,
And Columbia hired us
to write "back to the future."
They pitched me
"back to the future,"
And I liked... I've always liked
science-Fiction.
So this was old home week.
I grew up on science-Fiction.
As a writer, you aspire
to write something like this.
You want everything to be the
"back to the future" screenplay.
You want everything set up
perfectly paid off.
You want every character to be complex,
three-Dimensional, compelling.
I think it's the best thing that I've
ever written. Along with bob, of course.
But even... it's...
you probably have one of
those in you in a lifetime.
Columbia had been
extremely successful
Between 1978, when I went there,
And this is now 1982.
"Blue lagoon" turned out
a huge hit.
"Kramer" was a huge hit.
We had "tootsie," "karate kid."
So coca-Cola bought Columbia,
And that was a huge revolution.
And there were some problems of fit,
though, once coke was there,
Because coke prided itself
on its marketing.
And I thought we did
very good marketing.
They started interfering
with our marketing.
We couldn't get an agreement on
how to run the movie operation,
So that's when I left behind
a lot of projects.
"Back to the future" breaks
as many rules as it follows.
I mean, it...
Marty McFly is
a flawless protagonist.
He doesn't learn a damn thing.
He has no unconscious wish
that he needs to fulfill
Except maybe if you count the idea that
he wishes his parents were cooler,
Which is a selfish, dumb thing
to wish for.
And it's not like he learns
a lesson through any of it.
He's just this willing hero that
charges across this threshold
And mucks things up
a little bit.
He's really nervous
that his mom is gonna,
You know, give him
a HJ in the parking lot.
Oh, you mean like how you're
supposed to act on a first date.
For a movie where the guy that
you're in the shoes of doesn't...
he doesn't have an arc.
And that's one of many things
about that movie that's like,
Oh, this, strictly speaking, according to
Robert McKee or a screenwriting class,
It shouldn't be
as satisfying as it is.
I mean, it's definitely not
a perfect movie.
There might even be
one or two shots in it
That are a little bit,
a hair out of focus.
You know,
so it's not a perfect movie.
But the screenplay
is really good.
I mean, that's really something that
they should study in film school.
I know people who
have been to USC film school,
And certain teachers use the script of
"back to the future"
As the perfect script.
It rides this
Razor's edge between an absurd
amount of exposition...
Good evening.
I'm Dr. Emmett brown.
I'm standing in a parking lot
at twin pines mall.
It's Saturday morning,
October 26, 1985, 1:18 a.m.
And this is
temporal experiment number one.
...And total immersification.
It's just bursting at the seams
with pipe.
The molecular structure of both Einstein
and the car are completely intact.
Where the hell are they?
The appropriate question is
when the hell are they?
You're being told so many facts for
the first quarter of that movie
Simply so that the sudoku
can complete itself.
This readout tells you
where you're going.
This one tells you
where you are.
This one tells you
where you were.
And that's a rule being broken.
It's not supposed to, uh,
be fair to do that to an audience.
I'm gonna make you
flying-Saucer shaped pancakes.
Oh, there's no need to do that, Beth.
Regular pancakes are fine.
Oh, my god!
What is happening?
"Rick and Morty" was
Justin Roiland's frustrated,
punk rock tantrum
That he was throwing after finishing
working on someone else's show.
He was spending a year
Having no control over the content
he was expected to invest in.
And he came off of that job,
and he just made,
In his opinion, the most kind of
sacrilegious thing he could do.
For him, the equivalent
of Mickey mouse Pluto.
But who cares about Mickey mouse
and Pluto in this generation?
I don't know if the writers know more than
they're telling... than is clear in the movie
About how this teenage guitarist ended up
hanging out with this bankrupt scientist.
People would start wondering, "gee, is doc
brown, like, a child molester or something?"
But back in the day,
nobody ever thought about that.
The infectious
character of Marty McFly,
And his positivity,
and his high spirits.
The crazy doc brown.
That two-hander
between McFly and brown,
That's like laurel and hardy.
That's like Abbott and Costello.
I mean, those guys
will go down in history
As the best two for one
since hope and Crosby.
So Zemeckis and gale really
found lightning in a bottle.
And lightning in a bottle, you know,
tends to stick around for a long time.
We took it around
to every studio in town,
And they would all say, "it's very nice.
It's very sweet.
"Why don't you guys
take it to Disney?"
"It's a time-Travel movie, and time-Travel
movies don't make any money."
Everybody said, "oh, you can't
make time-Travel movies.
Well, you just don't make bad
time-Travel movies. You make a good one.
So finally, after we
heard that about 15 or 20 times,
Bob and I kind of shrugged, said, "well,
what the hell? Let's take it to Disney."
So we submitted it to Disney.
We took a meeting over there.
And the exec at Disney,
we walk into his office,
And he looks at us
like we're completely insane.
He says, "are you guys nuts?
"We can't make this movie here.
We're Disney,
"And you guys have
written a movie about incest."
So, it was nice and sweet for
everybody else except Disney,
And for them, it was taboo.
Marty, I'm almost 18 years old.
It's not like
I've never parked before.
Lorraine McFly is
essentially in love with her own son,
Which I thought was hilarious.
And I always have had a kind
of subversive sense of humor.
So I definitely got it
when I got the part.
But I really loved
the crazy aspect of that.
She was just like... I mean,
I played her like a kitty cat in heat.
And I still think it's funny
that people think
I'm, like, so white bread,
and sweet, and cute
When I'm really known for a part
where I wanted to sleep with my son.
You know what I do
in those situations?
What?
Steven Spielberg
always liked it.
But we'd made three pictures
with Steven,
And none had made
any money at the box office.
So we were afraid if we did another
picture with Steven, and it tanked,
We'd never work again.
And Bob said,
"I gotta get a movie made that's mine,
"So that people understand that Bob Zemeckis
can make a movie without Steven Spielberg."
And after all the frustration of not
getting "back to the future" made,
Bob finally said, "I'm gonna take the next
decent script that gets submitted to me."
Zemeckis went off without me and had a
huge success with "romancing the stone."
Back off me, creep.
Just back off.
Oh. Oh, I'm the creep, huh?
Well, at least I'm honest.
I'm stealing this stone.
I'm not trying to
romance it out from under her.
Out of nowhere,
this phone call comes
From the music editor, tom Carlin,
who I had worked with on "C.H.I.P.S."
And he's doing this movie
called "romancing the stone"
With this guy named
Robert Zemeckis.
Introduced us on the phone.
A guy and a girl running through the
jungle. Raining, machetes, federali.
"Can you do, like,
three minutes of that
"And come in around
9:30 tomorrow morning?"
I put a little, quickie,
demo mock-Up together,
Went in, got the job.
It's a big, big hit.
Everybody wants his next picture.
The movie he wants to make the most is
"back to the future."
And he decides rather than make it with
any of his new, fair-Weather friends,
Who now wanna be in business
with him because he made a hit,
We should go back to the guy
who believed in it originally,
They came back, and they brought me the
script called "back to the future."
And they said, you know,
"We'd like you
to be involved in this.
"We think it's something
we really wanna do."
And I read it and loved it.
I mean, I couldn't believe what an
accomplished and fun piece of writing it was.
And it was different than anything
I'd ever seen in a movie theater.
The story was off-The-Wall,
And out-Of-Sight, and out-Of-The-Box,
and all those other terms.
And so, I brought it
to Sid Sheinberg,
And Sid loved it too and gave us the
financing to go off and make it.
So we got it set up
at universal.
And lo and behold, the guy who was in charge
of the studio at universal was frank price,
Who originally brought us on
to write it.
Guy McElwaine,
who had worked for me,
Who was now running Columbia,
I mentioned to him that
a project he had with peter Falk
Seemed a lot
like "double indemnity."
And he was committed
to making it.
Guy had his lawyers check it,
Read the script
and make comparisons.
And I got
an urgent call from him,
Saying, "my god, you're right.
It's 'double indemnity, '
As it turned out, universal owned
the rights to "double indemnity."
I came up with two projects
That, as I put it, I'd had them in
development, couldn't get them quite right,
But I know I'd like to
work on them more.
And one is the other project,
and the other one is "back to the future."
I knew guy. He would have been suspicious
if it was just "back to the future."
He agreed to the deal.
And I gave him the license
for "double indemnity,"
And he gave me the two properties,
one of which I didn't want,
But I got the one I wanted.
I originally was in a film
in the early '80s
Called "scared straight!
Another story," which was a CBS film.
What? That's funny?
Seeing James wreck up his hand?
Hey, he's demented.
And the casting director
was so impressed with my work
That they were casting
"back to the future,"
So they set up a meeting
for me to meet Bob Zemeckis.
I was
making a film in Mexico city,
And my agent, Bob durst, sent me the
script for "back to the future."
I had, at the same time,
received an offer to go back and do a play.
Which I was enthusiastic about.
Things weren't going that great,
And I thought
I should get back to my roots.
I always thought
I might wanna go to Hollywood.
But I said I'm never going to
Hollywood till they send for me.
And then, in 1984, when I was doing
"Glengarry glen Ross," David Mamet's play,
I got a script
from Robert Zemeckis,
And it was "back to the future."
And I say, "okay, well,
maybe this is my chance
"To go out to Hollywood
and see what's going on."
You've got a real attitude problem, McFly.
You're a slacker.
You're a slacker, McFly.
I always told myself I'd always
leave no stone unturned,
So I took another look
at the script,
Went back, met Bob Zemeckis,
and that was that.
It was very
hard for me to get commercials.
'Cause they always
used to tell me
That I would distract
from the product.
I had a callback
later that day for a commercial,
And I was more excited about the callback for
the commercial 'cause it was so unusual.
For some reason,
I just really got the characters.
You just never know. Sometimes,
characters just come to you really clearly.
It's terrible.
Girls these days,
Smoking pot, drinking booze.
Look more straight above the lens here,
so you're not looking down.
- Oh, I see.
- 'Cause the hair might shadow your face.
I went and met with bob,
You know, I never auditioned
or read anything.
He was just asking me questions,
And next thing you know,
I'm Goldie Wilson.
And one day,
I'm gonna be somebody.
That's right.
He's gonna be mayor.
Yeah, I'm gonna...
mayor!
Oh.
If I had a penny
For every time
I was asked to say,
"Mayor!"
Hey, you know what?
It made me almost famous.
You can write a great script,
and cast just a couple people wrong,
Or one person wrong,
and the whole thing will fall apart.
And, you know,
that kind of was the case.
I was lucky enough to be in movie called
"the wild life,"
And they were thinking about Eric Stoltz,
who was my boyfriend.
You're the one
who needed your freedom.
For you to start going out
with the entire male race.
I made a decision
that was based on, um,
You know, just the desire
to get the movie made.
And I was given an ultimatum
by the head of the studio
That if I didn't start the movie on a
specific day, they weren't gonna make it.
My first choice
for the part was unavailable
Because he was in a TV show.
So Eric is a really good actor,
And I made the decision
to put him in the movie,
But it turned out that
his instincts
And the type of comedy that we
were doing wasn't really gelling.
It became clear
as the picture progressed
That the humor just wasn't
working the way it should.
It is something
to recast at that point.
This was a terrific picture,
should be,
And it wasn't coming alive.
When we broke
for dinner at, like, 1:00 a.m.,
All the suits were there
and everything.
Bob Zemeckis made
an announcement.
God, if I was an actor for six
weeks on something, and I got...
you don't recover from that.
I, um...
didn't wanna believe
that it wasn't working,
So that's why
I kept shooting and shooting.
I was kind of
in denial about it.
And I had to ultimately
accept the truth.
It was very painful
for everybody.
They started to shoot
the movie without me,
And I didn't know
anything went on.
And then Gary called me into
his office one day and said
That they had
approached me originally,
And then they'd shot,
and they weren't happy with what they had,
And would I consider
doing it now?
He thought I could do it.
As long as I did the show in the daytime,
and the movie at night.
The minute Michael J. Fox
was in it,
It was clear a very good
decision had been made,
listen, I'll tell you everybody
would love to see the Eric Stoltz footage
That we did not destroy.
Someday,
that footage will be released.
So we can look forward to that.
They were really welcoming to me.
They were really great.
I mean, there was
some concern...
there were
practical realities...
there were scenes
where my coverage was shot,
Where the other actors
are reacting to Eric.
They'd shot the stuff already,
And so they went and inserted
my coverage into it.
So it's really strange.
I mean, it's...
we would do days of shooting just one piece
of coverage from previously-Filmed sequences.
So, that was kind of strange.
But then very quickly, it became
just the way it was supposed to be.
And I don't mean that in any
derogatory sense towards Eric.
Just in the sense that we hit a rhythm
that they were comfortable with,
I would wake up at 10:00 in the morning,
and go to "family ties,"
Then they'd pick me up after work
and take me out to universal,
And I'd work there until like
2:00, 3:00 in the morning,
And then I'd go back
and crawl into bed.
Where a teamster was coming,
turning on the shower, waking me up,
And hustling me
toward the shower,
And getting me in the car,
And I'd catch a nap
on the way into work.
It was pretty incredible,
but it was, um...
you really felt like you were doing
something cool. It was really energizing.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Hold it, fellas.
I'm afraid you're just
too darn loud.
I remember we were contacted by
Steven Spielberg, I think, first.
And we took a meeting,
my manager Bob brown and I,
With the two bobs and Steven.
And they said
they'd just written this film,
And this character, Marty McFly, his favorite
band would be Huey Lewis and the news.
So, "how would you like
to write a song for the film?"
I told them I was flattered, but I didn't
know how to write for film necessarily,
And I wasn't too chuffed with the idea of
writing a song called "back to the future."
"You don't have to call it 'back to the
future.' Call it whatever you want."
I said, "I'll tell you what. We'll just
go off and try and write something,
"And we'll send you the first thing
we write, send it down to you?"
I know it's been a few years.
I know it's been a few years.
But Hollywood finally called.
That's it. Your favorite group
is in the movie business.
What's going on in there?
- Music.
- What kind of music?
- Dancing.
- Rock and roll.
Huey.
This is the place!
And almost the first thing we wrote was
"power of..."
I remember it as being
the first thing we wrote.
Bob, I think,
remembers it differently.
But either the first
or second thing we wrote,
Sent it down
was "power of love."
I really didn't think it
was gonna work in the film so much.
'Cause it's tangential.
You know, "power of love," what does
that have to do with the plot at all?
The power of love
is a curious thing
But it turns out,
that works better in a way, you know,
Than a song written
specifically for the film.
Bob Zemeckis credits us
with the greatest rollout ever,
They released the song,
before this movie came out.
Because it took that long
to build the song.
So I think the week
that the film was released,
"Power of love" was on top.
So that was a real help
for the film in this country.
But then when the film
became such a smash,
And then it went international,
The film drove
the song internationally.
And so, from then on, it really opened up
all kinds of doors for us internationally.
The power of love
is a curious thing
We wanted
to take people back in time,
And music is really the ultimate
way to do that in our opinion.
Music is a time machine itself,
So we get to really, like,
exploit the whole time-Travel function
I think that's one of the main
ingredients of why we blew up so fast,
Is because we really hit that
emotional chord with people, you know.
And that's one of the common themes
I see throughout our shows is,
You know, we hit that emotion.
And having that reference
with "back to the future,"
"Back to the future,"
that gets that out of everybody.
After a little time went by,
We started getting into
the cosplay circuit
For comic cons, and comikaze, and all
the conventions that are going around.
We don't consider ourselves
cosplayers by any means,
But it's cool to be
a part of that world.
We did it
for the love of the film.
We didn't do it because we know
there was a world out there
With deloreans
and time machines.
We weren't aware of how big the
"back to the future" universe was.
So really quickly, we started
bumping into time machine owners.
And then don fullilove
came to one of our shows,
And he was digging it,
mayor Goldie Wilson.
And then we started
doing things with Claudia wells.
Last night, we had a rehearsal,
And mayor Goldie Wilson
stopped by with beef jerky
And just gave us beef jerky that
he picked up from a road trip,
And hung out,
listened to a couple songs.
And it's just like that's so cool
just to have those opportunities.
Since what we play and
what we represent means so much
To just the public in general,
We can do this
for years to come.
And that's one of the things
that we look forward to
Is sort of going
around the world
And bringing people
back in time.
I do remember the first preview
of "back to the future."
We all got on a plane
and went up to San Jose.
And those
are usually terrifying,
Because it's the first time you're
gonna show the film to an audience,
And you really don't know
what's gonna happen.
MTV was just getting
off the ground,
And the VJS,
and all that good stuff, tom petty.
And they were talking about win these
tickets to a movie, blah, blah, blah.
So I submitted my name.
I never win anything, you know.
And I won the tickets,
not really knowing...
there was maybe smoke signals telling you,
"hey, great movie!" No twitter, nothing.
So we were sitting there,
and there were these crowds of people.
And there's no pictures, nothing
telling you what this movie is about.
I'll never forget.
The lights came down in this theater.
We were all sitting
way in the back.
And on the screen,
It says,
"Steven Spielberg presents."
The place went crazy.
And then it said,
"a Robert Zemeckis film."
They went crazy.
I was just like this...
throughout the whole film.
Just like totally just loving every aspect.
I saw that, I think,
with "star wars."
I saw that with "Ghostbusters."
There's no accounting for it.
After seeing the film,
I wanted to buy a delorean.
I mean, I bet you everybody did.
Well, obviously,
at 18 years old,
With a couple of waiter jobs,
parking cars,
I'm not gonna buy a delorean.
It was one of those
bucket list things in life.
It's almost like some people want a Rolex
watch when they turned a certain age
Well, you know what?
I wanted a delorean time machine.
That's not too much to ask.
And I did it.
In the first two drafts,
the time machine was not a delorean at all.
It was not in a car.
It was not mobile.
It was a time ray
that shot into a time chamber.
And in the climax
That took place at a nuclear test
site in those early versions,
The time chamber, doc converted a
refrigerator and put lead lining in it.
And Marty was protected
from the nuclear blast
By being inside of a time chamber
made of an old refrigerator.
Four, three,
Two, one, zero.
The original ending
for the first movie
Turned out to be "Indiana Jones and
the kingdom of the crystal skull."
I don't know
if you're familiar with this,
But the idea,
the nuke the fridge thing,
Actually came out of an early
draft of the first movie.
I didn't know that.
That was a pretty big moment
for me
When I was reading the script
and said,
"Hey, wait a minute.
I've seen this before,
"And I didn't like it."
We started thinking about this
and thought,
"Well, if you really were gonna
build a time machine,
"You would build it
in a vehicle,
"Because you'd have to be able
to get around."
We came up with the idea
of the delorean
Simply because it had gull-Wing doors,
and we had this joke...
That ain't no airplane. Look.
In the '50s,
when the kid is in the farmhouse,
And they go in the barn,
and he thinks it's a Martian that landed.
So we thought what kind of a
car looks like a spaceship?
Well, a delorean
'cause of the gull-Wing doors.
Ron comes aboard,
a really amazing guy.
Gets to work, and designs
an initial version of the car,
And then leaves
to go do another show.
The producers looked at it
and said,
"You know,
we like what Ron's done,
"But can you take it
another step further?"
So, I was able to get in there
And take his basic car, and add a bunch
of stuff to it, rearrange some things,
And come up
with a final version.
I had worked on a TV show
that had been pretty successful.
I had made a car...
kind of a talking car for a TV show.
Welcome aboard
the knight two thousand.
Thank you.
What's all this?
"Knight rider"
was one of the biggest-Budget things
And what I would sketch was
something I knew I could build,
Or I knew someone could build.
If you're gonna build a time machine into
a car, why not do it with some style?
I mean, the whole story
of John delorean
Is sort of a classic,
American folklore story unto itself,
So I think that ties in to the whole
doc brown being an American inventor.
It's also unique in the fact that it's
the only car that the company produced.
If they would have lasted longer
and produced other models cars,
Maybe even the bus,
maybe even the snowplow,
You would see a lot more of them out here
today, and it wouldn't be so special.
If the delorean was still around
today, even though it was in the movie,
I truly feel that
it would not be as iconic,
Because people would say,
"it's just another car."
So the fact that it failed
made it successful.
The fact that it failed made it a piece
of movie history and American history.
Out of 9,000 made,
It's now, what, 33 years
since the last car was produced,
And over 6,500 are
probably still around.
I mean, the day after the
last pinto came off the line,
You didn't see
any of those anymore.
I thought they built that car
just for the movie.
I didn't know.
I wasn't a car guy.
Years later, I found out it was a real car,
and I was like...
"one of these days,
I'm gonna get one of those cars,
"And I'm gonna turn it
into a time machine."
I've been thinking very
seriously about getting one.
I've ridden
in quite a few of them.
There we go. There we go.
- Oh, yeah.
- I got delorean.
And it's an eagle.
That's an eagle.
- An eagle?
- That's an eagle.
His excitement is not
that exciting to me.
My yard is all dirt, like sand.
Nothing would grow there.
I tried every grass when I first
bought the place 15 years ago,
I'm from Ohio. We just make decks.
It's just what we do.
And then I thought, "hey,
I've always wanted a little putting green."
So I just laid down some cement,
got the Astroturf, you know.
And I was like, "well,
I'll just make another tee box."
And I was done at, like,
three holes, and I let it go.
And then I had to make another deck,
and then I went, "well, we'll make it six."
You know what happens. You just
eventually go, "I gotta have nine holes."
I got some charities
involved in some events,
And once
I got charities involved,
I went and looked for some
celebrities that were close by.
And Claudia wells has a store
really close to here.
And I said, "wouldn't it be cool if we
made, like, a Jennifer Parker hole?"
And she went, "hmm," and I said,
"a 'back to the future' hole."
And she said,
"okay, that will work."
And so I thought, "awesome.
"Do you know anybody else in
the movie who could be in it?"
Mayor Goldie Wilson,
don fullilove.
So they came out,
Became this massive event with them
christening the "back to the future" hole.
Ladies should go first.
Am I right about this?
- Yes!
- Absolutely. Chivalry is not dead.
- So, you're right there.
- Okay, what do I do?
You put the ball on the tee.
See the little hole
right here behind you?
Oh, this is gonna be
a long game, everybody.
And I just did it
all just for that moment,
To help with her charity,
kids in the spotlight.
And I said, "hey, do you know
anybody who has a time machine?"
And she said, "sure."
And she found a guy,
and he was gonna bring the car up,
And it ends up
That he was gonna sell his car
right when he said he would do it.
And I got freaked out,
so I looked into getting my own.
And I bought a delorean
in Memphis,
And I shipped it to a builder.
And he had
some pre-fabricated parts,
That were bought in Burbank at apex hardware
where they got a lot of the original parts.
And got it all done in time
for memorial day, 2014.
It's been crazy. And we're raising
money with every tournament we do.
So it's awesome.
It's a win-Win.
When I came on board,
they had a lot of the car begun.
They got as far, even, as making some
of those time circuits on the outside.
But all the same,
it was gonna take some detail sketches
About where
all the little heat seeks go,
And where are we gonna put
these tubes and pipes,
And how do these things
get arranged on the back?
These are made
as much for the guys in the shop
As for the guys
in the art department.
Just so it stays organized.
And the things
we're talking about,
They end up kind of
where we're hoping they'd be.
On the back of the delorean, there's a
little plutonium door that Dr. Brown opens
To load in the plutonium
he's got from the terrorists.
Well, there's this little door right in
the middle of the dodge hubcap, right?
And it has to unscrew,
so it's got kind of a bayonet mount.
So you turn it,
and the little pins index with these slots,
And then you can pull it out.
So he could put the little container
with the plutonium into the holder here,
And then the little tube with the
plutonium would drop out the bottom.
Universal put us in touch
with a product placement company.
Their job was to find partners whose
products would be put in the movie
In exchange for some cash.
And one day,
the product placement guy
And an exec from universal are in
my office, and they say, "bob..."
They said to me, "if you change
the delorean to a ford mustang,
"You'll get $75,000."
And I looked this guy straight in the eye,
and I said...
"Richard, doc brown
doesn't drive a mustang."
For a while, the delorean
was displayed prominently
At the front
of the universal tour.
And then, for whatever reason,
they stuck it in the back somewhere.
And you could only see it
when the tram drove past it
With a bunch
of other picture cars.
We would see the a-Car on the
backlot at universal studios,
And it was sad, you know.
Here's this iconic piece
of so many people's childhoods
Just sitting there
falling apart and rotting.
The car was on display outside,
And you could just
walk right up to it
And take a piece
off of the back.
And people were walking off with pieces.
It was crazy.
I was at universal
studios with a buddy of mine,
Looked at the car,
and I was like,
"Dude, I could totally build this.
I could do this."
And my buddy was like,
"let's do it!"
And I was like,
"all right, don't mess with me,
"'Cause I'll do it."
And started to research what it
meant to build a time machine.
It took four years
to build my car.
And I became known pretty quick
For being the guy that was
truly obsessed with nailing it.
I had met a lot of people who were
in the delorean cult, if you will.
The delorean fan base.
And there were a couple guys
in I.A.,
Joe Walser and terry Matalas,
in particular,
Who had their own deloreans
That they had turned into
"back to the future" deloreans.
I think bob
was rightfully disappointed
In the condition of the a-Car
And said, "something
has gotta be done about this."
The guy at the backlot
on the tour, Fred Diedrich,
He had us come up,
and we brought terry's car up there,
And showed him what
it could really look like.
We went to them and said, "look,
the delorean shouldn't look like this.
"This is a part
of universal's film history.
"And if you guys don't wanna restore it,
that's okay.
"We'll get the Smithsonian to do it,
or the Petersen car museum.
"There's a lot of places
that would step up."
And Scott said, "no, no, no, we'll do it.
We'll do it."
for me,
it was all about accuracy.
I was like, "I'm not trying
to build a time machine."
I wasn't trying to build
Joe's time machine.
I was trying to build
the time machine.
The details are as important to me
as the fact that it's a delorean.
I'm like, "you're gonna
skimp on the details,
"Why don't you use
a fiero or something?"
If I could tell myself when I was
a little kid watching that movie
That someday I'd be working on that car,
I'd be like, "you're crazy."
So you know, it's just awesome.
It's the fulfillment of a dream.
He let me do some work on the
88-Mile-An-Hour speedometer box.
And then after we did that,
He's like,
"you're gonna help me build the flux bands
"And put the flux capacitor
back together."
So I think that was
when I had known
That I must have proved myself to
Joe and some of the other members.
It was an honor to be able to put
back together the flux capacitor.
There were some times
when even Bob gale said,
"This is actually better than
the car when we first got it."
And that's just...
you're like, "holy crap! Okay."
The guys that helped us, too,
the universal staff,
They were always
really eager to help, too.
You could tell that
they were interested, too.
And these are guys that you would
think nothing really fazes them.
You know,
they got E.T.'s head sitting in the corner,
And it's like,
"oh, no big deal. E.T.'s head."
Even these guys that
work on props day by day,
You know, this was still
like a holy grail for them, too.
One of the coolest things I've done since the
restoration is just go hang out by the car,
Just listen
to people's reactions.
It's so great
seeing somebody with their kids,
Explaining what this is
that they're looking at.
The kids are like, "yeah, okay," but you know
that the dads are just, like, flipping out.
The car is one of the stars
of the movie,
And here you are, like,
12 inches from it, you know.
I mean, it would be like being 12
inches away from Michael J. Fox.
You know, it's a celebrity
in its own right.
We didn't half-Ass anything.
I mean, we worked really hard
to nail it,
To nail every single piece
on the car,
So that everybody could get to see it
the way that it was meant to look.
My name is bill Shea,
and I live in central Massachusetts,
And you might call me
a "back to the future" fanatic.
My father, bill, and I
Are the lucky owners of the
"back to the future iii" delorean
And the "back to the future ii
and iii" Toyota pickup.
The pinnacle moment for me
was when the ramps came down,
And that delorean
came out of that truck.
And you saw her
for the first time
With the smoke, and all the noise,
and everything like that.
And he rolled it off, and they had the sound
effects of the exhaust and everything.
All of my life,
I've been involved in collectibles,
Whether they be comic books,
or coins, or military antiques.
That's been absolutely
part of my life,
And a very enjoyable
part of my life,
And something
that I make a living at,
And had the opportunity
to employ my family.
You know, Marty,
you look so familiar to me.
Do I know your mother?
My mother works
full-Time for my father, as do I.
And most recently, my daughter has come
on board, and she now works full-Time.
So the daughter, the grandkids, the son-In-Law,
the mother, the father, the whole family...
it's a wonderful experience.
I'm very, very fortunate.
My son, Patrick, who is very much
involved in everything I do,
Including the cars,
And without whom, I wouldn't do this,
because he's a real mechanic.
I'm Irish.
He has more patience than I.
I think he's inherited his
mother's patience and the like.
Ready.
That's running perfect now,
bill.
This is the home of the rebirth of the
beautiful truck you see behind me,
Marty's 1985 Toyota xtra cab
sr54x4.
Check out that 4x4.
That is hot.
The truck that
was used in part one
Was a contest.
They gave it way.
The story goes it was destroyed.
I don't know for sure,
so I can't really say.
But they needed a truck
to do part two and part three
That was exactly like
the truck from part one.
So they contacted
this movie rental company.
After that, it went back to its normal
life as a movie studio rental vehicle.
It's like a celebrity being
in the garage all the time.
Extra care is taken
every step of the way.
It's really special to be part
of something this unique.
You know,
it's once-In-A-Lifetime.
The part three car happens to be
The one and only
screen-Used delorean
That will ever be
in private hands.
According to most
in the consensus,
There were seven deloreans that
were used in the three movies,
And three of them still exist.
One is in universal studios
in Hollywood.
The other is in
universal studios in Florida.
And of course, one is sitting
right behind us here.
When all was said and done,
and the hammer was knocked down,
Including the commission charges,
it was around $528,000.
And of course, we had bought a few
other things at that auction already.
We had purchased some actual
props from the movie.
So I was warmed up,
let's put it that way.
And I work hard, I stay straight,
and I felt that...
guess what,
I really feel I made a good investment.
Shoot.
My father mentioned that
For him to take all of his toys with him,
that's what he'd enjoy.
But I don't think he wants that. I think he
wants everybody in the family to enjoy it.
Between me, my daughter,
my son, my grandkids, my family,
I have found that "back to the future"
is unquestionably a family affair.
When you see people
come up to the car,
They're with their wife, they're with their
children, and everybody gets involved,
And their kids are just as excited
about it as the parents are.
So once again, it transcends the
generations, and that'll never change.
Thank you so much.
There are car shows
around the country,
And the delorean car show
is one of them,
And it has a lot
of enthusiastic members.
I love the delorean community.
It was incredible how everyone was so friendly,
and so into it, and all the things they do.
I just love that we could be a
part of something like that.
With something that's so close
to us that brought us together.
It's incredible.
The wonderful thing
about this show
Is that so many things
amazing have happened.
But today, you get to have something
that's going to be even more amazing.
There's a young man here
that I'm looking for.
His name is nick. Nick?
Oh, nick!
Nick would like to take a moment
with all of you here.
Everybody is incredibly friendly,
and incredibly helpful,
And very motivational.
They don't try
to bring you down, you know.
You're gonna bring a beat-Down car to a
car show, you're gonna get ripped apart.
Quite the opposite.
We got there, and they praised us.
They were happy to see a car
in the shape it was,
'Cause, you know,
everybody has a complete car.
Here we are with just a body tub on
some wheels and some wires hanging out.
It's nice to examine
what's underneath the skin.
This is our first DCS,
me and Meghan.
Meghan, please come on up.
Come on. Don't be shy.
She's very shy.
So come on, Meghan. Come on.
I didn't know
he was planning anything.
I was just excited
to go see the play.
So it was definitely
a big surprise to me.
Meghan, I love you more than
anything in the entire world.
In front of everybody here...
Get on your knee.
Will you join me in the future
and be my wife?
Will you marry me?
Of course. Yes.
I did not know
Christopher Lloyd, Bob gale,
Claudia wells,
and Jeffrey Weissman
Were right there
in the front row.
It was just very overwhelming.
Earth angel, earth angel
please be mine
My darling dear
love you all the time
I'm just a fool
A fool in love with you
That's so nice.
I got to work
on a show called "American dad"
Where an episode of the show was called
"the delorean story-An,"
Which was partially inspired
by me getting my own delorean
And my fandom
of "back to the future."
Take it easy out there,
Mr. Smith, Mr. Kerkhoff.
I mean, what kind of a rush
could you two be in?
You're in time machines.
You got all the time you need.
They let me have the honor
of being animated
And get to do my own voice
in the show.
Hey, that's not your delorean.
Oh, whoops. My mistake.
Are connected to things I've done with
the car or as part of the fandom.
And it inspired
my interest in sound.
The sounds in the movie were very
impactful and very effective,
And my interest and my career
in sound came from that.
It's definitely influenced
my world as a whole.
And it'll always be
a positive thing.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yes.
I'd be lying if I said it
was easy growing up with a disability.
I actually kind of connected
a little bit with George McFly.
He's a guy that was an outcast.
He had big dreams.
He had big goals
Of being this person that no one
else thought that he could be.
I have cerebral palsy,
And in my case,
it's called spastic triplegia.
That affects my two legs
and my right arm.
The connection in living here in the area,
essentially, where mike grew up
I mean, I know some of his family
members and his nephew Jeff.
For me to be able
to go out into the world
And know that I'm actually
from the same community,
And that here's mike, a guy from Burnaby,
growing up with his family,
And he's done so much
for himself and his family,
And was able to sort of
go off into Hollywood,
And find a new home in New York.
If he's showing that
that was possible for him,
Then I knew that for me, and what I
wanted to do in following my passions,
Then it was possible
for me as well.
My dad was an immigrant.
He came here from Italy.
And I've said this
in my presentations before,
He had huge dreams
of me being a soccer star.
Well, obviously,
being in a chair,
I'm not gonna necessarily
be the next soccer star.
But I wanted to show him
that these things were possible.
So instead of getting involved
in one sport,
I went ahead
and got involved in five sports,
Wheelchair basketball, horseback riding,
weight lifting, swimming.
And I was able to go on to compete
in the BC summer and winter games
For athletes with disabilities.
And I did earn 22 gold,
10 silver, 2 bronze medals
In various sports
throughout the time.
And I remember
thinking to myself,
"Well, I wasn't able to do it in the
traditional fashion, but I was able to do it."
I was always looking
for motivational figures,
Figures that could push me through
the next day, and the next day,
And, of course, right away,
I connected with Michael J. Fox
As far as just a figure
that I could look up to.
I started my own speaking business
to help inspire other people
And show them that if you creatively
utilize your best energy,
In your own life, with the right
people and the right team around you,
Then anything is
really possible.
The fans are instrumental in keeping
"back to the future" alive.
Probably if
my wife had a time machine,
She probably would have steered
me away from ever seeing it.
But it was not
until a year later
When the movie came out on VHS,
on home video for the first time,
That I really got involved,
really got my geek switch turned on.
Bttf. Com, which is now
backtothefuture. Com,
Has become the go-To site for all
information about "back to the future."
It's the best place to find
"back to the future" merchandise.
Stephen has become
a good friend over the years.
We use him now as a consultant,
Because he's got
such great fan insight.
One of the other things
that we do is
Get involved with the licensees
of official product.
We've worked with Mattel, and Lego,
and a lot of the other companies.
I've written
a lot of the material
That goes on the back
of the packaging for products,
The booklets
inside the products.
And kind of authenticate
their efforts.
And he does it so well
That it becomes the portal,
the source authority, really,
For all news
about "back to the future."
To such an extent that he does the
job better than the studio could do,
Because he has
the passion for it.
There's a lot of books
in the works now
That we're actively working
with the book authors on.
Currently, I actually have
a book coming out
Called "the back to the future
almanac 1985-2015,"
Which is about all the "back to the future"
memorabilia that's been made.
The first one is the lexicon.
Inside is a breakdown of every person,
place, or thing.
When I say every, I'm kind of anally
compulsive about this sort of thing.
If it's a license plate,
and I was able to read it.
Or if it's a license plate,
and I wasn't able to read it
Until I spent a half an hour
staring at a screen
That had been blown up six times too many,
it's in there.
Everything, basically,
that appears in the movies,
In the cartoons,
in the comic books,
The video game
from telltale games,
The collectible card game, the old draft
scripts, we mined everything we could.
My interaction with fans,
I worry sometimes frustrates them,
Because they know more
about the movie than I do.
I mean, people come up to me and ask
me questions about flux capacitors,
And I say, "I was just standing
in a parking lot in Puente hills
"With flames
running between my legs.
"I had no idea
what was happening."
I started out
just as a superfan.
I was one of those guys that
was looking for information.
And I know there's a lot of other folks
out there looking for that information.
And we've got
a world-Wide audience now.
"Back to the future" knows no
boundaries within a certain country.
It's world-Wide.
Secret cinema
is a film organization
That essentially creates
immersive film experiences
Where the audience become part
of a story.
For me, "back to the future"
is one of my favorite films,
And it represents a sort of
nostalgia of this innocent time.
And the 1955 part of "back to the future,"
I think represents
This kind of
dream-Like Technicolor,
Which I think has such resonance with what
we're trying to do with secret cinema,
Which is this sense of romance,
This sense of ambition, this sense
that you can be anyone you wanna be,
secret cinema is about people
engaging with a film in a different way.
Experiencing it,
being part of the cast,
Feeling a little bit of what it must
have felt like making that movie.
And that's why everybody's here.
That's why everybody loves it.
It's kind of the social media
of old media.
Well,
we wanted to build the town of hill valley.
From the beginning, it was like we wanna
build the real town of hill valley,
One in which
every single shop is replicated.
And you go into the shop,
and there is a little world inside.
There is actors playing
the roles of the shopkeepers.
The audience themselves
were given characters.
And for us, the idea of it
Is inspired from
the "sandman" moment,
When Marty first arrives
in hill valley.
And he's thrown into this world,
and he has to find his way.
We actually built a
small farm with over 20 animals,
Which is Peabody's farm.
And the audience arrive
through the farm
Then the suburbia is having each different
house from the characters in the film
From George McFly, to Biff Tannen,
all the way through.
So that the audience literally
were taken into the world.
"Back to the future" is the greatest
'80s movie ever made.
- It's my favorite film ever.
- Favorite film ever.
I think because "back to the future"
represents something in people's hearts...
it's something that represents
a sense of ambition
And a sense of wanting to be
whatever you want to be.
And I think
when people come to this show,
Why they wanna come
is they wanna be that character.
They wanna be Marty McFly.
They wanna travel
back to the future.
They wanna fall in love with their mother.
I'm joking.
You know, they wanna
have an adventure.
- What's that thing he's on?
- It's a board with wheels.
I remember my mom
came back from the movie theater
And said to me, "I just saw this amazing
movie called 'back to the future.'
"It's about a boy who goes back
and falls in love with his mom."
And it was so interesting to me.
I was like,
"that sounds terrible."
Because as a kid with an overbearing,
Jewish mother,
I'm like, "who would make
a movie like that?"
I love you so much.
I love you, too.
- I love you.
- Mom!
I love you, Boopy.
I love you so much.
Hey, you with the window open,
tell my baby I love him!
Adam, if you need to make,
call me. I'll pick you up.
Of course, that's not
what the movie is about at all,
But I loved that my mom, to her,
that's what the movie was about,
A boy who goes back in time
and hangs out with his mom.
I was so excited about it.
I made my parents, who were separated
at the time, go see it with me,
'Cause it had such
a generational theme to it.
And maybe subconsciously
I was like,
"Maybe my parents
will get back together...
"if they watch this."
They did get back together.
And I got to work
under Zemeckis years later,
And one of
his development people,
As he was walking through
the lobby at image movers,
Said, "you got his parents
back together."
"His parents got back together
'cause of 'back to the future.'"
Which is not strictly true.
But assuming that it was,
Zemeckis's response was,
"eh, good."
Because he's probably
heard that 7,000 times.
Michael,
here we are at this royal premiere.
Huge, great crowd standing
behind us now as we're talking.
What do you make
of an occasion like this?
It's...
I mean, it's, uh...
it's a once-In-A-Lifetime thing.
If indeed it is only a once-In-A-Lifetime
thing for me, I'll die satisfied.
The greeting line
where we met the royals,
Princess Diana
and prince Charles,
And we had this little guy, this little
super-Serious protocol guy tell us,
"You can't speak
unless you're spoken to.
"You can't touch a royal. You can't..."
all these things you can't do.
And I was Canadian,
so I had some skin in the game.
I was a little careful
what I did.
I didn't wanna make
a fool out of myself.
So we do the thing,
and we meet them,
And I managed to avoid
any kind of royal gaffe.
And then we were
sitting in the theater,
And I realized that
the seat next to me was empty.
And we were standing waiting
for the royals to come in,
And it dawns on me that princess
Diana is gonna be sitting next to me.
And so, sure enough, she comes in.
She sits down next to me.
And the movie starts,
And it occurs to me
That I'm, like, a fake yawn
and an arm stretch away
From being on a date
with the princess of Wales.
She would chuckle now and then.
But when the truckload
of turds, manure,
Was dumped on biff and his gang
in the convertible...
shit!
She outright laughed.
You know, she just...
that conservative... you know...
dropped,
and she totally went with it.
And then the other thing I realized very
quickly was that I had to go to the bathroom.
Because I can't say to her, "excuse me,
your highness. I have to go to the loo."
'Cause I can't talk to her
unless she talks to me.
I can't tap her on the shoulder
and motion I'm going out.
And I can't get up
and turn my back on her.
So I'd have to kind of, like,
moonwalk backwards out of the theater
To get out of there.
And so I sat there,
and I was just in agony the whole time.
So the whole thing was
I sat in total pain watching the
movie with the princess of Wales,
And it was great. It was...
she was smoking hot.
Everybody has dreams, right?
And owning a delorean
was our dream.
But life gets in the way.
You know, reality,
day-To-Day things.
And I think everybody has probably
said at one time or another,
"If I ever win the lottery,
I'm going to..."
I'm gonna get me this.
I'm gonna buy something.
Yeah, but as you know
if you're into statistics,
We all have a better chance of
getting struck by a bolt of lightning
And we did get struck by a
bolt of lightning in a sense.
It was august 4, 2000,
Oliver was diagnosed
with cancer.
And the doctor gave me
six months to live.
You get your bucket list in
line when somebody gives you six months.
Yeah, it's pretty motivational.
So we made a will,
And we traveled a little bit, and visited family
and friends that we hadn't seen in a while,
Basically to say
goodbye to them.
And we got something in the mail
That said that we had been
approved for a credit card.
Yeah, a nice, big balance.
So we maxed out that card
on a delorean,
And we made it
into a time machine.
One thing that I think
we should mention,
We actually built
the time machine ourselves.
This was roughly 15 years ago.
All we had to go on
was a VHS copy of the movie.
But it was kind of almost a folk
art interpretation of the car,
'Cause when you got close,
they had just used what they'd found
To make this car.
It was fantastic.
We would pause
the videotape player,
And the picture would be
a little jerky,
And I would make little sketches and
notes about what we were seeing,
And then we would
fabricate it ourselves
Out of metal and scraps
that we found at the scrapyard.
It's like an impressionist
painting or something.
You get close,
and you see those brush strokes, right?
You got close, and you saw what
they used to put it together.
You stepped back,
the effect was perfect.
I think the conversion of his delorean to a
"back to the future" car
And what are they doing
with that car?
They drive around the country working
for Michael J. Fox's charity.
That's amazing.
We're volunteers.
We chose to do this because it was,
for us, the right thing to do.
Meeting Michael wasn't really
on the radar.
"Wouldn't that be nice?"
Was the thought.
When we did meet him,
he knew who we were.
He knew we were terry and Oliver from
south Carolina, and team fox members,
And that is humbling.
Have been hitting the road in their delorean
time machine to speed a future without pd.
They've raised
dollars and awareness
In more states and countries
than any other team fox member.
They've spent more time in a delorean than
even I have, which is saying something.
The people that are
big "back to the future" fans
Have been huge supporters of our efforts
to try to find a cure for Parkinson's.
And more importantly,
they've just shown interest
And an ongoing sense
of curiosity and concern
For me and for what we're doing.
It's great to have a bunch
of lunatics on your side.
'Cause they're crazy,
but they're crazy-Good.
Well,
we set a personal goal for ourselves
To drive the delorean time
machine to all 50 states.
Raising money and awareness
for the Michael J. Fox foundation.
We've raised over
a quarter of a million dollars.
When we built the car,
it was for selfish reasons.
We loved the movie, and we wanted
to drive a delorean time machine.
And that was a wonderful thrill
and an accomplishment personally,
But we never...
just like the car,
there were no blueprints.
And our life has taken us places we
really never knew it would take us.
We're one of their sponsors.
We do all their web promotion
for them,
To allow them to get out and travel across
the nation and into other countries
Raising funds for the Michael J. Fox
foundation for Parkinson's research.
We say this at every panel
we're asked to present.
Your future hasn't
been written yet, right?
No one's has.
No one's has!
Your future is
whatever you make it.
- So, make it a good one.
- Make it a good one.
Ta-da.
People always say to us, "well, you guys
must have known you were gonna do sequels
"Because of the ending
of the first movie."
And the ending of the first movie
is the heroes get in the car
And ride off into the sunset for another
adventure. That's just a classic ending.
Hey, doc, we better back up.
We don't have enough road to get up to 88.
"Where we're going,
we don't need roads."
and as Bob Zemeckis
has said many times,
If we knew
we were gonna do a sequel,
We would have never
put Jennifer in the car.
Because when it was time
to write the sequel,
We didn't know what to do with her,
and we end up knocking her out.
She's unconscious
for part two and part three.
Doc, what the hell
are you doing?
Relax, Marty. It's just a
sleep-Inducing alpha rhythm generator.
Home video happens in
between the two movies, basically,
Where we put "to be continued"
at the end of part one
When we released it
for home video.
If people saw it on a VHS for their
first time, that's what they think.
We took that off of the DVD.
The most fun perhaps was
"back to the future iii" for me.
There was horseback riding,
which I love doing.
Somehow,
"back to the future iii" is just as funny
As "back to the future"
I and ii.
I think that might actually be
a large part of it.
It's a trilogy
that doesn't suck.
There's no point where you watch it and go,
"that's the really bad one."
Two and three, I think...
come on.
I know you're interviewing gale
and I think Zemeckis.
I mean, these guys are my heroes
'cause they wrote "back to the future,"
But they took seven years
to write "back to the future."
And come on.
Everybody knows ii and iii suck.
"Back to the future ii"
has always been my favorite.
Because I like that it's dark.
I like that it get
into the headiness
Of what would happen
if just one little thing turned.
And I love the future idea.
The whole concept of
what's the future gonna be?
I guess you guys
aren't ready for that yet.
But your kids are gonna love it.
They went back into the first
movie. I mean, it's never been done,
What a brilliant,
brilliant stroke of creativity as a writer.
It suggested this digital
reality that we all live in now,
This kind of cyber-World
that we all occupy.
I had, as you know, been strung up and
put in an "ortho-lev" of the future.
It was rough, because being hung upside
down almost all day for two weeks
But then again, they didn't wanna get
me down in between takes all the time.
So they had built a ladder
with a board on it
That I could just do my sit-Up
and lie back down on.
They put it underneath me, so they wouldn't
have to get me down in between takes,
Which would have been
an extra couple of minutes.
And time definitely
was money on this shoot.
What's really cool about it is
The generational aspect of it
still plays.
I mean,
there's still that confused...
- I'm young!
- I'm old!
Not enmity,
but just kind of suspicion and befuddlement
Between the previous generation
and the next generation.
I mean, I have three teenage daughters
and a son who's in his mid-20s,
And I don't understand
what the hell they're saying.
A lot of times I get
asked about the special effects.
What did we do?
The clock tower,
the speaker gag,
Doc brown's lab,
the trails of fire.
A lot of work went into it on the
special-Effects level that were very common.
Wind, rain, fire, snow,
all of the normal stuff that we do.
A lot of prop creation
that we did.
And all of that
is our rote work.
And that was our trade
and our craft.
And the story didn't demand
Some of the bigger visual
effects that are now so common.
So it doesn't date itself.
People ask me about how come we
never had any CGI work on "jaws."
Well, we didn't have the C.
We never had computers.
We didn't even have cell phones.
Now, they make
whole movies on cell phones.
A lot of the work that we did on
"back to the future"
Was straight, across the board,
special, mechanical effects,
Along with a small dose of pyro,
and a great amount of prop creation.
That stands up.
Because a lot of times,
we'll see movies that are brilliantly done,
The cg gets better and better
all the time,
But a lot of people enjoy
a taste of the real way.
And I think that's
one of the ways
That it still endears itself
to an audience.
When we were making part two,
we always used to say,
"Wow, in 2015, we'll all get
together and see what we got right."
Yeah, you know, we did a pretty good job.
We hit about 50%.
We got the flat-Screen TVs
and phone video conferencing right.
The drones walking dogs.
We got the Google glasses right.
TVs with touchscreen and
hundreds of different channels.
We decided that what we were gonna
do was just have fun with the future.
We knew we weren't
gonna get it right.
We knew that there weren't gonna be
flying cars. That we were sure of.
No one is ever gonna be
in a flying car.
No one wants to fly in a car.
It's too scary.
People are scared
to leave the ground.
The limits of physics don't prevent
us from having flying cars.
The reasons that we don't have flying
cars today are really societal.
Aviation evolved
in a certain way,
And driving on the ground
evolved in a certain way.
These are human constructs,
so they can be changed.
But we have to show people, hey,
it can actually be better than this,
And there is no physical law that we are
breaking to make it better than this.
We just have to show people, hey,
this is what it could be like.
It could be a whole lot
better than it is today.
Terrafugia is
a flying car company.
We're developing a practical
vision for the future
And creating the path for how
to get from where we are today
To a world with flying cars
that anybody can use.
Growing up, I was definitely inspired
by movies like "back to the future"
And that vision of the delorean lifting
off and shooting over everybody.
And I was fascinated
with aviation
And trying to make practical
personal aviation.
We have these images of people
flying in lanes and stuff like that.
Why would you fly in a lane if you've
got all this three-Dimensional space?
You know, you need lanes
on the ground,
Because you need to know where the
other cars are gonna be running,
So that you can have people playing
over here or something like that.
Up in the air,
you don't need lanes, right?
You need to know where all the other
aircraft are, and you need to avoid them.
But you don't need
a lane of traffic
In order to know
where the other aircraft are.
So I think the future
is gonna be a little different
Than it was laid out
in "back to the future,"
But the idea behind it
is the right idea,
And that's where we wanna go.
I need to borrow your...
that was a true,
total invention of "back to the future ii."
But what's cool is that people
are trying to invent them now.
There's this old saying
that life imitates art.
And the rocket scientist
Robert Goddard,
He always said that
what inspired him to do rocketry
Was reading Jules Verne's "from the
earth to the moon" when he was a kid.
So, Bob and I cook up
this idea of hoverboards.
That's just a riff on our skateboard
chase from the first movie,
But, wow, does that capture
everybody's imagination.
The hendo hoverboard, I saw that,
and I got so excited. Wow!
And it's working on magnetism,
which was the idea that we had.
So how cool is that?
When you look
at the building industry,
The largest industry
in the U.S.,
It's a very difficult
thing to change.
But there's a better way
to build.
And so, in July of this year,
July of 2014,
We had a patent issued for something
we've been working on for a long time.
And that is, essentially,
a three-Part foundation system.
One of the key components of this
three-Part foundation system
Is something we call
the buffer medium.
And that buffer medium can be a liquid,
it can be a gas,
And as we discovered, why not
an electromagnetic field?
If you can hover a 50,000-Kilogram train,
why not a house?
However, the new maglev trains
in Japan, for instance,
Have to be going 170 kilometers
per hour to levitate.
There was no good way
to levitate a stationary object.
What if you had a train that levitated,
and that train went in a circle?
Now, what if that train was
the same length as the track?
You essentially have a stationary
object relative to the earth,
When you realize you can hover a
dynamic load in a stationary position,
Something that has been
impossible up till now...
that's the
first thing that comes to mind.
What better
way to demonstrate this...
Is a hoverboard? Absolutely.
We got letters from kids all
over the world wanting to know,
"Can I have a hoverboard?
Can I have one, please?"
Yeah, for a couple years when I was young,
I thought that thing was real.
Well, that little behind the scenes
thing that was put out early on.
Robert Zemeckis saying,
"oh, they're real,
"And the only reason
that we don't release them
"Is parents don't think
they're gonna be very safe."
That did affect
a lot of kids from the '80s.
I remember seeing
the Zemeckis interview,
And he said
hoverboards were real.
Just the parents' groups have not
let toy manufacturers make them,
But we got our hands on some.
I remember being
with a couple of my friends
And saying, "yeah, yeah,
I road a hoverboard."
And they were all like,
"no, you didn't."
And I said, "nope, it's true.
I road a hoverboard."
True story. I was walking through the mall,
and a scientist walked up to me,
And he asked if I wanted to be in a select
group of kids to test hoverboard technology.
Yeah, I call bullcrap.
It was really not fun
doing the hoverboard.
What you gotta do
is you gotta aim it.
You gotta kind of pop it
on an arc.
- Okay.
- Okay?
- Ready?
- Ready.
We didn't have
computer-Generated images in those days,
And we had to have
actors hanging on wires.
And the wires
had to be really thin,
'Cause you couldn't
graft them out on the computer.
You had to hid them
from the camera.
And it was really
time-Consuming,
And it was really, really,
difficult to do.
I mean, people think
that it looked so smooth,
But I this thing stapled to my foot,
and I was dangling from wires.
Anyone who's probably, like,
15 and under...
I don't know unless their parents show them
"back to the future,"
If it's an important movie to them,
they'll see it.
I know that Sean's parents love
the movie and showed it to him,
I don't know that he has that
passion for it that I did.
What he loved was watching
the hoverboarding videos
And getting to do that scene where
he's up in the tree hoverboarding.
Yippee! Here I am,
Testing out the world's first
actual hover...
ow! Ow! It's squishing my parts.
He was really excited
to do that.
I mean, you know,
anyone wants to ride a hoverboard.
It's a fantasy everyone wants to live,
and he got to do it.
It's pretty amazing.
May 31, 2013,
And you're looking at the world's
first ridable hoverboard.
Because we were in our kitchen,
and we had to literally chain it down,
Because we had no idea
How powerful this beast
of a hoverboard was.
All right, it's hovering, guys.
It was one of those
moments where I felt like I was 10.
I mean, it was one of those really
powerful moments of what was yet to come.
It was just the beginning.
- See, that chokes me up.
- It does.
Okay, check the escs.
I'm gonna keep rolling here.
- Unbelievable, Jill.
- How the was that?
It was clunky, very
clunky. It was not so attractive,
If we can keep
taking care of each other,
And allowing this extra time
and energy to dare to wonder.
It's a great time to be alive.
Wouldn't trade it
for any other time in history.
Yeah, well, I'm not gonna do
"back to the future" anymore.
Three is enough. You know,
three is a good number.
After Bob and I made
the third movie,
We actually had t-Shirts made up
That had "back to the future iv"
With a circle and slash
through the roman numeral four.
We'd said what we wanted to say. We'd done
what we wanted to do with the characters.
And if we went back
to the well another time,
It'd be kind of
an act of prostitution, really.
Three is a dramatic number.
You know, it's the trinity.
It's the three-Act structure.
Four is a boring number.
You know, it's bland. It's even.
Sometimes,
I'm asked if they ever came up with a iv,
"Back to the future iv,"
would I still do it?
You bet.
Totally.
Oh, I'll do I, ii, iii, iv, v,
whatever it...
what could be bad, you know?
Somebody might do it.
I mean, maybe somebody after I'm dead...
universal could maybe...
or if my kids...
if my kids need to make money
And wanna have universal,
you know, do the movie
With some new concept
or something,
I guess they'll do it.
But it's nothing
I'm interested in.
Yes, people keep asking
for more.
So, we did the telltale game,
It pretty nicely captures the
energy of the movies, I think.
And Bob and I had started kicking around,
oh, almost 10 years ago,
The idea of putting
"back to the future"
On Broadway, or in the west end, or
someplace to do a musical production of it.
I think all of us want,
First and foremost, to adhere
to the hippocratic oath,
So we're very... you know, we're looking
very carefully at how to proceed with this,
Because "back to the future"
deserves the best we know...
you know, the best we can do.
And we wanna really make sure
That what we do in that capacity
Adds to, again, the legacy
of "back to the future."
What about all that talk
About screwing up future events,
the space-Time continuum?
Well, I figured, what the hell?
There comes a time
in every child's life
When he truly understands
that adults were once kids,
That his parents
were once children.
Seven, eight, nine,
ten years old, it clicks.
You realize, "oh, my god.
I'm gonna grow up to be an adult,
"Which means that my adult
parents were once children too."
the idea that
your parents were once young
And had the same dreams that you
are gonna have or have right now,
And that we're all just people,
and we all still feel young at heart.
And that's what
"back to the future" is about,
That sudden realization,
That idea that
your infallible parents,
Who you think are infallible
when you're a little kid,
They were gawky teenagers,
And fumbled around in a car, and didn't
know what the hell they were doing.
And that resonates
through all generations
And through every culture
in the world.
The appeal to
"back to the future" for me, of course,
But also for an audience, is the fact that
it was such an interesting look at...
I guess you'd call it
wish fulfillment,
Which is who wouldn't wanna go
back in time and fix something?
I think when George McFly has
the courage to punch biff at that moment,
I think that moment
was so perfectly constructed.
I think we all wonder
about that.
If we would have done something
different at one moment,
Would it have changed our whole lives
for the better or for the worse?
Now, 30 years later,
you look back at a project like this,
And you try to remember just what
your part in all of this was.
And it's just
a pretty small part.
I mean, yeah,
the car is featured in all of these scenes,
And it's used,
and it's cherished,
And plastic models
are made of it.
It's nice being a part of that.
Well, the movie is just...
you know, the movie defines the taste
of buttered popcorn. It really does.
We actually use the same logic
When we go to see movies
as we do walking into a casino.
We largely know
we're gonna get ripped off,
But the chance is worth it.
If it were any other industry,
we would have long ago shut it down
And sued everybody.
Because if it was cans of tuna,
The equivalent would be like every
third can had a human finger in it.
Movies are so bad now.
And they're allowed to be,
Because that's how good
"back to the future" was.
It's just
one of those things, man.
You know, it's one of
those things that worked.
It just worked.
So how far ahead are you going?
About 30 years.
It's a nice, round number.
Look me up
when you get there, all right?
I guess I'll be about 47.
I will.
- Take care.
- You, too.
All right.
Bye bye, Einie.
Oh, and watch that re-Entry.
It's a little bumpy.
You bet.
To the future!
- All right, Marty, you all set?
- Yeah, yeah, go!
There are so many places I would
like to see if I had a time machine.
Every era, I would love to see.
And I am so lucky.
I have been able to
a lot on film.
Boy, if I can go
anywhere in time,
I would go back to maybe
the MGM auction of 1970,
And I would hopefully be able
to go back there
With 10 or $20,000
in my back pocket.
And I'd buy all the stuff that I keep
hearing over the years went for nothing.
Well, it depends
what the time travel rules are.
You know, I mean...
I guess if I could
only go one way,
I think about 10,000 years in
the future might be interesting.
I probably wanna go
into the future
About four and a half weeks
right now.
Because I'm writing
on a film right now,
And I'm working really hard.
And about four and a half weeks from now,
I think I'll be finished.
I don't know
if you've ever seen "Henry V,"
Olivier's "Henry V."
All the backstage activity,
People throwing things from
the groundlings who'd paid...
the re-Writes going on.
It would have been kind of cool to go back,
be an observer of that today.
I was doing a TV movie
with woody Allen,
And we were talking,
as always happens to me on sets and stuff,
So we were in a full-Fledged discussion
about where we would go in time.
And woody Allen was normally
preoccupied with other things,
And so someone summoned up the
courage to ask him where he would go,
And he said, "no time before
the invention of penicillin."
I always thought that
was a good rule of thumb.
But I would think...
Sometime before car alarms.
I think I would rather go back
in time than forward in time.
Because I think
when you go forward in time,
It's gonna be disastrous.
There's your 10-Year-Old,
horny self
That remembers that in the '80s,
women were the most beautiful.
When I think about femininity,
and sexuality, and music,
And all the things that make a
little kid squirm and feel alive,
I think of the '80s.
I'm a big in the moment guy. I like
right now. I've always liked right now.
I've never yearned
for times in the past.
We have all that information.
We can watch all the movies.
But the future.
Yeah, it's gotta be the future.
You gotta go past
when you're gonna die
You know, if you're curious, you've
gotta say, "how does this all work out?
"What happens with humanity?
"What's the next iphone like?"
You know,
all those important things.
I'd like to travel
100 years into the future.
Because just looking back
at what has evolved
And what's happened over the
past 100 years is mind-Blowing.
So I only need to go
100 years into the future
To see some amazing things.
I really...
I'm gonna sound like a crackpot,
But I really believe that, because so many
things have been transmitted digitally now,
I think there's a real possibility
of some sort of teleportation.
Physical matter being transmitted
in some kind of digital form.
And I know that sounds crazy,
But everything does
before it happens.
Then there's the objective
kind of like fascination.
I think I'd like to go back
to the 1920s.
'Cause it seemed like
such a crazy, historic...
simultaneously gritty and pretentious
kind of culture. I don't know.
I'd get to wear a hat.
I could probably wear a hat now.
But it makes me nervous.
If there's an opportunity
to tweak things
And not upset
the space-Time continuum,
I could go back and bitch-Slap
a couple people. I don't know.