We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy (25 page)

“There was a sequence where I was chasing the train on horseback, galloping along the tracks,” Lloyd says. “I had to hang on to the train, and pull myself off of the horse onto the locomotive. They would not let me do that because there was a risk involved. You can see me in one of the takes galloping along, and it was a lot of fun. I have ridden a lot, so I felt comfortable. I could easily have gripped the handle on the train and pulled myself up. I almost did it, but I thought,
What if it doesn’t go right?
” Although he has a general fear of heights, Lloyd is not altogether risk-averse. He and Michael J. Fox had the opportunity to run on top of the train, although they did not actually jump from car to car. Lloyd
actually prefers to do his own stunts whenever possible, as it gives the director more options when filming and the editors more material to cut together. His thrill-seeking had been relatively limited in the trilogy until that point, but on
Part III
, even the Doc got to ride one of the sought-after hoverboards, as he and Clara glided away from the locomotive, moments before it crashed into Clayton (or Eastwood) Ravine. “Those steam engines are such amazing creatures, these huge iron gadgets with all these moving parts,” he says. “It was pretty heavy. I forgot how they rigged the hoverboards to the train, but I loved it, I absolutely loved it. I felt comfortable. I felt safe. You had to pay attention working on those parts, but I really liked doing those sequences.”

For their third go-round making a
Back to the Future
film,
Part III
’s unique take on what had, by 1990, already become a very familiar story kept the experience fresh. “I’d like to make it sound like it was an awful, arduous experience and that we were fighting heat and sleep deprivation at all times,” Dean Cundey says. “But I have to say, we turned it into really sort of a great, fun adventure for all of us. We were lucky to have that location up in Central California. It’s the famous gold country, where gold was discovered and most of the gold rush took place. It was chosen because there is the old train museum up there and they still keep alive the steam trains on a section of track and let them run through a visually perfect little valley. We took over the town on the edge of the train line. We were staying in small, rustic little hotels and stuff. They were very comfortable, very scenic and interesting.”

In a lot of ways,
Three
was almost a victory lap. Even the DeLorean time machine, for all of the headaches it caused during work on the first film, was relatively easy to work with, thanks to some much-needed enhancements from Tim Flattery. In total, seven DMC-12s were used during production on the trilogy—three
for the first film, one additional for the second, along with the fiberglass car, and two more with extra oomph for the last installment. “The DeLorean was definitely not a performance vehicle,” Bob Gale says. “Having learned this during
Part I
, we had our people do some work on some of the cars to make them more powerful, more stable, and tougher.”

“We built an off-road chassis from the ground up with a Volkswagen engine in it, and put the DeLorean body over the top of that,” Flattery says. “If you look at that vehicle in the film, you’ll see that it sits higher than a normal DeLorean would, just because of the suspension system on it. We had to make it taller so it could drive through that desert with all that rough terrain. It got the car to the point where it was ready to go and just needed the exterior dressed to match the other DeLoreans. I drove it up to Sonora with transportation, stayed up there for two days to make sure everything went smoothly, and then left after that.”

That conclusion of the trilogy reached its fitting end when the DeLorean B car was smashed by a train at the end of the film, once Marty returns back to the present time. For those on set, the experience was somewhat emotional, but also pretty exciting. “It was mostly a sweet moment, because we didn’t have to worry about it anymore,” Neil Canton says. “It was like a character in the movie, but movies are like that. As you get towards the end of principal photography, there’s someone who you’ve been with every day for months, and then it’s their last shot in the movie and then they’re done. It affects you. You know that you may never work with them again. It was kind of like that. The DeLorean was captured in the movie, so you felt sad that it was done, but at the same time you were happy because it got to the finish line. I think some people grabbed pieces of it. I just
know we were going to make darn sure that no one else could work with it, so we were going to destroy it.”

“It wasn’t bittersweet at all,” Bob Gale says. “It was a perfectly executed wreck. After all, it wasn’t the A car. But it’s a testament to the power of these movies that the audience reacts so strongly to its destruction, as if it was a character. That day is vividly etched in my memory. I mean, come on, how many people ever get the chance to see a car get hit by a train—and for a good reason?”

With the DeLorean in shambles, our hero returned to 1985, and with the two-hour mark nearing in the movie theater, there was only one more thing to do—send Doc Brown and his new family back to the future in a custom time-traveling steam train that also didn’t need roads. Marty Kline, an animator at ILM, designed the train, following the directive from Robert Zemeckis that the locomotive be evocative of the
Nautilus
from Disney’s 1954 film
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
. To create the various moving parts and time slice animations, John Bell and Wes Takahashi worked together to decipher how the train was going to move and react on-screen. “The train was modeled,” Takahashi says. “To do the time slice, I would just get a background plate, then look at it forwards and backwards, frame by frame, trying to figure out what I could do to it. The train had many more moving parts, so we had to figure out what all these parts would do once we added the ILM magic to it. I worked very closely with John Bell on that. He gave me a photograph of what he thought all the bells and whistles on the train were doing. On certain parts, they’d be emitting sparks; on other parts, they would be emitting glows. There would be smoke coming off of it. I was following John’s lead. By
Back to the Future Part III
, I could do the time slice in my sleep. It wasn’t that different from doing it on the DeLorean.”

Principal photography wrapped in early 1990, giving the postproduction team a little bit longer to work on the finishing touches. For the first time, Arthur Schmidt, Harry Keramidas, and the effects wizards at ILM didn’t have to move heaven and earth to make their theatrical release date. Zemeckis polished the film, gave some promotional interviews—as did several of the lead actors—and awaited the response. On May 27, 1990, just days after the Bobs and Neil Canton publicly declared that there would be no fourth installment with their custom-printed white T-shirts, it seemed like audiences had yet to have enough of
Back to the Future
. Universal and Amblin had pulled off a hat trick: For the third consecutive time, their time-travel film debuted in the top spot at the box office in the United States. When the dust cleared, the overall haul for its inaugural weekend was less than that of its predecessors, $19.1 million, but they had still struck gold. Perhaps even better than their commercial success was the acclaim the film received from both fans and reviewers alike. Siskel and Ebert both pointed their thumbs toward the heavens, and unlike with the second film in the series,
Entertainment Tonight
’s resident movie appraiser was back in support of the Bobs’ story. “I just thought it was great fun,” Leonard Maltin says. “I happen to love westerns, and I was happy to see a big, splashy shot in Monument Valley with a great railroad train. I thought it was great fun from start to finish. It captured the spirit of the first film while going in a totally different direction, and it had so many funny ideas. One of my chief disappointments with
Part II
was that it got serious.
Part III
lightened the tone again, and even though it was markedly different from the first film, it had the same panache and ingenuity.”

The initial reaction may have been better than
Part II
’s reception, but the third volume did fall a bit short of expectations.
Although it was predicted by some in the industry to surpass
Part II
’s domestic gross due to better word of mouth, there continued to be diminishing returns at the box office.
Back to the Future Part III
grossed $87.7 million in the United States, making it the only film in the franchise to not reach the coveted $100 million mark. Overseas, the picture made $156.8 million, an impressive number, but significantly less than
Part II
’s $213.5 million. Perhaps adding slight disappointment, the filmmakers’ dance cards were mostly left blank come awards season.

To the unsuspecting eye, it may have seemed that
Back to the Future
was going to go away not with a bang, but a whimper; however, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. With three films in the can, Marty and Doc were charging full speed ahead toward more adventures—this time at Universal Studios theme parks and on Saturday morning
television.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

R
obert Zemeckis sat at his computer before starting the day’s work. There was nothing too pressing on the agenda, which, for all the hustle and bustle of his schedule of late, was just the way he liked it. He opened his email and saw a message from Bob Gale. He read the short note, clicked a link, and was transferred to FunnyorDie.com. Just days earlier, Warren Buffett, the fourth-richest man on the planet, offered $1 billion to anyone who had predicted a perfect NCAA basketball bracket. The headline on the site announced that a winner had been crowned, and when the director scrolled further down, he saw a photograph of Buffet and Tom Wilson—dressed as the Biffhorrific version of his character—holding up
Grays Sports Almanac
. The director couldn’t help but laugh, taking his glasses off to wipe away a tear. “Of course it’s gotta be Biff,” Zemeckis says. “I love that people are still thinking about
Back to the Future
.”

Time has been very kind to the Bobs following the staggering success of their three time-travel movies. Following
Part III
’s
release, Bob Z continued his long-standing working relationship with Steve Starkey. Together, the two brought films that pushed technological limits, like
Death Becomes Her
,
Cast Away
, and
The Polar Express
, to the big screen. A number of other
Future
crew members, including Rick Carter, Joanna Johnston, Ken Ralston, Arthur Schmidt, and Alan Silvestri, have also continued to work with the director on a number of projects—and some have even won Academy Awards during the process. His parents may have initially been skeptical of his decision to be a film director, but it’s safe to assume they had since changed their minds by the time he won an Oscar for
Forrest Gump
in 1995, almost a full decade after he first made box office history with
Back to the Future
. He was right about films all along—they do have the power to captivate, bring people together, and change the world.

Working on
Back to the Future
has also been life-changing for Bob Gale. Not only did he also gain his parents’ support—“My father has taken to introducing himself not as Mark Gale, but as the father of the writer of
Back to the Future
!”—but he has also been instrumental in preserving the integrity of the trilogy and stoking the fandom flames throughout the years. Over the past three decades, Universal has continued to consult with Gale on all matters involving the trilogy, a responsibility the cocreator has happily accepted. For the film’s fans, Bob G is “Mr. Back to the Future,” the go-to expert and authoritative keeper of the franchise’s history. He isn’t just a multi-hyphenate behind-the-scenes creative, but the movies’ number one fan. The credits may state that the movies are all Robert Zemeckis’s films, but as anyone who has chronicled the trilogy’s ascent in our popular culture—and Gale’s role in it—can attest to, they are equally Bob Gale’s babies.

By the time the Bobs exchanged Internet memes via email,
the last film in the
Back to the Future
trilogy had been released twenty-five years prior. Unlike on a television show, where the same cast and crew can work together day in and day out for years, moviemaking is much more ephemeral. Yes, a director or producer may invite some of his team on Project A to work with him or her on Project B, which was what happened with some of the various members of the
Back to the Future
team who had crossed each others’ paths before and after filming the trilogy, but that is by no means expected. Hollywood is a fleeting place, often built on fragile relationships.

Which makes it all the more phenomenal that so many members of the
Back to the Future
family have remained in touch and loyal to the film series throughout the years. As conventions have become more mainstream, many of the cast and crew have met with fans, posed for pictures, and signed glossy eight-by-tens in major markets and small towns around the United States. While some have done the rounds more than others, virtually all of the key cast members have sat behind a table at one point or another since the early 2000s. At the 2006 Hollywood Bowl, an annual convention celebrating popular culture, an unprecedented
Back to the Future
reunion was staged. Two dozen
Future
alums, including Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and Lea Thompson, spent hours hearing stories from fans about how these three films impacted their lives.

“I’ve been hanging out with Chris Lloyd at conventions for a few years, and I think he’s surprised that he’s so beloved,” Thompson says. “I mean, he is massively loved. Thousands of people hang on his every word, and he’s hilarious. It’s interesting to look out at two thousand people, and a good half of them weren’t even born when the movie was made. It’s such an amazing feeling.”

“When I am sitting at the table signing, the parents that come up who have kids, they were kids when the first movie came out,” Lloyd says. “They are just so affected by the film and the story, and entertained by it. It is amazing for them to actually meet Doc, and they all go on repeatedly about how it was part of their growing up. It was their world.”

While he has frequently traveled the convention circuit as a lone wolf, Crispin Glover has chosen to abstain from any events commemorating the film since its release. From as far back as the late 1980s, the actor has been critical of the first film and, especially, its subsequent sequels.
Back to the Future
was a boon to his career, he’ll be the first to acknowledge, but he doesn’t consider the movie to be among the work he is most proud of. In recent years, Glover has taken to touring the country promoting
What Is It?
and
It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE
, two independent films he’s written and directed. The actor’s official website currently has a somewhat lengthy explanation of why the actor didn’t appear in
Part II
and
Part III
of the trilogy, but besides that, little mention is made of the film that helped make him a star.

Coincidentally, Tom Wilson used to be one of the most readily available actors to make public appearances in conjunction with
Future
-related events, but he has also chosen to abstain from making the reunion rounds in recent years. The actor, who was a staple of the late-night talk show circuit around the time of each film’s theatrical release, appeared at a number of conventions between 2001 and 2003; however, since then he has significantly distanced himself from his affiliation with the films. For Wilson, it has been a delicate dance that has inspired debate and some frustration among fans of the franchise. During his stand-up act—Wilson started his career as a comedian and continues performing comedy gigs to this day—he has taken to performing
“The Question Song.” The number, an infectiously jaunty tune that Wilson sings while strumming an acoustic guitar, is designed to answer all of the questions about
Back to the Future
that audience members may have.
Yes, Michael J. Fox is a nice guy. No, the hoverboards don’t really work. Yes, Crispin Glover was unusual. No, the manure wasn’t real.
Some have seen the song as a sign that the actor is unappreciative of the fans who have given him the biggest hit of his career, while others can empathize with the actor’s frustration with receiving the same queries on a daily basis about three films he acted in decades ago. It seems unlikely that Wilson isn’t proud of his work on the
Future
trilogy—his official website still sings the film’s praises—but he probably would prefer if he wasn’t requested to call someone a “butthead” on every day that ends in a
y
.

However, despite the few notable exceptions, most of the cast and crew of
Back to the Future
remain happy to speak about the film whenever asked. Claudia Wells, who owns a discount high-end men’s fashion store, Armani Wells, in Studio City, is often visited by tourists from around the world who stop in to speak with her about her role in the first film. Although far fewer people realize his connection to the film, fans also chat up Bob Schmelzer, who doubled Eric Stoltz in the early days of the first movie’s production, at Circle-A, the skateboard shop he owns in San Jose.

“By and large, almost everyone who worked on our films had a good experience and has great memories,” Bob Gale says. “I hear it from our veterans all the time—that the
Back to the Future
experience was one of the best, if not
the
best, time they had on any show. Certainly, part of that is because the movies are so good. When you tell someone you were part of
Back to the Future
, they usually want to hear more about it. I certainly love the fact
that this happens to me, and I don’t get tired of talking about it. There aren’t many films that attain ‘classic’ status, so it’s very rewarding to be associated with one.”

All of these recent displays of
Future
fandom might seem like a recent phenomenon, but their roots can be traced back at least to the late 1980s and a superfan named Dan Madsen, a man who was no stranger to gathering the troops. He was the president of both the
Star Trek
and
Star Wars
officially licensed fan clubs, two franchises that also have endured well past their debut. When he heard that there would be sequels to
Future
, he and his partners approached Universal to see if the studio could use his assistance in putting together an official fan club. It was the ultimate win-win situation: Madsen would have the opportunity to visit the set and interview some of the actors, while the movie studio would have a de facto publicity campaign for its upcoming films run not only for free, but also by a fan who knew how to attract other like-minded folks to join his flock. Madsen and his team flew out to Los Angeles to meet with someone at the movie studio, who told them, pending the Bobs’ blessing, Universal would be happy to have their involvement.

“Once they saw what we were doing with
Star Wars
and
Star Trek
, and realized that we could do something fun like that for
Back to the Future
, they agreed to get on board and support it as well,” he says. “It really just kind of evolved from there. It was a traditional licensing deal. We got the license to do it, and then we kicked it off and started marketing it around. When
Back to the Future Part II
went into production, that’s when we got on the phone and started talking to everybody.”

Madsen knew speaking with some of the actors and key crew members would be a perk of the project, but he was struck by just how informative, and how much fun, his interviewees
were. Even after several decades, he has never forgotten the warm treatment he received from even the biggest and brightest stars on the project. “We had a whole list of everybody that we wanted to talk to, and they were good about getting us everybody that we wanted,” he says. “At the time, Christopher Lloyd was not an easy person to get an interview with. He was kind of a quiet guy. We were told he didn’t do that many interviews, but since this was the official publication for the fan club, they thought he would do it. It took a little while, but we got him, so I’m most proud of that interview, there’s no question about it. Mary Steenburgen was also one of my favorites. She’s such a sweetheart. I was really impressed with her and loved being able to interview her. And of course, Michael J. Fox is a class act all the way.”

Unlike with Madsen’s two previous fan club ventures, the
Back to the Future
official fan club folded by 1990, after having four magazines, one released each quarter, featuring dozens of articles and previously unseen photographs, becoming the first outlet of any kind to take an in-depth look behind some of the more technical aspects of the trilogy. There were two more surprises that Madsen left as parting gifts before he went back to dedicating himself fully to
Star Wars
and
Star Trek
. Universal had quietly been developing a theme park ride for its Florida location, as well as an animated series inspired by the trilogy. A sneak preview of the ride appeared in the final issue of the fan club magazine, before it was officially announced in
The Secrets of the
Back to the Future
Trilogy
, a half-hour special hosted by Kirk Cameron that was included in the first VHS box set of the three films. The ride opened May 2 of the following year in Orlando, with thousands of excited fans flocking to the park to be among the first to ride in one of the eight-seater DeLorean time machines.

The ride was created with a relatively simplistic functioning
concept. The patrons would line up and watch a preshow video featuring Christopher Lloyd, Tom Wilson, and Darlene Vogel, who traded in her Spike costume from
Part II
and now was playing the role of the ride’s “spokesperson.” The basic premise was that Biff Tannen had stolen the time machine, after breaking into Doc’s Institute of Future Technology, and was now traveling throughout history, potentially disrupting the very fabric of the space-time continuum. The “volunteers” at the institute, the riders, would then make their way into an auditorium and sit in one of twelve DeLoreans, which were on pistons that allowed them to bend, tilt, rise, and fall. A large-format film was projected on an IMAX screen, placing the volunteers right in the middle of the action. At the beginning, flight was simulated as the front section of the car rose eight feet in the air. The attraction was an unmitigated success, which led to identical versions opening at Universal Studios in Hollywood on June 12, 1993, and at the company’s theme park in Japan on March 31, 2001.

One of those patrons who visited Back to the Future: The Ride in its early days was Stephen Clark, a self-described “country bumpkin from Alabama.” His first venture was eight months after it opened, in January 1992, and from that moment he was hooked. He had seen the films in theaters several times and fancied himself a real enthusiast of the trilogy, but there was something about sitting in a DeLorean time machine, placed in front of the action, that sparked something in him. “I just really threw it into high gear as a geek fan,” Clark says. “I could not get enough information about
Back to the Future
. This was before the Internet, before any of that stuff. When I came back from the ride, I just thought,
I have got to find me a copy of that footage
.” His quest for his holy grail led him to Universal. He called the studio and was directed through the bureaucratic channels to Bob Gale, who still had an office in the
backlot while
Back to the Future: The Animated Series
, which debuted in September 1991 and ran for two seasons on CBS, was in production. The two got to talking. Clark had a background in computer programming and thought he could be helpful in revitalizing the fan club, but in a different form for fans who remained just as interested as him in the trilogy. With the assistance of technology, perhaps Stephen Clark could not only help keep interest in the franchise high, but also provide a forum for fans to connect with others from around the world. Gale agreed that it was worth a shot and assisted Clark in getting hold of some of the cast and crew.