All language subtitles for Back to the Future (1985).Commentary 2.eng

-Hi, this is Bob Gale.
-And Neil Canton.

We're co-producers,
and I'm the co-screenwriter

of Back to the Future I.

We couldn't talk Bob Zemeckis
into sitting down

to do scene-specific commentary with us,

so you'll just have
to put up with us this time.

And this should be the last commentary
that you listen to.

Listen to all the other
stuff on the discs first,

'cause we're gonna assume
that you watched the documentaries

and listened to the first commentary,
so that we don't have to repeat

and make you bored with hearing
the same stories you've already heard.

This is a set, obviously,
shot on Stage 12 at Universal.

A major pain in the ass to get this shot
because of all these clocks

and the intricate camera move.

And it's actually the second beginning
of Back to the Future

that Bob Zemeckis and I wrote.

As you heard on the rest of the material,

the original version of the script
had a climax in New Mexico

at a nuclear test site,

and the original opening scene
took place in a classroom,

where Marty was watching
a documentary about that.

We actually built a classroom set
where we were gonna shoot that,

and after we recast Michael J. Fox

and were trying to figure out ways
to cut money,

Bob and I realized
that we didn't need that scene.

It was not information that we needed,

and we concocted this sequence with
the set that we already knew that we had.

That would be cheaper to do,

and since we were only shooting half-days
with Michael J. Fox,

this shot took about a half a day to do.

We didn't have to have Michael here
to do that.

This is Deborah Harmon on television.
Bob and I worked with her on Used Cars,

and she came in to do this uncredited
as a personal favor to us.

However, officials now attribute
the discrepancy to a simple clerical error.

The FBI, which is investigating the matter,
had no comment.

One of the things
that this scene is doing, of course,

is giving us information
about Dr. Emmett Brown.

We're not gonna see Doc Brown
for a good 20 minutes into the movie,

but by seeing all this gadgetry
and craziness,

you get a complete sense of who the guy is,

and you'll be interested to find out
what kind of a character he is.

Also I should mention
that the opening with all the clocks

is either an homage or a rip-off
of the opening

of the George Pal movie The Time Machine,

which starts
with a whole bunch of clocks, as well.

Einstein, come here, boy.

What's going on? God.

Jesus!

That is disgusting. Where the hell is he?

Now, when you're watching the movie,

you don't really know anything
about what it's about,

except for the fact that you've already
seen the commercials and so forth.

But putting the plutonium down there
and showing where it was

is a way to keep you interested
and let you know

that something major is gonna happen
a little bit later on.

You may have noticed on
one of those gauges, it said, "CRM 114."

One of Bob and my favorite movies was
Dr. Strangelove, is still Dr. Strangelove,

and CRM 114
is a direct reference to that movie.

We blew Michael back, right?

-Yes, that was Michael.
-That's not a stuntman.

That was Michael.

And my recollection is that
we had some kind of promotional deal

with whatever company
made these sunglasses.

It's the only time in the movie
you see him wearing sunglasses,

and we put them in here
to do some kind of contractual obligation,

and you never see them again,

because shooting with mirrored sunglasses
is a major pain in the ass.

-Where are you?
-Thank God I've found you.

Listen, can you meet me
at Twin Pines Mall tonight at 1:15?

I made a major breakthrough,
and I'll need your assistance.

-Wait a minute. 1:15 in the morning?
-Yeah.

Doc, what's going on?

-Where you been all week?
-Working.

-Where's Einstein? Is he with you?
-Yeah, he's right here.

You know, Doc,
you left your equipment on.

This was a complete four-walled set,

and we could move out any wall
that we needed to.

And our property people had a great time,
and set decorators had a great time,

just finding any kind of junk that
they could to load up the set with.

Jukebox, there's a canoe in here,
there's a couple of animal heads, I think.

They just scrounged
everything they could find

out of the prop
and set-decorating department

and stuck it in here.

The idea, of course, being that,
when Doc Brown's mansion burned down,

which you saw earlier in the scene
on the newspaper,

Doc salvaged everything that he could
and stuck it here in his garage.

It's where he lives, in the garage, also.
A section of it is his bedroom.

He keeps the plutonium under his bed there,

which, of course,
is where anyone would keep plutonium.

I would.

The garage there was just a flat
that we put next to this Burger King,

which is on Victory Boulevard in Burbank.

Again, we had some kind of a tie-in
with Burger King on this,

and the deal was...
I don't think they gave us any money,

but my recollection is
they let us shoot there for free,

which was something.

The guy who's driving the Jeep there
is our stunt coordinator Walter Scott,

and this, of course,
is the back lot at Universal.

Walter is somebody that Bob and I met

during the production of 1941,
and again on Used Cars.

He was not our first choice
for stunt coordinator.

We tried to get Terry Leonard,
who we'd worked with many times before,

but Terry was unavailable and said,
"Use Walter. Walter will do a great job."

And Terry was right, he did.

The high school was in Whittier.
It's Whittier High School.

Richard Nixon's alma mater.

Doc?

Strickland there is played by James Tolkan.

Terrific actor.

Bob and I noticed him
and were impressed by him

in a movie called Prince of the City,

where he plays
a really tough New York City cop

or police commissioner or something.
And he was a joy to work with.

You got a real attitude problem, McFly.
You're a slacker.

You remind me of your father
when he went here. He was a slacker, too.

Can I go now, Mr. Strickland?

I noticed your band is on the roster
for the dance auditions after school today.

Why even bother, McFly?
You don't have a chance.

You're too much like your old man.

No McFly ever amounted to anything
in the history of Hill Valley.

Yeah, well, history is gonna change.

That's Huey Lewis,
if you weren't paying any attention.

And this was shot
at the Burbank Community Center on...

-What street was that on, Neil? Riverside?
-Yeah, I think it's Riverside.

-Alameda? Something like that.
-Right.

One, two, three.

The guy playing guitar there
was Michael J. Fox's guitar instructor.

We put him in the movie, 'cause... Why not?

Okay, that's enough.

My recollection is that this idea
that they get rejected by playing too loud

-was Huey Lewis' idea.
-That's right. It was Huey.

It's the stupidest reason to
reject anybody, and of course...

But I think it's something
that actually happened to him.

-Yeah, that's right.
-One time in his career.

Here, of course,
we're setting up Goldie Wilson,

who we're gonna meet in a little while.

Now, interestingly enough,
Claudia Wells here, who plays Jennifer,

we had originally cast her as Jennifer
before we had cast Marty.

This audition tape of yours is great.

You've gotta send it in
to the record company.

As you know, it took us a long time
to finally get to the point

where we cast Eric Stoltz as Marty,

and we pushed the start date back
several times.

By the time we had readjusted our schedule,
Claudia was no longer available

to play Jennifer,

so we had to recast her
with an actress named Melora Hardin.

And Melora Hardin was a couple of inches
taller than Michael J. Fox,

so when Michael J. Fox
got put in the movie,

a lot of people on the crew, particularly,
interestingly enough, the women,

felt that it was not a good image

to have Marty's girlfriend
be three or four inches taller than he was.

And it was... One of the hardest things
I had to do was to fire Melora Hardin.

She'd never even worked a day on the movie
and she hadn't done anything wrong,

but that's what happened.

And, of course, with the new schedule now
with Michael J. Fox,

Claudia Wells was available,
so she came back and played Jennifer,

as we had originally wanted.

I mean, look,
I think the woman was born a nun.

She's just trying to keep you respectable.

Well, she's not doing a very good job.

Terrible.

You'll notice the clock tower back there,

the ledge that Doc Brown
is gonna walk on, later on,

is completely intact.

Thirty years ago,
lightning struck that clock tower...

This is the vision of time travel
that Bob and I came up with,

where you can change things.
So, in this version of the world,

Doc Brown was never out there
on that ledge,

so it is completely intact.

And of course, at the end of the movie,
when we're back here,

you'll see that it is broken,

and it's also broken
in Back to the Future Part II.

-It's my dad. I've got to go.
-Right.

I'll call you tonight.

Aerobics, of course,
was a big craze in the '80s,

and we always tried to find something
that we could do on the back lot

that we were gonna change
that would be an interesting contrast

between the '80s and the '50s.

So, the cafe became aerobics.

If we were doing it today,
it would probably have been a Starbucks.

And Orgy American Style playing there
at the Essex Theater.

Not actually sure
if that's the title of the real movie,

-but it probably is.
-I don't know.

When the movie played in Australia,

Michael J. Fox had to do
a public service announcement

for Australian television

telling kids not to ride off the
back of cars on their skateboards.

They were, I guess,
a little bit behind us in Australia,

and kids hadn't even figured out
that you could do that,

and then, of course,
we had to tell them that it was dangerous.

This street is in Arleta,

-although this shot right here is on set. Yes.
-It's on a stage.

The first shot, where the truck
comes down the street, is in Arleta.

-Blind spot?
-I could've been killed.

And here we have Crispin Glover as George

and Tom Wilson as Biff in their makeup.

Hi, Son.

You'll find on the DVD some makeup tests,

and we did a lot of tests to try to figure
out how we were gonna light the makeup,

so that it wouldn't look too makeup-y.

And this was a combination of latex devices
and the actors' own flesh.

By the time we did Back to the Future II,

there had been advances
in latex technology,

where all the old age makeup was in latex,
but here it was a combination

of partially latex and appliances,
and partially them.

Do you realize what would happen if I
hand in my reports in your handwriting?

If I recall correctly,
it was Ken Chase who created the makeup.

That's right.

Ken had done Roots.

He had done a lot of interesting makeup
on Roots,

and that's the reason that we hired him.

Not too early. I sleep in Saturday.

McFly, your shoe's untied.

Don't be so gullible, McFly.
Got the place fixed up nice.

On the other commentary, I think
we talk about how it was an unusual choice

for us to use the same actors
playing themselves old and young.

It's still not done all that often,
but we felt that it was critical

that the audience would appreciate
what happens to these characters

by seeing the same actors play them
in all their incarnations.

I know what you're going to say, Son,
and you're right. You're right.

This greasy hair look
that Crispin has is great.

We did a number of tests trying to figure
out what we were gonna do with his hair,

and this just turned out to be the ticket.

I mean, he wrecked it. He totaled it.

I needed that car tomorrow night, Dad.

Do you have any idea
how important this was to me?

Do you have any clue?

I know, and all I can say is, I'm...

I'm sorry.

Believe me, Marty, you're better off

without having to worry
about all the aggravation...

Now, this peanut brittle gag here
is the payoff of a scene that got cut out

in which, after Biff leaves,
a neighbor comes by

with his daughter selling peanut brittle,

and George ends up buying
a whole case of peanut brittle,

and that's what he's having for dinner.

We're going to have
to eat this cake by ourselves.

Your Uncle Joey didn't make parole again.

I think it would be nice
if you all dropped him a line.

Uncle "Jailbird" Joey?

We have a lot of exposition
to set up everything that happens

later on in the show,
and exposition can be very, very painful,

and you always try to figure out
creative ways to get it out there.

I think the most creative piece of
exposition is the setup for "Jailbird" Joey,

because the cake gag that sets it up
is funny all by itself

and you're completely unaware
that it's any sort of a setup whatsoever.

The rest of it is pretty
much pure exposition.

The whole story
of the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.

And as a writer,
you sometimes try to be creative

in how you hide the exposition
and make it so that it isn't noticeable,

but sometimes the best thing to do
is to just bite the bullet

and have somebody just spit it all out.
So, that's what we do.

Well, it'll just happen.
Like the way I met your father.

That was so stupid.
Grandpa hit him with the car.

Marty's brother and sister, by the way,
are Wendie Jo Sperber and Marc McClure,

who are veterans of the Zemeckis-Gale
acting repertory company.

We used both of them in both
I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars.

When you enjoy working with an actor,
you go back to them

and have them come back again,

because you know
that you can depend on them

and you know that you'll have a good time
working with them.

Like a little lost puppy,
and my heart just went out to him.

Yeah, Mom, we know.
You've told us this story a million times.

You felt sorry for him,

so you decided to go with him
to the Fish Under the Sea dance.

The makeup on Lea Thompson here,
Lorraine, is just great.

All puffed up because she's an alcoholic.

And it's quite a contrast to the makeup that
Ken created for the very end of the movie.

It was then that I realized

that I was going to spend
the rest of my life with him.

Another thing I should say about this scene
is that, because of Michael's schedule,

we had to film the coverage
before we shot the masters.

We would block the masters
at the end of the night

when we were shooting with him

so that everybody would know
what their place was,

and then we would put a stand-in there
for eye-line,

and Bob would shoot the coverage of
everybody else, before Michael came in,

and then, when Michael showed up,
we'd shoot the master,

and then Michael's side of the scene.

So, the camera doesn't move around a lot
at the dinner table

because that was of necessity.
We didn't have Michael to shoot that way.

This mall was a long schlep
to get to this location from the studio,

but it was the closest mall
that we could find

that had this hill looking down
on the parking lot,

which was critical for the sequence
at the end of the movie,

when Marty comes back
and watches himself.

Hey, Einstein, where's the doc, boy?

We had to schedule
the shooting of this scene

to take place after Christmas.

The movie started shooting in November,
that was with Eric Stoltz,

and we couldn't shoot at a mall
during Christmas

because there were Christmas decorations
all over the place

and it was too crowded. It was
still a working mall when we shot it,

and we would shoot
our close-up coverage first

in a very small section of the parking lot
that the mall people let us have,

and then by 10:00 at night
all the employees were gone

and we could shoot the whole thing.

We started filming this in January 1985,
and we filmed a few nights with Eric Stoltz.

It was during the filming of this
that we made our casting change,

on a night that Neil will always remember.
Tell them about it, Neil.

I had a beeper on and my wife beeped me.
She was pregnant, nine months pregnant,

and just after we gave Eric the news

and spoke to the crew
and let them know what was going on,

my beeper went off
and I went to the payphone,

'cause we didn't have
cell phones back then,

and I called my wife
and she said the baby was due,

"It's time to come home," and I raced home.

It figures it was the furthest point
that I could possibly be.

Raced home and took my wife
to the hospital, my daughter was born,

and I came back to work on Monday, was
a proud father of a beautiful baby girl,

and had a new actor, Michael J. Fox.

Okay.

Please note that Einstein's clock

is in precise synchronization
with my control watch.

-Got it?
-Right. Check, Doc.

That insert, I remember,
was a pain in the ass to get,

-to have both clocks...
-Both clocks at the same time.

...change at the exact same moment there.

In a couple of these shots in the car
with the dog in it,

we actually had a stunt guy
wearing a dog costume

who could actually drive the car.

So, the close-ups,
where you obviously see it's a dog,

is the real dog,

and anything that was wide like this,
where we were afraid you might see the dog,

-was a stuntman...
-In a dog's... In a dog's head.

Actually, it was a whole suit.
It was a dog suit.

'Cause we all know dogs can't drive cars.

This is, of course,
an homage to Disney's The Shaggy Dog.

You're going to see some serious shit.

This, of course, a combination of
first unit, second unit and inserts.

Executive producer Frank Marshall
was the second unit director,

and he'd go out to the mall

after we were all finished
with the storyboards

and the stunt guys,
and go out and shoot shots like that.

Then he would complain about
how incredibly cold it was out there.

It was cold.

Actually, I think we maybe even had
some snow flurries on one day.

I think you're right.

People frequently have asked,

"What's the significance
of 88 miles per hour?"

And the only significance to it
is that it's easy to remember.

What did I tell you?

Now those fire trails,
that was another major pain in the ass.

In the shots where the fire ignites,
I think we had to under-crank those.

Some kind of combination
of gasoline and pyro fluid.

And our special effects coordinator,
Kevin Pike,

always had great theories
about why things were gonna work,

but it seemed like eight out of 10 times

the theories needed to go back
to the drawing board a little bit.

Yeah. A lot of times we would get the fire
lit, and by the time we were ready to roll,

the fire would be out. We'd have to
stop everything and start all over again.

I sent him into the future.

One minute into the future, to be exact.

Now, notice the composition that Bob uses,
the blocking here,

the disparity in the heights between
Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd.

This is one way that Bob came up with
to compensate for that,

so you'II notice
throughout Back I and Back ll,

Bob uses this blocking a lot,
where Christopher Lloyd is walking one way

and Michael J. Fox is
walking the other way,

and they're walking back and forth
in three-dimensional space.

That's very effective.
It's also very dynamic.

I believe this was liquid nitrogen that we
had sprayed all over the car to ice it up.

That's right, and it was also a problem
keeping it on the car.

It would drip off several times
before we were ready to go.

This is the iciest
you'll ever see the DeLorean.

You'll notice, as the movie goes on,

when the DeLorean reappears
from a time trip,

there's less and less ice on it, and
finally, by the time we're into the sequels,

there basically isn't any.
I figure we used Mr. Fusion as an excuse

why we weren't gonna have ice
on the car anymore,

because great idea, great visual, and...

-Hard to do.
-Pain in the ass to shoot.

And he's completely unaware
that anything happened.

As far as he's concerned,
the trip was instantaneous.

That's why his watch is exactly
one minute behind mine.

He skipped over that minute
to instantly arrive at this moment in time.

-Come here. I'll show you how it works.
-All right.

Now, the red, green and yellow
of the different time displays

is again another homage
to the George Pal Time Machine,

where he had three light bulbs over the time
display thing that were in those colors.

Say you want to see the signing
of the Declaration of independence.

Or witness the birth of Christ.

This is one of my favorite jokes
that nobody ever laughs at,

that Jesus was born on December 25th
in the year 0.

Probably still not laughing.

November 5th just happens to be
my father's birthday.

My father, I think, believes to this day
that this is a great homage to him.

It was just the right day of the week

to make the thing work out right
in the script.

And we picked November

because of the time of the year
that we were shooting the movie,

and, of course, to make sense that they'd be
having things like a school dance at school.

We obviously couldn't have it
take place in August,

because there wouldn't be any school.

Things have certainly changed around here.

I remember when this was all farmland
as far as the eye could see.

Again, blatant exposition here,

and what takes the curse off of it

is a great actor saying it
with a crazed look in his eye.

This is heavy-duty, Doc. This is great.

Does it run on regular unleaded gasoline?

Unfortunately, no. It requires something
with a little more kick. Plutonium.

Plutonium. Wait a minute.

Notice Doc's truck there,

E. Brown Enterprises,
24-hour scientific services.

Our thinking was that the folks in Hill Valley,
if they needed a scientist day or night,

could simply call Doc Brown
and he'd be there in his truck

to do whatever service
a scientist would be required for.

So I took their plutonium and, in turn,
gave them a shoddy bomb casing

full of used pinball machine parts.

-Come on. Let's get you a radiation suit.
-Jesus!

We must prepare to reload.

Now, this plutonium
is actually fairly accurate.

I remember John Zemansky, our prop man,

actually had a guy come to the parking lot
at Amblin

with some things that
looked just like this,

to show us how plutonium
would be stored and carted around.

So, for those of you that might be interested
to know what plutonium would look like,

I don't actually know
if it would be red like that,

but it would be carried around
in a case and units like that.

Don't you lose those tapes now.
I need that as a record.

Let's put this back here. There we go.

I almost forgot my luggage.

Who knows if they've got
cotton underwear in the future?

I'm allergic to all synthetics.

If you've looked at the deleted scenes,

you'll see the scene
that we used that suitcase for.

If you haven't looked at the deleted scenes,
you can stop the DVD and check it out.

See what you missed.

Doc.

Look me up when you get there.

Indeed, I will.

And Doc talks about
going into the future to

find out who wins
the next 25 World Series here.

Of course,
at the time that Bob and I wrote that,

we had no idea
that we'd be doing a World Series gag

in Back to the Future II, but there it is.

What am I thinking of?
I almost forgot to bring extra plutonium.

How did I ever expect to get back?
One pellet, one trip.

I must be out of my mind.

I was told
that when NBC ran this movie recently,

about four or five months ago,

and this is June 2002 we're recording this,

they edited out
some or all of the terrorist stuff here.

I guess in the network's desire
to be politically correct,

they didn't want to offend any terrorists,
be they Libyans or anybody else.

We were ahead of our time
with Libyans wanting plutonium.

Actually we weren't. That was something
that was pretty topical then and there.

Qaddafi was trying to get a bomb.

Anyway, the moral to that story is,
don't watch movies on network television

if you want to see the movies
the real way they're supposed to be.

No!

We were criticized for
that being too violent

when the movie came out,
but it had to be violent,

because we needed to make this
incredibly powerful impression on Marty,

so that he would be motivated
to write that letter

and want to do something
to avert Doc's death.

Damn Soviet gun.

Go!

You can't really hear the dialogue there,
but one terrorists says,

"Damn Soviet gun," when the gun jams,

and the other one,
when he can't get the car started, he says,

"Damn German car."

Now, story-wise, it was important
that Marty goes back in time accidentally.

Bob and I struggled with this
for a long time.

Traditionally, in time-travel movies,

the time traveler
wants to go travel through time

and does something
because he wants to travel through time

that messes things up.
We didn't want to mess anything up.

Obviously, we wanted
to make things turn out better.

And so the solution to that
was to make sure

that is was clear that our hero
did not want to go back in time,

and once he got back in time,
all he wanted to do was get back.

And for you continuity geeks out there
that like to find continuity mistakes,

we know that the odometer,

the numbers on the odometer aren't
consistent from one shot to the next.

It's a movie.

Don't worry about it. You're supposed
to be watching whether the needle hits 88

and not what the odometer says.

This was filmed
at the Disney Ranch in Newhall,

at this wonderful barn there.

And that shot was under-cranked.

We shot it a couple of times
at different speeds,

and that was the one
that was the most effective.

That's the fastest turn-on of lights
and moving from upstairs to downstairs

in the history of cinema there.

What is it? What is it, Pa?

Looks like an airplane.

I've a vague recollection that the woman
in this scene was late arriving.

We thought maybe
she wasn't gonna show up,

and we tried to talk
one of the hairdressers...

That's right. Dorothy Byrne, right.

...into getting dressed,
and she was dressed in the outfit...

-And then the actress showed up.
-...and then she showed up.

Forgot about that.

That's a fake comic book, by the way.

We made that, obviously,
to make it look like the DeLorean,

but it's inspired by EC Comics
and Weird Science Comics.

Cows are always good for a laugh,
so we have cows.

Excuse me.

Sorry about your barn.

It's already mutated into human form!
Shoot it!

Take that, you mutated son of a bitch!

Get away!

Hold it.

Shoot it, Pa!

My pine! Why you...

Of course,
the twin pines are now a lone pine,

and the payoff for that is, again,
at the end of the movie.

All right. All right. Okay, McFly.
Get a grip on yourself.

This is a process shot here.

I don't remember
whether we actually shot these plates

or whether we found them in stock.

-I think it was stock.
-I think we found them in stock.

And this is near Chino, California,

about an hour and 20 minute drive
from the studio.

This was a really tough location to find.

Just to find a big, vast section of
farmland like this close to Los Angeles.

It's probably not farmland anymore.

It's probably all housing and condos
and stuff.

But the weather gods were certainly
on our side when we shot this,

'cause we had to bus the crew
way the hell out here,

and we couldn't have
asked for a better day.

Don't stop, Wilbur! Don't!

Originally in the script,
the housing development

was gonna be under construction,
but that was too expensive to do,

so the construction
became simply a billboard and...

I think we even scouted some sites
that were under construction.

Right, and there was not a sense
of big open space like we had here,

so we decided
that the billboard would work,

and certainly, it's
absolutely as effective.

This is probably impossible to do,

for him to actually get the car back there
like that with it dead, but it's a movie.

Solves a lot of problems.

I don't remember
whether Miller gave us any money

for putting their truck there,
but they did give us free beer, so...

Gave us product, right.

On Fridays everybody got to
go home with a couple of beers.

You know, on Friday,
that was pretty important for the crew.

This was a gag
that Bob came up with right on the spot.

There was one gas station attendant
in uniform,

and Bob saw that and suddenly said,
"Wait, I know a great gag we gotta do,"

and he made Deborah Scott,
our costume designer,

go scour through the studio
to find three more costumes like that.

That's a great gag, gets a big laugh.

I think we also shot this sequence
on a Saturday, as I recall,

-'cause of Michael's television schedule.
-Right.

And so we needed daytime work.
We couldn't get him except on a Saturday,

and it turned out
it was a beautiful day with...

-Yeah, with these big clouds.
-Big clouds and blue sky and all, so...

-Today, of course...
-...gave it a real '50s feel.

...you'd put that sky in digitally
if you didn't have the sky that you wanted.

Right. But you'd still have
to shoot it on Saturday.

The future is in your hands.

If you believe in progress,
re-elect Mayor Red Thomas.

The picture of Red Thomas there,
that was Hal Gausman, our set decorator.

No clearance is necessary when you use
pictures of the crew for those things,

so that's what we did.

And it's a testament
to Larry Paull's production design here

that everybody on the crew said that this
street reminded them of where they grew up,

whether it was a suburb or a small town
or bigger city.

This is one of the few interior-exterior
sets on the Universal back lot,

and it's been used
in countless Universal movies.

-What?
-What's with the life preserver?

I think this was used
as the drugstore in The Sting.

It might've been.

That's Norm Alden there,
well-known character actor.

Brown.

Great. You're alive.

Phone book gives you the impression
that Hill Valley's a much bigger area

than it probably is.
The Browns are a pretty big family,

judging by how many of them there are
in the phone book there.

-Do you know where 1640 Riverside...
-Are you going to order something, kid?

I remember that Pepsi,
who we had a deal with,

asked us to take out the reference
to Tab in the movie.

We told them nothing doing.
It was too good of a joke.

Just give me something
without any sugar in it, okay?

Of course, you probably don't know
what Tab is anymore.

It was a very popular diet drink,

mostly in the '70s and, in fact, by 1985,
when the movie came out,

Tab was pretty well history,

but it was too good of a joke
for us to not use.

I'm talking to you, McFly, you Irish bug!

-Hey, Biff. Hey, guys. How are you doing?
-You got my homework finished, McFly?

That's Billy Zane there, by the way.

If you saw Titanic,
you know who Billy Zane is.

This was his first movie.

I got to have time to recopy it.

You realize what would happen if I hand in
my homework in your handwriting?

I'll get kicked out of school.

You wouldn't want that to happen,
would you?

-Would you?
-Now, of course not, Biff.

-No.
-I wouldn't want that to happen.

-What are you looking at, butthead?
-Biff, get a load of this guy's life preserver.

Dork thinks he's going to drown.

How about my homework, McFly?

Okay, Biff. Well, I'll
finish that on up tonight

and then I'll bring it over
first thing tomorrow morning.

Not too early. I sleep in Sundays.
McFly, your shoe's untied!

-Don't be so gullible, McFly.
-Okay.

-I don't want to see you in here again.
-Okay. All right. Bye-bye.

As I recall, Crispin did come up with this
business of him eating his cereal like that,

and as many problems as we had
with him matching,

he'd really worked out when he was gonna
have a mouthful of cereal,

so that was something we didn't
have any continuity problems with.

...push you around like that for?

Well, they're bigger than me.

Stand tall, boy.
Have some respect for yourself.

Don't you know,
if you let people walk over you now,

they'll be walking over you
for the rest of your life.

This actor's name is, believe it or not,
Donald Fullilove.

I'm gonna make something of myself.
I'm going to night school,

and one day, I'm going to be somebody.

And, of course,
he did not really have a gold tooth, but...

Through the magic of makeup
and appliances, he does here.

A colored mayor. That'll be the day.

You wait and see, Mr. Caruthers.
I will be mayor.

I'll be the most powerful man in Hill
Valley, and I'm going to clean up this town.

Good. You can start by sweeping the floor.

Mayor Goldie Wilson.
I like the sound of that.

That's a great vintage bike
that we got from Schwinn there.

Hey, Dad! George! Hey, you on the bike!

This is South Pasadena.
Bushnell Avenue, as I recollect.

And when we shot with Eric Stoltz,

this was actually the very first thing
in the movie that we filmed.

When we were scouting this location
with Eric Stoltz,

Michael J. Fox was shooting Teen Wolf
on the same street.

And he always talked about
how he remembered

that some Spielberg company
was there scouting,

and how he wished he could be
in a Spielberg movie someday.

One of the greatest sound effects,
that head hit on the cement there,

and another specialty of Chuck Campbell,
our sound effects editor,

is the barking dogs.

Anytime there's something loud
that happens on a street,

Chuck would always
give us some barking dogs back there.

A wonderful little touch.

Mom? That you?

There, there, now. Just relax.

This, of course, is back on a set again.

I had a horrible nightmare.

Our soundman, Bill Kaplan, was, is,
and remains to this day,

a total fanatic about trying to have the
most perfect production sound he can create.

1955?

And so, he went to great lengths
to put the right kind of sponges

to absorb the rain
falling outside the window,

so that the sound of the water falling
would not ruin the production track.

And thank God he did, because we didn't
have to loop any of this scene.

...thin!

Just relax, Calvin.
You got a big bruise on your head.

-Where are my pants?
-Over there, on my hope chest.

I've never seen
purple underwear before, Calvin.

Lea Thompson was
just absolutely wonderful here.

Well, that is your name, isn't it?
Calvin Klein?

This was one of the audition scenes
that we had for Lorraine,

-and she just nailed it.
-She was great. Yeah.

She was great. She was Lorraine.

Call me Marty.

Pleased to meet you, Calvin.

Marty.

Klein.

All the little touches
that Larry Pauli and Todd Hallowell,

our art director, came up with,

just putting all those photographs around
her mirror of heartthrobs from the '50s.

It's not something that you notice, really,
but if you do,

it just kind of helps you understand
that Lorraine was really boy crazy.

Oh, my God! It's my mother!
Quick! Put your pants back on!

And this is pure Michael J. Fox here.

This is the kind of stuff he can do.
He's so great at it.

He could just do that,
and he could do it every time.

I guessed you're a sailor.

That's why you wear that life preserver.

Frances Lee McCain as Stella Baines there,

and George DiCenzo is Sam Baines.

Bob and I met George DiCenzo
and actually wrote dialogue for him

during Close Encounters.

He played an Army colonel or general,
Air Force colonel or general.

So, you're my uncle Joey.

Better get used to these bars, kid.

Yes. Joey just loves being in his playpen.

He cries whenever we take him out,
so we just leave him in there all the time.

Well, Marty, I hope you like meatloaf.

-Listen, I really ought to...
-Sit here, Marty.

Sam, stop fiddling with that thing
and come in here and eat your dinner.

Look at it roll.

Now we can watch Jackie Gleason
while we eat.

It's our first television set.
Dad just picked it up today.

Do you have a television?

Well, yeah. You know we have two of them.

Wow! You must be rich.

Honey, he's teasing you.
Nobody has two television sets.

Now, when the movie was translated
into Italian,

in Italy, all television was state controlled,
so they did not have a word for rerun.

-Rerun.
-What's a rerun?

Nobody in Italy would have known
what that word meant,

so in Italy this scene was translated as,
"I saw it on cassette,"

because they did have VHS machines
over there by 1985.

You can't.

Right, and didn't you have to
change overseas the Calvin Klein?

That's right. Calvin Klein wasn't
well-known over there, either,

so I think it was Yves Saint Laurent
in France.

No, Pierre Cardin, it was Pierre Cardin. So
Marty was always called Pierre in Europe.

Who the hell is John F. Kennedy?

Mother?

With Marty's parents out of town,

don't you think he
ought to spend the night?

I mean, after all,
Dad almost killed him with the car.

This was an actual practical location
in South Pasadena there.

I think you're our responsibility.

-Gee, I don't know.
-And he can sleep in my room.

I gotta go!

I'm trying to remember,
did we shoot this on a Saturday,

or was Michael finished with his show
by the time we did this?

I think he was done with his show.
I don't think this was a Saturday.

-He's a very strange young man.
-He's an idiot.

Comes from upbringing.
His parents are probably idiots, too.

Lorraine, you ever have a kid
who acts that way, I'll disown you.

This is the Gamble House in Pasadena,

a great example of Craftsman architecture,

built by architects Greene and Greene,
and it's a tourist attraction.

It's a California landmark.

If you come out to Southern California,
be sure to check it out.

Now, the close-up here, this door
was a different Greene and Greene house

in another part of Pasadena
called the Blacker House.

We weren't allowed
to shoot inside the Gamble House,

so this, by being the same architects,
was a pretty good match.

I don't want to know anything about you.

-Listen, Doc...
-Quiet!

And again, this was a scene that
we had originally shot with Eric Stoltz,

and we had to go back to the same location
to shoot it with Michael.

I'm going to read your thoughts.

And the woman who owned the house
had sold it

from when we filmed there the first time,

"and our location manager came to us
and said, "You guys,

"you gotta film in here
before escrow closes,"

"because I don't know if I'll be able
to make a deal with the new owners."

So we begged Gary Goldberg to let Michael
out of his rehearsals for two days

so that we could shoot there
before escrow closed on this house,

and Gary was kind enough to let us do that.

1985.

My God.

Do you know what this means?

It means that this damn thing
doesn't work at all!

Doc, you got to help me.
You are the only one...

I think this was one of the very
first things we shot with Michael.

I have that recollection.

No, I think this was much further along.
This was, like, in March.

Okay. All right, I'll prove it to you.

Look at my driver's license. Expires 1987.

Look at my birthday, for crying out loud!
I haven't even been born yet.

And look at this picture.
It's my brother, my sister and me.

Look at her sweatshirt,
Doc. "Class of 1984"?

Pretty mediocre photographic fakery.
They cut off your brother's hair.

Now, this disappearing photo gag
is a wonderful example

of what Bob and I refer to
as movie logic versus real logic.

There's no real sense as to why

the characters would disappear
from this photograph one by one.

Why don't they all disappear
at the same time?

But it's one of those things
where you see it and you believe it.

Why doesn't the photograph itself
start to disappear? But it doesn't.

-This is a set again.
-This is a set again.

Obviously, the wide shot
was at the Gamble House,

and then this is on Stage 12 at Universal.

...and you hit your head on the sink.

That's when you came up
with the idea for the flux capacitor,

which is what makes time travel possible.

This was the back lot at Universal.

There's no reason to go all the
way back out to Chino to shoot this

when you weren't gonna see anything.

Our effects guys brought the fog machines,
and this was up near the Psycho house,

-as I remember.
-That's right, yeah.

After I fell off my toilet, I drew this.

The flux capacitor.

By the way, you'll see the toilet that Doc
fell off of in Back to the Future Part III,

so stay tuned.

Now, Doc builds the time machine
for himself,

but he felt compelled
to create Dymo labels there,

saying to shield your eyes
from the flash of the Flux Capacitor,

I guess to remind himself
that it was dangerous.

...sneak this back to my laboratory.

We've got to get you home!

Okay, Doc, this is it.

The deleted scene of Doc's going through
his suitcase and looking at his belongings

came right before this scene here.

Thank God, I've still got my hair.

What's on Earth is this thing I'm wearing?

This is a radiation suit.

Radiation suit?

Of course.

As I recollect, it wasn't quite as easy
to find a black and white television

that we could do this with as we thought,

and what we ended up doing
was taking a color set

and putting it into the shell
of a black and white set

and treating the video to look like this,

so that it would look like
it was black and white

-when it was actually a color set.
-That's right.

It's one of those things we just thought
would be a simple thing to do,

and it turned out it was very complicated.

There's always those things in movies,

you think something's
gonna be a snap to do,

and it turns out to be
a headache and a half.

1 .21 gigawatts.

Great Scott!

There's a marlin on Doc's wall there,
to the right.

Another unseen adventure of Doc Brown.

Tom, how am I going to generate
that kind of power?

It can't be done, can it?

Doc, look. All we need
is a little plutonium.

Of course, these portraits of Isaac Newton,
Ben Franklin,

Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein there

are seen at the very beginning of the
movie, when we're exploring Doc's lab.

During the credits.

-And this is back in Pasadena.
-Right.

And it was one of the most difficult scenes
we had to shoot,

partly because we had airplanes
constantly flying overhead,

and Bob was trying to get it all in one.

And we couldn't get all the way through
without having the airplane noise come in

and having to cut the shot.

And there was also a time restriction
in Pasadena as to how late...

-How late you could shoot.
-...you could shoot and we were

at the edge of the envelope
on the time restriction.

Yeah, all the trucks had to be off
the street by 10:00, as I remember,

which means we had to wrap shooting
by 9:00 p.m.

This is the answer.

It says here that a bolt of lightning...

Here's that back and forth
composition again,

with Christopher Lloyd walking
back and forth in three-dimensional space.

If we could somehow harness this lightning,

channel it into the flux capacitor,

it just might work.

Next Saturday night,
we're sending you back to the future!

Okay, all right. Saturday's good.
Saturday's good.

I can spend a week in 1955. I can hang out.
You can show me around.

Marty, that is completely
out of the question.

Our sound man didn't like that fire
going in the fireplace, either.

The planes were driving him crazy,
so he was okay.

Compared to the planes, it was nothing.

Sure. Okay.

My recollection is, we
finally did get it right.

We did get it clean
and didn't have to loop it.

But that's just my recollection.
I could be wrong.

No, I think we did.
I think we did it about 30 times, 32 times.

Just as I thought. This proves my theory.
Look at your brother.

His head's gone. It's
like it's been erased.

The fact that Doc is able
to figure all this out so quickly,

it's a testament to his true genius.

They really cleaned this place up.

Back at Whittier High School.

And in the deleted scenes,
you'll see the bit that we cut out

where Marty finds Lorraine
sitting in class, cheating.

We just cut that out just because
we decided we didn't really need it.

Which one's your pop?

That's him.

Ron Woodward, who's running
for class president there on the left,

was our key grip.

And he didn't win.

Okay, real mature, guys.

-Okay, pick up my books.
-McFly.

That's Strickland.

Jesus, didn't that guy ever have hair?

Shape up, man. You're a slacker.

The disciplinarian at my high school,
his name was Bailey Burkhead,

and he always used to say, "Let me give you
a nickel's worth of free advice."

So some of my friends from high school,
when they saw the movie,

wrote to me telling me
that they fell out of their chairs

when they heard Strickland say that line.

It happens in hospitals when
nurses fall in love with their patients.

Go to it, kid.

Hey, George, buddy.

I have been looking all over for you.

You remember me,
the guy who saved your life the other day?

-Yeah.
-Good.

There's somebody I'd like you to meet.

And that sign there in the background,

Bulldogs vs. Indians,

those were my junior high school
and high school teams, respectively.

When you're the writer, you can just write
stuff for the art department to put on signs,

and they do it for you.
So, a lot of in-jokes from my hometown.

Including, by the way, the Lyon Estates.

The entrance to the university
of the city of Missouri

has lions on the main street.

-Doc, she didn't even look at him.
-This is more serious than I thought.

Apparently, your mother is amorously
infatuated with you, instead of your father.

Wait a minute, Doc.

Are you trying to tell me
that my mother has got the hots...

I love Doc's shirts in this movie. He's
always wearing these great Hawaiian shirts.

It's not exactly a Hawaiian shirt, I guess,
but it's loud enough to be one.

...is if they're alone together,

so you've got to get
your father and mother to interact

in some sort of social...

-What? You mean like a date?
-Right!

What kind of date? I don't know.

One of the rules of how Doc Brown talks
is that he never uses a small word

if he can think of a big word.

So, he has a hard time coming up
with the idea of a dance.

The Enchantment Under the Sea dance!

Even though it says
it right in front of him.

-...for the first time.
-All right, kid.

You stick to your father like glue
and make sure he takes her to that dance.

George, buddy.

Remember that girl
I introduced you to, Lorraine?

-What are you writing?
-Stories.

Science fiction stories about visitors

coming down to Earth from other planets.

Get out of town!
I didn't know you did anything creative.

-Let me read some.
-No, no, no, no.

I never let anybody read my stories.

Why not?

Well, what if they didn't like them?
What if they told me I was no good?

I guess that would be pretty hard
for somebody to understand.

No. No, not hard at all.

So, anyway, George. About Lorraine.

She really likes you.

She told me to tell you
that she wants you to ask her

to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.

-Really?
-Yeah.

All you got to do is go over there
and ask her.

What? Right here, right now,
in the cafeteria?

What if she said no? I don't know
if I could take that kind of a rejection.

Besides, I think she'd rather go
with somebody else.

Who?

Biff.

-Don't kid around. Come on.
-I'm gonna leave.

You want it. You know you want it.
You know you want me to give it to you.

Shut your filthy mouth.
I'm not that kind of girl.

Maybe you are
and you just don't know it yet.

Get your meat hooks off of me.

You heard her.
She said, get your meat hooks off.

Please.

So what's it to you, butthead?

You know, you been looking for a fight.

Since you're new here,
I'm going to cut you a break, today.

So, why don't you make like a tree
and get out of here.

Incidentally, Billy Zane is not
in this scene with Biff's guys.

I think we shot this on a Saturday,

and Billy just wasn't available
to work that day, so he wasn't in it.

You don't really miss him,
but in case you're wondering

why Biff only has two guys with him
instead of three, that's why.

This is the same street in South Pasadena
where Lorraine's house was.

It was two or three doors down the street,

and worked out perfectly to have this
other house next door to the first one.

...or anybody else on this planet
is going to make me change my mind.

And Science Fiction Theater is an actual,
real television show from the 1950s.

By the way, that wishing well
in the photograph there is at Amblin.

The Amblin office at Universal.

And that Fantastic Story Magazine there
is something that our prop guy found

or set decorator found. It was not
something that we made for the movie.

It was just so perfect and looked so much
like Darth Vader that we had to use it.

The tape is labeled "Edward Van Halen"
instead of "Van Halen. "There was some...

We couldn't get permission
from the entire group,

but Eddie Van Halen
gave us permission, so...

Yeah, we were able
to identify it as him personally,

but not call it Van Halen the group.

I am an extraterrestrial
from the planet Vulcan.

-Here's the hair dryer.
-Right. There's the hair dryer,

which you can see the long version of that
in the deleted scenes.

You weren't at school.
What have you been doing all day?

I overslept. Look, I need your help.

I have to ask Lorraine out...

And this is just a wonderful throwaway gag,

with Michael not being able
to open up the Pepsi bottle,

'cause a kid from the '80s
would only be used to

twist-off soft drink bottle caps.

Last night, Darth Vader came down
from Planet Vulcan

and told me that if I didn't take
Lorraine out, that he'd melt my brain.

Let's just keep this brain-melting stuff
to ourselves, okay?

-Yeah. Yeah.
-All right, okay. There she is, George.

Now just go in there and invite her.

-Okay. But I don't know what to say.
-Just say anything, George.

Crispin really is good in this movie,

and it's too bad that he had
such strange ideas and attitudes

about how an actor should behave.

Look, tell her destiny
brought you together.

Tell her that she is the most beautiful
girl you have ever seen in the world.

Girls like that stuff.

-What are you doing, George?
-I'm writing this down. This is good stuff.

Yeah. Okay, let's go.

-Can you take care of that?
-Right.

Our music supervisor, Bones Howe,
did a great job

coming up with songs
that clearly were not rock 'n' roll

and didn't have much R&B aspect to them,

to create a contrast to Johnny B. Goode,
when you hear that later on.

Dance With Me Henry
is the name of that song.

Lorraine. My density has popped me to you.

What?

What I meant to say...

I'm trying to remember, Neil,
if this was another Saturday shoot.

Yeah, I think it was. It was.

I'm George.

-The Saturday shoots were very expensive.
-And I remember Crispin had a cold.

That's why his voice
kind of sounds like that.

-But it really worked for the scene.
-Absolutely did.

When he first came in,
he said he couldn't speak.

Hey, McFly.

It's great, one of those great movie gags,
where the music just stops.

Somebody unplugs the jukebox to enhance the
dramatic effect of this. No reason for it.

How much do you want, Biff?

All right, punk.

-Now I'm going to...
-Biff. What's that?

That's Calvin Klein.

I should tell you a pretty good story
about finding the skateboard experts

that helped us design
this skateboard chase.

I'll get it back to you, all right?

Remember, this is...
We're in pre-production, this is 1984,

and skateboarding is not the popular thing
that it is now.

Nobody... There were no skateboarders
who had any name recognition

the way there are today.

So, I decided to go down to Venice Beach
on a Sunday

because every crazy person
that has a weird skill

is always hanging around Venice
on a Sunday afternoon.

So I'm walking around,
and there were two guys

doing skateboard demonstrations. They
were terrific. I watched them for a while

and I thought,
"These are the guys we need to help us."

So, I started talking to them, and I
felt like the biggest jerk in the world,

to go up to these guys and say,
"Hey, I'm producing this movie

"and we need some skateboarders."
But you have to do that sometimes.

So that's what I did, and I gave them this
big speech about how I'm producing this movie

and we have this skateboard chase,

and I'm wondering,
"What are these guys gonna say?"

And one of them pulls out his business card
and he says,

"My agent's name is on this card.
Just call her and she'll set it up."

And it turns out that this guy was...
Per Welinder was his name,

and he was a European
skateboard champion.

And his friend was
a guy named Bobby Schmelzer.

He was a perfect stunt
double for Eric Stoltz,

so we used him when we shot this with Eric,
and, of course, when we shot with Michael,

he was five inches too tall,

so Michael's stunt double
was Charlie Croughwell,

who is now a stunt coordinator,
one of the best in the business,

and just a really skilled and terrific guy,
very bright,

and he helped us figure out
how to do some of this stuff

and learned how to skateboard, because
he didn't really know that much about it,

and did a great job.

Oh, my God.

They found me.
I don't know how, but they found me.

Run for it, Marty!

Oh, my God.

They found me.
I don't know how, but they found me.

And you'll notice here
that the tinge of the set

is more sepia than blue.

I can't exactly remember why
that was the case.

...I haven't told you about the night

-we made that tape.
-Please, Marty, don't tell me.

No man should know too much
about his own destiny.

-You don't understand.
-I do understand.

If I know too much about my own future,
I can endanger my own existence.

Just as you've endangered yours.

-You're right.
-Now...

Let me show you my plan
for sending you home.

Please excuse the crudity of this model.

This was the art department in their glory.

I love the ketchup bottles
and all the different...

-Salt and pepper shakers.
-...salt and pepper shakers, right.

All this stuff that, you look at it
and you can sort of identify what it is.

Meanwhile, we've outfitted the time vehicle
with this big pole and hook,

which runs directly
into the flux capacitor.

At the calculated moment,
you start off from down the street...

I should talk about gigawatts for a second.

The proper pronunciation is,
of course, "gig-awatts,"

and when Bob and I were doing research,

we talked to someone
who mispronounced it "jigowatts."

And we were actually
completely unfamiliar with the term.

We thought that
was how it was supposed to be said.

It does come from the Greek root gigas,
for "gigantic,"

so I suppose it's not beyond
the realm of possibility.

But never having heard of it, we actually
spelled it in the script J-I-G-O-W-A-T-T.

So, a "jigowatt" is actually
supposed to be a gigawatt, a million watts.

Set.

So, the mystery of the gigawatts
is now solved.

Release.

And this scene, of course,
is a classic World War II,

"Here's the mission, boys,
and this is what we're gonna do."

You show the mission,
you show what's supposed to happen,

so that when things start to go wrong,
the audience completely understands

what's gone wrong
and what has to happen for it to be right.

You take care of your pop.

By the way, what happened today?
Did he ask her out?

-I think so.
-What did she say?

It's your mom! She's tracked you down!
Quick! Let's cover the time machine.

This is the only scene in all three movies

that Lea has with Christopher Lloyd.

Marty.

Mom. Lorraine.

How did you know I was here?

We always thought it was amazing
that she did these movies

and never really got to
play any kind of a scene with Chris.

This is about as much as they get to do,
looking at each other there.

Marty, this may seem a little forward,

but I was kind of wondering if you'd ask me

to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance
on Saturday.

Wow, you mean...
You mean nobody's asked you?

I think that shirt that Michael's wearing

was something that Deborah Scott
just found in the wardrobe department.

I don't remember her
making many clothes at all in this movie.

Finding just about everything.

-We didn't have the budget.
-We didn't have the budget to make things.

...so he can stand up for himself

and protect the woman he loves.

Don't you?

Yeah.

Chris Lloyd just nodding his agreement
to that scene, it's just...

Chris just does great stuff like that.

Well, because, George,
she wants to go with you.

She just doesn't know it yet.

That's why we got to show her
that you, George McFly...

Now, again, for all you continuity geeks,

you can watch the flaps
of Michael J. Fox's pocket.

It goes in and out.

There it's in, and I think in
the next shot it's out again.

It's one of those things
that we never noticed,

in all the times
that we've been looking at the movie,

and we got a letter about it. It was one
of the first letters we ever received.

-Right.
-And we went back to the editing room.

And you're surprised.
You're always surprised.

There's always a couple things like that
that happen

where you just never notice something,
and, boom, there it is.

So, for all of you
that have watched the movie

as many times as you have
and never noticed it,

now you'll never be able to watch
this scene without noticing that flap.

So, 9:00, you're strolling
through the parking lot.

You see us struggling in the car.

As I remember, this was actually
the exterior of Lorraine's house.

Yes, it was the backyard at Lorraine's
house, and all that grass there was cement.

-We put the grass in for this.
-That's right.

-You really think I ought to swear?
-Yes, definitely.

God damn it, George, swear.

Okay. So, now you come up.
You punch me in the stomach.

I'm out for the count, right?

And you and Lorraine live...

And the clothesline,
just one of those great period touches

that adds so much.
You don't think about them anymore,

but that was what people did
to dry their clothes

before there were clothes driers.

But all you kids watching this,
that was the case.

The voice on the radio there,
giving the weather report,

is our sound effects
editor, Chuck Campbell,

who has a very wonderful,
resonant radio-announcer's voice,

and we begged him to do that.
He finally relented.

Just knowing that I'm going to be around
to see 1985.

That I'm going to succeed in this!

The Packard there,
everybody in the crew wanted that Packard.

It was some private collector
who had that car,

and everybody lusted for that Packard.

I'm really going to miss you, Marty.

It ran every time, too.
He took damn good care of it.

Unlike the DeLorean.

-Doc, about the future...
-No!

Marty! We've already agreed

that having information about the future
can be extremely dangerous.

Even if your intentions are good...

There are some people that will claim that
that the guy who just rode the bicycle

behind Chris there was the Doc Brown
of Back to the Future Part II

riding his bicycle, looking for Marty.

That's not true, but it's a good story.

"You will be"

"shot by terrorists."

"Please take whatever precautions
are necessary..."

Now, there is another continuity mistake
on this letter that, again,

we got a letter from a
kid in Japan, actually.

One of the words at the end of a line is...

When the letter is put back together
at the very end of the movie,

is at the front of a line.

Again, we never noticed that,
and the fact that somebody in Japan

would notice that,
who he doesn't even speak English,

and would write us a letter
in very bad English about it.

Some people don't have enough to do,
I guess.

-You got a permit for that?
-Of course I do.

The actor playing the cop is Read Morgan.

Read is a great character actor.

Bob and I used him in
I Wanna Hold Your Hand.

For any sports fans, he played basketball
at the University of Kentucky

-for Adolph Rupp.
-I didn't know that.

This shot is done
off of the remote Hot Head camera,

which was a stage crane camera

which Bob used extensively in this dance.

A much better version of the Louma Crane.

Took a couple of weeks for the camera
operator to be comfortable using it,

because he wasn't able to look
through the lens when he operated it.

He could only watch it on a TV monitor.

...park for a while?

That's a great idea. I'd love to park.

Marty, I'm almost 18 years old.
It's not like I've never parked before.

What?

Marty, you seem so nervous.
Is something wrong?

Did we shoot all of this
on location here, Neil?

Yes.

I get confused with Part I and Part II.
This was...

-Yeah, this was on location.
-This was all on location. Both sides of it?

Yes.

I swiped it from the
old lady's liquor cabinet.

Yeah, well...

At Whittier. The interior
of the dance is in...

Yeah, the gymnasium.
Right, that's the Methodist Church

on the corner of Franklin and Highland,
in Hollywood.

They have a terrific gymnasium there,
and we were able to shoot

during the daytime,
because it's not a real school.

We could only shoot at Whittier High School
on Saturdays,

during school vacations and at night.

And, in fact, between shooting
with Eric Stoltz and with Michael J. Fox,

we shot there both over Christmas vacation
and spring vacation.

Marty? Why are you so nervous?

Lorraine.

Have you ever...

This was the scene that was too risqué
for the Walt Disney Company,

and was the reason
that they would not consider

having us make this movie for them.

Sort of.

I think I know exactly what you mean.

You do?

You know what I do in those situations?

-What?
-I don't worry.

Actually, this is what I was thinking of.
This shot here, we shot later.

-Yes.
-This was shot on a stage.

-Right, 'cause we were missing her reaction.
-Her reaction didn't work.

Or whatever we had.

This is all wrong. I don't know what it is.

But when I kiss you, it's like I'm kissing

my brother.

I guess that doesn't make any sense,
does it?

Believe me, it makes perfect sense.

Somebody's coming.

You caused 300 bucks damage to my car,
you son of a bitch.

We've been asked why the movie is shot

in the 1:85 aspect ratio
as opposed to widescreen,

and the reason for that decision,
which Bob made

with Dean Cundey,
the director of photography...

Bob had shot Romancing the Stone
with Dean Cundey

before making Back to the Future,
and that was shot widescreen,

and Bob didn't like widescreen
because he likes a lot of depth of focus

when he shoots. This movie
is shot with a lot of wide lenses.

Very rarely did Bob ever use
a closer lens than a 29mm.

Most of it was a 21 or a 24.

And with an anamorphic widescreen lens,

you just don't get the
depth of focus, ever,

and Bob likes to have that depth of focus.

The other reason was
that it's not a big movie,

and since we couldn't show as much
on the sides of the frame

as you can in a big outdoor movie,
we decided

that there was no point
in shooting it in widescreen,

and the 1:77 format
had just been decided as the standard

for widescreen televisions of the future,

and we figured that,
by shooting it in 1:85, in the end

more people would see the movie on video
than saw in a theater,

and they would see it much closer to

what Bob and Dean
intended in their framing

by shooting it in 1:85,
than if we'd shot it in widescreen.

I think you got the wrong car, McFly.

George, help me! Please!

Just turn around, McFly, and walk away.

-Please, George.
-Are you deaf, McFly?

Close the door and beat it.

No, Biff. You leave her alone.

All right, McFly.

You're asking for it...

Now, there was a gag that we
cut out of the rehearsal of the fight

that showed George practice-punching
with a punching bag,

and missed with his right hand,
and then let fly with his left hand,

and knocked the punching bag
off of the clothesline,

suggesting that perhaps George
should've have been a left-handed person

and was forced to be right-handed.

We ended up cutting that out
because there was no reason for it.

It was much better for this
to turn into a surprise,

and for his anger here to be
the catalyst for him laying Biff out.

And actually, in the first draft of the
script, when Marty comes back to the future,

George, instead of becoming
a successful writer,

ends up becoming a boxer.

We decided that kids really didn't want
to have their dads be prizefighters,

so we ended up changing that,
but that was our first idea.

-Who is that guy?
-That's George McFly.

-That's George McFly?
-Excuse me.

Those cats on either side of the clock
were from The Cat People,

something that the art department found
in the scene docks at Universal.

He can't play with his hand like that,
and we can't play without him.

This is Whittier High School.

Big high school.

Found all kinds of great places
to shoot around there.

Hey, man, the dance is over.

-And they were very cooperative.
-That's right.

This is for all you lovers out there.

That's the actor who's singing,
Harry Waters Jr. Great voice.

Nice guy.

George, aren't you going to kiss me?

Those shots... The shots
that you're gonna see of the photograph

in the neck of the guitar,

those, especially the ILM shots,
it was impossible to get that shot,

so ILM built a giant guitar neck,

about three or four times the size
of a regular guitar neck,

and we blew the photograph up
much bigger,

and that's how we got those shots.

This is the one effect
that never really worked right.

-It's good enough, but we ran out of time.
-We ran out of time.

And Bob signed off on that
because he had to.

There was no other way we were gonna
get the movie in theaters by July 3rd.

The vision of your happiness

Why he gets a hole in his hand instead of
the whole hand starting to vanish?

Again, the vagaries of time travel.

That was the shot that ILM
had to build the large guitar neck for.

I'm just a fool

A fool in love

with you

And one of the things
that happens musically there,

we bring in the string orchestra
when George kisses Lorraine.

That's a sort of subjective decision
that Bob and Al Silvestri made.

It was very, very effective.

We want to have it be as lush and romantic

and syrupy as possible,

and it just works because,
as the audience, you want it to work.

All right, this is an oldie, but...

Well, it's an oldie where I come from.

All right, guys, listen,
this is a blues riff in B.

Watch me for the changes,
and try and keep up, okay?

This is not Michael J. Fox singing here,
by the way.

The guy that sang this,
his name was Mark Campbell, as I recall.

Very, very good match for Michael's voice.

Someone that Bones found.
Heard him sing in a club or something.

There stood a log cabin
made of earth and wood

Where lived a country boy
name of Johnny B. Goode

He never ever learned
to read or write so well

As I remember,
there was some black militants

that decided that this was a racist movie

because a white guy had to
inspire Chuck Berry to invent rock 'n roll.

In their interpretation of this.

Some people just don't know
that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,

and sometimes a joke is just a joke.

Go, Johnny, go, go

Go, Johnny, go, go, go

That's a great shot,
with the remote head cameras

swooping through the girl's legs
right into the guitar.

And it took Bob a long time to
get that shot, but worth all the time.

It's Marvin.

Your cousin, Marvin Berry.

You know that new sound
you're looking for?

Well, listen to this.

Chuck Berry enjoyed this, by the way.

Michael rehearsed
the hell out of this number,

and the hours and hours
that he put in doing this really paid off.

He brought the house down.

The idea
for The Enchantment Under the Sea dance,

by the way, came from researching
old high school yearbooks

and seeing what kind of things went on
in high schools of the period,

and quite a few high schools had
sea-themed dances. It just seemed perfect.

-Marty, that was very interesting music.
-Yeah.

I hope you don't mind, but George
asked if he could take me home.

Great! Good. Good, Lorraine.
I had a feeling about you two.

I have a feeling, too.

Listen, I got to go,

but I wanted to tell you
that it's been educational.

Marty, will we ever see you again?

I guarantee it.

Well, Marty, I want to thank you
for all your good advice.

I'll never forget it.

And what makes the movie into a movie
instead of a television show

is the background
behind Lorraine and George there,

seeing the dance behind them.

This is a real Frank Capra moment here.

Michael... Marty remembering this thing

that happened to him
when he was eight years old.

There's always one thing, as a kid,
that your parents do to you

that you never forget.

For me, it was my dad
throwing out my comic book collection.

Damn! Where is that kid?

Damn!

Damn! Damn!

We should talk about
the various wind machines

that we used during this sequence here.

We used the standard Ritter machines that
are frequently used, which are electric,

but for the really big wide shots,
where we needed wind blowing

all the way across the back lot there,

we had a machine known as the McBride,

which was simply named after Mr. McBride,
whose machine it was.

Basically what it was,
was an airplane engine

on a big cherry picker,
a huge cherry picker,

and it was the loudest thing
that's being used here.

It'll be like you never left.

This is where Bill Kaplan, our sound mixer,

would just kind of shrug his shoulders
and know that

we were gonna have to
loop all this stuff here,

because that thing
was just oppressively loud.

-But effective.
-Very effective. Very effective.

But it was the words
that the crew dreaded to hear,

was when the assistant director said,
"Turn on the McBride,"

and this thing would roar to life.
And it was an airplane engine,

so imagine that you're standing 50
feet away from an airplane engine,

and that's what it sounded like,

but you need an engine that powerful
to blow wind that far.

-Thanks.
-Thank you.

See you in about 30 years.

I hope so.

Don't worry!

As long as you hit that wire
with the connecting hook...

Shooting in the back lot at Universal,
it's cold back there at night.

I don't know how the guys
that built Universal figured out

that it was gonna be one of the...

Probably the coldest place
in Southern California,

but, man, at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning
we were shooting this stuff,

we were freezing.

-Remember Ramon, Neil?
-Yeah.

-The caterer?
-With his chili.

With his chili.
One of the weird things that happened.

We had four people
that came down with appendicitis

during the production of this movie,

and people started thinking there was
something wrong with Ramon's food

that was the cause of that.

It wasn't.
It was just some really freak coincidence.

One of the guys was kind enough
to have the appendix that he had removed

put into a glass jar, and he brought it
and put it on the craft service table.

Yeah. That didn't
last long, as I recollect.

You get the cable,
I'll throw the rope down to you.

Right! I got it!

Figuring out how we were gonna
shoot the night sky during this sequence

was something that we spent
a lot of time thinking about.

ILM would have liked to have done
a composite special-effect sky

for just about every shot,

but Bob and Dean and I talked about that

and decided that, if you were
really filming during a lightning storm,

the only time you ever would see the sky
was when lightning backlit the clouds.

You would never see anything in the sky
other than that.

It would always just fall off and be black.

So we let it be black most of the time,
and you only see it when there's lightning,

and that's what makes it look...

It looks much better that way
than it would if you always saw the clouds.

-What?
-I have to tell you about the future.

-What?
-I have to tell you about the future!

These tight shots, when Doc's on the ledge,

we had built that. It was a separate set
from the back lot. It was on a stage.

And we were working, pretty much,
noon to midnight, or 2:00 to 2:00,

depending upon Michael's schedule.

We started so many days with Chris up
on this ledge, waiting to get Michael.

Right.

So, every day we'd do a little bit of Chris
on the ledge and Michael would show up,

and we'd go and do the stuff with him.

You've got less than four minutes.
Please, hurry!

We did put Chris Lloyd up there on
the real exterior of the clock tower there

-for a couple of shots, and that's him there.
-There's one.

And there's a shot coming up.
That's the stage, that's fake.

But we just need a couple of those shots
to show him up there

for you to completely buy the illusion.

The stuntman that we had doubling
Chris Lloyd here was Bob Yerkes,

who is one of the legends in stunt.

-He's the inventor of the airbag.
-That's right.

And his family were circus aerialists,

so Yerkes came by, doing anything...

Anytime you want to have
somebody way up high,

Bob Yerkes was always the first guy
that you'd try to get,

because he was born to that.

This stuff here was shot in Griffith Park,
my favorite location in the movie,

'cause it was only five minutes
from my house at the time.

Wait a minute. I got all the time I want.

I got a time machine.
I can just go back early and warn him.

And we shot this on a Friday night, after
Michael finished shooting Family Ties,

so we started shooting at 10:00 at night
and we shot all the way till dawn.

Engine running. All right.

No. No, no. Come on. Not this time.
Come on. Come on.

Fact about clocks that I didn't know
until we made this movie,

the number four on the clock is four "I's"

instead of an "IV" in Roman numerals,
and that is apparently a clock tradition.

And you know what? On the...

-Yeah, we broke tradition.
-That's a mistake. That's right.

Roman numeral clocks
are supposed to have all four lines,

and here we didn't do it.

Well, it's too late now.

Come on.

Here we go. Here we go.

Here's another example
of movie logic versus real logic.

The idea that this alarm clock
was going to be accurate enough

to signal Marty to get to the clock tower
in time for this lightning strike

is just a completely ridiculous concept,
but nobody thinks about that.

When is it 10:00?
When the clock chimes start chiming,

or when they finish,
or somewhere in between?

Wonderful editing here.

Harry Keramidas was the lead editor
for this sequence.

We had two editors.
Harry was brought in later when we realized

how jammed we were gonna be
on our post-production schedule,

and Harry would take one sequence
and Artie would take another sequence

and they would look at each other's work
after one had edited,

so that there was true collaboration,

and, of course, Bob would work
with each editor in great detail

to get these sequences timed out perfectly.

By using editing and wide-angle lenses,

we made that street on the back lot look
about five times longer than it really is.

Doc.

We looked at a lot of National Geographic
footage of lightning bolts

to get to one that was the model
for the big lightning hit,

described in the script as the biggest bolt
of lightning in the history of cinema,

something like that,
and ILM gave it to us in spades.

The Atomic Kid on the marquee there
was a Mickey Rooney movie from 1954

that took place on a nuclear test site.

That's the only remnant of the idea that we
originally had in the script for that idea.

And now, as I explained earlier,

the ledge, you can see,
is still broken here 30 years later,

and the courthouse
is now the Department of Social Services.

Here's the Raisin bus bench that I
talked about on the other commentary.

Product placement
that the Raisin board spent $50, 000 for,

and then we gave them their money back,
'cause it was definitely a rip-off for them.

There was an old movie theater in Burbank
that had been changed into a church,

and that's how we came up with the idea
of making that movie theater

into a church in 1985.

All right. Red.

And I love this, the fact that here's
the town square completely dilapidated,

and Michael says everything looks great.

And that Bank of America
that you just saw in that shot there,

that was where the bank wanted to
put in a working Versateller in the bank,

and we told them
they didn't have to do that.

Libyans.

And we're back in the City of Industry
at Puente Hills Mall,

now Lone Pine Mall
instead of Twin Pines Mall.

No!

You bastard!

And the two Martys coming up here,

this was just done with photo doubles.

There's no special effects here,

there's no two Michael J. Foxes,
like we do in Part II and Part III.

There was really no reason for it.

We were told that at this exact time

in 1985, on October 22,
at 1:30 in the morning,

about two dozen people showed up at this
mall to see if anything was gonna happen.

Nothing did, of course.

Doc! Doc!

No! No!

And yes, Fotomat did give us some money
for that little product placement there.

Everyone will want to take their photos
to Fotomat because a car crashed into it.

Bulletproof vest?

How did you know?

Here's the letter that doesn't quite match
the letter when Marty writes it,

and again, nobody noticed this
except one kid from Japan.

Nobody would have noticed it, of course, if
there was not such a thing as home video,

but if there was no such thing
as home video,

we wouldn't be sitting here watching this
and we wouldn't be doing this.

-So, how far ahead are you going?
-About 30 years.

Now, in the beginning,
when Doc says he's going into the future,

he says he's gonna go 25 years,
and now he's gonna go 30 years.

I guess Doc just decided that
'cause Marty went 30 years one way,

he should go 30 years the other way.

No real logic to that,
but as Doc says, "What the hell."

And we decided that we'd seen
the DeLorean go through time enough times,

that we would save money
and not show it happening here.

Just have it happen off camera.

Now, to show you
that somebody is always watching

and details that you don't think
are important, somebody else notices,

this yellow magazine there that says RQ,

which just went completely by everybody
on the crew,

something the set dressers found,
is actually...

RQ stands for Reference Quarterly,

which is the trade journal
of reference librarians,

and I got two or three letters from
reference librarians from around the country

that had seen the movie
and wanted to know why...

What was the significance
of this trade magazine?

What was it doing in Marty's bedroom?
There's no reason why a kid would have it.

And, of course, it's just a mistake.

It's something that the set dresser
threw on the set

and nobody paid any attention to it,

and reference librarians
have scratched their heads ever since.

Second of all, somebody named Greg or
Craig called you just a little while ago.

Well, which one was it, Greg or Craig?

I don't know! I can't keep
up with all of your boyfriends.

Hey.

-What the hell is this?
-Breakfast.

Did you sleep in your clothes
again last night?

This was the second pass
that Larry Pauli did on this set.

The first version that he designed
was too modern.

It just did not look feminine enough,

since we all know that it's the wife

that is the prime mover
in interior decoration in a house.

Mom! Dad!

-Did you hit your head?
-Marty, are you all right?

You guys look great. Mom...

Getting Crispin to wear these clothes

was one of the hardest things
we had to get him to do.

He just hated that wardrobe,
he hated that look.

Marty, I almost forgot.
Jennifer Parker called.

I sure like her, Marty.

And coming up,
when Biff comes in with the novel,

take a close look at the picture of George
on the back of the book.

He doesn't look the same
as he looks in this scene.

That was the first version of the revised
George McFly look that we came up with.

We had to have something
for the photograph,

and that was what he was gonna look like.
When we had him acting that way,

it just didn't seem good enough.
Didn't seem enough of a contrast.

Don't con me.

I'm sorry, Mr. McFly.

I meant I was just starting
on the second coat.

Biff. What a character.

Everyone wants to know, is Biff gay
now that George decked him?

Well, when this movie was the only
of the three movies that existed,

you could believe that,

but, as you'll discover in the sequels,
not the case.

Honey! Your first novel.

Like I've always told you,

you put your mind to it,
you can accomplish anything.

Marty...

UPS got there very, very fast,

from when Marty closed the door
to when Biff came running back in.

-How about a ride, mister?
-Jennifer.

Are you a sight for sore eyes!
Let me look at you.

Marty, you're acting like
you haven't seen me in a week.

I haven't.

You okay? ls everything all right?

Yeah.

Everything is great.

Marty never gets to kiss Jennifer
through the whole movie.

You look carefully in that shot,

that was not Chris Lloyd driving,
it was a stuntman.

I think it was R.L. Tolbert.

You've got to come back with me!

And those are solid metal glasses.

Christopher Lloyd couldn't see
a damn thing out of those,

but they looked so good that...

-That he worked with it.
-...that he worked with it, right.

I need fuel.

One of our statements on the necktie...

Chris Lloyd is wearing
a clear, plastic tie.

What's the point of wearing a tie
if you can't see it?

What's the point of wearing a tie,
even if you can see it?

No, no, no, no, Marty.

Both you and Jennifer turn out fine.
It's your kids, Marty.

The Japanese characters on his shirt,
by the way,

indicate the significant Japanese influence
we expected there to be in the future.

Weren't wrong.

And the great bar code license plate there.

When we previewed this movie, this shot
was a really rough black-and-white shot,

and it didn't matter. The audience was right
there, ready for that car to fly, and...

-Went crazy.
-...they went crazy. Absolutely.

All right, we'll continue this
in Back to the Future Part II.

Looking forward to it.