All language subtitles for Back to the Future Part II (1989).Commentary 1.eng

Hello everyone, we are back here
at the University of Southern California,

I am Laurent Bouzereau, co-producer
with Universal Studios Home Video,

of this exciting celebration
of the Back to the Future trilogy on DVD.

We are here at USC Film School

With the two Bobs,
Bob Gale and Bob Zemeckis.

Thank you.

And we're gonna be asking them questions.

The audience will be participating
and I will be repeating their questions

so all of you viewers at home
will be able to experience this commentary

as if you had been right here with us.

So we should start by talking about
the sequel. How did the sequel come about?

And how... It was, like,
almost four years after the first movie.

So tell us how that all started and then we'll
start taking questions from all of you guys.

Bob Gale?

Well, the first movie, of course,
made so much money

that it went from being a movie
to a corporate entity,

a corporate asset.

And so the success of it
meant that there was no way

that Universal wasn't gonna want
to make a sequel.

So the first thing that they did was,
smartly, they asked us if we would do it.

And we said, "Well, yeah, we'll do it"

"on the condition that we have Michael
J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd come back."

'Cause despite what some people thought
about the end of the first movie,

we didn't have any idea for doing a sequel,
the end of the first movie was simply a joke.

As we'll tell you, we found we kind of

painted ourselves into a corner
with that ending.

But what happened was

we decided that as long as we had
Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd

we would be able to concoct
a story that made sense and

would be a suitable sequel
to Back to the Future.

So Sid Sheinberg went and made a deal
with both Michael and Chris,

and thinking ahead, Sid made a deal
not only for Back to the Future II

but for a Back to the Future III...

although Back to the Future III wasn't in
anybody's consciousness at that time.

And then Bob and I decided that,
"Okay, what is it that..."

"People go to see a sequel.
What is it that they want to see?"

And they wanna see as many characters
come back from the first movie as possible.

So the next thing we did was
we contacted the rest of the cast

to find out
who else wanted to be in the sequel

and first we called Lea Thompson and she
said, "If you guys are doing it, I'm in."

And we called up Tom Wilson
and he said the same thing.

And then we contacted Crispin Glover.

And that was a little different.

Crispin asked for some things
that were pretty ridiculous for an actor

in his position in the industry. He
basically wanted to have the exact same deal

as Michael J. Fox, and even asked for
some things that Michael wasn't getting.

And I had this phone conversation
with his agent.

I said this is just completely ridiculous.

I said, "Go back to your client
and talk to him",

"and if I don't hear from you in two weeks
we're just gonna assume that"

"we will not have Crispin Glover
in the sequel."

So the whole idea
in Back to the Future Part II,

that George McFly is a tombstone,
was a direct result of

Crispin deciding
that he didn't want to be in the sequel.

Tell us a little bit about the screenwriting
process because you had different ideas

as to where you guys
were going to go with it,

including the '60s, I think, at some point.

So tell us about the writing process
of the script

and at one point it had become, I think,
Part II and III.

Bob Zemeckis.

I've said many times before that

it's really hard to do sequels, you know,
they're really hard to do.

And it's mainly because I found,
you know...

Because once we decided
we were gonna do this,

studying what sequels work
are basically the ones

like The Godfather: Part II
which is a continuation of the movie.

That is so rare because most sequels are
like James Bond movies or

Indiana Jones movies where there's
basically stories that have characters that

don't have dramatic character arcs,

they're secret agents or they're adventurers
and they just keep changing the adventure.

So the character can stay the same

and all you do is change the villains
and change the settings.

And those make the most
successful sequels.

So we were stuck
because we actually had a movie that had

character development in it
even though it had all this

time-travel and science fiction stuff
in it as well.

What I realized is that audiences thought
of sequels the same way they think of

sitcoms on television.

They just wanna be back having
another adventure with these characters.

Audiences have
this sort of love-hate relationship

with sequels, they want them to
be different, but not too different.

They want them to be the same but not
exactly the same, so you're constantly on

this balance beam
trying to figure out what to write.

And then the biggest problem
as well is that

everybody has an opinion
about what the sequel should be.

I mean everybody who saw the first movie
starts writing their own sequel.

So the thing that made the movie
an experience for me as a director

was this breakthrough idea
that Bob and I had

where it wasn't so much
just going to different times

like, we're not gonna go to the future,
we're not gonna go to just this...

In the original draft that Bob wrote
it was the '60s,

we're not gonna go to the Wild West.

The idea was to go into the original movie.

And we had the unique circumstances
of a time-travel movie

that actually addressed
time-travel paradox issues

and we were making a sequel,
so we had a chance to do that.

And that's what excited me
more than anything

about making a sequel to this movie.

When we started trying to figure out
what exactly the sequel was gonna be,

again we were stuck
with the ending of the first movie,

and it just seemed that there was no way
that we couldn't start

the second movie
the way the first one ended.

But we had a real serious writing problem

because the whole point of the first movie

was that you can change history.

The future isn't written, nothing
is written, you can change things.

So we're starting the second movie
with this idea

that something's gotta be done
about your kids.

And we said, "Well, could Doc
just hand Marty a big box of condoms"

"and say, 'There,
this will solve the problem here'?"

Marty says, "I'm not gonna marry you,
Jennifer, the problem is solved."

How were we gonna get the audience
to be interested in

the children of Marty and Jennifer, when

we don't even really know anything about
Jennifer 'cause she was such a minor

character in the first movie
and their kids don't even exist.

And we've said
that they don't necessarily have to exist.

So what we finally decided to do

was to just use that as an excuse

to get into what became
the real essence of the movie

which was the story
of the misuse of time travel,

and going into the future
to get this sports almanac

and then... Which of course ends up
wreaking all kinds of havoc in the past.

I also had a real problem. It was really...

I was doing something
that I swore I would never do, which is

do a movie that depicts the future.

Because I personally don't like to see
movies that predict the future.

The only guy whose movies
I've ever enjoyed,

who's done the future
has been Stanley Kubrick.

And he didn't even think of a PC
when he did Clockwork Orange.

The problem is,
you underestimate the future, you never...

You underestimate it on things
and you overestimate it on other things.

So the way that we knew we had to do
at least a section of the movie

in the future, just so we could
get out of the future and get back on to

safer territory, so the way we wrote
ourselves around that was just to write

as many jokes as we could think of
because we thought:

"Let's just make the future funny."

That was the best way that we could deal
with that knotty problem.

Because obviously
when we get to the year 2015,

which is right around the corner,
it's not gonna look like our movie at all

and that means our movie is gonna be
this kind of quaint thing, you know.

I might actually have to live
to see that happen, you know.

-But we got out of it because...
-As long as I keep my cholesterol down.

We had Doc Brown saying that the future
is just the extrapolation of what happens

if things continue today.

So since we changed them,
we have a very convenient excuse.

And I don't know if we talked about this.

Did we talk about what we wanted to do with
the first movie? About changing the future?

That was one of the very early ideas,
was we had this idea of,

what if somebody went to

the 1950s, altered time,
came back to the 1980s,

but the 1980s in the
altered time looks like

what futurists thought it was gonna look
like in the 1950s, if that makes any sense.

In other words if you went back to...
Say you went back to

1950 with fusion technology.

1980 would be a completely different world.

Anyway, we ended up throwing that idea out
because the idea about the characters

and the idea about the story
and not dealing with that big idea

ended up being a much better movie
in Back to the Future I.

Why didn't the idea of the 60s work
in this film?

Well it wasn't so much that it didn't work,

-it was that it wasn't particularly interesting.
-Or funny.

It was...

Well, I mean, it was funny
in a sad awful way.

Like the clothes looked funny.

Stuff like that.

But what had happened
with the 60s draft was,

just so that you understand
what was happening here,

the first two acts were the same.

The future 1985-A,

and it turned out that Biff gave himself
the almanac not in 1955 but in 1967.

So Marty goes back to 1967 to get
the almanac instead of going back to 1955

and he ended up endangering
his own conception

instead of his parents' meeting.

And Bob thought,
"You know, we did that movie."

"It's not different enough
from the first movie"

"that makes it worthy of us
spending a year of our life doing it."

And Bob came up with this idea of,

"Let's go back into the first movie"

and that was such a damned cool idea,
that we had to do it.

And you also got the bonus
of being able to go to the movie

and seeing the characters that you liked
exactly the way they were in the first movie.

You know, Biff was the same.
You could bring back...

It broke our hearts that now we couldn't
have Crispin in the movie

because we could have really...

We could have really had
some fun with him.

But it turned out fine anyway.

Can you tell us
if part of the process of writing

Back to the Future Part II

was to actually go back to watching

Back to the Future Part I

and see what elements
you had in that story,

and how you could apply that
to the sequels?

Oh, yeah. We knew what these big,
pivotal moments were

and I think that where we knew
we wanted to go was,

we knew that the time-changing moment,
the pivotal moment in Part I

is when George punches Biff

and changes the course of his life.

So we thought, "That's the place where"

"Marty has to go and witness it," because

he sort of just got
there in the first movie,

-you know, right after Biff got knocked out.
-Right after Biff got knocked out.

And he didn't get to see
anything leading up to that.

So, we knew, "Okay, let's do that."

"Let's get him there to see that
from the other side of the parking lot."

That was sort of the basic idea

and then we thought,
"Well, then the thugs have

"two Martys running around," you know...

So it turned out to
be actually a lot of fun.

The notion of time travel
was a lot more complex

in Back to the Future Part II
than it was in the original film.

Can you tell us about the type
of research you might have done

to make that credible?

Well, I think,

Back to the Future Part II might be
the most interesting movie I've ever made.

And it got, like all sequels, it got
a bunch of, you know, negative reviews

but I think there's really a lot going on.

It asks a lot of interesting questions.
It's got a lot of dark stuff in it,

a lot of edgy things in it.

I guess the way
to answer your question exactly is

that by the time Bob and I got done
making the first movie,

-you know, we were time-travel...
-Experts.

-Experts.
-If there is such a thing.

As a matter of fact,
here's the greatest compliment we ever got.

When I was doing
Contact, the first thing...

When I met Carl Sagan,
the first thing he said to me is, he said,

"That movie you made"

"is the best"

"time-travel movie"

"based on the science of time travel,
that's ever been made."

And I thought, "What can you do?
You can't ask for more than that."

So, we violated quite a few rules
of our own,

what we didn't do in the first movie,
like duplication, and things like that...

But that's what the fun of it was,
in the second movie.

For those that are really interested in

all the permutations
of the Duplication Paradox

I recommend a science fiction book
called Up the Line, by Robert Silverberg.

Silverberg was probably the dean
of intricate time-travel stories,

and that one has the most
of the Duplication Paradox.

I read that when I was in college,
and a lot of that stuff stuck with me,

and it's in Part II.

Didn't you do one, though?

There's a book
with all the mapping-out of...

One of your companion books
to the sequels.

One of those Back to the Future companion
books where all the timelines are?

-Oh, yeah. It's got...
-Yeah, so you could pick that up, too.

We had...

We had it all over my office.

All these index cards,
with all these different numbers.

In fact, the script actually had

the most radical scene-numbering system
ever designed in a movie

to keep track
of all these different time periods.

We would just jump up
another hundred numbers,

in each time period we went, so that people
could look at the scene number

and know what period we were in.

But I think that the other, more important
story about writing the sequel

was that, in the first draft of the sequel,
which was...

I don't know what draft it was. It was
probably 12 or 15 drafts down the line,

but the one that we said to the studio
was the one that we wanted to make,

was the one that ended...

The ending was actually Part III.

And we brought it to the studio,
and we wanted to make this three-hour,

giant epic

that went from everything you saw
in the two sequels,

from the future, to back into the first
movie, and then end up in the Wild West.

And

it was one of those
great Sid Sheinberg moments

because he was the one who...

You know, he'd been badgering us
for years to make the sequel,

and we presented him with the script,
and he said,

"I am not going to make the most expensive
movie in the history of the movie business."

What happened actually...
Let's backtrack a little bit

because we had this version that had...
I don't know, it was 160, 170 pages,

it had everything in it.

And I kind of felt that it didn't really
work the way it should, because

we were introducing
all these brand-new characters in,

what was ostensibly the fourth act
of the movie, the Old West.

Suddenly, we've got to introduce Clara,
we've got to introduce Buford,

Marty's ancestors in the Old West.

And it's really hard to introduce
that many new characters

in the last hour of the movie.

So I said to Bob,

"Let me take a pass at this
and write it really long"

"and see what happens."

So, I ended up with this 220-page script

that was Back to the Future II
and Back to the Future III,

with everything in Back to the Future III
fleshed out the way it was supposed to be.

You would, you know,
develop all the characters properly.

And we realized that what we had here
was two movies.

So this was where we made
this good news-bad news phone call

to Sid Sheinberg in the studio.

They'd wanted Back to the Future II
out for summer 1989

and that wasn't going to happen, because
Bob had been working on Roger Rabbit,

and that turned into a hell of a bigger
production than anybody ever thought,

so we kept pushing back
Back to the Future II because of that.

So we called up the studio and we said,
"Here's the good news and the bad news.

"The bad news is we're not gonna have
Back to the Future II for you"

"for summer 1989."

"The good news is that we will have
Back to the Future II for you"

"for Christmas 1989,"

"and we'll have Back to the Future
III for you in the summer of 1990."

And Sheinberg thought we were
completely insane, and he said,

"I don't want to hear anything
about Back to the Future III"

"just give me goddamn
Back to the Future II."

So, okay. That's when we took
the 220-page script,

and condensed it down to 160 pages,

and then Sheinberg had that one,
and threw it down and said,

"This is the most expensive movie
ever made, and I'm not making it."

Ironically, he was the man, a couple
of years later, who made Waterworld.

That was the most expensive movie
until the Titanic was made.

So, you see?

So when the budget came in
for this version that included

fourth act of Back to the Future III,
and it was so ridiculous

he said, "I don't know
what we're going to do."

And I had... As a good producer,
I'd done my homework

and I'd had my production manager
do a budget

based on the 220-page script,
splitting it in half and saying,

"All right. instead of making one movie
that's going to cost $65 million,"

"let's do two movies
that are going to cost $35 million each."

So when Sheinberg got pissed off at us,
that's when I was able to say,

"Okay, take a look at this budget, Sid."

"Here's Back to the Future II and III,
and they each only cost $35 million"

and he said, "Okay."

And I remember him saying this. He said,

"This is either the most insane idea"

"or the most brilliant idea."

That's what he said about making
the two movies at the same time.

Since Crispin Glover
was not in Back to the Future Part II,

any challenges in writing
the part of George McFly?

-Bob Gale?
-Oh, yeah.

We thought...

At one time, I thought,
"Well, we could go into the future"

"and have George McFly be dead."

But, that wasn't...

I didn't think that the audience
would like to see that.

They want to know
that all these characters are alive.

So we came up with this idea of hanging
him upside-down in this back brace

thinking two ways.

One, if we don't have... Or three ways.

One, it's funny.

Two, if we don't have Crispin in it,
and we have another actor,

we put him in makeup,
he's gonna be upside-down

and the audience is gonna have
a hard time recognizing him

to tell whether he's Crispin or not.

And three, if Crispin ever changed his
mind, and decided he did want to do it,

then we'd get to hang him upside-down.

I mean, we thought, "Well, he could be
climbing Mount Everest",

"but then that would just be..."

"Then people would just be
talking about him."

You know?

So, this turned out to be the best idea.

Bob Zemeckis.

In reference to film quotations
and film references in the movies,

we're just wondering if

there was any intentions on your part

to refer to Pottersville
and It's a Wonderful Life

in Back to the Future Part II.

Capra movies are in our mind
no matter what we write.

All the Back to the Future movies
are like a Frank Capra movie

in a lot of ways.

A lot of people don't realize that
but It's a Wonderful Life

is a spectacular time-travel movie,
and so is A Christmas Carol.

You know,
those are two great time-travel stories.

But, yeah, as a matter-of-fact, we were
worried that we would get hammered

by making it too close of a Pottersville,

but that's what that section of the movie
needed to have.

If the movie is a success, it's an homage.
If it's a failure, it's a rip-off.

Right, exactly.

There's a rumor that

Marty McFly was going to go
back into the prehistorical time.

Did you guys ever write that
into the scripts?

Never.

Can you comment about Michael J. Fox
being called chicken

throughout the movie.

We just introduced that into the sequel.

We realized that in the first movie,
the character who makes a change

is George McFly.

We needed to have Marty
go through a change

in the course of the sequels.

And so we gave him this character flaw

that he overreacts any time
anybody calls him a chicken,

so that, through the course
of his adventure,

he would learn that that wasn't
a very good lifestyle choice.

Yeah, it was more like, we thought,
Marty was this guy who

sort of had the world in the palm
of his hand in the first movie.

I mean, he had... He was charming,
he was funny, he was good-looking.

He had all this stuff going for him.

And so, we thought,
"Wouldn't it be interesting if"

"his dream of what his future was
was completely opposite"

"of what he thought it would be,
and then why would it get that way?"

So we sort of just designed
all this stuff in and make him

this kind of, like, broken-down,
middle-aged guy in the future.

-Why does the old Biff die?
-That's a good question.

Why does the old Biff die
when he comes back?

There's two reasons for that.

The reason you can accept,
watching this movie exactly the way it is,

is that the shock of time travel
probably caused him to have a seizure.

But the original concept was that

Biff came back to a world where

old Biff didn't exist anymore

and in fact, in the deleted scenes
on the DVD, you'll see the extension

of Biff's seizure
where he actually is erased from existence

and Bob and I kind of postulated it

that somewhere around the mid-1990s,

Lorraine got pissed
off at him and shot him.

So old Biff would have returned to 2015
and he would have been long gone,

and buried and therefore,
have been erased from existence.

Bob and I understood that, but when we...

We actually previewed the movie
with Biff fading out of existence

-and the audience...
-We lost the audience.

They just couldn't go there

-and we realized that...
-It's an idea that only makes sense

-the second time you see the movie.
-Right.

And that's why the audience couldn't get it
because they had no idea

what this middle section was
of this perverted 1985.

So we just decided, "Let's just take it out
and not risk losing the audience"

"at that point in the movie."

Then the story that Bob just described,
you could do a whole movie about that.

You know, that's, like, a lot of stuff.

After you completed the trilogy

was there ever any talks about doing
a Back to the Future Part IV?

Three is a,

three is a, you know...

three is a dramatic number.

You know? It's a very important number.
The trilogy, you know,

the Trinity.

You know, I think three
is probably a good place to stop.

Four starts to become too balanced.

You said earlier
that you backed yourself into a corner

when you ended the movie Part I
and decided to do a sequel.

How would you have ended Part I if you
had known you were gonna do a sequel?

We would have just been able to do
anything we wanted to do,

if we didn't put the girl in the car.

-I mean, we had to deal with that.
-The first thing that happens is

Doc puts her to sleep.

Yeah, he's got to knock her out.

We had to get her out of the picture.

She spends the whole movie
being carried around being unconscious.

But as far as what would have happened if

we didn't have that ending

it's like, what movie would you have had if
we had had Crispin Glover? We don't know.

These were the facts that we had so we dealt
with the universe that existed, not with...

We can't answer
what would have happened

if we had a different
universe to start with.

If the girl wasn't there

Marty could have gotten
in the car with the Doc

and then Marty could have said,

"Doc, this is so great,
we're going to the future."

"No, we're going to the prehistoric times,
back to Ancient Rome!"

We could have done anything.

You know, because we had
that kind of joke at the end that...

We wrote that joke about, you know,
"No, there's no problem with you,

"it's your kids."
We really never thought of it being

the set-up for a sequel, ever.

We still had to change it.
If you look at the re-do of that scene

in the beginning of
Part II, when Marty says,

"What happens to us in the future?
Do we become assholes?"

We had this extra little moment
where Chris Lloyd just kind of

stutters and does that
little look to indicate,

"Well, yeah, you do become an asshole
but I can't tell you."

How much do you guys think about,
this is like four years later,

ILM has gone much further.
You just did Roger Rabbit.

How much did you think about all
the cool stuff you could do in the future

such as the use of this new camera, I think
it's called the VistaGlide, that allowed you

to film several actors
playing the same roles and all that stuff.

When I was doing Roger Rabbit

they had just built this new big VistaFlex
camera for me, this silent camera,

and they did a great job.
I mean, it showed up

and it worked the first
day that it got there.

I knew we were going to do
this thing in the future

and Bob was working on it
and I was in London making Roger Rabbit,

and I knew we were doing this thing
where Marty was gonna be

Marty from the movie and he was gonna
see himself as his kid...

-And as his older self.
-And as his older self.

And then I called up Bob and I said,

"Well, Michael J. Fox is also
gonna play his daughter."

So you gotta remember, this is
the very first digital shot I ever did

is in Back to the Future II.

It's one of the shots where Marty's
on the skateboard in the cave and,

what we did is we put a rod out
on the back of a camera car,

and we held him with these wires,

and they did the first
computer removing of that rod

on that shot.

So this is pre-any digital images.

So, knowing we were going to do this movie
with all this stuff in there

and this is one of the good things about
doing a sequel is you can do stuff like this.

I said,

"Build me a motion control camera."

You know, I just said that.

I just said, "I don't know."

I said, "I need a camera
that we can do these splits in, that can"

"pan, tilt and dolly."

And they said, "Okay."

And I said,
"You guys got two years to build it."

And they built this thing
called the VistaGlide camera

-and it...
-It worked on the first day.

It worked on the first day.

They didn't know it was gonna work
on the first day, but it did.

It was very complicated, but it worked.

Didn't you guys have an earthquake
or something that was...

Yeah, when we were doing...
Remember when we were doing

the pizza shot.

The shot that starts with

the three hands coming to take
the pieces of pizza and it pulls back

and you see three Michael J. Foxes
in the same shot.

And that shot took us
two or three days to do

because it was so complicated
and it's cut real short in the movie.

It was originally, like, a 90-second shot.

It was played all on a master and

we had to lock everything down.

Every time we stopped, we would do it.

We filmed it on that one.

I think the A side was

with Marty as Marlene,

and we had Marlene and Lorraine
in the shot and we

did it with stand-ins for everybody else.

Then everything would be locked down.

So you couldn't move the table,
you couldn't move a picture on the wall,

you couldn't move a light,
you couldn't move anything.

We waited for Michael J. Fox
to get into his next makeup,

played back the program on the camera

that made the camera move
exactly the way the

selected take was on the A side

and then we had
to lock everything down again.

Well, we were worried that... What would
happen if we had an earthquake

before we got to do the next part
of the shot and it actually happened.

We had an earth tremor one night
but it wasn't powerful enough

to have knocked out of alignment.

But

Ken Ralston damn near had a heart attack

when he heard that there'd been
an earth tremor that night.

Every little thing, every little,

you know, piece of set dressing
would have to be hot glued into the set

so that nothing could move,
or vibrate, or shift.

And the way we would have to do
those scenes is that we would...

A computer in the camera was locked to

the video playback
of the first side of the shot.

And then on another track,
I would give verbal cues,

you know, we would rehearse and rehearse
and I would mark the track

on the computerized dolly with a piece
of tape and put numbers on them,

and I would even watch the scenes

so I would see who's coming up
on the red tape

and I'd go, "And turn",

"and now,"

"and pizza, and..."

So when playing back in the set,

when they were doing
the B and the C sides of those shots

they had the voice, the actor had the voice
of his first A-side performance,

my cues that were based on
the burn-in on the camera move

and then he had to act
the new character that he was doing

and basically what we did is we would put

a stand-in or another actor in there
for him to work with.

Those days are long gone.

-Thank goodness.
-Thank God, they're gone.

But that's how you had to do it
in the old optical days.

One of the other things
that we learned from

trying to figure out,
how do you use this camera,

and use this technique the right way.

First thing you do when you get a new toy
is you want to show it off.

But that wasn't necessarily a good idea
as we learned in that particular shot.

The 90-second-long take
of the pizza scene all in one master,

it just didn't play right.
It just didn't seem...

You didn't know what to watch,
you didn't know what to follow

and it was one of our editors
who, I think, said,

"You know, if you had three different
characters, three different actors"

"playing this, you'd never play
this whole scene in a master."

And that's when we realized,
yeah, you know, you gotta...

You gotta approach this like,
even though they're all Michael J. Fox

or you've got two Chris Lloyds
or whatever...

You've gotta make the movie
as if these were different actors

and that's how the audience
will buy the illusion

that it's working.

Because the film-making
is the same that you would do

as if you had two different actors.

But then it's great in the scene
with the two Biffs in the garage,

and then there's that part
where he hands the book to himself...

and you know, when we were
previewing that movie

somebody, like, cried out in the audience,

"How did they do that?"

And I'll never...

And I just sat there and I thought,
"Okay, mission accomplished."

Because a simple thing
but unbelievably spectacular and basically

what it was, was,

in addition to all the servos
on the camera and the dolly,

we had them build an armature
in the dashboard of the car

with another servo
that was hooked to the computer

with the book attached to it and went...

And it moved that book
through the frame exactly,

you know, where the split was,
even though the camera was pushing in

or I think it was panning,
I don't remember what it was doing.

-It was panning.
-Yeah, it was panning.

So the book was actually

slaved to the move in the camera computer.

The other shot to watch, which is

the most perfect illusion in the movie,
is the scene when

Marty, in the Cafe 80s,
Marty takes the hat off of Marty Jr.

And puts it on his own head.

There's like one frame there
where the arm and the hat are out of frame.

It worked on one frame
and it's absolutely seamless.

You could do Back to the Future II now
and it would be like a shrug.

Anybody could do this, I mean, anybody.
All you need is a computer.

But in those old optical days, it was...

It was a computer, that's what created
the motion control camera but

now with digital images,
it would be real easy.

One question here has to do
with Michael J. Fox playing

so many different characters
in the movie Back to the Future Part II.

Is there any reason why you decided
to use him so many times,

playing so many different characters?
Bob Gale.

Yeah, we had Michael play all those
different parts because it was funny.

And he was a good actor and it was,
you know, why not?

He only does Marlene in two shots.

The music in all three
Back to the Future movies

is really quite remarkable.

Can you describe your relationship
in coming up with the themes

with composer Alan Silvestri?

Well, you know,
in the sequels Al just had a...

He took the original themes
from Part I and just

wailed, you know,
he just did different variations

on those ideas all throughout.

As a matter of fact, I have to say,
one of the saddest things

of making Back to the Future II
is that it's the only movie that I

never had a chance to go
to a single scoring session

because I was shooting
Back to the Future III, and

we had these, up in Sonora, California,
where we were shooting

Back to the Future III,
we had these trailer unit things

that we dropped on this vacant lot.
And that's where the editorial was.

They tricked one out
with all this high tech

THX surround sound and Al
would just come up on the weekends

and run the cues for me.

And I never had the chance
to actually be on the stage.

So it was all done sort of long distance.

Bob Zemeckis,

you mentioned the challenges of scoring
Back to the Future Part II and III at once.

Any other challenges involved
with making two movies at once?

Yeah, well, you shouldn't do
two movies at once.

And I don't ever want to do it again.
Now I just did two movies back-to-back

which is different.

You know, that you can do.

But doing two movies at the same time
is not good for the following reason.

It's that you don't have enough time...

You can't edit the movie you just finished
while you're shooting...

You don't have enough energy
and enough time in your day.

So the problem,
the overlap of the two movies

was during the post-production time
of Back to the Future II.

And I look at the movie now
and I know that if I wasn't in the middle

of shooting a movie every single day,
see places

where I could have really
just tightened this movie up.

I maybe would have made
a few more calmer decisions

and pulled the movie together,
maybe a little bit better than I did.

So I wouldn't recommend it.
It's too hard, that was the hardest part.

The logistics of it was that

Bob would be shooting
Back to the Future III up in Sonora,

and I went down
to L.A. to supervise the dub

of Back to the Future II.

So, Bob would finish shooting,

we were shooting days so we'd
lose the light around 5:00 or 5:30,

he'd jump on a private plane,
fly down to Burbank,

there would be a car waiting for him,
take him over to

the Hitchcock Stage at Universal.
We had dinner waiting for him.

We'd eat.

We'd sit down and play back the reels
that we mixed that day.

Bob would make his changes.
We'd do them right there.

We'd work till 10:00, 11:00, 12:00.

Bob would go to the Sheraton Universal,
check into a hotel room.

Go to sleep for 5 hours.

Wake up at 5:00. Car would take him
back to the Burbank airport.

He'd fly back to Sonora,
and at 6:00 or 6:30 he'd be on the set

directing Back to the Future III.

That went on for 2 or 3 weeks.
As he said, it wasn't pretty.

When Back to the Future Part II
was released it got...

Some reviews mentioned that it
was a little bit confusing in terms of

the time-travel elements to the story.

Do you recall that when you were

writing the script
and submitting it to the studio

that you ever got any notes back
from the studio

saying that the story
was a little bit dense,

or a little bit confusing?

Well, I don't remember getting
any notes from the studio...

About it being too confusing.
No, they were just so happy that we were

making the movie.

I don't think they... I don't know whether
it was that they didn't care, or whether

they didn't have any problem with it.

Two different things are going on.

And that's why sequels,

as proud as we are
of making these two movies,

sequels are not movies, they are

a whole different kind of thing.
They're a marketing thing.

Here's the thing about sequels.

It's the only thing

that's a sure thing
in the entire movie business.

And that is, you can open a sequel
to a successful movie.

Studios love that
because it's the only thing that they know.

And they don't know anything else.

So the only thing that they know
is that we can open Back to the Future II.

There was not any other movie
that opened on that weekend.

It was Thanksgiving 1989.

And we broke all records that weekend
and all this stuff happened.

That was really small numbers nowadays.

But all the tracking was telling them that.

But I know in my heart that this movie
didn't pack the wallop,

the emotional wallop of the first movie.

-It couldn't.
-It couldn't.

And the audiences were
going to be let down.

But that's, you know, unfortunately,
that's the nature of this business.

I mean, sequels are
unrealistic expectations.

They're unrealistic expectations.
Everybody goes to a sequel

thinking they're going to see something,
they don't know what it is.

-But it can never...
-Give you the rush of the first one.

Yeah, live up to the expectations
that you bring to the theater

on that opening day.

You mentioned earlier the VistaGlide camera
and the special effects that you did on

Back to the Future Part II.

Was there ever anything
that you had to rewrite or rethink because

of the limitations of special effects back
at the time that you were doing this movie?

Well, CGI technology didn't exist
so we didn't know what we were missing.

So we were working with what we had.

-And what we knew.
-And what we knew.

I would say the answer to that is no.

We would always tell ILM,

"We want to do this,
and can you figure this out?"

And we also had
somebody who, in my opinion, is

one of the greatest mechanical effects
supervisors in the world

on this show, Michael Lantieri.

And he took it on himself
as a personal challenge

to try to figure out ways to do things
on the set that

today you would do with a computer.

The movie's better for it.

One of the best shots, by the way,
when you watch the movie again,

is when the DeLorean comes back

to 1985-A from the future

and it flies down from the sky,
and it goes behind a lamppost,

and lands on the street,
pulls into the driveway

and a dog gets out of the car,
all in one shot.

The split, of course, was the lamppost,

when the camera, when the VistaGlide
camera panned across the lamppost,

we went from a miniature model car
flying at ILM on a blue screen

and they matched the actual DeLorean

driving down the street
and into that driveway.

Absolutely perfect seamless shot.

Bob told Ken that's what he wanted to do,
and Ken said:

"I'll figure out how to make it work,"
and he did.

In terms of the set design, actually,
if you could talk a little bit about

switching team, in a sense,
from Larry Paul from Part I to

the Rick Carter team on Part II and III,
and how he made that kind of seamless.

I had a chance to work
with Rick Carter on an

Amazing Stories episode
and I got along with him great

and I thought he was
really creative and he got

the ideas and the tone
of what it was that we were trying to do.

You know, I don't think
it was a problem for Rick

to just step into the first movie
and be able to, like, recreate that and

see what we did. Although

what's interesting is that,
the biggest challenge that we had was

the construction of the town square

into the production schedule.

Because we had to build
this elaborate future town square

with a lake and everything in it,
and everything being futurized.

Then we had to build the alternate,
with the 1985-A

the alternate, you know,
Sin City town square.

And then we threw in the total

perfect recreation of the first movie.

So the only way,
if you look at the movie really carefully,

the only way that we could do that.

Rick and I decided that the only way
we could do it is we could only

shoot one street of 1955 in the town.

Yeah, that was the first stuff that we shot
in Back to the Future II.

And if you had walked onto the set,
you would have seen 1985-A

on the other streets
that was going on at the same time.

No, it was the future, wasn't it?

No, I think we did '85-A next.

-And then we just got off of there...
-Okay, that's right, because it was, like...

That's right, 'cause they built it into
casino. So basically where the camera track was

to do the stuff on the street in 1955,

everything behind the camera
was under construction.

-Right.
-In that town square.

So I had to shoot that street out,
get on the stage,

give them the town square to finish it off,

and then I don't even remember what we did
when we came back to do the future.

-I don't even remember.
-Well, we spent weeks doing

-all that stuff in the McFly townhouse.
-Right.

That took forever to shoot that stuff.
And they were building...

They were building
the future at that point.

And then we also recreated the stage,

the Johnny B. Goode stage

on Stage 12. Originally in the first movie,
and actually for parts of the second movie

we shot that at the Methodist Church
at the corner of Franklin and Highland

in Hollywood.

They have a gymnasium there
and that was the location that we used.

But they didn't have any
of that catwalk stuff that we used later so

we had to build this actual stage
on Stage 12 at Universal

to do all that stuff with Michael
up in the rigging and that gag.

The wide stuff and the big dance stuff
we went back

and shot in the same
Methodist Church, and

we went back to Whittier High School
and we shot all the exterior stuff

right there at Whittier High School again.

And we actually built the set
of Strickland's office,

as I remember,

as sort of a free-standing

set that we were able to move around

at Whittier to get the angle

so that you could look out
the window and see

George deck Biff.

In regards to the scene
that take place in 1955

did you use any kind of optical trickery

to recreate

what had been done
in Back to the Future I

or did you reshoot everything from scratch?

There are some outtakes

from Back to the Future I

of Crispin in Back to the Future II

and then we also recreated shots

with Jeffrey Weissman,

who played George McFly in the sequels

and we always tried, Bob always tried
to figure out a way to make sure that

you were looking at his back,

or to just throw the
focus out a little bit so

you wouldn't realize
that it wasn't Crispin.

To answer your question specifically,
the only opticals,

were only ever optical splits,

where we put the two characters in.

Everything that was in the frame

was physical and built

and recreated to match the first movie.

One question here has to do
with the Pepsi commercial that

aired around the time
of Back to the Future Part II...

The Pepsi commercial
that you're talking about

was filmed while were shooting
Back to the Future Part III

because I remember having a...

Getting really pissed
off at Michael's agent

for telling me that Michael was gonna
leave Back to the Future III for three days

to shoot these Pepsi commercials

leaving the company
with no Michael J. Fox to shoot with.

But, that happened
while we were shooting Part III.

I think Bob, Bob Z.,
one day you told me that you

came up with all those jokes

because you didn't really want to have
to deal with the technology of the future

and, that's how the Jaws,

Steven Spielberg joke came about,
is that correct?

And if you could elaborate
a little bit about that.

You know, we always did
a theater marquee gag.

We did two of them in the first movie, you
know, in the first movie, in the theater,

the Essex Theater is playing
this Ronald Reagan movie,

and then in 1985, it's a porno theater,

so we thought that in the future
it should be a hologram theater

and then we said, "Well, what should it be?"
And we said, "Well, Jaws 10, because..."

Or Jaws 19 or whatever it was that we'd say
because, "Let's make some sequel jokes"

"because we're doing a sequel."

Was it tough to come up with some of the,

as I said, you know,

the gadgets of the future, or

were you trying
to make them look practical, or...

We wanted to make all of the gadgetry
in the future look

fun

more than practical.

There was a certain amount

of practicality we thought about, but

the guy that designed most of that
is a fellow named John Bell,

who was one of the designers at ILM and

he joined the art department for this
because he had such a wacky imagination.

And I remember Bob would tell John,

he said, "Just"

"give me some stuff that we
don't even know what the hell it is."

"Just some stuff
that we can put on the street"

"that nobody will know what it is"

"and it'll just be there."

We've got some really interesting signs

in the town square,

some picture signs of

things with a circle
and a slash through it that

I couldn't tell you
what they were supposed to mean.

John just came up with these crazy images.

We would have
these endless future meetings about

the future. I mean, we would have them
over and over. We would bring

the wardrobe department in,

Rick Carter's department,

and the prop design

and we would just try to figure out...

We'd come up with ideas, like, we'd say,

"Okay, if cars can fly,"

"what are the kind of problems
that are gonna result from that?"

At one point, we thought,
"Well, if cars are leaking oil"

"and they're flying, everybody would be
carrying an umbrella"

"because they'd be
getting oil on their clothes"

"from oil falling out of the sky."

Which was a great gag,
but it took too long to explain it

so we didn't use it.

I thought one of the neat things
we came up with was the two-tie thing

you know, like the two...

The two knotted ties.

-Why not?
-We had a tie joke in the first movie

because Christopher Lloyd's tie,

at the end, and at the beginning of this is

clear plastic.

So, he's wearing a tie
that you can't even see.

Then we said, "What's the
other tie joke we can do," and...

Then, I think it was actually in the script

and you see it in the movie,
but what you really can't see is that

kids all wear their pants inside out.

Does Doc say that in the...

-He says it, yeah.
-He does, yeah.

But it's hard to tell
because they're denim jeans.

We did stuff like that,

we tried our best.

But it's hard.

Incidentally, one of the little kids
playing the video game,

in the Cafe 80s,

is Elijah Wood,

who you all know now
from Lord of the Rings

and I think that was actually
his first movie appearance.

Tell us about product placement
in Back to the Future Part II.

Well, which is the one...

My favorite story is...

Which was the one about the Versateller?

Was that in the sequel?

Actually, that was in Back to the Future I.

Oh, that was in Back to the Future I.

So...

-Should I tell the story? Edit it out.
-Go ahead.

The,

the product placement guy
that I told you about last time who was

just trying to promote
every sleazy deal that he could

we said, "Let's have...
We had a Bank of America there"

"let's have a Versateller."

And

Bank of America thought

that that meant that we wanted
an actual working Versateller.

And they actually

brought this truck with this

working Versateller and these technicians

and they were gonna install
this real Versateller.

-They put phone lines in.
-All this stuff.

It was just ridiculous.

We told them,

"No. It doesn't have to work."

They couldn't understand
why you would want one that didn't work.

Yeah, they couldn't grasp the concept
of stuff being fake,

they just couldn't get it.

One of the product placement issues
that we had in Part II

it was not just a placement,
but it was a promotion.

The studio made this deal with Pizza Hut

and when Back to the Future II came out

Pizza Hut was gonna do a promotion and

every week you were gonna get futuristic
glasses from Back to the Future Part II.

And the studio loves to make these deals
with the fast food companies

because they have
such a huge advertising budget,

and

it still goes on.

You'll see a commercial for the fast food

but they'll have footage from the movie

so it's like a free TV spot for the movie.

But the deal with the devil that you make
when you do this stuff is that

the fast food companies have to have
this really long lead time.

They can't change
their release dates as quickly

as we change our release dates
in the movie business.

So, there was a point where

we got a phone call
from the product placement

promotion people at Universal, saying,

"If this Pizza Hut deal is gonna go,"

"you now have 24 hours to get out of it."

In other words, "If you're not gonna make
a Thanksgiving release for 1989"

"tell us now, and we
can still blow this deal.

"But if you say that you're gonna make it"

"come hell or high water, the movie
is coming out Thanksgiving 1989,"

"because otherwise Pizza Hut
will sue our ass off because"

"they'll have spent all this money
to develop these"

"products that they're gonna
promote with the pizza."

Sometimes it was fun, though.

Talking about the pizzas reminded me
when we were doing that scene where

she hydrates the little pizza
and it becomes a big pizza

Pizza Hut brought an entire kitchen

onto the stage.

You know,
with refrigerators and ovens and

three pizza food stylists.

This stuff just arrived
and they plugged it all

and brought all their own pepperoni.

They worked for hours
and hours and hours

designing these pizzas,
which was so nice to have,

this elaborate thing,

happening there.

And, of course, all of the reject pizzas

they would just give to the crew to eat.

That was kind of fun.
They just brought all these people in.

It was one less thing for me to do.

"Tell me when you got
a pizza that's ready to shoot!"

In talking about
making those two movies together,

we talked about how hard it was
on you guys from behind the camera

tell us about how hard it was
in front of the camera

dealing with the actors,
especially Michael,

with virtually almost every shot, if
not, like, several times in the same shot,

tell us about working with them,
especially Michael and how

you got the performances you got from him.

You know, there really was no problem.
I mean, Michael...

For the first three months, remember,
he was still doing Family Ties.

Well, that was a problem. That was 'cause,

yeah, the first three months
we were still back at night

shooting, I remember just being
on those stages, shooting at night.

But as far as shooting the splits, I mean,
Michael understood the concept

and he knew what he needed to do.

It was tough for the actors just spending

the hours and hours
that they had to spend in makeup.

That was a killer.

If we were shooting in the daytime,

I know Tom Wilson, to get
into that old-age makeup

he would get to the set
at 3:00 in the morning.

And he'd work

18 hours.

The hardest thing, I remember
they would all complain about this,

and it happened mostly

to Lea because she obviously
had the most sensitive skin, but

what happens is that you have those

prosthetics on your face all day,
and when you wrap

what you wanna do
is just get that stuff off

and they'd say, "Oh, no! Don't do that!"

So, you have to go back into the chair
for at least an hour

while they take a solvent and they

paint it off of you so you don't

irritate your face, because

if you pull that stuff off

and then you irritate your skin

then you're in agony the next day
when they start putting the glue back on

and we had a couple of situations
where that happened.

So it's like not only are they in
hours of makeup in the morning

they're in hours of makeup at night

and everybody's gotta
have their turnaround

and, you know, it's just a lot of work.

It's, of course, really fun to see

Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers
playing the role of Needles.

How did he get the part?

He came in and read,
you know, the casting director

and we said, "He's perfect!"

But, we, yeah, I know that it's cool
that he's become this guy

he plays bass on all of these
other guys' albums and stuff.

Yeah, it's cool.

And Charles Fleischer, of course,
makes a cameo appearance.

How did he end up in the movie?

Well, because, I had spent
a year working with Charles on

Roger Rabbit, so...

Charlie just wanted to be
on camera as himself once

instead of just being this cartoon voice.

Yeah, right, "Can't I just be on camera
instead of just a voice?"

That's how he got in the movie.

Okay, everybody.
I think we're gonna stop right here

and save the rest of your great questions

for the Back to the
Future Part III session.

Thank you so much for coming.

Thank you for listening.

And, the biggest thank you, of course,

to Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale.

No. Our only chance to repair the present
is in the past

at the point where the timeline
skewed into this tangent.

In order to put the universe back
as we remember it

and get back to our reality,

we have to find out the exact date
and the specific circumstances

of how, where and when Young Biff
got his hands on that sports almanac.

I'll ask him.

Bulletproof vest! Great flick!
Great frigging flick!

The guy is brilliant.

Hey, what the hell's going...

-Hey! What the hell are you doing in here?
-Party's over, Biff.

Sorry, ladies.

How did you get past
my security downstairs?

There's a little matter
we need to talk about.

-Yeah. Money, right? Well, forget it.
-No. Not money.

Gray's Sports Almanac.

You heard him, girls.

Party's over.

Start talking, kid.
What else you know about that book?

First, you tell me how you got it.

How, where and when.

All right. Take a seat.

Sit down!

November 12, 1955. That was when.

November 12, 1955.
That was the date I went back...

That was the date
of the famous Hill Valley lightning storm.

You know your history. Very good.

I'll never forget that Saturday.

I'd just picked my car up from the shop,

'cause I'd rolled it in a drag race
a few days earlier.

I thought you crashed into a manure truck.

How do you know about that?

-My father told me about it.
-Your father?

Before he died.

Yeah. Right.

So there I was, minding my own business.

This crazy old codger with a cane shows up.

He says he's my distant relative.
I don't see any resemblance.

So he says,
"How would you like to be rich?"

So I said, "Sure."

So he lays this book on me.

He says this book will tell me the outcome

of every sporting event
till the end of the century.

All I have to do is bet on the winner,
and I'll never lose.

So I said, "What's the catch?"
He says, "No catch. Just keep it a secret."

After that, he disappeared.
I never saw him again.

And he told me one more thing.

He said, "Someday a crazy,
wild-eyed scientist",

"or a kid may show up
asking about that book."

"And if that ever happens..."

Funny. I never thought it would be you.

Yeah, well, Biff, you're
forgetting one thing.

What the hell is that?

You're dead, you little son of a bitch!

-Hey, there he is!
-Hey, hey!

Oh, yeah!

Go ahead, kid. Jump.

A suicide will be nice and neat.

What if I don't?

Lead poisoning.

What about the police, Biff?

They're gonna match up the bullet
with that gun.

Kid, I own the police.

Besides, they couldn't match up
the bullet that killed your old man.

You son of a...

I suppose it's poetic justice.

Two McFlys with the same gun.

Idiot.

What the hell?

Nice shot, Doc!

You're not gonna believe this.
We gotta go back to 1955.

I don't believe it.

That's right, Doc. November 12, 1955.

Unbelievable that Old Biff
could've chosen that particular date.

It could mean that that point in time

inherently contains
some sort of cosmic significance,

almost as if it were
the temporal junction point

for the entire space-time continuum.

On the other hand,
it could just be an amazing coincidence.

Damn! Got to fix that thing.
All right. Time circuits on.

What do you mean, time circuits on?

-Doc, we're not going back now.
-Yep.

Doc, what about Jennifer?
What about Einstein?

We can't just leave them here.

Don't worry, Marty.
Assuming we succeed in our mission,

this alternate 1985 will be changed
back into the real 1985,

instantaneously transforming
around Jennifer and Einie.

Jennifer and Einie will be fine,

and they will have absolutely no memory
of this horrible place.

Doc.

What if we don't succeed?

We must succeed.

This is heavy, Doc. I mean,
it's like I was just here yesterday.

You were here yesterday, Marty.
You were. Amazing, isn't it?

All right, sunrise should be
in about 22 minutes.

You go into town.
Track down Young Biff and tail him.

Sometime today, Old Biff will show up
to give Young Biff the almanac.

Above all you, must not interfere
with that event.

We must let Old Biff believe he's
succeeded, so that he'll leave 1955

-and bring the DeLorean back to the future.
-Right.

Once Old Biff is gone,
grab the almanac any way that you can.

Remember, both of our futures
depend on this.

You don't have to remind me of that, Doc.

Here's some binoculars and a walkie-talkie
so we can keep in contact.

I'll stay here and try to repair the short
in the time circuit.

That way, we don't risk anyone else
stealing the time machine,

and I won't risk
accidentally running into my other self.

-Other self?
-Yes. There are now two of me here,

and there are two of you here.

The other me is
the Dr. Emmett Brown from 1955,

the younger me that helps the other you
get back to 1985.

Remember the lightning bolt
at the clock tower?

-Yeah.
-That event doesn't happen until tonight,

so you must be very careful
not to run into your other self.

Let me give you some money.

I have to be prepared
for all monetary possibilities.

-Get yourself some '50s clothes.
-Check, Doc.

Something inconspicuous.

Doc. Come in, Doc. This is Marty. Over.

Roger, Marty. This is Doc. Are you there?

Yeah, Doc. I'm at the address.

It's the only Tannen in the book,
but I don't think this is Biff's house.

It looks like some old lady lives here.

-Biff!
-Yeah.

-Where are you going, Biff?
-I'm going to get my car, Grandma.

When are you coming back? My feet hurt,
and I want you to rub my toes some more.

Shut up, you old bag.

Give us our ball back.

-What ball?
-That ball!

What ball are you talking about?

Give us our ball!

-What ball?
-Biff!

-Is this your ball?
-Yeah!

-Is it your ball? You want it back?
-Yeah.

Go get it.

Doc, it is Biff's house. I'm on him. Over.

Hey.

Looking good, Terry.

Hey, Biff, she's all fixed up just
like new, but I couldn't get her started.

You got some kind of kill switch
on this thing?

No, you just gotta have the right touch.
Nobody can start this car but me.

-Yeah, the bill comes to $302.57.
-300 bucks?

300 bucks for a couple of dents?
No, hey, that's bullshit, Terry.

No, Biff, it was horse shit.
The whole car was full of it.

We had to pay Old Man Jones 80 bucks
to haul it away.

Old Man Jones probably resold it, too.

-Now I ought to get something for that.
-You want something for it?

We'll go inside. You can call Old Man
Jones. If he wants to give you a refund...

It's 300 bucks, Terry. If I catch the guy
that caused this, I'll break his neck.

The manure. I remember that.

Four cans of Valvoline is fair, Biff.

-Four cans for a $300 job?
-I couldn't even have lunch in the shop.

-Makes me nauseous.
-I should get a case of oil

-out of you for a 300 buck job.
-You've been inside.

It smells worse than the bathroom
at a gas station.

-You robbed me again, Terry. Yeah, yeah.
-The smell's never gonna go away, Biff.

Never gonna go away.

-Last time I do you a favor. Last time.
-Thanks a lot.

Let me see.

It's perfect, Lorraine.

-Look at it!
-You're going to look so good!

-You're going to look...
-Well, lookey what we have here.

Hey, nice dress, Lorraine.

Although, I think you'd look better
wearing nothing at all.

Biff, why don't you take a long walk
off a short pier?

Hey, listen, Lorraine. There's
that dance at school tonight, right.

Now that my car's all fixed,
I figure I'd cut you a break

and give you the honor of going
with the best-looking guy in school.

Yeah, well, I'm busy.

-Yeah, doing what?
-Washing my hair.

That's about as funny
as a screen door on a battleship.

Screen door on a submarine, you dork.

Look, Biff, somebody already asked me
to the dance.

Who? That bug George McFly?

-I'm going with Calvin Klein, okay?
-Calvin Klein? No, it's not okay.

-You're going with me, understand?
-Get your cooties off me!

When are you gonna get it through
your thick skull, Lorraine?

You're my girl.

Biff Tannen, I wouldn't be your girl
even if you had a million dollars!

Yes, you will! It's you and me, Lorraine.

Watch it!

It's meant to be.

I'm going to marry you someday, Lorraine.
Someday you'll be my wife!

You always did have a way with women.

Get the hell out of my car, old man.

You want to marry that girl, Biff?
I can help make it happen.

Oh, yeah? Who are you, Miss Lonely-Hearts?

Just get in the car, butthead.

Who are you calling butthead, butthead?

How do you know how to do that?
Nobody can start this car but me.

Just get in the car, Tannen.
Today's your lucky day.

Hey! Hey!
Hey, watch where you're driving, old man.

If you dent this car, I'll kill you.

-This cost me 300 bucks!
-Would you shut up about the car?

Hey, and another thing.
How do you know where I live?

Let's just say we're related, Biff.

And that being the case,
I got a little present for you.

Something that'll make you rich.

-You want to be rich, don't you?
-Oh, yeah. Sure. Right. That's rich.

You're going to make me rich?

You see this book?
This book tells the future.

Tells the results of every major
sports event till the end of the century.

Football, baseball, horse races, boxing.

The information in here is worth millions,
and I'm giving it to you.

Well, that's very nice.
Thank you very much.

Now, why don't you make like a tree
and get out of here?

It's leave, you idiot.
Make like a tree and leave.

You sound like a damn fool
when you say it wrong.

All right, then, leave
and take your book with you.

Don't you get it?
You could make a fortune with this book.

Let me show you.

UCLA trails 17-16.

It's 4th and 11
with only 18 seconds left of this game.

I'd say it's all over for UCLA.

Bet you a million bucks UCLA wins it 19-17.

What are you, deaf, old man?
He just said it was over. You lost.

Oh, yeah?

Here comes Decker with the kick.
It's up. It looks good, folks!

It looks very good. Field goal!
UCLA wins 19-17.

Listen to that Coliseum crowd go wild.
Jim Decker...

All right, pops. What's the gag?

How did you know
what the score was gonna be?

I told you. It's in this book.

All you gotta do is bet on the winner,
and you'll never lose.

All right. I'll take a look at it.

You damn fool!

Never, never leave this book laying around.

Don't you have a safe?
No, you don't have a safe.

Get a safe. Keep it locked up.
And until then, keep it on you like this.

-Hey, what are you doing?
-And don't tell anybody about it, either.

And there's one more thing. One
day, a kid or a crazy, wild-eyed old man

who claims to be a scientist is going
to come around asking about this...

If that ever happens...

I'm trapped. Doc.

Doc, come in, Doc.

-Marty, what's the report?
-Biff's gone.

He's got the book. The old man's gone, too.
I'm locked in Biff's garage.

You gotta fly the DeLorean over here
and get me the hell out of here.

The address is 1809 Mason Street.

I can't take the DeLorean
out in the daylight,

but don't worry, Marty.
Somehow I'll get over there.

Doc, wait a minute. Doc. Hey, Doc. Doc.

Perfect.

I told you, Grandma.
I'm going to the dance.

-When you coming home?
-The dance.

I'll get home when I get home.

Don't forget to turn off the garage light.

Marty. Marty!

Marty.

Marty, Marty. Damn!

Where is that kid?

Doc. Doc, come in.

Come in, Doc.

Marty! Marty, come in.

Doc.

Marty.

Oh, my...

Great Scott.

Oh, my God.

Doc, Doc, come in.

Marty, what happened to you? I went
to Biff's house, and you weren't there.

You must have just missed me.
I'm in the back of Biff's car.

He's on his way
to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.

Marty, listen, we may have
to abort this entire plan.

It's getting much too dangerous.

Don't worry.
The book is on Biff's dashboard.

I'll grab it as soon as
we get to the school.

Marty, you must be extremely careful
not to run into your other self.

-My other self?
-Yes.

Remember, your mother is
at that exact same dance with you. Yeah.

-Right. This could get heavy, Doc.
-Heavy, heavy.

Marty, whatever happens,
you must not let your other self see you!

-The consequences could be disastrous.
-Excuse me, sir.

Yes, you with the hat.

-Who, me?
-Yes.

Be a pal and hand me a five-eighths inch
wrench out of that toolbox.

Five-eighths?

Don't you mean three-quarters?

Why, you're right.

I presume you're conducting
some sort of weather experiment.

That's right. How did you know that?

I happen to have had a little experience
in this area.

Yes, well, I'm hoping
to see some lightning tonight.

Although, the weatherman says
there's not gonna be any rain.

There's going to be plenty of rain,
all right. Wind, thunder, lightning.

-It's gonna be one hell of a storm.
-Well, thanks. Nice talking to you.

Maybe we'll bump into each other some time
again in the future.

Or in the past.

Doc, Doc! Come in!

Where's that punk Calvin Klein, anyway?

How am I supposed to know, Biff?
I ain't his secretary.

Well, go find him.
He caused 300 bucks damage to my car,

and I owe him a knuckle sandwich.
Get going!

-Drink up, Biff.
-Yeah, thanks.

-Ain't you coming?
-I'm reading.

Well, well, well, Mr. Tannen.

How nice to see you here.

-Why, Mr. Strickland, it's nice to see you, sir.
-Is that liquor I smell, Tannen?

I wouldn't know.

I don't know what liquor smells like,
'cause I'm too young to drink it.

I see.

And what have we here?

Sports statistics, interesting subject.
Homework, Tannen?

No, it ain't homework,
'cause I ain't at home.

You've got a real attitude problem.
You know that, Tannen? Just watch it.

Because one day, I'll have you
right where I want you in detention.

Slacker!

Jesus, you smoke, too?

Marty, you're beginning
to sound just like my mother.

Yeah, right.

When I have kids, I'm going to
let them do anything they want.

Anything at all.

-Yeah, I'd like to have that in writing.
-Yeah, me, too.

Marty, why are you so nervous?

Yes!

No!

"Oh Là Là?"

"Oh Là Là?"

"Oh Là Là?"

-Doc! Doc!
-Hey, you.

-Doc, come in!
-Marty, what's up?

Doc! I'm in trouble. I blew it.

-Where's the book?
-Biff must still have it with him.

-All I got is the damn cover.
-And where's Biff?

-You're asking for it.
-I don't know.

-Don't you have any idea where he is?
-No! I mean, he could be anywhere by now.

Marty, the entire future depends on you
finding Biff and getting that book back!

-I know. I just don't know where...
-Stop it!

Stop it, Biff. You'll
break his arm. Stop it!

Of course!

I gotta go. I got one chance!
My old man is about to deck Biff!

Yes!

Talk about déjà vu.

Are you okay?

Okay, everybody, let's back up now.
Let's back up. Let's everybody just back up

and give him a little bit of room, okay.
A little bit of air.

-It's okay. I know CPR. I know CPR.
-Hey.

-What's CPR?
-You!

-He's fine.
-Hey, did you just take his wallet?

He just took that guy's wallet.

Doc, success. I got it.

Thank goodness.

Great, Marty.

As soon as I reload the fusion generator,

I'll meet you on the roof
of the high school gym.

On the roof. 10-4.

-Hey, it's him!
-Hey, he's in disguise.

Guys, what's that?

Come on! Let's get him!

Damn!

Earth angel

Please be mine

My darling dear

Love you for all time

I'm just a fool

A fool in love

with you

All right! Let's do another one.

Where did he go? He just came in here!

Something that really cooks.

Look! How did he get up on stage?

I don't know, but when he gets down,
we're gonna nail him.

How the hell did
he change his clothes so fast?

All right, 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?

-Doc. Doc, come in!
-Marty, come in.

Listen, Biff's guys chased me into the gym,
and they're going to jump me.

Then get out of there!

No, Doc, not me. The other me. The one
that's up on stage playing Johnny B. Goode.

Great Scott! Your other self will miss
the lightning bolt at the clock tower,

you won't get back to the future,
and we'll have a major paradox!

Wait, wait, wait. A paradox?

You mean one of those things
that can destroy the universe?

Precisely. Marty, you have to stop
those guys at all costs,

but without being seen by your other self
or your parents.

10-4.

What the hell?

-Where is he?
-Who?

-Calvin Klein.
-Who?

-The guy with the hat, where is he?
-He went that way.

I think he took your wallet.
I think he took his wallet.

Go, Johnny, go, go, go

Johnny B. Goode

Go, go

Go, Johnny, go, go

Go, Johnny, go, go, go

Go, Johnny, go, go

Go, Johnny, go, go, go

Johnny B. Goode

I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet.

But your kids are going to love it.

Hey, Doc, success. Everything's cool.

Great. I'll be landing at the school roof
in about one minute.

I'll be there.

Lorraine.

Marty, that was very interesting music.

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

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

I have a feeling, too.

Hey, butthead!

You think that stupid disguise
would get by me?

Let's have it out. You and me, right now.

No, thanks.

What's the matter?

Where are you going?

Are you chicken?

That's it, isn't it?
Nothing but a little chicken.

Nobody calls me chicken.

What the hell?

You steal my stuff?

And this one's for my car!

Doc!

Doc! I blew it.

Biff nailed me. He took the book.
He drove away with it in his car.

It's my fault, Doc.
I should have got out of there sooner.

No time for that now. Which way did he go?

-East towards the River Road Tunnel.
-Get in!

Yes!

There he is, Doc!

-Let's land on him. We'll cripple his car.
-Marty, he's in a '46 Ford. We're a DeLorean.

He'd rip through us like we were tin foil.

-So what do we do?
-I have a plan.

Repeating tonight's
earlier weather bulletin,

a severe thunderstorm is heading
for Hill Valley.

Serving Hill Valley and all of Hill County,

you're tuned to KKHV,
the voice of Hill Valley.

Turning to community calendar,

the Hill Valley Women's Club bake sale
will be held tomorrow afternoon

from 2:00 to 5:00
at the community center on Forest Road.

For you sports fans out there, there was
a lot of action today in college football.

Here's what happened to the top 10.

UCLA narrowly defeated Washington 19-17.

Michigan State crushed Minnesota 42-14.

Ohio State beat Iowa 20-10.

-Michigan blanked Indiana 30-0.
-Shit.

-It was Notre Dame over North Carolina, 27-7.
-Son of a bitch.

Oklahoma ripped Iowa State 52-0.

West Virginia lost to Pittsburgh 26-7.

Texas A&M over Rice 20-10.

Maryland defeated Clemson 25-12,

and it was Texas
Christian over Texas 47-20.

Repeating tonight's earlier
weather bulletin, a severe...

You again? Give me that book.

Let it go!

Let go of the car!

That'll teach him.

Go, Doc!

Hold on, Marty!

Shit!

Yes!

Manure! I hate manure!

Doc, is everything all right? Over.

10-4, Marty,
but it's pretty miserable flying weather.

Much too turbulent to make a landing
from this direction.

I'll have to circle around
and make a long approach from the south.

Have you got the book?

In my hand, Doc! I got it in my hand!

Burn it!

Check!

Doc! Doc! That newspaper changed.

Doc, my father's alive!

That means everything's back to normal,
right?

Mission accomplished.

That means Jennifer's okay
and Einie's okay, right?

That's right, Marty.
It's the ripple effect.

The future is back, so let's go home.

Right. Let's get our asses back to the...

Doc, Doc, are you okay?

That was a close one, Marty.
I almost bought the farm.

Well, be careful.
You don't want to get struck by lightning.

Doc.

Doc?

Doc, come in, Doc.

Doc, do you read me?

Do you read me, Doc? Come in. Doc.

Oh, no.

He's gone.

The doc's gone.

Mr. McFly!

Is your name Marty McFly?

Yeah.

I've got something for you.

A letter.

A letter for me?

That's impossible.

-Who the hell are you?
-Western Union.

Actually, a bunch of us
at the office were kind of hoping

maybe you could shed some light
on the subject.

See, we've had that envelope
in our possession for the past 70 years.

It was given to us
with the explicit instructions

that it be delivered
to a young man with your description

answering to the name of Marty
at this exact location

at this exact minute, November 12, 1955.

We have a little bet going as to whether
this Marty would actually be here.

Looks like I lost.

Did you say 70 years?

Yeah, 70 years, 2 months, 12 days
to be exact. Here sign on line 6, please.

Here you are.

It's from the doc!

"Dear Marty, if my
calculations are correct,

"you will receive this letter immediately
after you saw the DeLorean struck by lightning.

"First, let me assure you
that I'm alive and well.

"I've been living happily
these past eight months in the year 1885.

"The lightning bolt..." 1885!

"September, 1885."

Wait, wait, kid! Wait a minute.
What's this all about?

He's alive! The doc's alive!

-He's in the Old West, but he's alive.
-Yeah, but, kid, you all right?

Do you need any help?

There's only one man who can help me.

Doc! Doc! Doc!

-Doc! Doc!
-What?

Okay, relax, Doc. It's
me. It's me! It's Marty.

No, it can't be.
I just sent you back to the future.

Yeah. No, I know. You did send me
back to the future, but I'm back.

I'm back from the future.

Great Scott!

Doc! Doc. Doc.

Fantastic.

Hey, McFly.

Just try it, Tannen!

Come on, runt!
You can dance better than that!