Back to the Future
Back to the Future is one my favorite triologies next to Indiana Jones and Die Hard. Me and my one friend Abe regularly quote the movie. We’ll casually drop lines from the movie into conversation. It is sort of like our own inside joke. I love reading about behind the scenes information about the movie. While watching the original Back to the Future about a week ago I was browsing Imdb.com looking up trivia about the movie.
I found somethings to be pretty interesting. For example Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis’ original idea for the time machine was a refrigerator, but they decided to scrap that out fear children might start climbing into them. Another interesting note the head of Universal Pictures Sid Sheinberg didn’t like the title of the movie stating that no one would want to see a movie with “future” in the title. He issued a memo to the director Robert Zemeckis suggesting the title should be changed to “Spaceman from Pluto.” Speilberg responded with a memo back to Sheinberg saying they enjoyed his joke memo and every one got a kick out of it. Sheinberg was too proud to admit he was serious thus the movie kept its title and the rest is history. How different would this movie series be had they changed the name? Amazing.
This summer I went to California to watch the Cubs play in San Diego and Los Angeles. While in L.A. before the game I went to several locations where they filmed the movie. I visited Doc Brown’s house, which is The Gamble house. The house was built in 1908 and celebrated its centenial this year. The residence belonged to David and Mary Gamble until 1966 when it was given to the University of Southern California. It also is a historical museum. It is alandmark on both the state and national level. I visited Marty McFly’s house as well as the Burger King he skateboarded past in the first few minutes of the movie. Also I went to the mall where Doc and Marty first tested the DeLorean. The mall is pretty much the same with the exception being that JC Penny’s is no longer there. Interesting side note the houses they used for Lorriane Baines, Biff Tannon and George McFly were all on the same street. I wanted to visit Universal Studios to see the clock tower set, but unfortunately there was a fire that week, go figure.
Also this summer I was lucky enough to see Tom Wilson’s standup. For those who don’t remember who Tom Wilson is he played Biff in BTTF. Needless to say it was pretty sweet to see his act. I sat in the front row and instantly became a target for him during his show. Nothing mean or offensive of course because he doesn’t use profanity in his act which is a nice change of pace every now and then. Anywho he has a song about BTTF it’s called the questions song. He is a pretty nice guy and I can always say 20 years from now I got picked on by Biff. Another interesting note he was on Chicago Tribune Live a day before his show and he talked about Michael J. Fox wasn’t originally cast as Marty it was Eric Stoltz. However, Stoltz was fired because he was taking the role too seriously and the director and the producer didn’t feel he was working. So they fired him and Michael J Fox became immortalized as Marty McFly. Also Crispin Glover who played George McFly wasn’t in the second and third movies. He was fired as well because he wanted more money than Michael J. Fox. They didn’t believe he should make more money than Fox because his role wasn’t as great. It amazes me when I found out things of this nature.
That’s all I got for now.
