Blank Check with Griffin & David - Back to the Future

Episode Date: September 27, 2020

It was the #1 film of 1985. It’s a theme park ride. An animated series. It spawned video games. Comic books. Musicals. It’s in the goddamn Library of Congress! And key to this series, it guaranteed Robert Zemeckis big crazy budgets for decades. Has there ever been a bigger “blank check" than Back to the Future? Now make like a tree and start the episode already! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch @ shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine out of a podcast? That was pretty good. I kind of like that. Podcasts? Where we're going, we don't need podcasts that was good but i'm just more into your michael j fox just because it's like you know who has a michael j fox you think i'm well suited to a michael j fox impression over a christopher lloyd impression sure sure yeah i see what you're saying look hey he's he's he's on the smaller side sure he's a little squirrely mm-hmm doc oh yes marty i don't know i can't do him no i'm sorry you go

ahead you go ahead ben go ahead do your thing doc marty you made it yeah welcome to my ladies experiment this is the big one the one i've been waiting for all my life. Well, it's a DeLorean, right? Bear with me. Marty, all of your questions will be answered. Roll tape and we'll podcast. Ben really wants to do that one. I think it was so hype to do that one. Yeah.

It's like saying that we're rolling tape, even though we now been recorded for a minute. Also, Ben, should we mention you're wearing sunglasses? You've decided to go full Marty McFly for this episode. Listen, you gotta. This is a requirement for our listeners. You gotta pop your collar, you gotta roll your sleeves up and throw on some shades if you got them. I mean, he's got like a rolled sleeve, but he's

also got like a five-layer thing going on. Oh, wait, hold on. I just gotta pop my soda. Jesus Christ. Ben got a glass bottle of Coke and he's just popped the cap. How many cups did you buy for this? You also asked if you could skateboard into the episode.

Yeah, which seems like that's not going to be happening. I hate to stomp all over it, Ben, but I feel like you abandoned the skateboard into the podcast plan. Well, I was going to be, of course, like hanging on the back of a truck and i would have then skateboarded into the episode that way look i'll give you an entire

episode to figure out how to hang tailpipe all right i'm trying to think of like a good uncle fester quote that's my favorite christopher lloyd whoa oh wait you're giving me a woe for for that declaration yeah alone that i'm just picking him over doc brown i assume i assume i guess Oh, wait, you're giving me a woe for that declaration alone? That I'm just picking him over Doc Brown, I assume. I assume, I guess maybe Taxi. Maybe he should have won the Oscar for this performance. Yeah, he's great in this movie, but have you seen and heard of Uncle Fester? I have. For your information, motherfucker.

Pretty cool. I watched both of those movies recently. He's incredible in them. We will soon be rewatching Who Framed Roger movies recently he's incredible in them we will soon be re-watching who framed roger rabbit he's incredible in that and i have watched all of taxi and he is unbelievable in that his run is was incredible incredible and those are very different roles doom fester reverend jim doc brown yeah is there something worth i'm trying to remember is there anything else in his that i mean that's the real golden run he had other like big movies but

that's those are the top tier things he's in trek don't forget you haven't seen it but you know commander cruge that's a great performance i guess he's in clue that was fun right uh there's the dream team a movie that i like that's michael keaton christopher lloyd peter boyle steven root yeah i never seen that one i'm a great great great gang the the you know the quartet the boys i call them the boys um of course switchblade sam we've shouted him out in dennis the menace of course well that's that's where we're getting into the 90s period. And then you have... Still, that's before Adam's Family Values. So I'm counting it.

You got the Pagemaster. That's the year after. Radioland Murders. Camp Nowhere, which I feel like is a Big Ben movie. Am I correct on that? Camp Nowhere, Ben. I've never seen it. That does strike me.

Wow. I think you'd enjoy. It's Bushwhacked. I i got confused bushwhacked is the movie you love right ben well i don't know i don't know bushwhacked either what you don't know are you kidding me i feel like you've talked about okay okay i'll take it mouchette that's the movie you love right ben let's just keep naming movies um it's that thing griffin like, you've got this run here. And then the nineties where like, it's like, he's consistently above the title. Like you think of the page master or like angels in the outfield, right? You know, that, that, that, that era, my favorite Martian, of course.

Right. Camp nowhere. I always associate with Bushwhacked and that they're both like, Hey kids, here's that like supporting actor you loved in your movie. Let's try to build an entire movie around their persona. And it's like too much when they're kind of the sole lead. I've never seen Bushwhacked, but that is Daniel Stern, correct? That's sort of like what's basically intended is like,

let's just take Daniel Stern's Home Alone thing. It's kids terrorizing daniel stern right right and then camp nowhere is kind of uh accepted is sort of a stealth remake of camp nowhere it's kids hire like a burnout to pretend to be a camp director you just say camp nowhere twice i assume it's a remake of something else i accept it didn't i say accepted you said oh you oh i thought you were saying it's accepted that camp nowhere is no no my friend like you were saying like look broad consensus is formed around a few issues you know in american life one of which of course is that camp nowhere is a remake of camp nowhere i accepted the justin long college movie yeah i i saw camp nowhere in theaters i do not remember it uh i do remember when i was eight being hyped for a movie where

there were no parents and no counselors and no rules obviously it was very exciting and i think it's jess galva's first movie so it had all the makings of a young jess galva right but i'm just saying yes he kept working he stayed above the title i feel like my favorite martian is kind of the end of that run uh i i feel like he's been unfairly slept on for the last 20 years i feel like i've talked about this before it feels like he still got his fastball and he hasn't been given a proper role in a while but that run is pretty incredible in terms of like doom fester reverend jim doc brown arguably all four of those performances became iconic and they're very different and they're very sort of

like chameleon performances although he obviously had his like defining attributes, you know, his high wire sort of energy. His energy, right. Yes, his specific energy. Yes. Crazy eyes, I suppose you would define it as. He has crazy eyes. But that's why, like Judge Doom is very laconic, wearing sunglasses.

I mean, we'll get to that. We'll do an entire Judge Doom episode. He has crazy eyes though, okay. But they save it. I know, I know. Yeah, we'll get he has crazy eyes though okay but they save it i know i know uh yeah we'll get to that we're here to talk about back to the future but first griffin uh broad consensus is formed around the idea that you should introduce the podcast it's accepted oh so it's accepted it's accepted yeah exactly right right this is a podcast called blank check with with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David.

And that's the power of love. Of course. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their career say their fourth movie ever and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. the next 35 years of their career right right i mean this is we we've talked about this uh this is an example uh we were saying this in the romancing the stone episode of a clear so big the checkbook will never be taken away from him i think it's compounded by roger rabbit being kind of equally

big and then the sequels by and large working like that run of experience yes the run is crazy yes and then that's why he gets to make movies forever because they're a lot of these movies plus gump are pitches that would sound ludicrous in the room and so when some when zemeckis comes to you and he's like yeah you know it's this guy and he makes models and he's a foot fetishist and action figures represent his emotions people are like well look it's been a while but you did make back to the future right so sure here's 100 million dollars it's also one of those movies where it was 200 even um i think it was about it's 40 yeah i think it was about 40 million thousand something like that billion um it's

one of those movies too where it's like this is not an accident there is no dumb luck at play which is the other reason i think people keep on giving him the check it's like this is such a tight movie it is so deliberate it is so well constructed this isn't a guy who stumbled into something backwards can i say something that is pushing back on that but only slightly i don't think this is a tight movie until 30 minutes in is that fair for me to say i don't i wouldn't this is obviously a movie that feels perfectly constructed when it comes together at the end it's just that immense hollywood satisfaction of like oh this was all you know working this way for a reason i think this is a slow start which is fine it's a fine to have it be a slow start it's not a complaint i think the ultimate magic trick of this movie are our wait

we haven't said the miniseries the films are called podcast away and today we're talking about right a little movie called back to the future this happens i wouldn't even say once a miniseries i would say it happens maybe once or twice a year period where we cover a movie that is so big, it's kind of daunting to actually record the episode on it. Yeah, I would say with all kindness to these masterful movies, they are actually usually not our best episodes because, right, how do you even talk about a movie everyone's talked about?

But, you know, it's a great one movie everyone's talked about but you know it's it's a it's a great one because we're gonna mostly say that it's very good and very successful oh well i got a lot of stuff to say i've been doing research for weeks you've been doing research yeah griffin's been all in on back to the future even though we did episodes on titanic the matrix what are some other big ones we've done griffin uh that are on this kind of level fury road i've put in that etchery road because it's so much more recent it's easier to tackle under siege dark territory under siege territory basically every christopher nolan movie right dark knight i put in that territory if we're talking top top tier dark knight i put

in that territory robocop i put in that territory yes um sounds of the lambs sounds of the lambs maybe the incredibles maybe i don't know maybe that's probably not even quite there uh maybe like tim burton's batman right you know right right right yeah with tim burton there's like the couple there that are up there. It's not quite the same as this. Movies that were blockbusters, critically adored, and have aged only better and have so thoroughly

seeped into the popular culture. Right. Touch everything of our modern world. We very much live in a post-Back to the Future America in the way that that that i think applies to all the other movies we just listed um but what was the thing i was about to say oh i think david reese the great david reese creator of dicktown which

everyone should watch on hulu co-creator of dicktown with john hodgman our other dear friend promoting dicktown dicktown's a good show everyone watched dicktown it is a great show it's so fucking funny and it's on hulu you can just watch it and i'm in an episode you are in an episode pretty cool um have you seen have you watched my episode yet i haven't so that even i haven't gotten to it yet so that shows how much i like this show i haven't even gotten to the griffin episode yet and i love it and and already it's hot yeah no i i kind of torpedo the show but uh okay all right all right right going great until david reese said on our podcast i think that we've gone back to a lot that all great movies are either uh puzzles or dreams right it's our spirited away episode if you

want to hear that right and the addendum i'd like to put on that it's not it's not uh uh i'm not refuting that i i'm adding a sort of like layer onto it which is i think a lot of the best puzzle movies are constructed like magic tricks right uh yeah yes you're talking about this kind of movie where there is a geez what's the prestige you know right the uh right give me the three stages of the prestige because i forgot right it's the exact same thing i want to do the prestige structure and i forgot to look it up and i'm not going to remember it but i feel like the thing this movie does that a lot of good puzzle movies do is they solve the puzzle right in front of you and make you not pay attention to the fact that they're doing that the the pledge the turn and the prestige that's that's what it is i had to google

it because it was driving me crazy but that's exactly it yes right um right yes no of course not every puzzle movie is a mystery movie with a secret inside that you need to like think about like obviously maybe that's sort of the appeal of a christopher nolan movie or but like you know no of course i feel like but if we're doing broad puzzles or dreams puzzle movies are what you're talking about these very elaborately satisfying yeah machines that are beautifully constructed and come together really well. But this is that territory of we're going to do the puzzle for you. Like, we're not going to make you solve the puzzle by and large, but we're going to, we're going to somehow distract you from the fact that we're doing a puzzle. We're going to get your

eye off the ball in that sort of prestige way of like, pay attention to the wrong thing, you know? Yes. And it might be with great characters that you enjoy spending time with. So that's what I was going to say. Doc Brown appears on screen 20 minutes into this movie. It takes 20 minutes.

And then there's essentially 10 minutes between when Doc Brown appears and when Marty goes through time. Right? Yeah. That's the first half hour of this film that is just a hair under two hours.

I think the genius of this movie and the thing that just shows how fucking sharp Gale and Zemeckis were at this point is that first 20 minutes are pretty leisurely paced.

I'd say the next 10 minutes when doc brown enters you have the delorean you have the terrorists all that sort of stuff it's like clearly throttling into a new year but at that point you don't really know what the movie is right if you're pretending you're watching it going in blind i'm trying to remember how i watched it for the first time and then the 30 minute mark is really where the movie starts to like reveal itself. I think what is so impressive about this movie is you accept the first 20 minutes, which don't feel on their face like they're tight because they just feel like you're watching any 80s teen movie. It's characterization. It's a cool guy. It's good songs. He's in the band. His parents are kind of annoying.

His siblings are, you know, these sort of silly characters. He wants to have his weekend with Jennifer. His best friend is, of course, an aged scientist. You know, like, right. You know, it's all, it's mostly normal stuff. Agree with you on this. The brilliance of the movie is that every single thing that happens in those first 20 minutes is invisible setup for something that comes back into play.

Right. That would, that's why, of course, it's not like I'm like, huh, back to the future could tighten it up a little bit. Um, you're totally right. I'm more just wonder, like if I plop a 10 year old in front of this movie now, are they kind of like, and I'm not trying to rant about the young people and sure how they're all you know whatever have no attention span but like are they kind of just nonplussed by this very kind of like sort of like you're saying like

apart from him being friends with doc brown which is is wild everything else is very cookie cutter it's like he's in school his parents are hassling him they're boring you know what i mean like the stakes seem pretty low well apart from that his parents suck those are the stakes i guess right i'd offer two rebuttals to that one i think i saw this right about at 10 so obviously you know you're not like these i'm a movie nerd and there's been 21 years since then yes absolutely yeah do you know about these tiktoks that they're god the teens and their tiktoks but here are the two actual rebuttals i would offer one marty mcfly is super fucking cool and he's very much a 10 year old's conception of what you want to be as a teenager i mean i i do agree with that he's really cool ben please weigh in also he has a skateboard he has a yeah he's a skateboard he has an awesome vest he just like also has like it's like high tops and

jeans and plays a guitar but also his attitude where it's like he's not totally like a bad guy but he's also not like uptight at all like that always resonated with me they they hit such a sweet spot yeah he's like that high school guy where everyone would be friends with him maybe he's not in any particular social group but it's like yeah marty he's cool but he would also still smoke a cig in the boy's bathroom well now you're projecting oh sorry i think that's that's the line they hit i mean obviously we'll we'll talk about the coup of Fox in this movie, which is like the key to everything. But I think even as the character is written, the fact that he's not prom king cool and the fact that he does seem to exist in his own sphere. But also, I've been trying to watch all of The Simpsons.

But also, I've been trying to watch all of The Simpsons, and the thing that I've been struck by, especially re-watching the early seasons, is I think they're so smart about not making Bart too high status in a way that is similar to Marty, where it's like neither of them, although they're popular and they're well-liked and they have skateboards and they're objectively cool to a child uh they both like deal with bullies they both have frustrations they're not like everything doesn't roll off their backs and in that way i think the pure charisma of the first 20 minutes combined with like the coolness of the skateboarding the music all that sort of stuff i mean he hangs on the back of a dang car and gets around that's like i mean obviously obviously that is cool i think that's still cool that's super cool and then i think you get to shit still i think you get to shit like him being frustrated with his dad the principal like telling him he's never gonna amount to some anything i think that's stuff that still you plop any eight-year-old in front of it and they don't understand why they suddenly feel such a connection to that guy i think you're right i do it is it's broad especially like the principal where you're like now you're like that's so funny that the

principal just berates him in the hallway for like nothing but what he's late okay the principal is like you know what you write it off you're you ain't that's it you're not gonna do fucking anything for the rest of your life but it's this other thing i mean gail and zemeck has talked about this so much but marty is such a reactive character like he makes active choices and he pushes the story forward but the crux of the movie is doc brown figuring out time travel and getting his parents together as a couple he's helping to facilitate both of those things but the big payoffs you're looking for in the movie aren't really things to do with him as directly you know obviously he'll disappear from

the photo if this doesn't get solved he needs to help both of these people get to their end points yes they're the ones who have the big ecstatic wins in the movie yes his you're right he is or whatever time is moving through him in a way like he is not like the stakes are are somewhat passive in a way that would seem odd to whatever a hollywood pitch meeting maybe right where it's like well why why do i care about marty like what like his mom wants to kiss him like that's that's all that's like you know like what does he want what does marty want like and it's kind of like apart from to not be you're right you're right you're right i'm sorry i'm just repeating what you're saying no there's so much stuff about the construction of the screenplay that sort of defies logic and in many ways goes against how screenplays are taught i feel like it's so often so binary when you get into like save the cat shit and like the

rules of stuff and gail and zemeckis very much had this process where they like wrote shit on note cards and they went like what's the overall theme of this movie? Like, what is the number one thing we're trying to say? Circle that a thousand times. Make sure everything helps feed into that. Right. But then they would just go like, what are things that would be cool to happen in this movie? And they just would come up with things they would like to see in a film in this sort of like, why not make every scene as good as it could be principle. But then what they

would do is they do the legwork so they go okay if we like the idea it would be funny if marty is the one who creates rock and roll potentially a little bit racist but also funny i mean sure right we'll we'll discuss that choice later at the time very cool right yeah let's put that note card on the board. But now we have a commitment to ourselves to seed that throughout the entire film. And so I feel like they're very practical in how they plot things. Because they come up with the exciting things they would like to earn by the end of the movie. And then they really work to make sure those things have been laid out properly.

And it's a better way in many senses of writing a sort of like commercial populist film than I think the linear A to B that a lot of people do. That's very interesting. It's also the only way to explain a movie where the core concept and again like guys go look we're talking about a movie that's really famous go listen to the millennia bit about back to the future obviously every everyone has had their sport yes with back to the future but the core concept of back to the future is like what if you went back in time and learned that your mom was horny like that is the the thing that Zemeckis hits on when they,

him and Bob Gale are like, right. They're like what home in Missouri home in St. Louis looking at their old yearbooks. And they're like, ah, you know, like,

oh, whatever. And Zemeckis is like, like, what if your mom was like, oh, I never kissed anyone in high school and she was lying. And you found that out by going back in time.

Now, I think that's a brilliant idea for a movie to be clear it's just a strange one for a blockbuster that's all yes that that's that's the fascinating thing about this movie and it falls into the same category for me as like big which i feel like i've talked about i re-watched a year or so ago a similarly oedipal 80s movie about American horniness. Yes, go ahead. And it's like, everyone's done stand-up routines about it. Everyone's done the memes about it. Right, right. If you explain the events of that movie to someone, it sounds demented. That person should be put in jail. Penny Marshall should be court-martialed. But the magic trick of that movie

is, it is so intelligently written is directed with such wit the performances are so on point that the movie much like a magic trick does a good job of only making sure you only focus on the things it wants you to focus on at any given point in time certainly it does not want you to think too hard right and it is very easy for like mulaney to do an excellent stand-up bit on how fucked up the premise of back to the future is the thing that's incredible about back to the future is that's not subtextual that is the premise of the movie and while you're watching it you're not processing how fucked up it is certainly not when i was a kid like now i watch this movie and i'm like oh right this is a movie like zemeckis is like making a movie for reaganites being like the 50s were seedy america

has always been seedy like you know it's not like we we didn't just invent sex 20 years ago like all of this was going on in your nice picture perfect cookie cutter like leave it to beaver land and like if you went back in time that's what you'd be confronted with and i love that but when i'm a kid i'm definitely more just like oh no marty's like gotta get the timeline back in order i don't know like when you're a kid you're very you're very into that whole like sort of balancing act of like well this needs to happen for this needs you know right like you're just very invested in that what some would call the rules though i sure love the rules this was not a pivotal movie for me as a kid i saw it as a kid

multiple times and i liked it but it's not like a movie I owned and watched over and over and over again like whatever some of these big things like I I I am I am positive on this movie and always have it I just feel like it's maybe more foundational for some people I don't know was it for you I don't know absolutely this is humongous for me this is like one of my favorite franchises and this is certainly one of the movies that felt like an explosion for me when I finally watched it. Why was that? I don't remember what finally got me to watch it. But I feel like a lot of movies of this era, of the 80s and 90s in particular, my exposure to it was all the sort of ancillary stuff first. So I knew the basic iconography.

I knew it's a skateboarding kid a mad scientist i probably had watched many episodes of the animated series before i saw the movie and so i was just like i don't know it's some time travel thing like the animated series is very much they have time travel adventures they go back and see dinosaurs or whatever i i've seen that show i don't remember it at all but you know i remember it's fun i like it i've been re-watching it but it's like every episode i'm trying to be thorough david of course yes very thorough and i got the box like this is yes this is i'm being thorough that's what i'm doing here you got the box set for the animated show well they're about to come out with the 4k box set, which has a lot of new added stuff. But I have the 2010 box set,

which I think was the, or the 2015 box. It was the 30th anniversary. And it like comes in a box that looks like the flux capacitor and it has all the movies and it has the animated series. So I've had the animated series for all these years and I just haven't been watching it. So I was like trying to rewatch it because I knew that was my exposure to this at first which is very much like right as you said it

almost feels more like wishbone where it's like every episode is themed around a time period it's like where are they going now and it's so much about jules and ver and doc brown's kids and the dog like einstein's a big part of it i forgot that there's the kids yes of course because they were like kids are like there's got to be little kids because it's a saturday morning yes right right marty's kind of like their cool uncle doc brown is like their frazzled dad and every episode is pretty much the kids fuck up and put them in a different time period and marty and doc have to untangle it and biff remains this sort of like mythic bully figure where there's always a biff equivalent in every timeline every every

timelines of it like you go to ancient rome and there's whatever an evil biff senator there's truly like a dinosaur biff and like right uh lord biff and all this sort of shit but I feel like that was my exposure and then it was one of those like video store movies for me where you have this like amazing Drew Struzan poster and as a kid I loved the symmetry of the three boxes all having the same posing but with like one two three people and different outfits and whatever but I think I still just thought like the premise of this movie is these people just travel through time. They just go to crazy different time periods. I don't remember what finally got me to watch it, but I feel like my dad was like, have you ever seen Back to the Future? You would like that. So I finally rented it and it just felt

like atomic bomb. This movie is so satisfying. It's so i love these characters i love the world i love the sort of subtle mythology that's built into it and it was like a thing where the next two weekends i rented back to the future two and three and it felt like i i spent the next week at school waiting to see two you know it was like the thing that got me through that next week of school as if it were like a television series it's like oh my god i can't believe i get to see two. You know, it was like the thing that got me through that next week of school, as if it were like a television series. It's like, oh my god, I can't believe I get to watch two more of these and see how they go. Loved both, and just have seen them

a billion times. I feel like they were one of the first franchises that I got like really, really deeply into. And, you know, wanted to read everything I could about it. But, you, right, you know, want to read everything I could about it. But you, right, you go like, why does this appeal to kids so much? And I do think it is tapping on very elemental things.

I mean, if we're going to talk about the origin of this movie, Gale and Zemeckis loved time travel. Nerds. Also loved, like like futurism. And this movie was essentially like two different strains that ended up meeting. The first strain is that, right? And they were like, what we would love to do is make a movie that in reality sounds a lot like what Brad Bird eventually did with Tomorrowland. that in reality sounds a lot like what Brad Bird eventually did with Tomorrowland, which is,

I want to make a movie about the way the future was predicted in the World's Fairs of the 40s, and why we didn't get that future and what happened to that future. So that was their original idea. And I believe they had a title that was called like, Doc Brown's Funtabulous Time Machine or something. Sounds great. They had Doc Brown as a character, which makes sense because that's the only way you end up with Doc Brown in this movie, is they already got into the idea of like this like manic, electric, mad scientist,

you know, sort of on the verge of mania. So they have that. And they never come up with an actual story for that movie. They know they like time travel. They've talked about their theories of time travel and how they would use time travel in a story. They have the stem of this Doc Brown character, and they have the idea of dealing with alternate futures we didn't get and things like that. But they never come up with a narrative or an emotional hook for that movie. So that's put on a shelf. Then they do used cars. And after they finish filming used cars, as you said, Bob Gale goes home to visit his parents, goes to the attic, finds his dad's yearbook, and he sees that his dad was the class president. And Gale, although I don't think he was as cool as Marty McFly, was very much like an anti-authority dude in high school. And he said that he started a group in high school to eliminate student

government. Like his entire life was, he was like this low scale high school political radical who thought student government should be abolished. I mean, and also it should be noted. Gail grew up in the sixties, not the fifties.

Like this movie set in the fifties. Cause it makes sense for it to be up in the 60s not the 50s like this movie's set in the 50s because it makes sense for it to be set in the 50s like marty's parents would have right but like but gail was born in the 50s like so like it makes more sense you know by the 60s an anti-establishment teen would be a little more you know like yeah right gail and zemeckis are ultimate boomers they're born in the 50s but they come of age in the 60s. But I do think that makes them realize the fulcrum point of, and it's the reason why this movie can never be remade, why you cannot transpose it onto a modern day setting, because it's the fulcrum point of how much American culture changes in the 60s and the 70s, that the 80s are almost unrecognizable to how the 50s look. And from there on out, the changes tend to be a little more surfacy. But there's a real cultural shift there, which you also tie to the fact that the 50s are like the birth of the American teenager, know of like youth culture yes of course teen consumer you're you're rock around the clock type you know right blackboard jungle 50s kid

right so it's just like the times match up so perfectly it will never be that sort of meaningful again but you go here are two guys born in the early 50s, so they're small children, or they're born in the mid-50s or whatever. But they come of age in the 60s, they know their parents were coming of age roughly in the 40s or 50s. They have this understanding of that,

and Gale's looking at this yearbook, and he has the breakthrough notion, which is, if I was in high school the same time as my father would i even be friends with him so that's the idea he takes back to zemeckis the the mom stuff comes in a little bit later i believe the mom stuff is what zemeckis brings to it that is zemeckis's concept they start boiling on that and he said right what if your mom turned out to, you know, after preaching all these sort of values to you? You went back in time and your mom was not the goody two shoes she claimed she was.

They take those two ideas, bring them to Columbia, and Columbia's like, write a script. Like, you know, like, obviously it's not like you have a go picture, but like, whatever. They make a deal. Well, they merge it with the time travel thing. Because when they have that idea, they go, how do you get to someone being the same age as their parents? And they said, we don't want to do that thing where they conk their head and they wake up and they're in the 50s. We don't want it to all be a dream. They wanted it to be like sci-fi.

Right, right. Right. Because I also feel like that was somewhat of a radical idea. You have a lot of movies like Peggy Sue Got Married, which I know comes out after this. of a radical idea you have a lot of movies like Peggy Sue Got Married which I know comes out after this classic but but things like that with different time periods and excuse me different realities and all that sort of stuff now you may know this I'm sure you know this better than I but wasn't the original idea of the time travel a fridge in the Nevada like atomic site and that must be where it why that's being used in crystal skull right like them it's too weird

for that to be parallel right david this is a robocop episode there's a reason we don't have a guest we're getting to all of this but yes a hundred percent gail says that that is a hundred percent from their draft and i'm inclined to believe him spielberg was obviously a producer on this uh you can see on the uh the blu-rays at the most recent set I have, I don't know if the newer set will have it as well, they have the storyboarded sequence of the test site. And it is so similar. It is so similar. I absolutely believe that Spielberg got cocked at that.

That whole sequence in Crystal Skull is so Back to the Future-y because it's mocking the 50s and all that. Yeah, so it makes sense the nuclear family if you will i will get to that in a moment um i do think the idea that it was oh semi-hard sci-fi is how we execute this concept which is on its face kind of a fable right it's this fable of the thing that none of us ever get to do be the same age as our parents to merge that with sci-fi and and not sort of silly space opera sci-fi but actual like notions of how the space-time continuum works even if you know theorists dispute the science

very broad yeah yeah but but they're building their own reality of how it could work here it's not just something they're sort of like it's a hot tub right it's it's close to a hot dog but yes okay i mean flux capacitor right you know like they have their language for it but it doesn't i know what you're saying it's not him it's not a dream it's not an imaginary story or what you know and that it's so much about the way the past impacts the future and the effects of those two timelines and all that sort of stuff the cause and effect even though a lot of theorists don't think that is how things would actually work and that it's maybe closer to the end game theory it is telling that end game has to go out of its way to say this isn't back to the future because back to the

future has become sort of the definitive way that people think about the sound of thunder-esque cause and effect of time travel right yeah so they merge those two ideas they have doc brown in the back pocket and that's how you end up with a movie in which the coolest skateboarding rock and roll playing dude in high school is best friends with a mad old scientist who burned down his family mansion for insurance money doesn't make any sense and the movie doesn't even try to explain it do you know what their justification is what's their justification he has the big amp he has the what the big amp he's got a big amp which he wants to use to play guitar real loud i you know i will say i was watching this with forky who had never seen this movie oh wow it's not

surprising you you know her hey david david david he's a come on sporky as we know is an animate spork created only a few years ago so of course forky hadn't seen that that isn't what i was leaning into the bit that isn't what i was gonna correct what were you gonna correct i wasn't gonna correct anything i was just gonna say you're telling me that you showed forky back to the future for the first time last night it wasn't last night but very recently yes now that's the power of love okay all right um and i will say that's the power of love i kind of was sort of doing the thing where like i'm sort of trying to get it i was like look i know it's it's silly like he's friends with a mad scientist who's old like i know it's silly and she was like yeah but he hates his dad like isn't doc brown just like

his you know it's like a dad figure he's in search of dad figures and i was like you're right i mean that's that's not and again the movie doesn't make really a lot of effort to vocalize that but yes like that's a very easy way to just sort of see that like yeah his marty's dad is the dangest ass fucking freak that there is and marty can barely stand to look at him so yeah like doc brown you know is sort of this exciting and weird and sort of enter you know energetic figure and like that's more fun for marty to be around i think there's another factor too which is it's what we're talking about, the precision in which Marty is characterized, as much as it doesn't feel like it's a big choice, that he is not the prom king, that we don't see him hanging out with a lot of friends, that he very much is an individualist. But imagine that as much as it's an odd pairing, Marty would have more respect for the like reclusive rebel old man scientist who's playing by his own rules in the town and like making his own life. You know that this guy is just sort of like I'm master of my own domain.

I do whatever the fuck I want. I build whatever the fuck I want. No one tells me what to do. That's appealing to Marty as this vague sort of like counter-authority figure. But to hear Gale and Zemeckis talk about it, they're like, well, we knew we had to come up with an explanation for why Marty hangs out with Doc Brown, and then we finally hit upon it. It's that he has the biggest guitar amp in town. So that's why Marty goes over there. It is so funny. You have that opening that, you know,

is all the machinery and all that that is setting up the amp. What's so funny? They describe it as if like, and then we figured it out. It was perfect. And it's like, no, weirdly, the movie works in spite of that.

Like, as you're saying, we just came up with two really good explanations for why Marty is friends with Doc, even though on its face it's ridiculous. And they're like, no, no, no, it's the amp thing. In this way that I want to keep getting back to this, this is one of those movies that's kind of a miracle. Because even though I do think these guys were very skilled and the people they surrounded themselves with are very skilled, there are so many sliding doors moments you hear about with this film where it almost was disastrous you know where they just somehow by by circumstance lucked into the better of two options over and over and over again and uh the production of this movie was very weird for those reasons it was the the other thing i think we should acknowledge about the development this year i'm sure you have a million things you want to acknowledge but that

i'll point out is like at the time this movie is almost tame for a teen movie in a lot of ways not for a family adventure movie but for a movie about teens because the 80s is when the sexy teen movie becomes like you know that when it's invented and porkies and rich one high and like you know like movies with sex in them like explicit sex in them are are all you know all the rage so right wasn't columbia kind of like yeah perfect things to change to tame right yeah right so they gail has the breakthrough brings to Zemeckis, Zemeckis adds the mom element, they combine it with the time travel stuff, they go and pitch it to Columbia.

Because their narrative had been, obviously, Spielberg is the one who gets them set up with movies, right? He produces their movies, he directs their 1941 scripts, and those were three strikes in a row. All three of those things had bombed.

And at this point, it's looking like, why did Spielberg bet the farm on these kids? They're not going anywhere. But with I Want to Hold Your Hand, which I believe was Universal, right? They make that, it bombs, but the head of Universal calls up Zemeckis the following day and says, I just want you to know, I watched that movie with my grandchildren. You've made a great film. And this might have bombed and it's not getting noticed. That's our fault. It's not your fault. You're going to have a big career ahead of you. And I would be honored to keep making films with you. So that gives him the juice to start

writing used cars, which then ultimately Universal passes on. So, but the fact that people wanted to stay in business with him gets the screenplay done, where eventually they then go and set it up at Columbia. And then the same thing happens again. The movie comes out, it bombs, but the head of Columbia calls him up and goes, we mishandled this, this is our fault. You made a great movie.

And there's a bigger thing at play, which is your career at large. And I know you're a good filmmaker and I want to keep making movies with you. So once again, he feels like he has that support. They have the idea. They go and pitch it to Columbia. They go, great, write it. They write the screenplay. They do a couple drafts. They bring it back. And just as you said, they go, look, this is good, but this absolutely is out of vogue with the time, with the moments.

Too tame, not adult enough essentially right right now i want to hold your hand is pretty tame used cars is one of only two r-rated movies that zemeckis has ever made yeah you use cars is kind of dirty in kind of a juvenile way and pointedly i feel like the stuff that ages the worst in used cars the stuff that feels like him trying to play the porky's game the scene where they rip the woman's top off in the commercial all that crap you're like this feels forced and kind of just junky 80s sexy comedy stuff yeah but you read the reviews for used cars at the time and the people who are critical of it are like this movie is way too dark. It's way too anarchic. People are like,

too far, too far, too far. So I feel like at this point, Zemeckis and Gale are like, that's not our zone. We can't out Porky's Porky's. Let's do what we do. They bring the script in, head of Columbia goes, look, it's a teen movie and it's not ribald. There's not really a market for this. I'm sorry. We can't really green light this but the fact that columbia had bet on him allows the script to get to that point right it means it came into fruition so now they go and pitch it to every studio multiple times he says he still has every rejection letter he got 40 of them they pitch it to everywhere but disney first oh okay i mean because i know disney was like the mom thing is no good we can't disney's the final straw right right disney first oh okay i mean because i know disney was like the mom thing is no good

wait we can't disney's the final straw right right disney's the final straw they pitch it to everyone everyone says too tame too tame too tame this isn't how teen movies work then someone says to him you should pitch it to disney if everyone's saying it's too tame they went oh you're right they weren't even thinking of that they go to disney disney goes are you fucking kidding me he's gonna fuck his mom get out of here we're not right this is a family company go away mickey mouse spits on his shoes goes fuck you goofy goes yeah close the door behind you on the way out right so they're just like why were they allowed to run the company it's insane and don duck was like uh so everyone else was like too tame disney was like fucking perverted nastiest movie we've ever read and he's just like i guess this thing can never get made sure while they're in that point

when they're just stuck at a standstill is when spielberg says i'll produce the screenplay for you and zemecka says as we talked about in our romancing stone episode i can't let you do that right now i've made three movies essentially they all were shepherded by you all three bombed people think it's nepotism that i'm just your friend it was just two movies not romancing the stone but yes yes, like use cars. And I want to hold it. He's like, if,

oh sure. Right. Yeah, exactly. But right. But he's essentially like, if I make this movie with your name on it and it doesn't work, I'm done.

Not only will my reputation be over, but it's so bad for you. And also I'll never be able to stand on my own two feet. I'll just look like the guy who gets movies made because his buddy is the most successful director in the world. So he does the I'll make the next good script that comes in my mailbox, which eventually ends up being Romancing the Stone. And he produces it, and it's a big hit. So then they go back and say, you know, who's the one person who actually believed in this movie from the get-go? Spielberg was the one who always loved it, wanted to make it. What's changed in that period of time is now Spielberg has set up Amblin.

At the earlier point in time, Amblin did not exist. Back to the Future is the first Amblin movie ever. It is the first Spielberg producing a non-Spielberg film with his own company. So he's got the hot hand. He's built this new thing. Everyone wants to be in Spielberg business. They go back to Universal, who were the people who liked it originally, back, back, back in the day.

And they go like, sure, but here are the stipulations. We'll do it with Spielberg. We want it to be a summer movie, which means you need to start filming, like, immediately. Immediately, immediately, immediately. Like, I feel like this movie was greenlit nine months before it ended up getting released, if even that much. So it's on expedited fast track.

We'll make this film because it's low budget, because you have Spielberg, because Romancing the Stone was a hit, but it has to come out in the summer because that's when it appeals to kids. So, that's where they originally get boned. What? There's one thing I have to tell you that you will like,

and you may be read, that Universal got the rights from Columbia, which did still own the movie, by trading them the rights to double indemnity because columbia was making big trouble the cassavetes movie that is so similar to double indemnity that they needed permission like they needed like double indemnity rights to release it and so universal was like we'll flip you the license if you give us back to the future and that is just a weird we i i just feel like you love that kind of hollywood

horse trading crap like you know it's so so bizarre deal at some point i'm gonna tell the chappy deal on this podcast deal we have to talk about not right now this this episode's too busy it's gonna have to be a more of a master builder style episode i want to hype up that someday the chappy deal will be told on this podcast and i'll tell it and you won't know what story i'm telling until you get to the end and then you'll go oh my god it was the chappy deal all along i'm just calling my shop right now sounds great that's incredible so universal gives them a go picture a thing i did not realize is a really large chunk of this movie was financed through um uh whatchamacallit um product placement uh they're obviously like big notable things where it's like acknowledged in the

uh the dialogue or whatever but gail has commentary with neil canton the producer and like everything that anyone touches they're like that was product placement that was product placement that was product placement sure sure sure that was the main reason i think universal agreed to make the movie was because a the hook of oh it's 50s to 80s means that legacy companies that have existed for over 30 years can have the coolness of existing in two different time periods, you know, and getting spotlight in that way. And B, that Marty's a cool kid. So his sunglasses are sponsorship, you know, and everything he wears is sponsorship, all this sort of stuff. I think ironically, the things that are called out in the dialogue are less product placement.

It's more like the ExxonMobil station, things like that. Sure. Pepsi, what have you. Pepsi free. Pepsi free. Pepsi free. Pepsi free. So they're a go picture, but it has to be started very soon.

Their first choice, no question, is Michael J. Fox. You got Spielberg, you have Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, who are now running Amblin for him, and then Gale and Zemeckis are the main creative team setting this movie up. When people try to act like Kathleen Kennedy is some rube they picked off the streets to run Star Wars who has no idea what she's doing, I find nothing more infuriating. You can dislike what she's done with Star Wars, but her fucking track record for 30 years leading up to that point is not a mistake or an accident. But they're like Michael J. Fox.

At this point, Family Ties has been on for like a season or two. It's a big, but it hasn't gone supernova. I think Michael J. Fox said that like when they were filming this movie, it was right after or right during the season where they got moved

after the Cosby show. And that's when they exploded. That's when it became huge. Yes. There was also some issue of Meredith Baxter might have been on maternity leave or something like they could not spare him right david i'm gonna outline all this for you so oh my god okay okay they go we want michael j fox they go to gary goldman uh uh

showrunner creator of family ties meredith baxter bernie had just had gary goldberg sorry i'm sorry gary goldberg i'm anti so eventually they go to gary put michael j fox and spin city an incredible show yes go on yes um i feel like that was more him going to goldberg and being like can i please do another sitcom i I want to do TV again. Like they develop that together. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, they're like, we know he's on a TV show. Is there any way we could get him? And Goldberg is like, Meredith Baxter, Bernie just got off of maternity leave. It, it threw off the whole show. I can't lose another cast member. We just got her back. Like the show is finally just back on rails again. Fox had used the maternity leave to do Teen Wolf, which I think was very much him being like, I want to be in a movie. I finally become something of a leading man. I want to be in a movie. And he's like, I kind of immediately regretted it. And when I was on set filming Teen Wolf, I remember the high school we were filming at, some location scouts came by and said they were scouting for a Steven Spielberg movie that Crispin Glover was going to be in.

And I had the feeling of, Jesus Christ, I wish I could be in a Steven Spielberg, not in fucking Teen Wolf. Right. Why did I waste my one break on this crap? Because the two things were essentially going to be like back to back right um but so he doesn't even know that they offered him Back to the Future because Goldberg just shuts it down it's like I'm sorry they go they cast they audition everybody every young actor I believe this new depth Stiller, this new 4K set that's about to come out, I believe has a lot of those auditions on it for the first time, like the other soon-to-be leading men who auditioned for Marty McFly. The guy they end up casting, infamously, is Eric Stoltz. And by and large, I think they cast him because of

his similarity to Michael J. Fox. They pretty much say, we were so set on Michael J. Fox that when we couldn't get him and we were so frustrated, we said, who's a guy who kind of looks like Michael J. Fox, kind of has a similar voice, feels like he might be able to do the Michael J. Fox thing. This is the thing, because obviously this is the most notorious recasting ever, right? No competition. Of all time. Fox thing. This is the thing, because obviously, this is the most notorious recasting ever, right? No competition. Of all time. No competition.

Ben, did you know this, that Eric Stoltz played the role of Marty McFly for like weeks? I mean, we'll talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like this came up maybe off mic, but I feel like I remember Alex Ross Perry

talking about this. Right, right. Oh, yes. Yes, because he's buddies with uh Eric Stoltz who of course has big Ben Hosley energy yes and will eventually play me in my biopic totally yes of course old Ben um Stoltz I I feel like you know so it's sort of like there's always been the question of like well what was he doing wrong?

Like, why have we never seen this? Like what, what was the like big problem? Like how could they recast him like weeks into a movie that was like, there's always been this mythos of like, he must've been doing something terrible or crazy or unusual. But I feel like it's what you're saying is like,

they're just looking at him and being like, I wish he was Michael J. Fox though. Like though like they say like oh he was giving this very dramatic performance it wasn't light enough and like he was very good but it just wasn't fitting the movie and i buy that but i just also feel like they had this thing in their head that you're saying where they're like they just wanted fucking michael j fox i think that's definitely like the main thing and the fact that they cast him, it's like when you start dating someone after a bad breakup who kind of reminds you of your ex and it doesn't help matters. You'd be better off trying to date someone who's dramatically

different rather than someone you're attracted to because they kind of have the same face, which is only going to make you long more and more for the person who dumped you. I think that's a big factor. I do also believe that the difference between Fox and Stoltz is you kind of need the like, you know, Fox was a child star in Canada. He did light entertainment and then he moves to sitcoms and you kind of need someone with sitcom energy in their back pocket to make this movie work. I think Stoltz was more of a serious actor in terms of his development, right? He was more of like a theater dude, a real like drama school dude, I believe. And I think it is that like, it's the magic trick element of the movie that you need a champagne performer, that you need

someone like Michael J. Fox, who's just like this. I understand that this doesn't really make sense, but I also understand what I need to do in order to make this scene work. And perhaps an actor who had a little bit more of an obsessive tendency towards like, I have to find the dramatic truth in this scene would do that at the sake of landing jokes. Because Zemeckis and Gale always talk about their films, their screenplays don't really have joke jokes. The comedy comes from characters playing situations very, very straight. But you also have to be aware of where the laugh should be. You have to time that properly and put the right emphasis on everything, which I just think is a muscle developed by a dude doing a sitcom in front of a live studio audience over and over and over again you know um i i think

that's a huge difference and i think it is just like the the uh as you said that they had fox in their heads and i also think there's something about the fact that fox is so little and his voice is so high pitched like stolts is five inches taller than him and like two two pitches lower are you telling me you built a time machine stolts is like a cool motherfucker like as much as too conventionally cool he doesn't have the the mild low status thing that marty always has from being so small he he had just been in mask where obviously he has this crazy makeup on so it's you know that's helping him be like i'm sorry seem like an outsider obviously mask his like his uh make good for back to the future he had already filmed it and they

had already seen it it was why they cast him it was not yet out it comes out a few months it comes out like march of 85 like you know a few months before back to the future um but like obviously in that he's playing a you know underdog um and he's good in mask but i do think of eric stoltz more as like eric stoltz and kicking and screaming or whatever like the kind of sly guy who's kind of like you know kind of a little cool and low-key and kind of over it you know what i mean like he's great at that he's so good at that he's got a good relaxed he's so good at her smell doing that like you know fucking 40 years later practically where whereas like michael j fox is working like he's acting he's not going for naturalism but you need that in this movie i mean he's he's a very honest

reactor but he understands the pitch of the movie he's in that it needs to be simpatico with what christopher lloyd is doing you know and that i do think there's that innate vulnerability that comes from just his size and that also gets back to why kids i think can relate to this movie and like the same way that movies like paddington yeah aside from everything else kids like movies in which someone's a lot smaller than everyone else around them yeah you're you're right you're right i i think michael j fox is kind of a brilliant actor i mean that's not a that's not a super controversial take obviously no um and I really like him in the movies where he actually was trying to challenge himself like casualties of war or what you know

what I mean like uh the movies that are not big city and things or yeah yes or even mars attacks where he's playing a jerk you know like you know against his likeability you know exactly exactly um but there it is just also that kind of underrated thing of like it is just fucking hard to be this likable like it's it i mean maybe it comes natural to some people maybe it comes natural to him but like i was not a family ties person because yeah i that's not my i was i wasn't really alive for most of that but like to think of that he was like america's hero playing a little fucking young republican twerp like yeah and that but like to think of that he was like america's hero playing a little fucking young republican twerp like yeah and that was like the hottest sitcom of the 80s and everyone

fucking loved alex keaton and like he won multiple emmys right yeah oh yeah and i grew up watching spin city and i fucking loved spin city rules by the way even though it probably doesn't probably if i watch it now i'd be like yeah, this is like a fun 90 sitcom, but like, he's kind Fox. It's it. It rules. It's an insanely loaded cast. Insane.

Ruck. You're forgetting rock. Rock. You know, come on. Hey, Jennifer Esposito. That's Esposito.

Carla Gugino in that, that weird first 12 episodes. Um, yeah. Great, great, great show. Um show um yeah i don't know it's just it's hard to sum that up yes no but that's that's a great point i mean there's the famous story that when he was testing for family ties i think the the network had said like you know everyone wanted to hire michael j fox who had been this canadian child actor done a lot tv and uh but like you know canadian tv children's programming stuff and uh the executive said he's good but no one will ever buy a lunchbox with that guy's face on it like at that point in time it was so much the kirk cameron model of like if you're putting a young man on the tv show he has to become some sort of heartthrob and the fact that Fox became such a

heartthrob I mean the story is that he like then sent a bunch of the lunch boxes to that guy a year later when he became Tartikoff right yes yeah right Tartikoff right exactly um but as you said that the character is so unlikable so smugug, so arrogant. I mean, that's a character who is kind of the opposite of Marty McFly in so many ways. But it is the fact that like the pure charm is carrying him. I don't think as much as certain people are naturally charming. I think there is clearly a level of craft at play to understand how you play on screen. Here's the story I kept on thinking about while watching this movie last night. It's an anecdote I think about all the time that is such a good distillation of the difference between a movie star and an actor. Not that they're mutually exclusive, but the different powers of each one, right? The different parts of your brain it would take. Ethan Hawke, I believe, was the first choice for Steve Hiller in Independence Day. They send him the script.

He goes, this is unactable. There is no way to do this. It's impossible. This is trash. Good luck and Godspeed to whoever gets the role. A year and a half later, he goes to see Independence Day in theaters. And when Will Smith punches the alien in the face and says, welcome to Earth,

Ethan Hawke cheers. And he goes, well, that's it. Like, that's the thing I could never do. Like, I'm too much in my head as the serious dramaturgical guy that I don't understand that sometimes you just want to do something on screen that looks cool.

Like, even if you can't justify why someone would be doing this, it's just want to do something on screen that looks cool like even if you can't justify why someone would be doing this it's just gonna play and it's that that preternatural sense that i do think smith and fox have unified from the sense that they were sitcoms performing from live studio audiences understanding the rhythms of the pavlovian if i do this people will explode the ethan hawke thing is interesting because he is such a self-conscious actor in the 90s and i do feel like i mean obviously he never wanted to be what you're talking about right like he clearly just avoided the the kinds of movies you're talking about kind of in but he meant to he wanted to he didn't want

to do those things but he did eventually flip a switch and become a much more natural actor and i wonder if there was just some yeah he figured it out yeah but i think stolts is very similar to ethan hawke i think they come from a similar mindset you know uh and i think that's the biggest difference and also the fact that they were so similar so they they start filming the movie with Eric Stoltz. Zemeckis said it was like a thing where he knew fundamentally it wasn't right. They probably knew from day one. He said, I knew before we even did it. I can fix it.

I was full of piss and vinegar and I was like, I'm such a good director. I'll be able to make him work. I'll hire the guy closest to Fox and make it work. They filmed five entire weeks, Ben. That's just so crazy. To be clear, that's a lot of time in a movie. A lot of time. Especially these days, most movies are five weeks.

Well, certainly an indie movie. But certainly a small movie would be like a month or six weeks or whatever. This is obviously a studio film. but an indie movie or would not be, but like a, certainly a small movie would be like a month or six weeks or whatever. But like, this is obviously a studio film. It's obviously not a cheap film, but it's not a, it's sort of a mid budgeted, right?

Like, you know, it was, it's, I think the original budget was more like $14 million, something, you know, it's big,

but not colossal. I think it was 10, but no, it was, it was budgeted at 14 and ended up costing 19. Oh, okay. Jeez. It's absolutely a thing that doesn't happen without Spielberg.

It's one of these many like sliding doors things where you're like, if he hadn't finally relented and let Spielberg produced it, he would have been fucked at this point. Because he takes the five weeks of dailies, he cuts them together into a rough assembly he calls spielberg in for a screening and he says i just feel like we're not getting laughs like it isn't hitting and without that effervescence without that champagne performance at the center you're not going to buy into the movie i think that's the

difference of people spending too much time thinking about, wait, this entire movie is constructed around him not trying to fuck his mom. Michael J. Fox can guide you through that and keep it light. Eric Stoltz, you probably think about the reality of it too much. So he turns to Spielberg and goes, what do you think? And Spielberg goes, you're absolutely right. And he goes to Universal and he's the one guy who has the clout to be able to convince them we have to start over they essentially have to throw away five weeks of filming there is still a lot of uh coverage from other actors in the movie that i believe is them playing off of eric his back is in the film at least a little bit or whatever it's another reason why it's just

bananas that this movie works and that it works and harmonizes so well. They try to keep whatever they can. But and you look and it's like Stoltz has dark hair, like jet black hair, even though he's a redhead. He's got a totally different wardrobe in the footage that's come out. We've never heard his line readings, but there's been a lot of footage like mos that they put into documentaries and stuff right you there's images certainly that you can see and stuff right yeah his hair is kind of tough d in that sort of stoltsy way he's obviously way taller he doesn't have the life preserver no he doesn't have the orange thing right exactly um and he's more not that this

is crucial but he's like Lloyd's height, practically. Right. Where is Lloyd? Harden. Right. Yes, Melora Harden was going to play his girlfriend and they kicked her off

because she was too tall to play Fox's girlfriend. Was cast off of Stoltz, who later becomes Jan Levinson Gould on The Office. If you want to talk about how long careers are, this was supposed to be like her breakout.

She never films a day because they were doing the 50s stuff first and they have to call her up and go actually you're not hired for this movie because you're five inches taller than michael j fox um the other wild thing there is like claudia black who ends up playing jennifer but doesn't do the sequels was their original casting choice i'm sorry she becomes claudia black later through marriage um they uh they cast her originally she had done a pilot that they were saying wasn't going to get picked up they cast her for the movie then the network changes their mind and goes actually

we are picking it up so then she has to drop out so then they hire melora uh uh, why am I getting her name? Not Melora, Melora Harden. They start filming the movie. They do five weeks, then they reset. And by the time they go back to Claudia Black, that TV show had already been canceled and she gets it back again. Like the lining up of all this shit is just wild. But they go back to Goldberg and they go, is there any way we can get Fox? And Goldberg says, look, the show's up and running again. It's fine. I'll give him the script. If he likes it, I will give it my blessing. But the show has to be in first position. Your schedule has to defer to my show at all times. So he gives the script to Michael J. Fox. He goes, look, I'm sorry. I didn't send this to you four months ago. They wanted you. I blocked it.

Read it. Fox reads it. He goes back to Goldberg. He says, this is the best thing I've ever read. You have to let me do this. Fine. So Michael J. Fox's schedule while filming this movie was he would work on Family Ties from like 6 or 7 a.m. until like 5 p.m. Then they had a truck with a mattress in the back of it. He would nap while they would drive him over to Universal. And he would film starting at like 6 p.m. until like 3 or 4 in the morning, sleep one hour, take a shower, go back to Family Ties. He would do that in five days a week.

And then Saturday was the one day where they could film exterior daylight scenes. Cause it was the only time they had him during daylight hours. Yeah. I think it kind of fucked him up. Yeah. He says he, by and large doesn't remember most of making this movie.

It was all muscles, like all instincts, you know? He does seem wired and kind of out of it in this movie, but that's just fine. Like that just makes sense for the character. So it's okay. I can barely act if I have had less than seven and a half hours of sleep. I don't know how he did this. I know he's just innately a very gifted actor, that he had the sitcom training that really just, I think, makes you like a fucking machine with this sort of stuff, and that he was running off like the energy,

you know, the perpetual motion of it. But it is astonishing. And to think that like most of these actors having already shot five weeks of this movie are now going back and having to reshoot scenes with another actor now at three o'clock in the morning. The movie shouldn't work the way it does. And there are all these other little changes of just like, as you said, it was supposed to be the thing that powers the flux capacitor isn't, you know, the bolt of lightning. It's it needs radiation. So they have to go to a nuclear testing site, which they end up realizing they can't afford to do. So they come up with the new ending that all has to take place around the Times Square with the lightning, which is so much better. It's so

much better to have it so contained within a physical space where you understand the rules so clearly, where the game board is so visible um you know that it was originally supposed to be a uh a fridge as you said that he traveled inside you know it was like the time travel device was like a thing that could be carried he brought himself inside of a fridge because that had the lining to prevent him from getting the radiation and universal said you can't do this because then kids are going to go hide inside fridges and die, and suffocate to death. Like, all these bad first ideas they had,

that were kicked out of them pragmatically. But it just speaks to, like, they had to fight for everything in this screenplay. So, the things they doubled down on, they really knew were correct. And the things they sacrificed, they ended up coming up with better solutions for. But, um...

Okay. You get to the opening of this movie. Let's talk about the movie. Hell yeah. This wild opening shot where you do so much sort of world building through the news broadcast, through Doc Brown's home. I mean, this really long one-er

that really sets a mood leading into the introduction of marty you have all the clocks you have the newspaper clippings man i love a rube do you guys not love a rube come on a good a good rube g whoo it's always good okay here here i'm gonna say it i'm sick of rubes what i'm i'm gonna be anti-rube fuck you david listen listen listen don't tell past and future guests are ruben that oh i love rubes to be clear rubes is great um is great love a ruben in 80s look this uh you've got married to the mob you've got peewees her peewees you know we've done we have done multiple rube goldberg movies right some of the best rgms yeah

mousetrap the board game of course yeah you know we have to we have to genuflect and give respect of course but you know say rats off to the mousetrap exactly i'm just saying like they've had their day in the sun let's let's leave them in the past i mean you're you're dunking on rube goldberg machines when all the examples you listed pretty much took place in the 80s people are still trying to put Rube Goldberg's in front of your eyes if a boom can hit a thing and a marble can go down and then it can like you know end up lighting a torch which then like burns a thing and it goes across the room I mean and all of this to pour milk into coffee that's good david they had their place

in the sun it's been over 35 years there's no reason for you to be upset that well we're not watching youtube this is a movie podcast griffin griffin griffin one other thing i want to say about the rube goldberg machine please it doesn't work in this movie which is kind of funny or whatever you know if it worked it's so long abandoned that it's piling up pieces of toast. But even that is deliberate because we're not going to see Doc Brown for 20 minutes. This movie needs to give us some background sense of the looming chaos and disorganization and mania of doc brown before we see him there are all these plot details not plot details but sort of like background details that are seated in there that i feel like you don't even really consciously clock i never really took stock of them until

i'd seen the movie like 20 times and saw it on the big screen for the first time but the thing about the fire to the the brown family mansion which is sort of implying maybe Doc Brown burned his house down on purpose for the insurance money. Is that how he's still surviving? Or is he just such a disaster that he ended up burning it down by accident? Either way, that sets it up. The fact that the machine isn't working properly, the fact that it's piled up and he hasn't been there for that long you know the news broadcast with the notification of the uh the plutonium going missing the terrorists all this sort of stuff you're just like setting up all these things but because it's a fucking rube goldberg machine you're just accepting it as like this is fun and light you're not feeling like

you're being spoon-fed exposition and then marty enters no plugs in the guitar plays the one chord gets blown across the wall and we're in this is the tone of the movie and that's the power of love right now just immediately he's on the skateboard he's on the tailpipe he's got his girlfriend marty great marty's cool yeah he's my best friend he wants to be in the band he's got a girlfriend it's pretty cool Huey Lewis thinks they're just too damn loud right he has a Huey Lewis poster

in his room I know how rude then of Huey Lewis to moonlight as the judge of his high school battle of the bands and tell him to go

fuck himself and I'm trying to think I guess there's the confrontation with the principal and you know after that we meet his parents his parents are where you're kind of like suddenly like intentionally the air is out of the room a little bit and you're like this sucks like jesus right because you have this long scene that's the dinner table scene uh first you have biff and then the dinner table scene right right you have biff chewing out his

dad but then it's everything the movie's been so fun so poppy so bright and then it's like this is a bummer you know here's his dad who is just so oblivious head in the clouds and his mom who just has lost any joy in life absolutely go ahead yeah it's got this coding of the the bad side of town yeah and i feel like though at the same time i really i really liked seeing that as a kid of like not showing kind of a like what's it called lions court or whatever the the the you know whatever the housing development's called they're're a weird sort of housing community. They're called a sack. I mean, and just kind of this mainstream movie that they're able to not show a perfect family.

Yeah, and these are things that also help Marty become a relatable character. Yes. Is that his life isn't perfect. relatable character yes is that his life isn't perfect and as much as if you asked him what his greatest goal in life is it would just be i want a bigger car so i can go to the woods and fuck my girlfriend as an audience member even if he could verbalize this you're like this guy doesn't have it all as much as he sort of glides through life you know seemingly without a care in the world there's there's a fundamental sadness to his existence. And it's that he's got these two parents

who are just like miserable and suck, you know? And both of his parents are sort of like, lack the courage to admit that they're sad. Yes. And if you live in that kind of environment, you're just putting up with your mother's alcoholism, right? Because that's just the normal. You're putting up with your dad being a pushover and everyone's unhappy and you sit at that table

you wonder if you're stuck am i just like doomed is this what you know right with his mom you get it okay she's she's drinking too much now and she has this weird scoldy energy of like a girl shouldn't be pursuing a boy that feels kind of like okay what crispin glover is doing is not normal no like what leah thompson is doing i can totally understand what crispin glover is doing i'm like just looking left and right i'm like who what what's the deal with this guy this guy is the craziest thing i've ever seen i enjoy crispin glover i know this is obviously his one of his most iconic roles probably his most iconic role just because the size of the movie this or the hair sniffer

from charlie's angels exactly and i like obviously and i know enough about the movie that i know that he was kind of driving driving zemeckis crazy absolutely every choice he's making is just odd he's just yeah i mean he's he's a freak he's a damn freak fox said like you know it's interesting you hear about the different acting styles on this movie right and it's like leah thompson's background was as a dancer she's very much into precision and technique you know and she's like i really like the challenge of playing two people and two different you know one person in two different eras being able to affect the physicality of it i love the degree of how technical zemeckis was his makeup on it's right it's really elaborate yeah right fox has the champagne energy has the you know the sikami timing you know the effervescence all these

things i'm saying christopher lloyd is like this really like meticulous sort of go for it. But but in some to some degree improvisational. I mean, they talk about he like Christopher Lloyd is a guy who does one hundred and fifty percent energy on every take. So when they would do camera rehearsals, he wouldn't do it. Like he would be like, oh, Marty, what are you doing here? Like moving at no speed whatsoever, like Chris Rock trying out new material. And he was like, I just can't burn energy if it's not a real take. But also his performance would evolve take over take. So a lot of the great stuff he does is discoveries. And then once he discovers something, he could then repeat it perfectly, but there has to be a natural build to it. It's not there in the first time. He's not doing that level of prep work. He's like chipping away at it. So they would film the rehearsals knowing that it probably would be unusable, but you don't want to

have a blocking rehearsal that doesn't really make sense because he's not really doing it. And you also don't want to tie him down to something because he's going to find it later. And then you have Crispin Glover, who's just gonzo. Like Crispin Glover is in that category of like Nicolas Cage, where it's like what I'm doing is like impressionistic. It doesn't resemble logical human behavior. My thought process behind every decision. I can explain it, but it makes no logical sense. I mean, like Fox said that that was the guy that he sort of envied, that he was such a big Crispin Glover fan, that he had worked with Crispin Glover a couple times before, done TV movie with him.

Glover had been on Family Ties. And amongst their generation of actors, everyone kind of envied glover because they were like man this guy's just in another he's weird right yeah he's doing his own thing yeah and he just sees the world differently he has ideas that no one else would ever had and he said like there's a scene where i'm trying to convince him to ask out lorraine and he grabbed a broom and started like sweeping in front of me like in the air and after the take zemeckis was like uh crispin what was that and he was like it was my sweep of indignation okay crispin god i would be like i already burned firing an actor on this thing what am i gonna do that was the exact

response they gave him but it was like we know that the good stuff he's giving us we couldn't get from someone else who's more right-brained it works in that like it's probably boring or less compelling if lloyd is just a dweeb right like? Like, you know, and it's also kind of, I mean, sorry, not Lloyd, George, Christopher Lloyd. Yeah. George McFly. It's also probably kind of hard to play an adult dweeb, like regular dweeb.

Yes, absolutely. Like people don't behave like that as grownups. Like they don't let people walk all over them. Like the scene where Biff is walking all over him is sort of, is is insane it's very funny because it's so insane and because biff is so ludicrous and then it's so funny to see it mirrored but like the you're like what kind of a person and then you see what christian glover's doing and you're like yeah i guess this kind of a person i guess that's the only kind of you argue

that because it's it's done in this way that it actually doesn't feel sad sure he's not exactly sad right he's sort of just like in his own world he's so oblivious the whole premise is like yeah they fell in love almost by mistake because she like would nurse him back to health and it was just kind of like a freak occurrence right like and they quickly realize she quickly realized he's like just in his own world i i think that's an incredibly good point ben because it's like without leah thompson giving it the actual weight and gravitas of her sadness every line reading she has in the 1985 reality is just like the full weight of a woman who regrets every decision she has made that led

her to this point. Without that, it feels flippant. You know, I don't feel like the stakes are there if you actually want to see them get together beyond, you know, Marty not disappearing from the photo. The idea that you want these two people to be together emotionally, I think you need that. But on the other hand, if Glover is as sad as she is, the movie becomes unbearably heavy. You know, it's like, you need that. Jesus. I think also in this Nicolas Cage way of like, he's not representing what actual human behavior looks like.

He's representing how it feels. It's like he's playing the way someone perceives their father that they're embarrassed by, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Which also adds to the tension of the movie where when he goes back to 1955 and George is still that fundamentally weird, you're like, this is impossible. This is impossible. He will never make her fall in love with him. You know, aside from him just being a conventional nerd, it's like, this guy is so weird. There's no way to solve this. I think it, it lends the movie some real tension. I mean, he's, have you ever seen this movie in a theater,

David? Probably not. No. They did some re-release either for, i think the 25th or the 35th like a fathom of vance it played one weekend thing and i feel like it's been re-released in drive-ins a lot this summer when the movies died um but i only saw it like in theaters then you know five or ten years ago and the two things that jumped out to me about how differently it played in a theater were a there are so many compositions where uh he has christopher lloyd in the background of a frame doing something incredibly funny that is hard to read on a small screen uh and b the glover performance just like brings the house down in theaters yeah because he's right in the Cause you, that's that sort of thing of like, we need to laugh at this just so we feel more comfortable with how bizarre

this is. Yes. Right. Like I always just sort of viewed him as the dilemma and Lloyd as the funny character. And then watching in theaters, I was like, wow,

he's like stealthily, maybe the funniest performance in this movie. Everyone's funny though. I think Tom Wilson, obviously very funny as biff yeah i think he kind of has the buffoonery of that down in a way that a lot of people wouldn't a lot of people would just be like i'll just be mean like combined with a genuine man he needs to yeah right he needs to be ludicrously insecure which he is like which is just makes it funnier um

I think Leah Thompson is so funny in this movie like once she's young Leah you know once she's young Lorraine

who wins the supporting categories in 1985 for for the Academy Awards yeah the Oscars

because I just feel like slam dunk in my mind I know I've done this thought experiment before Leah Thompson and Christopher Lloyd both should have been nominated yeah the oscars because i just feel like slam dunk in my mind i know i've done this thought experiment before leah thompson and christopher lloyd both should have been nominated let's see who won obviously this film was only nominated for screenplay and the song and some technical awards is this the highest supporting actor year

no best supporting actor is donna michi and cocoon absolutely christopher lloyd should have beaten donna michi and cocoon yeah christ Absolutely, Christopher Lloyd should have beaten Don Amici in Cocoon. Yeah, Christopher Lloyd should have beaten all these guys, actually. Kind of a weird year. Robert Loja, Eric Roberts, Klaus Maria Brandauer, and William Hickey. Wild, wild five. Weird fucking year. And weird that Zemeckis was supposed to direct Cocoon.

He was, right. And then supporting actress Angelica Houston wins wins for prizzy's honor great win uh and you've got oprah winfrey and margaret avery from the color purple you've got amy madigan from twice in a lifetime you got meg tilly agnes of god you know the 80s are weird i'd you know i would kick leah thompson in there too for sure and i would kick lloyd in there for sure i'm with you the thing that always jumps out to me rewatching it is I do feel like Leia Thompson is one of the best performances

by a young actor playing an older person I have ever seen. She is so subtle in the way she ages the character up, you know, that it doesn't feel cartoonish. And watching this movie for the first time as like a 10-year-old, and obviously I was watching it on VHS, the quality was lower. You know, when you watch it in HD, the makeup is more apparent. I remember thinking this is a woman in her 40s. And when you go back to 1955 and I recognize, oh my God, this is the same actress.

This is her stripped of makeup. I kind of couldn't believe it. Whereas Glover's obviously giving this far cartoonier performance. But he's good, to be clear. To be clear, I support the performance. I just think it's weird that he did this. If that makes sense. But it's like a happy accident

that ends up synchronizing, harmonizing with what everyone else is doing perfectly. So you get the scene with the siblings. Everyone's miserable. Marty's the one guy who's sort of seemingly aware of the fact that life could be better. That's kind of his handicap is like everyone else is just resigned to being sort of miserable and being under the thumb. And all he wants to do is go away to the cabin in the woods for the weekend with Jennifer, with the car, and his mom doesn't want to let him do it. Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.

But he goes to sleep. He wakes up a phone call in the middle of the night. He forgot his promise to his best friend, reclusive inventor, Dr. Emmett Brown. Of course. He had to be there to film the thing. Skateboard's over with his video camera twin pines mall that's his end of the bargain is that he's the the cinematographer he's he's the of course the cameraman for doc brown's experiments and doc brown believes that he's finally cracked at the thing he's been working on for 30 years, the flux capacitor. You get this hero reveal of the car.

I mean, it's like, it's a calling their own shot thing. Like, to some degree, you wonder, does the car become iconic because the movie is so adamant about making you accept the car as iconic? But I also just feel like it's another perfect accident that like the movie gains power by how quickly the DeLorean collapsed after the release of this movie so that this becomes peak DeLorean and as time goes on this car just feels like a complete creation of this movie down to like the wing doors to be clear Griffiniffin the delorean had already collapsed the delorean was an antique object when this movie came out okay it collapses by 1982

it the reason it works in this movie is because that car was like a space car yes you know like when people and of course that was why it stuck out when it was created where it was like look at this thing nothing looks like it and then of course people bought it and it cost a ton of money and it was it didn't work very well and so like it didn't like commercially succeed but when this movie recasts that like fringe object as a futuristic machine i mean like of course they know it's a delorean but like that's and it's like great you found the purpose of this thing you like who knew it it looks like uh production design for a sci-fi movie about time travel in its natural state and it's stripped down yeah there are only 9 000 deloreans in the world ever made like it was not it was not like a big thing yeah right well you keep

buying them right and you know obviously yeah but yes the joke of i love them i just live in them uh i have a race car bet except it's just a literal race car um the uh the joke of you built a time machine out of a delorean is it's like you built a time machine out of a zune it's like a shitty car right right right exactly it's like any fair you know failed like big belly flop uh technology but i just think the more time goes on and the more that kids don't even have that context of knowing that it's a failed car it just looks like it's like back to the future has been able to fully own the delorean as its own proprietary thing in this weird accidental way and all the kibble they add on to it is so good it's the right combination of

sleekness from the innate car and the sort of like scrappiness of all the add-ons that gives it it's it's it's telling you it's signaling to the audience that he's a renegade scientist which i love i think that that's so cool that he's like doing all of this crazy stuff, but clearly is just like not involved with any kind of like academia in any way. That he's like dealing with terrorists and stealing plutonium. Yeah. Now,

Ben, we know you love the members only jacket, or at least you did for a while. of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a similar object in an 80s curiosity

that was briefly you know cool the delorean the members only that's i'm making a connection that's all got it yeah now everyone everyone just went over like a brick well i just feel like uh members only though 40 approval rating oh well okay no sorry still win the electoral college uh members only unfortunately the system's broken is uh also it's like one of those things though david where it's like it will permanently be in every vintage clothes store like it's like kind of almost synonymous with like yes it's like the michael jackson thriller of like use record you know sure you know what i'm saying like because they they were so hot for two years they made a zillion of it's

it's like how there's so many copies of killer instinct on the nintendo 64 still floating around there jerry mcguire on vhs yes um anyway look they travel back in time let's travel back in time guys can we take a five second pause for me to pee? I need to pee very badly. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Cool. I'll pee too. We'll see you listeners in the future.

I'm back. I'm back as well to the present. I'm back to the present. Back to the present. Ben is not back yet despite what peter hedges might tell us oh boy oh boy um david i'm just getting back into it sure yeah let's do it david this isn't an ad read this is a new point i'm gonna make um my film career has uh not been uh what uh one would call good oh get out of here no i'm not being self-effacing but you know like the the work i've done that i'm proud of by and large is in tv and as someone uh yeah sure the movies you've been in less yeah yeah sure right yes

and as someone who loves movies so much and loves the communal experience of movie going which i miss greatly um yes i get so envious when i hear stories about like legendary test screenings you know or like opening weekend audiences those instances where a movie plays like a live performance this is a classic where the studio is like yeah back to the future i don't know like i watched i thought it was okay they watch it with an audience the audience is just absolutely through the roof and they're like shit oh my god i'm gonna tell the idea of being able to because as a live performer you don't get to be outside of your head

and enjoy the audience enjoying it. You're still working. If you have a good movie and you get to go to the theater opening weekend or sit at the premiere or the test screening and watch it play like gangbusters, it must just be the most satisfying thing in the world. And they talk about like,

Michael J. Fox was getting bigger and bigger from Family Ties. When they test screen this movie, which they did like four weeks after they finished filming, right? They like put it together with temp music, with unfinished effects really quickly. The audience knew nothing other than it's the guy from family ties and the guy from taxi right it's like two sitcom stars who aren't movie stars yet and they know the title but what the fuck does back to the future mean it might as well just be gobbledygook right they know nothing about the premise so the first 20 minutes they're thinking it's just kind of your average teen movie as you said when doc brown comes in you know gail and zemeckis say they could feel

the audience going like what is this wait how does this character figure into this movie christopher lloyd is one of in this film i think if i can throw out a little hyperbole perhaps the best exposition giver in the history of cinema you're right he's very that is hyperbolic but yes he's incredibly good you're at the exposition you are not wrong and they talked about that was like a big fear for them is like we have to do so much table setting how is the audience gonna live up to this and it's like he makes such strong comedic choices that carry over in everything he says so that he's always entertaining and even if you feel like you're not absorbing what he's saying to you you're subconsciously backpocketing it while enjoying

the comedy of just like what's this guy gonna do next the unpredictability keeps you paying attention which is the magic trick of this performance rever Reverend Jim has like a similar sort of like chaos to him, but he's so spacey that like, you know, he's this burnout character on Taxi. This guy, he's so propulsive that you like want to lean in because you trust that he's going to take you somewhere. And Marty McFly is like the reaction character of going like, what, what are you talking about?

That makes it easy to absorb. But you're having all this like him explaining like, Fox capacity got hit in the head, Marty. All this sort of stuff. This incredible thing, device he uses over and over across these three movies where because the height difference between Lloyd and Fox is so big, he'll do that thing where he has them in a two shot but staggered. So one of them is really close to the camera and one of them is really far away. So they roughly look the same height and then he has them switch positions and they keep on

walking back and forth, which also lends to this sort of magic trick quality of even though it's not a musical number, the choreography is kind of exciting to watch the timing be that precise. The actors pick up those lines. But you get to this thing where the car comes out, the Sylvester Stallone score kicks in, as opposed to other movies of this era, you don't have this synthesizer score. You don't have what was starting to become the popular score method of the time. And you also don't have a rock and roll score because rock is going to underline the movie as like a key thing. You have this very old fashioned major symphony score, which is giving you this hero theme for a car and then a dog. And Gale talks about like sitting

there, test screening, this happens. And the audience is like, wait, what is this movie? and the audience is like wait what is this movie they put einstein in the car hit the stopwatch the car zooms explodes disappears flames right and he's like marty's doing the whole like ah you blew up the dog you know right like the audience goes like oh right because they're like is the premise of this movie they killed a dog is that what this movie is gonna hinge on now why would that be the premise of this movie i'm telling dog is that what this movie is gonna hinge on now why would that be the premise of this movie i'm telling you this is the story that the because the audience if you're watching a movie with no context you're sitting there going when's the hook gonna come in when's the hook when's the hook right so they also no one wants to see an animal get hurt

it's like a universal universal no one likes that right so the audience like cringes and then when the dog comes back he's like i felt this sudden like immediate release of tension where it was okay wait it's time travel so that's what's going on this movie the audience starts to get roped in then of course you have this really really just well-constructed sequence where the terrorists show up. They get in this big shootout. Doc Brown gets shot down. It's pretty upsetting, which it kind of needs to be because you need to have the fact that Marty witnessed this firsthand be something that haunts him so much that he's willing to disrupt the space-time continuum to prevent it. I agree.

But that was also the moment where Forky was like yeah i definitely haven't seen this movie because you don't remember him getting shot by terrorists totally done and then the fact that he does not know he is traveling through time the fact that is accidental that he's just trying to get away and then you just have that seamless fucking transition like as opposed to something like bill and ted shortly after this where you see them go through the circuits of time which i enjoy in its own way the fact that they have this like shot from the dashboard of just driving driving driving suddenly you're in a field like the hard cut is like sherlock jr stuff but it's so effective it's great he's in the 50s he's in the barn they think he's a spaceman from pluto right? He's totally disoriented.

The fact that they filmed this on the Universal backlot, that they didn't want to film on a backlot, that they wanted to find a real town, but this gave them the control to be able to make the 80s version of the town even dirtier than a real town could be, and the 50s version of the town even shinier than a real town could be it also makes it as i said such a clear visible game board so much of the movie is centered around this one town square and it helps that you have such a clear mapping of what the two look like because it's so manageable in your mind right absolutely and all the little jokes of the mayor right you know and uh things like that like you know the the all those little changes they're mr sandman playing spot the different stuff and as you said it's like gail and zemeckis

are to some degree riffing on the way that the 50s are portrayed in this very shiny idealistic this is when things were pure light and media at the time because this 50s version they put these warmer gels on the lights you You have the softer music playing. Like, everything feels like, oh, this is perfect. This is Paradise Lost. Look at this, like, perfect town here. He goes into the diner, right, or the malt shop or whatever. Biff walks in and yells McFly, and he and his dad turn around at the same time.

So great. That's the moment that Gale says the audience burst into applause. That he could hear the gasp from the audience of, oh my god, that's what this movie is about. That's so brilliant. It gives me fucking goosebumps to think about being in their shoes, sitting there in the theater at that moment with a cold audience. Seeing them all get it and be that excited by what the film was doing it's just like could there be any more satisfying feeling in the world of just like we we nailed it we nailed it and then the rest of the movie just fucking

pays out like a slot machine like they're hooked they're on the hook and and they were like kathleen kennedy is like there were seven spontaneous applause breaks spielberg's like it's still to this day is the single best test screen i've ever seen at the end of the movie they rose to their feet like to just walk out of that theater and be like we nailed it slam dunk but but in particular that moment because it is so exquisitely done of the turning around. And then him looking like that shot that's so good where you have the profile of George McFly and then Marty leans into it. Yes, yes, absolutely.

It's so deeply satisfying. I'm trying to articulate why. Go ahead, Ben. so deeply satisfying i'm trying to articulate why go ahead the thought i'm having is like you could do anything with time travel right story wise like the thing you wouldn't necessarily do is go to where you've lived right like i feel like the thought is like you go to see historical events or whatever right you do a bill and ted you'd hang out with you know socrates and beethoven right yeah and it makes me think of kind of why three doesn't work a little bit look i do you know what i'm saying yes i love two i like three a lot they unquestionably are diminishing returns

although i think two is close just in terms of being one of the better sequels ever made but two and three are fundamentally time travel movies. They are about time travel. This is a movie that uses time travel as means to an end, which is that moment. Like, it's all just shoe leather to get to that moment at the counter in the mall shop. And the fact that the window dressing of the time travel on top of that is so

exquisitely well done is what pushes this movie into like, you know, just like perfect cultural artifact territory. But you're never going to replicate that juice of, right, we all think about what we would do. How would we go back and kill Hitler to make the future better? How would we go back and meet people or see a time that we've been obsessed with in our minds? No, they hit on something that no one had crystallized before, which is the most profound thing you could do is be the same age as your parents, is be able to witness the things that you've only heard about and reconcile your perception of them, especially when you're this age where you are living with that fear of everyone's either in high school, I think, wondering, am I going to end up succeeding as much as my parents or am I

going to fail as much as my parents, right? Everyone, I think, either views their parents as like a specter of a future they want to avoid or an unrealistic sort of standard that they have to meet. And the idea of being able to at that threshold of adulthood. Compared directly is just it's it will never not be resonant. Also, for kids, you don't think about your parents as ever being young. Also for kids, you don't think about your parents as ever being young. No. It's like a thing.

I don't think that it takes until you get way into your adulthood to actually be like, so wait, yeah, when my parents met, they were basically like my age and were like me. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's brilliant. It is truly a brilliant idea for them to land on. And, and it's it transcends all generations it like you know it will never not be poignant that's true but this is a very specific movie like generationally i feel like yeah once again the story only works with the 50s and the 80s because of that shift there

if you think about if you were to make this movie today marty would have to go back to 1995 and it's just jokes about what music they're listening to right yeah i think so yes i mean like now it becomes hot tub time machine for sure but it's also like we would just be like there's so much disaster like whereas in the 80s and 50s those are both eras of prosperity and american exceptionalism right and it's funny to mock both of them with each other and even if gail and zemeckis's view of like that sort of reagan era arrogance and the sort of me generation is curdled, there's an analog there. And it also means that like it could make you actually long for a different type of American prosperity, because I think their view of what was going on in the 80s was fairly cynical. Whereas now, right, you'd be like, well, I mean, the 90s, were we any really better? I mean,

we're certainly worse now but it's not like necessarily a time where we're like man i wish we were there you know right but it's also we would just literally be like there's these disasters we have to protect like that we have to warn you about it would just be a bummer now right and it would just be like the fucking like pablo picasso i'm telling you he will never amount to anything like that sure right right yeah it becomes hbo making television shows nonsense the smaller tv on your phone you just listen to it like right it's hot what's that i like large bites yeah the bites need to be big really it's more of a swallow is how i describe

experiencing these things right you get those jokes with doc brown you get those jokes where it's like i don't know who's president uh ronald reagan the actor reagan joke right right yes great joke all that stuff he's but he was an actor yeah right the uh marty chasing george out feeling the sort of doomed like jesus christ the cycle's been going on for so long biff is still giving him the business back in this time period like my dad's just been stuck for 30 years um but then of course saving his father pushing him out of the way taking the hit from the car after seeing that his dad's a fucking dang ass freak sitting in a peeping tom with binoculars peeping yeah but i mean that's some 80s comedy shit though right coming after ben's nickname

i it's some 50s shit too though i mean like that is such a like now obviously no one would say peeping tom anymore as like a a thing like where it's like well he's a peeping tom but like that you know that's like that's like cutesy dialogue right for like this is the whole thing about this movie they were all freaks in the 50s they all wanted to fucking jerk off too and they like you know so they're they're horny little freaks they make the joke even that this keeps happening right because like the mother is always changing in the window also for listeners who are not familiar i'm i didn't earn the nickname from doing that it was from being in the room and watching the boys do their thing i just wanted to clarify you wanted to clarify that just in case people are like wait okay so are we saying that ben earned that nickname by being a total fucking creep okay i don't know ben but i mean it was it was pretty fucking horny

when you were watching us podcasting that was a very intimate act for the two of us and you were just peeping in on it okay yeah he's yes he's a he's a creepy little peeping tom he and he and uh marty takes his place and look i mean what i just love the second leah thomas thomas is there thompson leah thompson is there and the the whatever that further game is revealed where it's like oh oh like the calvin klein joke right like another thing where you have to imagine the audience is already starting to levitate from the george mcfly connection the moment where they click oh no now the movie is about the fact it's so transgressive it's so fucking weird right and and it's so freudian yeah the thing i think they're smart about right a it's very freudian but b i think they're smart about is these are two very

charismatic, very, very good looking young actors, right? On a basic primal sense, it would make sense that they would be attracted to each other. A thing I think that Michael J. Fox plays really, really well is it's not that he is tempted to fuck his mom, but objectively, she is good looking and he is a teenage boy who is getting attention from a pretty girl. That that starts short-circuiting him every time it happens, right? That it's not just a complete revulsion, that it's such a confusing experience for him. There also is that thing that like you hear about that phenomenon of like twins who were split at birth who then meet and fall in love and then find out that they're related. That there's like that weird energy you have with relatives that if you don't know it, you can misidentify as romance. And jumping ahead of ourselves, it is so smart. misidentify as romance and jumping ahead of ourselves it is so smart and zemeckis and gail were like that's the moment where we realized we could pull the movie off the fact that she

is revulsed once they kiss the fact that it's an immediate like oh that was gross i don't know why but that wasn't satisfying at all the movie doesn't work without that that's their saving like yes if the movie had them kissing and then she's like what distracted and then why are you pushing me away right and the movie proceeds and she ends up you know with george mcfly without that i think people would just be like jesus that's you know like whereas right having that it's just like right there's this notion like there's some sort of thing in the universe she just knows this doesn't make sense like the spell is broken yes whatever the same thing is that draws her to him also tells her you should not be kissing him that you're misidentifying what that

feeling of adoration oh god it's God. It's so fucking weird. Americans. Americans. I know. But he, like, the way they tell it, they were like, have we written ourselves into a corner? Is there no way to resolve this? And the moment you have that realization, it feels so obvious that, of course, that's what happens. it feels so obvious that of course that's what happens but yes this first scene is so fucking good with the two of them in the bedroom where she's just being so aggressive in her sort of

demure like who you who me but that's why it's funny though running it yes right it would be lame if it was like you know not to bag on isla fisher and wedding crashers but like you know that kind of a performance where it's someone who's just like the joke is that i'm so horny and it's like i like right katherine trammell and basic instinct yeah she's like climbing the walls right like i like halia thompson is like kind of doing the you know cute 50s you know girl drinking a soda pop like thing but just that like it's the things that mecca singhela do they're just kind of underlining like look guys it's the same with i want to hold your hand which is not like you say it's not like a particularly dirty movie but it is kind of about like some weird sexual passion like took over everyone's brain like this is it is is what's at

the root of this it just i think is a very masterful performance from her and she had done a couple movies at this point she did like jaws 3d and she did well she did the the cameron crowe movie that he wrote uh that's why they cast her oh fuck though oh god is that what it's called yeah the wildlife it's the sequel to fast times unofficially right it's because she's with stolts in that movie so that's why the caster she was also in um she's in red dawn and all the right moves that was right and all the right moves she's so good in that that's a good movie or is it good i don't know it's like a classic i think it's good 80s teen it's pretty good but this is like she's been in four movies of some note at up until this

point this is her best role like this has a lot to chew on as an actor that isn't just you're the love interest you're the cute girl because she's playing several things in every scene and because she is such a story driver like she's creating tension you know in conflict with all of her moves um and and once again like uh fox is such a good foil for her, a dance partner in understanding the right comic energy to throw back off of her. But now it's like, yes, this movie feels like you've set up this impossible conundrum, which is, man, Lorraine seems so fixated on trying to fuck Marty and George McFly is such a space cadet. such a space cadet how is he ever gonna get Lorraine off of him and how is he ever gonna get George to look appealing to her it genuinely feels like an unsolvable issue it does and then I like that the movie rather than being like okay well this is what it's about yeah then kind of is like well all right so that's the issue anyway now marty's gonna go find young doc now marty's gonna have run-ins with biff he's gonna have the big chase you know like

now we're gonna have a bunch of other adventures that are all feeding into this but we don't need it to be a cyrano de bergerac movie where marty is like feeding his dad lines the whole time and like you know what i mean like it could easily be like that could be your movie right young doc also he's like oh so old i when i was a kid i was like is doc 150 years old yes yes he's one of those people where i feel like it's a little bit of the max von seidel thing where as a kid you're like how is Christopher Lloyd still alive wasn't he 80 when Back to the Future was shot Lloyd was in his 50s I believe right because he's about 80 now so I guess that you could sort of go

with the concept of like I guess Doc Brown's in his like early 60s in the movie and like in the present and in his 30s he's just kind of like an old 30s like right like that's the idea look here i think it is a deliberate and canny joke on their part because on like the the blu-rays and whatever they have makeup tests where they gave him more prosthetics in the 1985 chunk of the movie where they were sort of putting there's a test where you see leah thompson with the makeup she finally has tom wilson with the makeup he finally has in the 1985 stuff and then christopher lloyd with that level of like prosthetic jowls and wrinkles and all of that and it looks weird you're greatly hampering his ability to not a good idea right right and i also think it's just so funny when you cut back to the 50s and you're

like oh this guy looks five years younger you know this idea that it's like and it feels fundamentally true where it's like he never would have felt like a young man. Like even when he was 20, you know, this guy always had old man energy. Yeah. Now I want to see what Christopher Lloyd looked like as a young man. I mean, look,

okay. You know what? He looked like Christopher Lloyd as a young man. I'm accepting this. But yes, he looks like Christopher Lloyd. I guess like one flew over the cuckoo's nest, right?

That's, that's, that's about the youngest Christopher Lloyd I've ever i've ever seen um but yeah no it works just make his hair lighter and like i don't care i don't care i find it i'm locked in yeah yeah it's very funny i also it's also oh sorry what are you gonna say about i just wanted to know i feel like it's this version of doc where he does something that you know i love he calls um an inventor uh by he calls a tom edison yes it's a great joke sorry i just had much like your dan lewis joke well of course we're very good friends there's familiarity with

like proper nouns like that but then they said like the big rule that gail and zemeckis applied for doc brown is he never uses the smaller word when there's one available so even like he will spend two sentences explaining something that could be conveyed with one saying like in the sense that when doc brown is trying to help marty realize that he needs to get his parents together he's standing in front of a poster that says like enchantment under the sea dance and he goes on this whole thing about like some sort of design social function in which young people are meeting like the word dance is there and he doesn't say it and they were like that was always a comedic game we were playing is that he'll take the longest possible route to get to something that could be very

colloquial um but yes this scene in the house where it's like okay now we're seeing the version of doc brown if he never got his shit together as chaotic as the guy seemed in the 80s this guy is just like a completely paranoid maniac you know who's like this wound on his head walking around his home with a bathrobe and a tie on like in this giant mansion by himself yeah it's like why doesn't he seem threatening because he doesn't i think when you're a kid there's just something inherently lovable about christopher lloyd except for we frame roger abbott obviously we'll get to that but right like don't you know what i mean there's an innocence to this character there's some kind of like grandpa energy i think it's the costuming it's how eccentric he is but he's wearing colorful

clothes like he looks like a weird adult right yeah he looks like a weird adult like sometimes kids are afraid of old people because whatever like you know old people can be kind of freaky like and yeah he's got that opposite energy of their kids just like yeah yeah i get this guy this guy is on my wavelength that's the other thing with the makeup test is he's got normal hair and he's the one like he said he got the script and much like robocop his agent sent him and he looked at the script he said back to the future, and much like Robocop, his agent sent him, and he looked at the script, and he said, back to the future, fuck this, and didn't read it. And it was three weeks later that a friend was like, you got offered a movie? Like, Chris, don't turn something down just because you think you don't want to be in a teen sci-fi comedy. And then he reread it and was like, I have an idea of what I could do.

Stop being so pretentious, right. Right. He goes to Zemeckis, and he's like, I'm going to pitch him what I would do with the character. Lithgow is the first choice. We didn't acknowledge that but lithgow was and there are a lot of other people like walk-in who i feel like have been thrown out klaus kinski maybe was thrown out at one point like anyone who was sort of like that wild in this time period but he was not low on the list but he was not their first choice he disregarded at first goes to zemeckis and is like look this is what i would do i like the idea of him being like albert einstein or leopold

stokowski where he's got this sort of fun exuberant energy he's got that sort of like mania to him that feels uh affectionate and somewhat adorable and zemeckis was like yeah right and gave him carte blanche to do whatever the fuck he wanted. And in most takes, he's doing things that surprise people, things that he wasn't doing in rehearsals that he's discovering in the moment. And it helps, especially because so much of the comedy comes from him being in his own little ecosystem

and Marty reacting to him as the audience surrogate. But this scene, this whole extended set piece of the two of them in the house, Marty having to win him over, giving him the emotional speech about the flux capacitor, and then Doc figuring out all the pieces, being so excited that time travel works, knowing he's going to amount to something in his life. Right. That's the weird thrill of it. Right, because he's just done the brain machine that didn't work like and he's obviously you know thinks he's a crackpot yeah right and you're like

he's like he must be the black sheep son of a very wealthy sort of higher echelon family in this town he has money for some reason that's not due to his acumen right what a shame that the brown kid fucked up a home lab is always like just again a sign of a really weird person yeah do you think you should have a home lab yeah for sure i wanted to buy a bunch of chemicals which you can just get online you have a garage you shouldn't see right you shouldn't acknowledge these things yeah no actually there should not be a trail of a taped thing yeah right okay yeah don't don't pull a woodward on yourself ben uh that's the other thing i love is that like he's got this big mansion you see the newspaper headlines of the house burning down back in the 1985 timeline but in the 1985 timeline he just lives in the garage that used

to be next to this house like the house is gone the garage was his lab and now the garage is also his home like he's like downsized whether it was through an accident gone awry or a insurance scam it's like everything's just become this lunatic willing to burn away like his family's legacy in the name of science. And the joy when he figures it out and then does that like point to the camera back to the future. Like he is two degrees off from staring at the audience and doing like a Vincent Price house of wax. doing like a vincent price house of wax let's also acknowledge just the confidence this movie has of the very bold logo to you know title logo right at the start you know i mean like a spielberg movie doesn't do that usually actually like he's just like we'll just have the title in like pretty regular font you know what i mean like this is like this movie is branding itself yeah and of

course then is giving itself a sequel without even knowing if it's going to get one right at the end you know what i mean like there is that weird swagger to this movie that i love totally totally and and that stuff helps you know in the first 20 minutes that something bigger is coming that this isn't just a movie this is just sad sack yeah yeah totally totally um um so now the pieces are in play yep yeah and and there's the biff sequence which is just fun this sequence is fun it's great it's great to watch him take care of biff yeah and as you said like the weird he gives you such good little glimpses of insecurity when he fucks up a joke but there's also the confidence with which

he barrels into every saying he doesn't actually know all the make like a tree and leaf things uh but you're also setting up biff as i said i do love how in this movie biff is just like well he's my dad's shitty boss and back then he was my dad's shitty bully and that the back to the future franchise especially when you expand into shit like the comics and the video games and the animated series biff becomes like this mythic force in the universe like whoever the tannin is in any time period is somehow the embodiment of all the worst qualities this person could have the most oppressive force this is why i whatever the extended universe has never attracted me but i that's i love all that shit i'm obviously more invested in back to the future as like a universe but gail i think also

has always like shepherded all that expanded stuff and overseen it but also very clearly communicates like the three movies are the thing everything else we do could fit in with it but it's really fun thought experiments it's alternate timelines it's what if and so i like that stuff it doesn't feel like it makes the three movies any less sacrosanct uh or or make them sacrosanct you know what i'm saying no you're right but i mean that's why i'm happy that's how i feel about all this stuff i'm like does, is it actually part of this or not? And they're like, oh, not really. I'm like, okay, well, then I don't care.

I like that they're less precious about it. That's how I feel about Star Wars. Totally. All right. The final sequence. It's the dance, Griffin. The dance slash, you know, clock tower. I want to say.

Well, what? Okay. To the point you were making that for most movies like with this concept it would be 45 minutes of cyrano that would be the main meat of the movie this essentially has two scenes i mean you have the scene back at the mall shop where he tries to get his father deliver the speech and it's the lorraine you're my density thing right that doesn't work that the syrano attempt doesn't work abandoned right gets into a fight with biff yeah the life vest joke is

so fucking good all those jokes are so good tab free yeah yep or tab put on my tab pepsi free all that shit yeah yeah heavy like all that stuff is fun um that of course leads to uh the the biff um uh creation of the skateboard chase sequence and biff getting manured so fucking hard which feels like a very ben move i imagine when like irs agents come to audit you you'll you'll fucking manure them ben i would love to do that hell yeah yeah it's like he literally got shit on well once again i'm not saying that the irs should look into ben's finances they're entirely above board and he doesn't have chemicals in his garage no i do not and yeah the llc i formed everything is uh you know good good good but like that any any of the vehicle sequences,

the car stuff, the skateboard stuff, it, as Bob Rafelson would say, cuts like butter. And it's partly because Zemeckis is so good at the visual math of this stuff. But also, they talk about

the benefit of them choosing to shoot on the back lot is as they were assembling stuff, it was very easy for Zemeckis to do pickups because that location was always there. zemeckis to do pickups because that location was always there so they were continuing to shoot pickups all right you can just go back over there right yeah that makes sense that makes sense he would watch an assembly and he'd go oh

you know be cool there should be sparks on the skateboard and then they would go back two weeks later and shoot just the sparks and then cut that back in and go what else could we use so all these sequences where it's like, you know, the final race of trying to hit 88 miles per hour, where you're like, this road is so small. There's no way he has this much room to drive. But through blocking, through framing, through editing, through sort of using movie logic and time,

they're able to convey to you the sense that there's enough room to traverse here. But there's that scene where he tries to give him the talk, and there's the scene where he goes to George's, like, backyard, and he's giving him the big pep talk with, like, the clothes dryers, stuff like that, right? Like, but that's pretty much all you have of that. You have the scene, obviously, where after he wakes up in the bedroom with the Calvin Klein, where he has dinner

with Lorraine's family, but that's his only big Lorraine scene. Like, the movie's so good at giving you just the bare minimum you need of that because what it really wants

is to save its final 50 minutes for the two things that matter, the dance and getting back to the future. Yes.

Now, of course the film's ultimate story device for how George and Lorraine get together is that Biff straight up locks Lorraine in a car and fucking attacks her. And it's another thing that i feel like is so it's so often remarked on now as like it's crazy that that happens in back to the future and i'm always like it's 100 the point that that happens not it's not like some weird like 80s thing we're like oh well you'd never see that in a movie today i'm like again this all feels part of the whole fabric of like biff isn't just like you know a teenage bully who shoves you in your

locker or whatever like he's a malevolent person yes well okay the spiritual evil might be that's what comes later but i'm just saying like it's like zemeckis is like these fucking people run the world in the 80s now and these guys are creeps and yes like they're awful like you know he's a he's a bad person and he's doing a terrible thing right and george you know finds his inner courage and that's that's great and he confronts him and like that's great and it totally lands as a moment for the audience of like yeah of course now they love each other like great like problem solved it's got that Zemeckis Rube Goldberg, like, great. The circle's been closed, but it also just, I love how you're like, for this episode, you're just like laying out everything that works about back to the future. And I'm just occasionally bursting into be like, and it's the point is

that America is shitty and horny and bad. Totally. Like that's like my take yeah right could i be critical just the only thing is the violence right it's like yeah you know a punch is like indiana jones right it sends them flying he like pulls up his fist and whacks him and that's that you're right it's suddenly very comic booky or whatever you know it's very clean it does that a little bit with sexual assault that's what i'm saying that's the only thing i do feel like seeing it now i'm like oh god it would be presented differently now own assumes i i'm i'm a guy i'm speaking from the perspective of being a guy i have a big sort of opposition uh immediate sort of revulsion to movies that I feel like use sexual assault as too easy of a plot point,

especially when it's like catalyst for revenge or things like that. I think there's something to the fact that the movie is about avoiding that, that it's about preventing that. And that I also think it doesn't feel like it's treating it flippantly. Like, I understand what you're saying, Ben, but I also feel like there's the moment when, and you have to remember that George thinks that it's going to be Marty pretending to do this, and that he's going into a play-acting situation in which he's having to save her from something with zero stakes. I think the moment that gives this weight for me and makes me feel like it is not treated insensitively is George opens the door. He sees Biff turn around with the look of like, don't you fucking dare.

Yeah, you're meaning you're a bug to me. Right. Yeah, right. He locks eyes with Lorraine and Lorraine gives him a look of actual fear, of actual dread and panic. And Thompson conveys the weight of the situation of if you walk away because you're afraid of getting punched in the face, I will be assaulted. And that's the moment for me that makes it work. That doesn't make it feel like it's just plot maneuvering you know that it has some basis and respect for the characters that is treated as this is going to be a horrific thing uh not too cartoonish even if biff is so silly i think she gives it the proper amount of weight and it

also defines george as a character that it's like as much as this guy is so capable of being put under the thumb by society, like there's a little deleted scene that's small but really fun after you see Biff chewing out George in the present day as his boss, where this guy knocks on the door and he's like, hey, my uh my girl is selling a peanut brittle for the girl scouts you want to buy like 30 crates of it and he's like yeah i guess so and then he's like see honey i told you we only have to go to one door this guy will buy the whole supply and then you see him it's still in the movie pouring a bowl of peanut brittle and when you see that in the movie you're just like is this guy just a fucking child like why is he just eating peanut brittle out of a bowl it works as a dead end but it speaks to their idea of just like this guy has never stood up for anything he does whatever anyone tells him to do and the fact that biff's looks him in the eye and says walk away mcfly and that he has a moral code as much as he's a coward he has has looked Lorraine in the eyes and he will not be able to

live with the conscience of knowing he let this happen. And that is what defines him. You know, at this point, I think truly the thing that motivates the punch, because it's a real punch and he knows the real repercussions could be in store for him, is not trying to impress Lorraine because he wants a dance. It's that he doesn't want to allow this to happen I think it is a selfless decision for him which is why she falls for him and why this is a defining moment that ripples throughout this character's entire life and changes his behavior for the rest of his life um right but it is it is stupid that that marty plays johnny be good and then uh chuck berry's cousin calls chuck berry on the phone that part's stupid it's stupid and gail gail and zemeckis

write it off as sometimes a cigar is just a cigar shit i think they're right it i am sure they did not intend to suggest that the origin of rock music was marty mcfly they're doing a cute joke it's fine it i get the function of it is a cute joke and i also get that like let's end this movie with a fucking concert of you know a musical number this is a high school movie they'll kiss and then we'll have the clock tower sequence i get get that. It's just, it's just fine to mock it now. It's, it's worthy of mockery. Totally.

And of course, and also your cousin Marvin is also worthy of mockery. It's just funny. That's one of the best lines of all time. Yes. No, but right. The semiotics of the implications of the rock and roll thing are fucked.

I don't think it was conscious, but I also think obviously we're living in a time right now. We mock it just mockery no no we don't need to turn it into a think piece it's just we can mock i'm not turning it into a mockable i i mean like it's not serious it's like it's not as it's just so stupid no no right the offensiveness of it is the flippiness of it but it's not deeply offensive to me and i also think when you have a movie like this that is so poignant and is largely perfect the things like that like this is a movie where we analyze every aspect of what the movie's saying and why it works and why it doesn't so obviously when you have a film that people care enough about then you start to get into like so what is it actually saying in the same way that crispin glover one of the many things he fought

with zemeckis about that led to him not being in the second one was that he hated that george was successful at the end of the movie that he felt like it was this very capitalist message of like well now he's rich at the end of the movie and they have this very upscale suburban lifestyle and that shows that everything's good rather than him being happy because of his own internal life. Right. It's fair to draw, like to, to, to be mad.

I get what he means because it's like, right. The answer shouldn't be like happiness and confidence means you'll end up wealthy. Cause that does feel like a very sort of Reagan-y eighties, like, you know, message to end on.

And Zemeckis says that's a conscious joke. That's satirical for him. Right. It's like their happy ending is this very 80s hollow version of a happy ending i think the rock thing doesn't have any point is behind it it's just cute for them it's it's that he gets that dumb fucking toyota truck right like that's that's the ultimate prize right right that's that's a little bit cynical on their part the johnny b good stuff isn't uh and the cousin marvin thing for me is just like i respect your cousin marvin that they're like look we're

not going to take five minutes to explain how he links up to marvin barry do it as an elegantly as possible but get it done as quickly as possible it's me your cousin marvin marvin barry beautiful i forget who it is but i have a friend junior well see i always thought it was harry waters jr but maybe it was another member of the band but would always start off his class in college as a professor showing people that scene um i'm not sure i all i know is that harry waters jr originated the Belize role in Angels in America, I think, before it was on Broadway, before Jeffrey Wright played it. Yes. I think that's right.

Maybe in San Francisco or wherever. No. Well, I don't know. Because I think it originally played in San Francisco. Yeah. But anyway, that's just funny. Anyway. That, yeah, those are his two big roles.

And it's also, you want see marty have a slightly personal win you know like because you've seeded the the rock stuff from the beginning it's like you want to see him do something really fun that's just kind of for his own enjoyment where the stakes of the rest of the movie are like the space-time continuum because otherwise the those small personal wins are for the other characters. I mean, there's also, in the movie,

there are these stakes of like, oh no, what if they don't kiss? Like, they need a song to dance to and the band can't go on break right now. But like, this has been such a rock-around-the-clock type of movie. Like, end on a dance number.

That's great. Give us a musical number as like an 11 o'clock number that's that's that's great and then the clock tower sequence which he gets out of there just in time he has that final scene i well don't jump over to it immediately because the the final moment with him and george and lorraine is really nice okay sure yeah when he when he says goodbye to them and they say like will we ever see you and Lorraine is really nice. Okay, sure. Yeah, that's nice. When he says goodbye to them and they say like,

will we ever see you again? I'll bet on it. And then he has to bring up before he leaves the like, if you ever have a kid and he accidentally breaks. Yeah, it's a fire. He lights the carpet on fire.

Right, yeah. Right. Right, but it's also, it's like everyone has those memories of like if i could go back in time this is the thing i would fix it was this one time i really fucked up in my parents eyes you know like everyone has an incident of like a parent's disappointment that burns into your memory that you wish you could undo and that's his final lasting thing but also like you genuinely believe that george and lorraine like each other at that point their chemistry is actually good in that final scene for sure so then you go to the clock tower

where doc brown has already been trying to set things up uh while marty's at the dance he changes back uh he's trying to rig everything up because of course what they need is the bolt of 1.21 gigawatts mispronounced uh of electricity to power the car to get it at the moment with 88 miles per hour. It's just such a clean visual with like that wire arm and where the wire between the poles is and just like these two things need to touch at the moment that he's going at this speed.

It's this number and also the lightning hits. And the fact that you've set it up so perfectly with the clock tower, with the flyer that he gets at the beginning of the movie, where he has to write down Jennifer's grandmother's phone number, like all that stuff is just so well seeded. And they talked about like the nuclear testing site, if that's where they travel forward in time it becomes a bigger event right like nuclear tests were a big event there weren't a bunch of them and they would have been more a part of like american history versus this being something that was big for this town but small in the grand scheme of america so the idea that it's like local legend right we know exactly it's it's perfect this one time well you know what time it's gonna hit because it like freezes the clock it's all

great i love it i love it it's it's what i love about this sequence is that the one thing needs to happen it's all set up and so the sequence is just about stretching that as far as you can go like that's what's so delightful about what Zemeckis is doing. Like it's the toy story stuff of everything going a little wrong. Oh, come on. Oh, you know,

like, oh no, now the thing's tangled. Oh no. You know, like just, just pure playing the audience, like a violin stuff.

Just, you know, you can't help, but have your heart in your mouth, even though, you know, of course it's going to work out the movie's ending right of course this will work out but lloyd the little red herring will come later that's yes so good right he's very funny physical

actor like yes his super exaggerated shocked faces the way he plays all the beats of the things on his leg like he's sort of doing like harold lloyd buster keaton stuff i'm not just saying harold lloyd because he's hanging from a clock but like you know that feeling of the things on his leg. Like, he's sort of doing, like, Harold Lloyd Buster Keaton stuff. I'm not just saying Harold Lloyd because he's hanging from a clock, but, like, you know, that feeling of the high wire, like... And because his name's Christopher Lloyd. His name is also Christopher Lloyd. That's very...

Just pointing that out. Yeah. But the stakes of every small thing, where the cable is, all that shit, and, you know, half of it is, like, inserts where they put that pedestal on a soundstage. But half of it, especially in the wide shots, you can see that he's actually at the top of that set.

And he's hanging from that high. And he's like, even though I have wires and harnesses and whatever, he's like, if I fell, it was really going to hurt. And also, there's like lightning. There's a wind machine. There's thunder. Michael is like very far from me. I didn't have to act at all. Like the stakes were there in acting.

It's so small stakes in a way that's just so charming. I know this is an obvious thing to say, but it's true, isn't it? You know, like. But better, yes, in a way that i don't think this film would work if it was the nuclear testing site where it's like oh no it wouldn't no of course not all that shit just sounds like you know it's like strip it out strip it out like you know which is

what this movie did just just take all that literally the only reason that didn't happen was because of budget it literally only happened got canned out because of budget maybe even only once they decided to reach i mean not to dispute the purpose of our podcast but it's kind of the argument against the blank check right like it's the argument for the constraints like you find these creative ways to work around stuff obviously it is not that this argument is that this podcast is pro blank check exactly it's just interested in blank checks but i'm just saying it is not that this argument is that this podcast is pro blank check exactly it's just interested in blank checks but i'm just saying it is it's both it's both this is one of those movies that like unlike something like fury road i bring up because it's a recent example of a movie that

is like this guy knew exactly what he wanted to make he had it like in his drawer for 20 years and he just willed it into existence and it was the exact version of what he had in his head to the degree that even the actors working on it couldn't see what they were doing versus this movie which is half that type of clear vision they'd worked so hard on the screenplay they'd done like 150 drafts it's so well honed but also everything they had to surrender ended up being the right choice and they adapted really really well it's a perfect balance of the two um in a way that i think movies like this often are you know not getting a working shark on jaws like all these things where it's the combination of

the right people at the top of their skills cresting in their ability combined with circumstances outside their control that force them to be resourceful. And that sort of survival instinct kicking in and leading to greater creativity. And yes, it's like we see the grid. The distance is so short, but they make it feel like Marty is driving this extreme distance.

Like Doc is never going to get the cable plugged in time. And when it happens, it is so thrilling, incredibly satisfying. It's such a good effect too. I love the visual effect, like the noise, the crackling, just the way everything,

you know, and that's sort of like they would have, it's like they're reversing an explosion or something. Like they had that kind of like smoky thing that kind of goes backwards. Great. And, and not to sound like one of these guys but it's a perfect example of i don't know what you mean i'm just excited by whatever the mainstream media telling

us no i was uh not to sound like one of these guys but uh this is one of those things where if this was done 10 years later and they had cgi at disposal, the effects would be less good. Having greater options for how you could render the time travel would be overdoing it. The fact that they're not going through the circuits of time, the fact that it's just the combination of the sounds,

the way the lightning crackles around it, all that sort of stuff. The ice, which you see the first time, but then because it was such a pain in the ass to do every successive time, they limit how cold the car is when it's coming out. But for me, like an incredible Zemeckis Gale story choice that shows how good their instincts were emotionally at this point in time is that unlike the other

things, like unlike traveling from Marty's POV from 85 into 55, when Marty disappears when the trail of flames is left they stay with Doc Brown and you have that moment that for me is like when they should have handed Christopher fucking Lloyd the Oscar

I get why they didn't it's the kind of performance that's easy to write off as fluff at the time especially because it's comedic and a big broad movie but the big wide shot of the completely empty town square with the flames behind him realizing that he's just done it,

that he's created time travel, and they play the softer version of the main Silvestri theme, and he starts dancing in the middle of the street is so thoroughly touching to me it's that thing i fucking love it's like billy elliott finally dancing where it's just like this person who just had one dream in their life against all odds pulled it off they did the thing that

everyone told them they couldn't do um i just think that sequence is so well done and lloyd's performance is so exuberant and genuine and he kind of dials down the cartoonishness for that one moment because you actually want to care about this guy and feel like this is an important win for him

and you want him to live there's all the falderal with the letter I can't look money I'm going to start sending I would damage the space with the letter and you know like you know all that i can't look money you know i'm gonna start damage the space uh i'm gonna start sending people letters that say don't open until like 2023 it's a great bit 29 right i recommend everybody do it and then you don't even have to write anything that's that good inside but just having someone to have to hold on to it yeah right butts just

right okay in terms of that like ephemeral uh uh ethan hawke welcome to earth like movie star line reading shit i don't think there's a better moment of that than michael j fox going like oh god if only i have more time more, Marty, what are you talking about? You're in a time machine. It's so fucking good. And that's a hard moment to pull. But the idea that he's gonna like fuck with it, that he's already written a letter,

which Doc Brown has ripped up, that he goes back a little bit earlier, but the car won't start. He has to run. He makes it just there in time. A thing, having seen this movie 30 times, I had never noticed before, is when they go back

and they repeat him running to the mall, the signage is now it's the Lone Pine Mall as opposed to the Twin Pine Mall. It's the first sign that he's altered the timeline in some way. It's funny. Very subtle. Because up until now,

everything else feels like it's largely the same. Also, Hill Valley. It's a funny name. Funny name. Hill Valley. Funny. Yeah. You know.

Yeah, and I love the inner history of Hill Valley as a town. I love their sort of legacy of things like Little Wilson, Clock Tower. All the stuff they kind of sneak in. They build that stuff out well in the next two films. But he runs.

Of course, he's just a second too late. He can't avoid the can't stop Doc Brown from getting shot. But when he runs up, Doc has the bulletproof vest and the taped together letter, which he's held on for 30 years. And what a nice touching moment. Everything worked out great. And now I thought, what? What the hell. Everything worked out great. And now... I thought, what the hell? I'll play faster.

It's, right, it's beautiful. That's like, I don't know. Sometimes you want to do the emotional thing. We're only human. As much as he tries to be like, I'm this crazy mad scientist. Time is the most important thing to abide by. It's also like, you're my friend, Marty. You didn't want me to die i'm gonna stay alive

you need it to be that you need it to be yeah i although i'm and maybe this is from millennia too i can't remember the millennia i haven't seen the millennia back to future bit in a while but like it is wild that he's like well i'll wear a bulletproof vest they can't shoot me anywhere like is marty specifically like yeah but anyway it doesn't matter you need it to be that versus marty triumphantly running them over or whatever because yes i don't know that would just feel clean in a way that would be kind of like i yeah i agree you need the weird friendship choice of like yes you know what it's too convenient a letter it must be important right but also it if you had marty go back and this time he's wearing like a full

jeremy renner bomb disarming suit you don't have the reveal okay well wait a second that would be funny though for back to the future if he was wearing yeah he was wearing a hurt locker suit that would be good yeah you can't shoot me anywhere no it's you need the reversal of the same events yeah um and i guess probably marty wrote in the letter your chest roughly from here to here yeah it's basically kind of like consider it like a strike zone it's kind of shoulders to hips right like that's what you want to protect i didn't get a full look at your wounds but it looked like that was the major area um and then yes of course as you mentioned right now they're rich uh now now biff is an obsequious you know the car detailer or whatever right you know he's getting bossed around

uh christian glover is playing it like almost like american psycho or whatever he's getting bossed around uh crispin glover is playing it like almost like american psycho or whatever he's got this like weird kind of like look in his eyes they're like that was absolutely the hardest thing to get crispin glover to do like he didn't want to wear that outfit he didn't want to play those scenes he didn't want to play a normal guy like all that stuff he hated it hated it he doesn't seem normal though he just seems weird in a new way which is i'm glad they threaded the needle on that crispin got to do his weird thing zemeckis got his plot points like whatever yeah and i think it's it's like an artificially neat ending which only works because they undercut it with doc brown coming back

at the end which of course was not meant to be a sequel setup was meant to just be a funny joke of like what could possibly now happen with time travel open i'm sure they were like they weren't anti a sequel right but certainly it's not like back to the future 2 where they're making the movies back to back and they know there's going to be a sequel i think they literally functions as a just a clever ending yeah but they also say that like when the sequel was announced they were like oh fuck we now have to do the future like we we've made this promise that we weren't thinking we were ever going to have to make good on but of course you do the future come on zemeckis what

are you going to go you know come on i mean well of course zemeckis is so horny to do a western and we will talk about that but i'll talk about that uh you know the future you know when i was a kid i was like show me the future that's what i wanted to see where you got like visor glasses and all this and it still has ended up being one of the most sort of like uh uh sort of like i I don't know, lasting visions of the future. I still feel like people relate what we have gotten and what we haven't gotten

to that notion of 2015. I feel like it's cited all the time. What it predicted correctly, what it was wrong on. I haven't seen, right, no, 100%. I haven't seen part two, probably since I was like 12 or 13 years old.

Great movie. So I'm very excited to rewatch it because like both the sequels, honestly, haven't seen them in a very, it on vhs after the car flies off after roads were going we don't need roads and the test audience runs it stands up and starts ending on your best line outrageous very smart yeah and his line reading i mean the timing of the flipping down of the glasses all that stuff and the visual effect and everything yeah when they and then smash to uh back in time uh back in time uh when they re-released it or when they released it on vhs knowing that the sequel was going to happen they put to be continued at the end of the first one so i saw it for the first time with to be continued i feel like a lot of people in our generation saw for the first time with to be continued so i always viewed it as like well they knew they knew they knew watching it and trying to like view it out of context pretending

that the sequel isn't a given that they didn't know what they were doing it's also just a funny reversal to be like well they solved everything everything's neat everyone's happy the present is great and then doc brown being like no time travels on the table which means everything's getting fucked with everything's bad and i'm gonna spend the rest of my life trying to iron out every small interpersonal issue you know like the mcfly family now the ripple effect of just like oh my son gets arrested i need to fix that. It's fun. It's funny. I love it. I love this movie. On top of everything else,

it's crazy that both of the Huey Lewis songs in this movie are like bangers and were hits. Like there's that weird 80s thing where you had giant blockbuster movies that also had big artists writing like number one hit singles. The luck of all of those things lining up is pretty wild to me because that rarely if ever happens these days should we play the box office game we should play a box office game did this movie do well uh it did do quite well in fact it was one of the bigger movies of its year it made 212 million

dollars domestically i believe some of that might be from a re-release yes certainly was uh i can't remember it ended around 200 million and i think then made a little more in a re-release or whatever um it made you know he made humongous amounts of money it opened number one at the box office 11 million dollars on july 4th weekend i think it was a 14 million for day weekend that's's all great. Now, Griffin, as you may remember, this is the week before Thunderdome. Oh, right. Okay. The other thing I just want to say is that test screening was so big and Universal knew it was going to be such a hit.

They kicked it to July 4th. Yeah. Right. It was supposed to be August. July 4th yeah right it was supposed to be August so they like had to do essentially 24 hour post production hire two editors four sound editors like all this sort of stuff the movie was released in theaters nine weeks after they wrapped filming like it's crazy how rushed this movie was and a couple months before Teen Wolf as you wanted to one month before clarify yeah i think yeah which i had always thought that it was like teen wolf a hit

but embarrassing this is the thing that legitimized his film career when in fact it is that like teen wolf was largely a hit because michael j fox was just fucking running the table like kids who had already seen back to the future three times were like there's another michael j fox movie um plays basketball he's a wolf yeah but for him it was embarrassing sure um number one at the box office back to the future number two at the box office so all of these movies are in the box office for the thunderdome box office is all i'm saying except for number five back to the future is number one for 11 out of the next 12 weeks pretty cool yeah people wanted to see it uh number two it's a western back in time yep secretly or western out in the open just a brazen western no no no no like a serious western from a very serious oh is that

no but my correct director hello joseph wales 70s drifter i'm forgetting the no that's you're doing the the 70s ones it's it's an 80s clint western i believe it is his only western in the 80s and it's a very good movie i like it western in the 80s and it's a very good movie i like it it's really stripped down it's really it's you always forget this i feel like we this came up the other time i think i always forget this movie exists what's the title of this movie it's called pale rider right fuck right yes i always forget to do this i've never seen it it's good uh yeah it's a good clint movie uh number three sounds like me when i'm on the subway hey hey writer sounds like me when i'm on the subway uh yeah because you're pale you ride the subway or you used to at least

before um number number three of the box stuff is a big sequel to a big movie in 1985 it's not beverly hills cop 2 that's too soon no beverly hills cop in fact came out this year is it a number two it's a number two and is it a comedy as an action franchise is it a rainbow first blood part two exactly there we go exactly um number four at the box office we brought it up it was an oscar winning film this year it won in an acting category is that why we brought it up yes we mentioned it's oscar win yes exactly it's not prizzy's honor nope it is cocoon it's cocoon another hit i mean these are all big hits big hit must have felt satisfying for zemeckis after getting fired off of cocoon to fucking

cocoon did well but right certainly nothing like back to the future yes suplex note yes number five is a movie i just i know i don't know at all it is from a major director um but i've never heard of it um how to describe it's a jungle movie it's like a guy searching for i believe his son in the rainforest or something his son got like maybe kidnapped or or taken in by like you know native people in the rainforest no it's not i mean he's an i'll tell you the actor powers booth like you know certainly an actor of the 80s but not a major star yeah no you're never gonna get this it's a john boorman movie so you know a big director um it's called the emerald forest yep nope truly that's never what i that's heard of that i didn't know it and like john borman is

someone we could ostensibly do on this podcast he's not high on our list maybe but like you know excalibur right like hope and glory those are these are does those are real blank checking movies but uh this one i don't know that's it you've also got i don't know st elmo's fire the goonies fletch another spielberg amblin yeah fletch is working overtime of course prizzy's honor i've been listening to the fletch soundtrack a lot recently i don't know why are you working overtime you've been listening in overtime i certainly have been working overtime i feel like i've been working under time these days maybe i'm trying to feel more inspired to put in the extra hours on i feel like i'm working overtime why don't you do some of my work well

we've got to even this out yeah i really want to write some think pieces about what's going on in media right now it's really exciting i feel great about everything you know how i like once a year i i start saying that i'm retired and i'm never gonna work again and i'm unemployable you do say that often yes once every two years maybe i i really feel at this time i really feel like i don't know if i'm ever gonna i'm just gonna point out that this is not a moment to uh predict one's future this is that's why i'm saying i feel this way i'm not even just feeling like no one likes me i'm feeling like, ugh, no one likes me. I'm feeling like, what would it take to get me back on a set again?

Right, right, right. I don't know. You know, next year could be great. Hey, you never know. That's me. That's my role in this. Yeah, I want to start a podcast like Election Profit Makers

where I bet against next year being good and you bet for it being good and somehow we figure out a way to tie financial rewards to that because i don't know at least maybe i can get rich while being miserable yeah that sounds fun like ben do you think that's a good podcast people would listen to that wait where did ben go ben's fully gone do you hear that david no no in the distance i hear i hear something there's like a i think he left his mic on there's some sort of like whooshing sound or something sorry hey what's up guys i just skateboarded into the podcast uh you know, hanging on a car. That is the sign that we are officially done, which is very exciting for us.

We finally checked that box. Ben asked me to set that up. I was not aware that he was going to, for the listeners at home, kneel on top of a rolling office chair and pretend that it was a skateboard i thought he put his feet on a skateboard have a skateboard at home no he pretended to skateboard on a chair well that's our back to the future episode three hours sort of blank check but it was back to the future it's under three hours and david it had to be this is a humongous movie um but it's not like the next three movies are small

yes i think this is even a little bigger and i'll say for people who are upset that we didn't do things like merchandise spotlight or the theme park rides or any of that sort of stuff we have two other back to the future movies to cover i theme park rides or any of that sort of stuff, we have two other Back to the Future movies to cover. I promise I will cover some of that appendix stuff in there.

But this one, I really want to focus on a dumb movie. Yep. Yep. For sure. Back to the Future. It's a movie.

David, it had to be. We couldn't change our past. Even though the future is not yet written, this episode had to be 230 plus it had to be it was always written on the newspaper and it never changed all right that's general i promise the show is about to get tighter and i promise that to you

david and i'm saying it on microphone to be held accountable folks thank you all for listening guys just just a warning for listeners we're gonna try and tighten this show up it's got a little whatever slack losing our mind zoom started being a thing that made it impossible to podcast for an hour without feeling exhausted and now it's made it so that somehow every episode becomes eight hours while also being exhausted uh everything is bad i'm betting on 2021 also being bad thank you all for listening please remember to rate, review, and subscribe thanks to Andrew Good for our social media

thank you to Lane Montgomery for being our Marty McFly and jamming out with that cool theme song Joe Bone and Pat Rounds for our artwork go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit go to our Shopify page for merch new stuff will be added old stuff will be added.

Old stuff will be coming back in stock. And feel free to always hit us up on social media at blankcheckpod if you want to suggest things you'd like to see us make merch-wise in the future. Next week, a little movie called Who Framed Roger, with the Doughboys. Nick Wyatt. That's right, baby! Mike Mitchell. It's a crossover.

People were speculating which episode they were going to be on. It's that one. Talking Doom. And David, the episode is done. You can relax. You can write a...

No end always? A think piece about any of the exciting things happening in the entertainment news world. Bleh. I just love anytime something happens.

I don't mean to complain about my job. I'm lucky to have a job. No, you have a great job. But also anytime something happens, you text me. We're like texting back and forth on it and then you go like,

oh, fuck, wait, I'm going to have to write about this, aren't I? Like when you realize you're going to have to come up with a take on stuff. Again, not complaining going to have to write about this, aren't I? Like when you realize you're going to have to come up with a take on stuff. Again, not complaining. I have a nice job.

My editors are nice. And of course, I was happy to write about Oscar roles. Yes, the roles. You love the roles. And as always. Doc. Doc. Doc.

Doc. Doc. Doc! Doc! Doc! Doc! Doc! Jesus. Marty? Marty! Marty. Marty!

Marty!