We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy (18 page)

Initially, Joanna Johnston couldn’t care less about the attractiveness of this partnership. The costumer felt she was in no place to really put her foot down, but she was less than enthusiastic about being forced to work with a brand. Product placement, she felt, was hokey, and furthermore, she could not understand the American obsession with sneakers. In her first few weeks here, Johnston was overwhelmed by the pervasiveness of sneaker culture in the United States. On the set, Zemeckis would wear sneakers daily, and to her surprise, even Mr. Steven Spielberg himself wore his casual kicks when he visited the backlot. She was used to working with English directors who would put on a jacket and loafers when coming to set, not adults who showed up to work wearing the same clothes as teenagers at the local mall. She thought the whole thing not only distinctly American, but Californian, and in the worst way. Her opinion changed once Zemeckis hit her with another conceptual idea. He told her that sneakers weren’t going to go out of style and, in fact, would become more feminine in time so they could be better marketed to women, even foreseeing a trend of high-heeled sneakers in the future. Inspiration was sparked—she didn’t have to work within the confines of existing designs. Perhaps there were creative things the sneaker company could bring to the table. She held a meeting with Nike and, together, they came up with the self-lacing shoes, among other futuristic footwear.

With some of the costume designs in place, John Bell continued working on the incidental background elements of the futuristic Hill Valley. While he wanted to push the look of the film decades ahead of the present day, the illustrator was cautious not to move too far beyond the familiar. He implemented a
“15:85 rule,” a ratio of unrecognizable to recognizable elements used in the design process. For example, consider Bell’s concept for a Federal Express mailbox. In his original sketch, it appears much like a standard U.S. Postal Service receptacle one might find on any street corner in America, but there is a red digital monitor attached where a person could input their address and other shipping information. Someone looking at the sketch can easily identify the object and its purpose, but there are elements that make it appear a little foreign.

On
Back to the Future
, Steve Gawley, the supervising model maker at ILM, oversaw the construction of the miniature DeLorean used for the visual effect at the end of the film when Marty, Doc, and Jennifer take to the sky. The small-scale model was shot against a blue screen, with the miniature’s movements controlled by a computer that would send information to a servomotor, a small device that allows for precision of acceleration, angular position, and velocity of the object to which it is assigned. Because the flying time machine would have greater importance in the sequel, the team at ILM created a new 1:5 scale model, but this time the device was far more intricate. There were turn signals, an opening door, and fully functioning lights, including a blinking flux capacitor. In total, there were more than twenty working components that would allow Zemeckis to seamlessly intercut between footage of the actual car and the model. To complete the illusion, there were also two fifteen-inch servo-powered puppets made in the images of Marty and Doc, the same technology used to make Elliott and E.T. ride their bicycle over the moon.

Car customizer Gene Winfield built a full-scale model DeLorean out of fiberglass that could be used for practical shots for special effects supervisor Michael Lantieri, who took over the job from Kevin Pike on the first film. The faux car could then be
lowered down into the frame via a crane to give the appearance of a smooth landing. For the remainder of the futuristic vehicles, some were models, while others, like the police motorcycles designed by Tim Flattery, were built upon previously functional machinery. Because of budgetary considerations, the motorcycles were made out of two Kawasaki 250 Ninjas. The wheelbase of the used bikes did not match Flattery’s sketches, so compromises had to be made when constructing the props. Anyone who walked past them as they were idling on set would be able to see two extra sets of wheels peeking out from the bottom, as they were unable to be fully concealed.

With a script in place and cast and crew nearly finalized, it became increasingly important to deal with the issue of George McFly. Bob Gale had no greater indication that Crispin Glover would reconsider and accept the current offer on the table for him to appear in the film, forcing the production team to begin thinking of ways to replace him. As much as they didn’t want to do it, substituting Elisabeth Shue for Claudia Wells was a relatively painless transaction. Sure, the two actresses looked different, but that was a nominal concern. Jennifer was a minor character in the first film, and even though she would have more screen time in the sequels, she would be unconscious for the majority of them and largely incidental to the plot. Conversely, with portions of
Paradox
revisiting moments from the first film, the necessity to cast an actor closely resembling Glover was paramount. As production neared, this became more and more prevalent in the producers’ minds, until Sophie reared her head again to deliver another ugly choice—this time on how to solve the George McFly
problem.

Monday, February 20, 1989

I
t was an all-too-familiar scene on the Universal backlot, which had been restored back to Hill Valley, 1955. Robert Zemeckis was reviewing the upcoming shot with Dean Cundey, Bob Gale and Neil Canton were double-checking that the crew had arrived, and elsewhere, in his trailer, Christopher Lloyd was filling with anxiety. The first day of shooting any film carries with it a normal and healthy bit of nerves, but what the actor was experiencing was beyond the standard amount of trepidation. As he waited to be called on set, Lloyd reviewed his pages. The scene being shot this day, the first for
Paradox
, was a revisit to a pivotal scene from
Back to the Future
, right after lightning strikes the clock tower and Marty I, the original Marty from the first film, is sent back to 1985. In the scene being shot this evening, Marty II, the one who returns to the fifties in an attempt to capture the sports almanac, grabs the Doc by his shoulders and causes him to faint. The actor now had the added burden of not only re-creating his character, but also expanding upon an exact scene from the first film.

While the mood on the set was characteristically light, the
actor knew a lot was riding on the sequel.
Back to the Future
was the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time in the United States, and although no one was saying it outright, the actor sensed that he wasn’t the only one feeling concerned about the sequel’s success. VHS copies of the first film could easily be found on the set, and when Zemeckis saw that the actor was jittery, the two sat down and watched the clock tower scene from the first film. Lloyd still felt nervous, but slightly more confident. He made his way to the familiar set, met Michael J. Fox—who had since traded in Marty’s classic costume from the first film for “something inconspicuous,” a black leather jacket over a maroon T-shirt—and shot the scene. Once the cameras started rolling, it all came flowing right back to him. For Christopher Lloyd, playing Doc Brown, it turned out, was a lot like riding a bike.

It was decided early on that the VHS of the first film would be one of the production team’s most valuable players during the
Paradox
shoot. A few weeks before the start of principal photography, the cast and crew were invited to Amblin to view
Back to the Future
. The stated goal was to remind the actors of their performances in the first film, but there was an additional advantage. Rewatching the original movie reminded many of how special that picture was and the obligation they had to the public to do the best job possible.
Paradox
’s script was thought-provoking, challenging, and certainly not indicative of a cash grab on the part of the Bobs. It was obvious that the two creators cared about their characters, and as the team that would be working on
Paradox
watched Lorraine and George kiss on the big screen, they were reminded that they cared about those characters too. The sequel shoot was sure to be taxing and, with the extra technical demands, maybe even more complicated than the original film, but there was a silent understanding that everyone was going to grab an oar and help keep this boat afloat.

But while the Amblin screening was a welcome reunion for the
Future
returners, one cast member was noticeably absent—Crispin Glover. The back-and-forth of whether or not the actor would return continued well after the rest of the principal cast was in place, up until just a few weeks before filming began. “Once we were in preproduction, Elaine Goldsmith called back saying that Crispin now thought he had made a mistake in deciding to not return for the sequel,” Bob Gale says. “I told her we’d consider using Crispin, but the role would be small, as we weren’t going to rewrite the script for him. He came into the office, met with Bob Z, Bob talked him through the story, and Crispin seemed ready to participate. When Elaine called me, I told her that we would pay him the same weekly salary that Tom Wilson was getting, and not a penny more. I told her I would not negotiate; it was a take-it-or-leave-it offer.

“Crispin didn’t like the money,” he continues. “So he fired Elaine and hired new agents, John Gaines and Gerry Harrington, both of whom are now deceased. They called me, and I told them the exact same thing: Our budget was locked, we were already prepared to make the movie without Crispin, and we didn’t care if he said yes or no. I also told them that if they came back and tried to negotiate for a higher salary, I would respond with a lower take-it-or-leave-it offer. Well, that’s what happened. They asked for more money, so I lowered the offer by five thousand a week, and Crispin blew the deal.”

The search was on for a new George McFly. However, replacing Glover was quickly proving to be easier said than done. Just as they had done when they ended the first film with Jennifer in the DeLorean with the two protagonists, the Bobs had painted themselves into a corner with the sequel storyline they came up with. Zemeckis’s idea to revisit the first film was innovative, but
even the most drastic reduction of the McFly patriarch’s role in the movie would still require him to appear in the film—and look pretty damned close to the way he appeared in the series’ first installment. While Claudia Wells was also not returning for the sequel, it was less important to the narrative that her physical appearance remain constant. Elisabeth Shue in an identical costume would do just fine, but because the Enchantment Under the Sea dance was so pivotal to the original film, as was George’s role in it, the Bobs had to come up with a plan.

Coincidentally, the answer to their problem was virtually under their noses. While the Bobs were working out of Amblin, actor Jeffrey Weissman was working at Universal Studios, interacting with the patrons while performing look-alike impersonations of Groucho Marx, Stan Laurel, and Charlie Chaplin, a job he had held for several years. After a day of work, he received a call out of the blue from an agent friend of his.

“Do you know who Crispin Glover is?”

“Sure. I worked with him at the American Film Institute on a project a few years ago.”

“And are you his height?”

“I think I’m a little bit shorter.” He thought for a second. “Wait, is someone looking for a Crispin Glover double?”

“Yes.”

“Is this for the
Back to the Future
sequel in the works?” He was finding it hard to contain his excitement. Like millions of others, Weissman had seen
Back to the Future
in theaters and was anticipating the new film’s release. While he liked his current gig, it would obviously be more beneficial to work for a Universal picture than a Universal theme park.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” his friend responded. “I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

A few days later, the actor was brought into an interview and formal audition with casting director Judy Taylor under the pretense that he was being considered for Glover’s photo double. He read a scene from the first film, where George is hanging laundry and talking to Marty. As he exited, he saw other actors waiting to audition. None of them looked too much like Glover, but that, the actor accurately assumed, was a nonissue. They all appeared to be of similar height and the same complexion as each other, so perhaps they were all up for the double position too. Within a few days, he was invited to meet with makeup artist Ken Chase. Like the rest of the hopefuls, Weissman bears little resemblance to Glover, so latex prosthetics were added onto his face to help him appear less like himself and more like the George McFly audiences would be expecting to see in the sequel. Molds weren’t taken of his face in advance, something that didn’t immediately strike the actor as odd. Instead, the facial appliances, which had been used for Crispin Glover’s old-age makeup in the first film, were readily available, having been pulled out of storage, where they had been kept for the past several years.

Once the transformation was complete, the actor was sent in to screen-test with Robert Zemeckis. “That was the first time I met Bob,” Weissman says. “He didn’t really say much to me. He just gave me direction, and most of the stuff went successfully, apparently.”

In what could have been a red flag to the actor had he the benefit of hindsight, Zemeckis leaned over to Dean Cundey after the actor was finished with his scene. “What d’ya think?”

“I think we have Crispin,” the cinematographer said. “Crispin without the trouble.”

At the time, no one in the room could have foretold how
incorrect that statement could have been, especially Weissman. In his blissful ignorance, he thanked them, got out of makeup, and went home. He was hired, and right before filming began, he was offered the role of George, not to be a double or stand-in as he’d originally thought. Universal opened negotiations with the actor’s theatrical agent and offered Weissman $20,000. The actor’s agent couldn’t believe their good fortune.

Once shooting on
Paradox
began, the returning cast worked on embodying their now-iconic roles—and the various iterations of them that appeared throughout the film—for the sequel. Lea Thompson was able to reassume Lorraine’s mannerisms, but found her greatest challenge to be capturing the Biffhorrific version of the character, which she describes as the “diva-drunk, poor old alcoholic Lorraine.” In addition to her having to portray that extreme version of the character, the makeup design, which was provided by Ken Chase before he left the production after the second week of filming over a financial dispute about his salary, left her straining to perform through the plastic.

“It was horrible,” she says. “Old-age makeup feels horrible, especially back then. Now they use something different that’s a little bit more malleable, but that makeup was so stiff. It was awful. You’re gluing something to your face—I would get blisters on my neck. It’s hard to complain as an actor, because we’re really, really lucky, but anytime you see wigs and makeup and period costumes, imagine wearing that stuff for twelve hours. It’s really painful.”

As inhibiting as the makeup was, the physical appliances added for the Biffhorrific scenes did help the actress get into character. The prosthetic Thompson wore to make it appear as if she had gotten breast augmentation surgery provided a healthy dose of entertainment on set. On one occasion, Steven Spielberg
came to visit, dropped his keys down in her fake cleavage, and picked them back out, much to her amusement. Other times, when the actress was only partially in her costume and sitting in the makeup chair, she would elicit gasps from onlookers who would have to take a moment to realize she wasn’t really topless. “I just loved that character,” she says. “I loved that sequence. I loved that set. I loved the shot of me coming out of the bedroom when Biff comes in. There’s that huge crane shot that comes out into that incredible set that they built on the Universal soundstage. I just think that sequence is genius. It’s one of my favorites that I’ve ever done. It was over-the-top, but I think that that whole part was fantastic. The fact that I got to play all these different aspects of one person under different circumstances, and such an interesting character, was so lucky for me. Now, on my reel, I put those parts, especially Lorraine in
Back to the Future Part II
. No one will give me that diva part, and I’m like, ‘Dude, I did this when I was twenty-three! I can do it even better now.’”

Tom Wilson also found the makeup process for
Paradox
taxing, to say the least. For the vast majority of his shoot, he had to endure six hours of makeup application, and sometimes also a fat suit, in order to play the various versions of the Tannen family in the film. In order to make it to the set by ten, Wilson’s days often started in the makeup chair at 3:30
A
.
M
.
He would shoot for seven or so hours, then begin the easier, but still time-consuming at an hour long, process of being undone and transformed back to his regular self. Sometimes the shooting schedule required that he begin the day in heavy prosthetics but end it with a clean face, like when the actor shot the scene where Old Biff gives Young Biff the sports almanac in the 1955 portion of the film. In addition to having to perform through the uncomfortable appliances, the actor had the unfortunate battle wounds of a severely irritated and
blistered face and neck—a side effect of a slightly toxic chemical the makeup artists used to quickly remove the latex from the actors’ faces—left after each day of shooting, which, if need be, would simply be covered over with makeup so Wilson could continue working.

Although it may seem like the obvious decision, using the same actors to play their older counterparts in the first film was a novel idea. The Bobs were fully committed to making it work, believing it would be more fulfilling for an audience to see the same actor when Marty goes back to 1955. During auditions, the actors reading for Lorraine, George, and Biff all endured a makeup test before being offered the part. For Thompson, being entrusted to stretch as an actress to portray someone so much older than she was made her confident in the project and in the filmmakers who were guiding her. “It’s magical when you first see Lorraine in the past after seeing her so sad and beaten down in 1985,” she says. “When you see her for the first time in the 1950s, she’s so young and full of life. It added so much to the dimension of the character. It’s one of the reasons people go to the movies. The fact that they had such faith in Crispin and I, and Tom Wilson, to pull it off was really great.”

While the day-to-day operations of moviemaking were largely the same, the atmosphere on the set filming
Paradox
was slightly more pressured, partially because of the expectations of the audience and studio executives, but mostly because the sequel was more technically ambitious than its predecessor. The perfect case study is the scene where Reese and Foley, two police officers played by Mary Ellen Trainor, Zemeckis’s wife at the time, and Stephanie E. Williams, bring Jennifer to her future home in Hilldale. The director had hoped to shoot the descent of the police car starting underneath the vehicle until the door opens, with the
three exiting in one long take. There were a lot of nerves on set that night, with some on the crew on edge about the director’s wife being involved in a minor stunt—she and the other two actresses would be in the car as it was lowered onto the ground. To further complicate matters, it was one of the last nights the production team had available to shoot at their location on the corner of Oakhurst Street and Somerset Avenue in El Monte. Light was disappearing as the sun set, and of course, the car wasn’t working. In designing and building the car, Tim Flattery built a channel so an industrial-size forklift could be fed through the bottom and it could be raised. The result, in a perfect world, would be a clean shot without any special effects trickery visible. Since a similar technique was used for one of the flying DeLoreans, Michael Lantieri expected the operation of this effects car to be the same. About a half hour before the shot was going to start, one of the crew members got into the forklift and prepared for the test run. He threaded the police car with his machine, started to lift, and—