We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy (26 page)

As the Internet took off, Clark was among the first to have a fan site for the trilogy, and he undoubtedly had the one filled with the most content. On January 22, 1997, BTTF.com was born. It’s doubtful that anyone could have predicted it that day, but the website—which is now more appropriately at home at BacktotheFuture.com—became the go-to online resource for all things about the trilogy. Stephen Clark remains surprised to this day at how influential his website has been, acting as an informative resource about the films and significantly helping to impact
Future
’s standing in our popular culture.

“Three distinct moments really stick out in my mind when it comes to the website’s impact,” he says. “The first was in August 2000, when Universal invited me to write the pop-up trivia featurette for all three films’ 2002 debuts on DVD. The second time was at the twentieth-anniversary screening at the ArcLight Cinemas–Hollywood in February 2005. I was a sponsor and did some heavy advertising for it online. We sold out two showings, with each followed by a Q&A with the cast. During both, the host asked the audience of over three hundred fifty people how many heard about the event through BTTF.com. Both times, about seventy-five percent raised their hands. That blew me
away—that an Alabama-based site could have such an influence on audiences in California.

“The third one—and the one I’m most proud of—was in December 2007,” he continues, “when the Library of Congress selected
Back to the Future
for the National Film Archive. The yearlong write-in campaign was my brainchild, and we succeeded on the first attempt. The Library of Congress said that they had never had such a large number of votes come from the public. I was interviewed by the
Hollywood Reporter
about it soon after, and the journalist who interviewed me said he had been trying to get
Caddyshack
nominated for a decade. He was jealous that we succeeded in just one year!”

In addition to exclusive interviews and photographs, fans also flock to his site to access the two things they covet most: a sense of community with others who love the movies, and tons of collectibles.
Back to the Future
was not designed to be a heavily merchandised film. Unlike with Joel Schumacher’s 1997 disaster
Batman & Robin
, there was never a suggestion that toys would play a part in the marketing of the films, even with all of the gadgetry in
Part II
. If the films were made today, Mattel hoverboards would have been on sale in toy stores around the nation in advance of the film’s theatrical release, but that was not standard at the time. But demand drives supply, and over the decades since the first film’s release, more products have come out for the
Back to the Future
franchise. Since the early 1990s, Universal has struck licensing deals with McDonald’s, Lego, and Hallmark, to name just a few. The merch caters to fans of all ages who enjoy die-cast DeLorean scale models, flux capacitors, Christmas ornaments, T-shirts, and a seemingly unending litany of other collectibles. Some of the most coveted items are those that were inspired by props for
Part II
. As “the future” of 2015
neared, the fan community worked hard to make some of the more fantastic technological inventions in those sequences a reality. There have been several attempts to create functioning hoverboards, some of which have been reported about in internationally renowned news outlets like the
New York Times
, but it seems that true hoverboarding like Marty does on film is not going to become a reality anytime soon.

Like others before it, Mattel, the toy-manufacturing giant, responded to the fans’ call for a hoverboard. In 2012, the company’s MattyCollector division, which caters specifically to collectors in the twenty-five- to forty-five-year-old demographic, thought it was time to bring everyone’s most desired handheld prop from the movie into fans’ homes. “The hoverboard, being an item that was made by Mattel in the film, seemed like a very natural item to do,” Scott Neitlich of Mattel says. “We approached Universal about doing a line of
Back to the Future
items, and the first one we wanted to do was, of course, the hoverboard. It really just came out of passionate folks at both Universal and Mattel who felt this was the right time and the right way to do this item. It made it easier to sell internally, being able to show images of it from the film and reminding everyone it was made by Mattel. That was sort of the straw that kicked it over. We needed to do this. It was too cool not to.”

Throughout March 2012, hoverboards were put up for presale at a price of $120 on the MattyCollector website. For legal reasons, the company does not release actual sales numbers, but it’s safe to assume the hoverboards sold extremely well. To date, the collectible remains one of the top three items MattyCollector has ever sold. Bob Gale gave an early endorsement, which no doubt helped persuade some fans who might have been riding the fence, and Stephen Clark heavily promoted the toy via his website.
It seemed to be a match made in heaven, that is, until the hoverboard was released and the product disappointed more than a few people. “This is one of the areas where there was a lot of controversy,” Neitlich says. “There were over thirty different boards used in the film, depending on the shot. There were boards that were screwed to Michael J. Fox’s foot. There were boards for close-ups. There were boards for far away, and no two boards looked the same. The colors, the stripes, the lenticular surface, the font—completely different from board to board. We started off by looking at images online and freeze-framing the film, but we were fortunate enough to have Michael Lantieri and Bob Gale visit Mattel. They brought several of the screen-used boards for us to look at. We actually filmed a segment, and it was online, of us meeting with Mr. Gale and Mr. Lantieri, and it was great because we were able to take measurements, but I think that led to a lot of expectations for the fans. Which of the thirty boards was it going to look like? We really tried to go for a composite of all thirty, sort of what the board looked like in your head versus exactly what it looked like shot to shot, since it changed so much.

“The two biggest challenges we had was, one, a lot of fans expected the board to actually float,” he continues. “Of the negative feedback we received, the number one complaint was, ‘Why doesn’t the hoverboard fly?’ Floating technology doesn’t physically exist. It was meant to be a fun thing for your wall or to hold in your hand or throw across the floor. We did promote that it would glide across carpet, which it does do, but I think a lot of fans wanted it to do something that’s just physically not possible, especially for a hundred-and-twenty-dollar item. I got emails from people sending me things from Harvard and Caltech and these think tanks in Germany and the United Kingdom that were developing hover technology, saying, ‘Why don’t you add
this technology in?’ Well, A, that’s extremely experimental, and B, we’re trying to mass-produce something for a hundred and twenty dollars. You’re talking about experimental technology that costs tens of thousands of dollars per square inch to make something hover. I always told fans that DeLoreans also don’t time-travel. You have to kind of let go of fantasy expectations.”

While a lot of criticism was directed at the device’s inability to function as it appears on-screen, the second-biggest complaint Mattel received was that it failed to affix a lenticular coating that, in the movie, gives the hoverboard its shine. For many fans, this exclusion was particularly baffling. How difficult could it be to put coating on a piece of plastic? Apparently, Neitlich says, pretty difficult. “Lenticular is incredibly expensive,” he says. “If we had a full lenticular sticker across the entire surface, it would have more than quadrupled the cost of the toy. We really wanted the board to be under a hundred and fifty dollars. We did not want to produce a five-hundred-dollar board, because that really limits the customer base. We had to go with a less lenticular sticker that sort of replicated the shine, but not exactly in the way it looked in the film. People questioned, ‘Well, how could they make it lenticular and shiny in 1989 when they were filming the movie, but you guys couldn’t reproduce that?’ The very easy answer is that the boards for the movie are movie props, and while there were about thirty of them made, I could probably guarantee they weren’t made for a hundred and twenty apiece. All of these handmade movie props cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to produce. When you’re mass-producing an object for consumers, there have got to be some concessions, and one of those was how shiny the lenticular could be.”

Among those who worked on the film, the hoverboard received mixed reviews. Bob Gale publicly withdrew his support
via Stephen Clark’s website, citing many of the same criticisms that fans had voiced to the company directly and in online forums. Among others responsible for bringing hoverboards to the big screen in the
Future
sequels, the reaction was more mixed. John Bell received a board as a gift. He thought they were re-created well, but he also cited disappointment with the lack of lenticular decal. Robert Zemeckis was generally pleased with the look and functionality of the Mattel hoverboard, although he has been on record as stating, perhaps jokingly, that he might have the only one that works.

The criticism over Mattel’s prop replica is likely due to the increased fascination with hoverboarding as the “future” of 2015 neared. While many fans may be disappointed that hoverboards don’t exist, at least not like they appear in the
Future
sequels, Bob Schmelzer, who worked on the skateboarding stunts on the first film, is happy life hasn’t imitated art.
Back to the Future
did wonders for skateboarding in America and throughout the world, raising the visibility of the sport and mainstreaming it from an activity for rebellious teenagers in the suburbs to something even the good kids wanted to try their hands at. But with the advent of hoverboards, the franchise drifted away from what initially made the movie so cool to begin with, at least to many in the skateboarding world. “When people talk to me about
Back to the Future
, the first thing they almost always ask me about is ‘hoverboard this’ or ‘hoverboard that,’” Schmelzer says. “I had nothing to do with that. There’s no skateboarding there, but people just remember that. When I think about
Back to the Future
, I remember the first movie’s actual skateboarding scenes more. People always ask me, ‘Well, aren’t you getting excited for when hoverboards actually exist?’ Well, no, because, one, it’s never going to happen. Two, it would never be close to the level of what
skateboarding is. I’m no physics major, but I understand how skateboarding works in a pool and in the streets. I also understand how a hovercraft works, and it’s never going to happen. Give it up.”

As popular as the films were three decades ago, it seems as if each year the cult of devotees grows a little wider and the cultural impact becomes a bit more apparent. In addition to conventions celebrating the film, there are also DeLorean car shows. There is no question that the film resuscitated air into the lungs of the DMC-12, which had been left for dead following the company’s bankruptcy and John DeLorean’s trial. However,
Back to the Future
made the vehicle en vogue again, a fact that DeLorean himself acknowledged in a letter he sent to Zemeckis and his production team shortly after the first film’s release. Since fewer than ten thousand DeLoreans were made in the early portion of the 1980s, they have become even more coveted in recent years—especially ones in good running condition. Currently, a company based out of Humble, Texas—also named DeLorean Motor Company, although it has no direct ties to the car’s creator or original company—has continued making the vehicle and celebrating the uniquely designed car in shows across the nation.

At such shows, it is often not hard to find someone who has tricked out their own stainless-steel vehicle in an attempt to match the A car from the film. The luckiest of fans have had an opportunity to have their vehicle appraised by Bob Gale or Kevin Pike at one of these events. “You have to understand that when we built the cars, twenty-some-odd years ago, we weren’t thinking about having them replicated into the future,” Pike says. “I guess we should have got in one of the cars and gone forward. I have people ask me, ‘Where’d you get this part? Where’d you get that part?’ and I tell them, ‘Listen, if I knew you were going to
ask all these questions about how to build the DeLorean time machine, I would have written a book on it.’”

Ken Kapalowski and Joe Walser are two fans who know firsthand what it’s like to meticulously reproduce the DeLorean time machine’s many exterior elements. The two met online in a forum for DeLorean enthusiasts. Both had DMC-12s they wanted to convert into a replica of the A car from the film, and a friendship was quickly formed. Ken made frequent trips from the East Coast to go visit Joe, look for parts, and work on their respective vehicles. When their DeLorean time machines were finished—and yes, they earned the endorsement of Bob Gale—it was somewhat bittersweet. Kapalowski’s trips to California often doubled as sightseeing missions.
Back to the Future
filming locations were hunted down, and he fell in love with retracing as many of Marty McFly’s steps as possible while on the West Coast.

“I call Joe a ‘jaded Hollywood guy,’ because he sees movie stars in line at coffee shops in the morning and he’s just like, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ but for me, seeing the tunnel where McFly rode on a hoverboard was just like, holy shit, it was awesome,” Kapalowski says. “I thought it would be a cool experience to share that with everybody, and that’s what Joe and I talked about doing. Universal wasn’t really planning anything big for the fans for the twenty-fifth anniversary, so we said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Proving the maxim that necessity is the mother of invention, from November 5 through November 12, 2010, the two friends held “We’re Going Back,” a weeklong
Back to the Future
convention. Over two dozen of the trilogy’s cast and crew members were guests of honor. There were sightseeing tours, panel discussions, and even an opportunity for fans to strap into a harness and ride a hoverboard, which was rigged in the way the stunt was done in
Part II
, but this time on a much smaller, and
safer, scale. The experience was enjoyable for both fans and honored attendees alike. The convention’s culminating event, a re-creation of the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, was unforgettable for A. J. LoCascio, a
Back to the Future
fan who managed to become a part of the franchise in his own right.