Back to the Future (Movie)

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    ‘Back to the Future’ on Broadway: Buckle Your (DeLorean) Seatbelt

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    If he could go back in time and do it again, Bob Gale probably wouldn’t change much about “Back to the Future.” This 1985 science-fiction comedy, about a teenager taking a whirlwind trip to the year 1955 in a time-traveling DeLorean built by an eccentric inventor, became an endearing and endlessly quotable box-office smash.The film, which Gale wrote with its director, Robert Zemeckis, also turned into a cultural phenomenon. It bonded its stars, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, to their quirky characters and spawned two hit sequels that its creators envisioned as a self-contained saga.When the words “The End” appeared onscreen in “Back to the Future Part III,” Gale explained in a recent interview over lunch, it was a message to audiences. “We told the story we wanted to tell,” he said. “And we’re not going to milk you guys for a substandard sequel.”But like its emblematic DeLorean, the “Back to the Future” franchise has continued to reappear in the ensuing decades, in authorized books, games and theme park rides, in cast reunions and countless pop-cultural homages.The gang’s all here: Doc Brown, Marty McFly and, at the center of some of the show’s much-anticipated stunts, a replica of the DeLorean time machine.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesNina Westervelt for The New York TimesNina Westervelt for The New York TimesAnd now on Broadway: “Back to the Future: The Musical,” which opens Aug. 3 at the Winter Garden Theater, follows a story that will be familiar to fans of the film. Using a time machine devised by Doc Brown, Marty McFly travels to 1955, meets his parents Lorraine and George as teenagers and must help them fall in love after he disrupts the events that led to their romantic coupling.On its yearslong path to Broadway, “Back to the Future” has faced some challenges that are common to musical adaptations and others unique to this property.While the show’s creators sought actors to play the roles indelibly associated with the stars of the film and decided which of the movie’s famous scenes merited musical numbers, they were also trying to figure out how the stage could accommodate the fundamental elements of “Back to the Future” — like, say, a plutonium-powered sports car that can traverse the space-time continuum.Now this “Back to the Future” arrives on Broadway with some steep expectations: After a tryout in Manchester, England, its production at the Adelphi Theater in London’s West End won the 2022 Olivier Award for best new musical. The show also carries a heavy price tag — it is being capitalized for $23.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Throughout its development process, the people behind it — including several veterans of the “Back to the Future” series — tried to remain true to the spirit of the films and keep intact a story that has held up for nearly 40 years.Bob Gale, who wrote the original movie with Robert Zemeckis, said of the stage adaptation: “We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. We just want to make the wheel smooth.”Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesAs Gale, now 72, put it: “We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. We just want to make the wheel smooth.”But, he added, “It cannot be a slavish adaptation of the movie. Because if that’s what people want to see, they should stay home and watch the movie. Let’s use the theater for what theater can do.”Gale’s inspiration for “Back to the Future” came in 1980 after seeing a photo of his father as a teenager in an old high-school yearbook, and he has become a passionate custodian of the franchise. That role dates back to at least 1989, the year a notorious “Back to the Future” Nintendo game was released. “One of the worst games ever,” he said. “I was so horrified by that I actually gave interviews to tell people, ‘Do not buy it.’”In 2005, after Zemeckis and his wife, Leslie, attended a performance of the Broadway musical “The Producers,” the “Back to the Future” creators began to contemplate a stage adaptation of their film. They hired Alan Silvestri, who wrote the scores of the “Back to the Future” movies, to create new songs with Glen Ballard, the pop songwriter who had worked with Silvestri on Zemeckis’s 2004 film version of “The Polar Express.”Gale said that as he and Zemeckis started to meet with Broadway producers, “They said all the right things. But their agenda really was, let’s get Zemeckis and Gale off this and give it to our own people to do it.”That was something Gale said he would never allow to happen. “These characters are like my family,” he said. “You don’t sell your kids into prostitution.”Instead they enlisted the British producer Colin Ingram, whom Ballard had worked with on the musical adaptation of the film “Ghost.” They hired the highly sought-after director Jamie Lloyd, and then parted ways with him in 2014. “The creative differences and the chemistry just didn’t work,” Ingram said. (Through a press representative, Lloyd confirmed that his departure was a mutual decision over creative differences but declined to comment further.)Behind the scenes: The show’s designer, Tim Hatley, was charged with evoking the spirit of the beloved film.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesNina Westervelt for The New York TimesNina Westervelt for The New York TimesUpon regrouping, the creators met with John Rando, who had directed “Urinetown” and “The Wedding Singer.” Rando said that after their initial meeting, “I grabbed Bob by the shoulders, looked him in the eye and said, ‘Bob, I love these characters. And I promise you I’m going to take really good care of them.’” Within a half-hour Rando said he got the call that he was hired.In conceiving “Back to the Future” for the stage, Gale said certain signature moments from the movie could never work: No scene of Doc Brown being attacked by disgruntled Libyan terrorists. (Now Marty speeds off in the DeLorean after Doc is overcome by radiation poisoning.) No set piece in which Marty races through the town square on a skateboard while the meathead bully Biff pursues him in a convertible. (Now the chase occurs on foot at school.) No pet dog named Einstein for Doc Brown. (Sorry, there’s just no dog.)A scene from the film where Biff is stopped before he can assault Lorraine remains in the show, though Gale acknowledged that this moment was “edgy.”“We want the audience to feel the jeopardy, and they do,” Gale said, adding that there were many elements from “Back to the Future” that might not withstand scrutiny if the film were being pitched today.Yet other familiar scenes presented opportunities for invention. Silvestri said he and Ballard were not given an exacting road map for where songs should go or what they should sound like. “We just kept trying to find our way,” Silvestri said. “It’s calling for a song here. It’s demanding music there.”The composers felt there had to be a rousing opening number to establish the show’s popped-collared, neon-colored version of the year 1985 and use the “Back to the Future” fanfare, and that became the song “It’s Only a Matter of Time.” There also had to be a love song for the smitten young Lorraine to serenade the enigmatic visitor she doesn’t realize is her own son, which yielded the doo-wop pastiche “Pretty Baby.”The curtain has lifted on “Back to the Future: The Musical,” but the creators of the franchise said they have no intention of pursuing more films.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThroughout the show’s development, there was a consensus that high-tech engineering and video projections would help recreate complicated scenes like Doc Brown’s perilous ascent of the Hill Valley clock tower during a fateful lightning storm.But Rando said he entrusted these elements to the show’s designer, Tim Hatley, and his production colleagues while the book, songs and performances were being nailed down.“They would keep asking me, ‘Hey, let’s talk about the clock tower sequence,’” Rando explained. “And I said, ‘Not until we get this musical right.’ And we would do readings and readings, and then finally there was a moment where we’re like, OK, now we can do it.”The actor Roger Bart, who has starred in musical comedies like “The Producers” and “Young Frankenstein,” was an early candidate to play Doc Brown. He landed the role with the help of a video audition in which he wore a lampshade on his head (to mimic a mind-reading device Brown uses) and sung the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime.”Though Christopher Lloyd is associated with the Doc Brown character, Bart said he felt it was not his job to copy that performance.“I’m 60,” Bart said. “There’s a certain point where I have to go, I know I’m entertaining. I’ve been in front of enough audiences to know that. If you really get bogged down with that thinking, you’re going to paralyze yourself.”The best way to play Doc Brown, Bart said, is to honor the spirit of Lloyd’s performances, “which is to create the idea that anything can happen at any moment, by being unusual in your choices.”Casey Likes joined the show as Marty for its Broadway run, after making his Broadway debut last year in “Almost Famous.” He said that his mother often compared him to Michael J. Fox when he was growing up. (The actor, who is 21, was born 16 years after “Back to the Future” was released in theaters.)At his audition, Likes said, “I wanted to convey something that was reminiscent of Michael but not an impression.”He added, “I went with the kind of vocal inflections that he had done, while trying to deliver the bright-eyed, somewhere between cool and dorky thing that he did. And I guess it worked.”As the curtain goes up on this “Back to the Future,” its creators are hopeful that it is a faithful representation of the franchise — one that they say they have no intention of continuing cinematically. As Gale put it, “We don’t need ‘Back to the Future 18.’”For its stars, their day-to-day hopes are more focused on steeling their courage when they step into the show’s mechanical DeLorean and trusting it will execute its stunts consistently.With a wry chuckle, Bart said he’d rather not have a day of work that ends with anyone “being sent to the hospital while the stage managers say, ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I called that wrong,’ and you go, ‘Oh, it’s OK, I have insurance, it’s all good.’ I don’t ever want to have that conversation.” More

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      How Science Fiction Movies Prepared Us for the Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

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      The promise of a new, bountiful energy source, not to mention the giant lasers, may sound familiar to fans of science fiction and comics.Today we step into the future. And it looks a lot like a movie we’ve all seen.Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced Tuesday that they had made a major breakthrough in studying fusion, a.k.a. the thermonuclear reaction that keeps the sun going. The news, about trying to harness literal star power the likes of which Hollywood could only dream, stirred great hopes because, if replicated and controlled, it could one day provide a bountiful source of carbon-free energy.If that sounds like science fiction, well, that’s because we’ve been amply primed for this discovery in pop culture, where alternative versions of our present and fantastical imaginings of our future have shown us impossible technologies powered by some combination of special effects and incomprehensible jargon.You probably already have some familiarity with fusion thanks to movies.At the end of the 1985 sci-fi classic “Back to the Future,” Dr. Emmett Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd, soups up his tricked-out time-traveling DeLorean by feeding trash into a canister called the Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor attached to the top of the car. And in “Spider-Man 2,” from 2004, the well-meaning scientist Dr. Octavius (a.k.a. Doc Ock, played by Alfred Molina) creates a fusion reactor with an artificial sun at the center. But when it gets out of control, so does he, transforming into a villain who aims to re-create the dangerous machine.Pop culture’s fascination with fusion goes beyond a process that sustains robotics and machinery; our culture’s collective dreams of safe, unlimited energy have even been epitomized by some of our heroes.Comic book protagonists like Captain Atom and Doctor Solar have bodies that can manipulate atoms to create blasts of energy. Firestorm, who was a regular in the CW’s Arrowverse, can change the particle structures of any substance and transmute it; and he himself is a kind of metaphor for the power of fusion, in that he was, in his first incarnation, a combination of two different people, Ronnie Raymond (played by Robbie Amell) and Martin Stein (Victor Garber). The DC Comics hero Damage has a body that functions as a biochemical fusion reactor, and then there’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s darling, Tony Stark, an engineer who Einsteins himself a miniature arc reactor (that glowing bit of chest jewelry) to power his Iron Man suit and keep him alive.The New York City of the M.C.U. is transformed by Stark technology, most prominently the arc reactor. Stark Tower appears in various Marvel movies and TV shows as the symbol of an alternate reality in which energy — and possibilities, superheroic or otherwise — are limitless.The same is true in many popular science-fiction universes, like “Star Wars,” where there are mentions of fusion generators and fusion reactors, and “Star Trek,” where the engineering systems of Federation starships use a “fusion reaction subsystem.”The workings of these fictional sciences are functional, plot-wise, but not always precise, clear or accurate. No matter how many times I watch my favorite sci-fi films and series, I still can’t tell a parsec from a cylinder of drugstore plutonium. And even now that fusion energy might be in our future, my relationship with it remains unchanged: Leave science to the scientists and MacGuffins to the writers.As long as we’re not breaking any scientific laws or introducing blatant contradictions, as a viewer I’m just here for the ride. Because it will be some time before we’re using fusion reactors to power our personal supersuits and fly off to boldly go where no sci-fi creator has gone before. Still, the science of today will lead us into a tomorrow where — great Scott! — there is no cap on the possibilities. More

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      ‘Back to the Future’ Musical to Open on Broadway Next Summer

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      The show, now in London, has a creative team that combines veterans of the film with some Broadway stalwarts. Performances will begin on June 30.Filmdom’s most famous DeLorean is getting ready to park itself on Broadway.A musical adaptation of the hit 1985 film “Back to the Future” is planning to open on Broadway next summer, its producers announced Friday. (Look at your calendar: Friday is Oct. 21, which is when devoted fans celebrate “Back to the Future Day.”)The musical, with a creative team that combines veterans of the film with some Broadway stalwarts, has already had a life in Britain.It had an ill-timed opening at the Manchester Opera House on March 11, 2020; that production closed a few days later because of the coronavirus pandemic. The show then transferred to London last fall, where it has had much better luck: It won this year’s Olivier Award for best new musical, and it is still running at the Adelphi Theater.The beloved science-fiction film, about a teenager who travels back in time in a DeLorean and disrupts the lives of his future parents, spawned sequels and a variety of spinoff ventures, and also contributed to the fame of its star, Michael J. Fox.“Back to the Future: The Musical” features a book by Bob Gale, the screenwriter who co-wrote and co-produced all three films, and songs by Alan Silvestri, who composed the film’s score, as well as Glen Ballard, a record producer and songwriter. The musical also includes pop songs featured in the film, including “The Power of Love.”The director is John Rando, who in 2002 won a Tony Award for “Urinetown.”Two members of the London cast have signed on to reprise their roles on Broadway: Roger Bart as the inventor Doc Brown, and Hugh Coles as George McFly, the protagonist’s father. Casting for the main role, of the teenager Marty McFly, has not yet been announced.The musical is scheduled to begin performances June 30 and to open Aug. 3 at the Winter Garden Theater, which is now home to a starry revival of “The Music Man” that is planning to close Jan. 1.The musical, with Colin Ingram as its lead producer, is being capitalized for $23.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Gale, who has been working on projects related to “Back to the Future” for more than four decades and is the de facto guardian of the franchise, said he is delighted to finally be working on Broadway, more than 15 years after Leslie Zemeckis, the wife of the film’s director Robert Zemeckis, saw “The Producers” and suggested “Back to the Future” could also be musicalized. “Broadway is the gold standard — musical theater was really invented there — and I’m delighted that we are finally going to get our shot on the Great White Way,” Gale said.Gale said the creative team has been making tweaks to the script and the set as it prepares for a Broadway run, incorporating lessons from the productions in England. They are small changes, he said, “but little things add up.”“One thing people appreciate about the movie: the more they watch, the more details they see,” he said. More

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      In ‘Back to The Future: The Musical,’ the Car Is the Star of the Show

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      A devoted fan of the 1985 movie helped the London production’s creative team recreate the iconic time-traveling DeLorean, down to the last detail.LONDON — During a recent performance of “Back to the Future: The Musical,” at the Adelphi Theater here, the audience couldn’t stop cheering.They cheered a preshow announcement asking everyone to turn off their cellphones, “since they weren’t invented in 1985,” the year the original movie was released. They cheered when Marty McFly, the show’s main character (played by Olly Dobson), skateboarded onstage in an orange body warmer. And they cheered, again, when he started singing, surrounded by break dancers and women in aerobics getup to complete the 1980s vibe.But the loudest applause came about 20 minutes in. After three loud bangs and a flash of light, a DeLorean car seemed to magically appear in the middle of the stage, lights bouncing off its steel bodywork and gull-wing doors.The audience went wild.Bob Gale, who co-wrote the original movie with Robert Zemeckis and wrote the musical’s book, said in a telephone interview that he always knew the car would be vital to the show’s success. “We knew if we pulled it off, it was going to make the audience go nuts,” he said.He added he had been working on making that happen for over 15 years. In 2005, Gale recalled, Robert Zemeckis took his wife, Leslie, to see “The Producers” on Broadway — another musical adaptation of a cult film. As the couple left the theater, she asked if he had ever considered doing a “Back to the Future” musical. Neither Gale nor Zemeckis had any professional theater experience, but decided to give it a shot — yet finding a producer who would take the project on their terms took the better part of a decade, Gale said.Getting the car right didn’t take as long, but Simon Marlow, the show’s production manager, said it was still a yearlong process. There were two challenges: to achieve the impression of movement and speed on the cramped stage of a theater, and to make sure every detail of the car onstage matched the DeLorean in the movie. “‘The ‘Back to the Future’ fan base is massive, and they’re very pedantic,” Marlow said.Steven Wickenden poses with his replica of the DeLorean time machine, near his home in Deal, southern England.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesOnly about 9,000 of the stainless-steel cars were made at a factory in Northern Ireland before the company went bankrupt in 1982 (John Z. DeLorean, the company’s founder, went on to be tried, and acquitted, for trying to sell cocaine to prop up his firm’s finances). So Marlow’s team contacted Steven Wickenden, a “Back to the Future” superfan who lives in the seaside town of Deal, England. He owns a drivable replica of the movie’s DeLorean that regularly appears at fan events.Wickenden, 49, said in a telephone interview that he had loved the DeLorean since watching the “Back to the Future” movies on videocassette as a teenager. It was “so cool and futuristic,” he said. In 1980s Deal, a local greengrocer and a dentist had owned DeLoreans, he added. “As far as I was concerned, we had two time machines driving around town,” he said.When he was 21, Wickenden traveled to Universal Studios in Florida to see one of the film’s original cars, he said, and eventually his wife bought him his own as a 40th birthday gift.Wickenden said he was surprised when the musical’s producers got in touch. He put the car onto a truck — because, under the terms of its “classic car” insurance, allowed mileage is limited — and took it to Souvenir Scenic Studios, a London prop maker, where “six or seven guys” used 3-D scanners and took thousands of photos, to capture its likeness, inside and out, to use as the basis for the onstage version. (They called him later to check some details, like the original brand of the tires, he said.)Once the model was made, the show’s team had to “pack it with engineering,” Marlow said, including a device that allows it to spin on its axis (so it looks like it’s doing stunt turns) and pneumatic equipment that lets it tilt in the air (when it crashes into a farmer’s barn). Projections also help create the illusions of movement.“We’re pushing the technology to the limit,” Marlow said. He added that around 20 people had worked on developing the production’s car and associated visual effects.Creating the impression of movement and speed on the cramped stage of a theater was one of the show’s main challenges, a producer said.Sean Ebsworth BarnesAlthough the DeLorean is one of the most memorable features of both the movie and the musical, Gale said it wasn’t part of the original concept. In the first script he wrote, in the 1980s, Marty McFly climbed into a fridge to travel through time; he swapped the fridge for a car when the movie was in preproduction. In addition to its futuristic look, the DeLorean was notorious at that the time because of its maker’s cocaine trial, Gale said, so it seemed an attention-grabbing choice.At the Adelphi Theater, all the hard work on the car seemed to pay off. Ten audience members — many dressed as “Back to the Future” characters or wearing DeLorean T-shirts — said that the car had been a highlight. “I was in tears the first time I saw the DeLorean come out,” said Stephen Sloane, 43. “It’s just got the ‘wow’ factor,” he added.Yet for all the team’s painstaking attention to detail, Roy Swansborough, 44, said he had noticed a few differences between the stage and movie cars. “The steering wheel is slightly different,” he said. But his wife, Beverley, said he was splitting hairs. “If you don’t look too carefully, you can go, ‘Oh, it’s like watching the film,” she said.The only moment of the show when the actors seemed to upstage the DeLorean came right at the end. The cast all came onstage for a final song and dance number, and each player took their moment to claim an ovation. But the car didn’t get one of its own. Despite all the technical wizardry, the one thing it can’t do is bow. More