When Blockbusters Were Blockbusters
Aah nostalgia... Its inherent comfort (I remember when things were better...) is also its biggest danger. Were things really ever that good?
Yesterday I went to a screening of Back to the Future at the Empire, Leicester Square. Amazingly I missed BTTF when it was first released at the cinema so it was an even bigger treat to finally get to see it on a big screen in what is arguably London's best cinema. (Take that Odeon One with your big box shape and incomprehensible leopard skin seats!) As an interesting aside, the original film was supposed to be a stand alone film, it was never conceived as the first part of a trilogy. The "to be continued" was added to prints after the film had been on release for a few weeks and the studio realised they had a huge hit on their hands which demanded sequels. The print I saw yesterday was one of the worst prints I have ever seen of any film. Scratched, dirty, dialogue rendered inaudible by the hideous scraping noise, it was the cinematic equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. Then at the end, as the newly converted (and surprisingly well animated) flying DeLorean flies at the screen, cutting to black to the strains of Huey Lewis, there was no "to be continued" and I realised just how old the print was.
Let's get back on track...
BTTF encompasses everything a blockbuster, or a film of that kind, should be. Fun, funny, exciting, characters you love or hate, imaginative, a great story well told. And of course, all this begins with the writing. The script, by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, is absolutely fantastic and is the main reason for the success of the film if you ask me. The first fifteen/twenty minutes sets up Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) as the "slacker" as the Principal, Mr Strickland, (James Tolkan) is so fond of calling him. Dreaming of success with his band The Pinheads, he is told by Huey himself that he's just "too darn loud" and so won't get to play in the school competition. With tremendous economy of writing we meet his family. His father George (Crispin Glover, arguably the film's best performance), weak, put-upon, bullied by his boss Biff (Thomas Wilson), never standing up for himself. His Mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson), an alcoholic, living in the past, disapproving of Marty's girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells) mainly because (as we will discover later) she sees in Jennifer the mistakes she made in her youth that have led her to where she is now. Marty's siblings haven't amounted to much either, their uncle Joey is in prison, this is the quintissential family of underachievers. Marty's main friend is "Doc" Emmet Brown (Christopher Lloyd), social misfit and eccentric inventor who invites him down to the local mall at 1.15 in the morning to be a witness to his latest experiment, the now legendary time travelling DeLorean. When the Libyan terrorists from whom Doc stole the plutonium (necessary to create the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity required to fuel flux capacitor... yeah you all know the drill!) turn up for revenge, they shoot Doc dead, and force Marty to escape in the DeLorean, accelerating to the required 88 miles per hour and accidentally going back in time t0 1955. So begins Marty's journey to get back to the future, make sure his parents fall in love and learn a thing or two about himself and his family along the way.
BTTF's script is a model of set up and pay off. The whole thing is founded on a great central idea, what if you could go back in time to see your parents when they were your age. But far from sitting back on this central conceit, the writers run with it, piling on idea after idea and obstacle after obstacle and making each pay off wonderfully. The time machine runs on plutonium, without it time travelling is impossible. In 1955 plutonium is a little difficult to locate and the only thing capable of generating the energy required is a bolt of lightening. We know that lightening struck the clock tower in a terrible storm in 1955 so now it's up to Doc to come up with a plan based on this information to send Marty back to his own time. But when he first arrived in 1955, Marty interfered with his parents meeting. Instead of Lorraine's father hitting George with the car (he falls out of a tree because, as Marty puts it, "He's a Peeping Tom") and Lorraine taking George in and falling in love with him, Marty is hit with the car and, in a Freudian nightmare, she falls in love with him instead. Marty now has to stave off his own Mother's advances and orchestrate his parents first kiss or else he will disappear from existence. Meanwhile Biff keeps turning up to throw a spanner in the works.
The humour and tension come from well drawn characters and situations. We know George is weak, so Marty hatches a plan whereby he will take Lorraine to the dance. In the car outside the school he will turn nasty, George will come along, punch him, save Lorraine, George and Lorraine will live happily ever after and Marty's life will be saved. Except that Biff turns up, his gang drags Marty away, he starts to tussle with Lorraine in the car, George turns up and now is facing Biff. After several tense moments of Biff having the upper hand as always, George has enough, sees red and punches Biff's lights out. This is a fantastic way of resolving George's self confidence issues, his torment at the hands of Biff, and of course making more believeable Lorraine's transition from being besotted with Marty to falling for George. But things are far from over. Biff's gang throw Marty in the boot of the car owned by the band who are playing at the dance. Trying to free him from the boot, the guitar player badly cuts his hand, meaning he can't play the guitar. If he can't play, there'll be no music, if there's no music there's no dance, if there's no dance Lorraine and George won't have their first kiss and Marty will still be erased. It's another superb pay off as Marty, unable to cut it with his own band in 1985, now takes to the stage to fill in for the guitar player and ensure George and Lorraine have their first kiss, which, after another tense sequence, they finally do. At the request of the band to do something that "really cooks", Marty leads the band in Johnny B Goode, one of the film's standout sequences as he goes increasingly mad on stage, performing a ludicrously over the top guitar solo.
And all this occurs before the finale which involves the DeLorean speeding towards a cable suspended from the clock tower across the street, with a large hook coming out of it that will harness the power of the lightening and send Marty back to the future, with Doc hanging from the clock tower trying to reconnect the cables that have come loose in the storm. I realise this has been a somewhat lengthy description of a plot most people feel they know backwards but it's worth investigating what makes the film so good as it's easy to take it for granted. The script keeps piling on the tension, piling on the plot and character points that need resolving, then resolving them in creative, satisfying ways. Every character wants something and is doing something to achieve it. It's a witty script, the dialogue (for the most part) crackles well between the characters, it's based on a solid idea and each character is individual. The film of course succeeds for other reasons. The cast is uniformly fantastic, Michael J Fox, Crispin Glover and Christopher Lloyd in particular stand out. Zemeckis' direction never lets the pace flag. Dean Cundey's photography and Alan Silvestri's score are also worthy of special mention. It isn't perfect by any means. What film is? The ageing makeup used on Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas Wilson for the sequences in 1985 is really ropey. Also the whole thing is painfully 80's at times. Marty's pre-orgasm like excitement as he sees the truck of his dreams, only relieved at the end when he actually has the truck smacks of 80s materialism. Only 2 years later Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko would sum this up in Wall Street by saying, "Greed is good." On a lighter note, check out Jennifer's leggings when she comes to see Marty as he is hugging his truck. They truly belong a long time ago in a decade far, far away.
But I keep coming back to that script. It's not easy to write something that entertaining, that imaginative, that technically proficient, and make it look that effortless. The pieces slide into place with an ease that suggests there could be no alternative. But that right there is testement to how good the script is. Because there are always alternatives. Always other routes and temptations and with every turn here, the writers make the smart choice. Never afraid to write themselves into difficult situations, they always come up with a great and believeable way out. One of my favourites is how Lorraine and George were supposed to have fallen in love in the first place. George McFly is a loser, permanently bullied and doing nothing for himself. Who is going to fall for him? Yet obviously the script demands that he married Lorraine. So, as I mentioned, the writers come up with the idea of sympathy. Her Dad hit him with the car and as Doc reasons later on, "It's the Florence Nightingale effect. When nurses fall in love with their patients." And we buy it. But it's important that we're not irritated by George, frustrated by his lack of courage. And indeed we are rooting for George, we feel sorry for him and wish he would stand up to Biff. This comes in part from Crispin Glover's charming performance. But it also comes from the script. After George's first confrontation with Biff, he acknowledges his lack of confidence to his son Marty, saying he knows what Marty will say and he's right to say it. He's self aware, he's not hiding behind a persona, and we at least can respect that. Later on, we discover George is creative, he has a talent for writing sci-fi, and again this earns some respect. There is always the feeling that Geroge could be someone if he just stepped out of himself a little. This is unfortunately hammered home by characters repeating, "If you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything" in one of the script's few clunky moments. Marty will learn the same message.
Every year I'm excited by the Summer blockbusters. As I said in an earlier post, I'm a sucker for the hype and I love the promise of adventure and seeing the impossible, these films hold. And every year without fail I am disappointed 90% of the time. Is this due to my tastes changing? In part it is. I'm not a child anymore. But I loved the Lord of the Rings films. Minority Report and War of the Worlds were great (flawed certainly, but ultimately for me, very good) Spiderman 2 had some great stuff in it. And more to the point I still get as much pleasure from the blockbusters of old as I always did. Indianna Jones, Terminators and of course, Back to the Future. If things really weren't that good all the time (which of course they weren't), at least Back to the Future demonstrated, and still demonstrates, one thing. You don't need a $200 million budget and 1500 special effects shots (BTTF has something like 20) to enthrall and captivate an audience. You need flair, imagination, a great story, and always, always, always to give the audience characters to root for.
Let that be a challenge for you. It is for me.
Yesterday I went to a screening of Back to the Future at the Empire, Leicester Square. Amazingly I missed BTTF when it was first released at the cinema so it was an even bigger treat to finally get to see it on a big screen in what is arguably London's best cinema. (Take that Odeon One with your big box shape and incomprehensible leopard skin seats!) As an interesting aside, the original film was supposed to be a stand alone film, it was never conceived as the first part of a trilogy. The "to be continued" was added to prints after the film had been on release for a few weeks and the studio realised they had a huge hit on their hands which demanded sequels. The print I saw yesterday was one of the worst prints I have ever seen of any film. Scratched, dirty, dialogue rendered inaudible by the hideous scraping noise, it was the cinematic equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. Then at the end, as the newly converted (and surprisingly well animated) flying DeLorean flies at the screen, cutting to black to the strains of Huey Lewis, there was no "to be continued" and I realised just how old the print was.
Let's get back on track...
BTTF encompasses everything a blockbuster, or a film of that kind, should be. Fun, funny, exciting, characters you love or hate, imaginative, a great story well told. And of course, all this begins with the writing. The script, by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, is absolutely fantastic and is the main reason for the success of the film if you ask me. The first fifteen/twenty minutes sets up Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) as the "slacker" as the Principal, Mr Strickland, (James Tolkan) is so fond of calling him. Dreaming of success with his band The Pinheads, he is told by Huey himself that he's just "too darn loud" and so won't get to play in the school competition. With tremendous economy of writing we meet his family. His father George (Crispin Glover, arguably the film's best performance), weak, put-upon, bullied by his boss Biff (Thomas Wilson), never standing up for himself. His Mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson), an alcoholic, living in the past, disapproving of Marty's girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells) mainly because (as we will discover later) she sees in Jennifer the mistakes she made in her youth that have led her to where she is now. Marty's siblings haven't amounted to much either, their uncle Joey is in prison, this is the quintissential family of underachievers. Marty's main friend is "Doc" Emmet Brown (Christopher Lloyd), social misfit and eccentric inventor who invites him down to the local mall at 1.15 in the morning to be a witness to his latest experiment, the now legendary time travelling DeLorean. When the Libyan terrorists from whom Doc stole the plutonium (necessary to create the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity required to fuel flux capacitor... yeah you all know the drill!) turn up for revenge, they shoot Doc dead, and force Marty to escape in the DeLorean, accelerating to the required 88 miles per hour and accidentally going back in time t0 1955. So begins Marty's journey to get back to the future, make sure his parents fall in love and learn a thing or two about himself and his family along the way.
BTTF's script is a model of set up and pay off. The whole thing is founded on a great central idea, what if you could go back in time to see your parents when they were your age. But far from sitting back on this central conceit, the writers run with it, piling on idea after idea and obstacle after obstacle and making each pay off wonderfully. The time machine runs on plutonium, without it time travelling is impossible. In 1955 plutonium is a little difficult to locate and the only thing capable of generating the energy required is a bolt of lightening. We know that lightening struck the clock tower in a terrible storm in 1955 so now it's up to Doc to come up with a plan based on this information to send Marty back to his own time. But when he first arrived in 1955, Marty interfered with his parents meeting. Instead of Lorraine's father hitting George with the car (he falls out of a tree because, as Marty puts it, "He's a Peeping Tom") and Lorraine taking George in and falling in love with him, Marty is hit with the car and, in a Freudian nightmare, she falls in love with him instead. Marty now has to stave off his own Mother's advances and orchestrate his parents first kiss or else he will disappear from existence. Meanwhile Biff keeps turning up to throw a spanner in the works.
The humour and tension come from well drawn characters and situations. We know George is weak, so Marty hatches a plan whereby he will take Lorraine to the dance. In the car outside the school he will turn nasty, George will come along, punch him, save Lorraine, George and Lorraine will live happily ever after and Marty's life will be saved. Except that Biff turns up, his gang drags Marty away, he starts to tussle with Lorraine in the car, George turns up and now is facing Biff. After several tense moments of Biff having the upper hand as always, George has enough, sees red and punches Biff's lights out. This is a fantastic way of resolving George's self confidence issues, his torment at the hands of Biff, and of course making more believeable Lorraine's transition from being besotted with Marty to falling for George. But things are far from over. Biff's gang throw Marty in the boot of the car owned by the band who are playing at the dance. Trying to free him from the boot, the guitar player badly cuts his hand, meaning he can't play the guitar. If he can't play, there'll be no music, if there's no music there's no dance, if there's no dance Lorraine and George won't have their first kiss and Marty will still be erased. It's another superb pay off as Marty, unable to cut it with his own band in 1985, now takes to the stage to fill in for the guitar player and ensure George and Lorraine have their first kiss, which, after another tense sequence, they finally do. At the request of the band to do something that "really cooks", Marty leads the band in Johnny B Goode, one of the film's standout sequences as he goes increasingly mad on stage, performing a ludicrously over the top guitar solo.
And all this occurs before the finale which involves the DeLorean speeding towards a cable suspended from the clock tower across the street, with a large hook coming out of it that will harness the power of the lightening and send Marty back to the future, with Doc hanging from the clock tower trying to reconnect the cables that have come loose in the storm. I realise this has been a somewhat lengthy description of a plot most people feel they know backwards but it's worth investigating what makes the film so good as it's easy to take it for granted. The script keeps piling on the tension, piling on the plot and character points that need resolving, then resolving them in creative, satisfying ways. Every character wants something and is doing something to achieve it. It's a witty script, the dialogue (for the most part) crackles well between the characters, it's based on a solid idea and each character is individual. The film of course succeeds for other reasons. The cast is uniformly fantastic, Michael J Fox, Crispin Glover and Christopher Lloyd in particular stand out. Zemeckis' direction never lets the pace flag. Dean Cundey's photography and Alan Silvestri's score are also worthy of special mention. It isn't perfect by any means. What film is? The ageing makeup used on Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas Wilson for the sequences in 1985 is really ropey. Also the whole thing is painfully 80's at times. Marty's pre-orgasm like excitement as he sees the truck of his dreams, only relieved at the end when he actually has the truck smacks of 80s materialism. Only 2 years later Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko would sum this up in Wall Street by saying, "Greed is good." On a lighter note, check out Jennifer's leggings when she comes to see Marty as he is hugging his truck. They truly belong a long time ago in a decade far, far away.
But I keep coming back to that script. It's not easy to write something that entertaining, that imaginative, that technically proficient, and make it look that effortless. The pieces slide into place with an ease that suggests there could be no alternative. But that right there is testement to how good the script is. Because there are always alternatives. Always other routes and temptations and with every turn here, the writers make the smart choice. Never afraid to write themselves into difficult situations, they always come up with a great and believeable way out. One of my favourites is how Lorraine and George were supposed to have fallen in love in the first place. George McFly is a loser, permanently bullied and doing nothing for himself. Who is going to fall for him? Yet obviously the script demands that he married Lorraine. So, as I mentioned, the writers come up with the idea of sympathy. Her Dad hit him with the car and as Doc reasons later on, "It's the Florence Nightingale effect. When nurses fall in love with their patients." And we buy it. But it's important that we're not irritated by George, frustrated by his lack of courage. And indeed we are rooting for George, we feel sorry for him and wish he would stand up to Biff. This comes in part from Crispin Glover's charming performance. But it also comes from the script. After George's first confrontation with Biff, he acknowledges his lack of confidence to his son Marty, saying he knows what Marty will say and he's right to say it. He's self aware, he's not hiding behind a persona, and we at least can respect that. Later on, we discover George is creative, he has a talent for writing sci-fi, and again this earns some respect. There is always the feeling that Geroge could be someone if he just stepped out of himself a little. This is unfortunately hammered home by characters repeating, "If you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything" in one of the script's few clunky moments. Marty will learn the same message.
Every year I'm excited by the Summer blockbusters. As I said in an earlier post, I'm a sucker for the hype and I love the promise of adventure and seeing the impossible, these films hold. And every year without fail I am disappointed 90% of the time. Is this due to my tastes changing? In part it is. I'm not a child anymore. But I loved the Lord of the Rings films. Minority Report and War of the Worlds were great (flawed certainly, but ultimately for me, very good) Spiderman 2 had some great stuff in it. And more to the point I still get as much pleasure from the blockbusters of old as I always did. Indianna Jones, Terminators and of course, Back to the Future. If things really weren't that good all the time (which of course they weren't), at least Back to the Future demonstrated, and still demonstrates, one thing. You don't need a $200 million budget and 1500 special effects shots (BTTF has something like 20) to enthrall and captivate an audience. You need flair, imagination, a great story, and always, always, always to give the audience characters to root for.
Let that be a challenge for you. It is for me.
posted by Garreth at 10:07 am
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