Friday, September 24, 2010

"Back to the Future" documentary

Recently I'd spoken to a friend of mine I'd met through Rebecca about being interviewed for a "Back to the Future" documentary he was putting together. He told me there wouldn't be any money involved and it couldn't be officially released because of copyright issues. I of course was very excited to be a part of this, and soon after he realized that he had an editor right under his nose, me, who could also put this entire thing together.

Turns out he had an editor who was from Mexico and wasn't particularly a fan of "BTTF" doing some cutting, but ultimately that turned out to be a bad match. Now I'm on board and having a lot of fun working on something connected with my favorite movie of all time! So almost two weeks ago we visited John (the producer, director, and cameraman of the project) to discuss my involvement.

Oh and BTW, he just happens to own the house where George McFly falls out of the tree while peeping Lorraine putting on her bra and is almost hit by an oncoming car, pushed out of the way by his future son who ultimately changes history. That tree is part of his property as well an as we arrived we had a chance to take the whole area in. Not only is the house used as Lorraine's residence right across the street, but George's house is just two doors down to the right with Biff's house three doors down to the left. All of this on a quiet Pasadena street that today looks exactly like it did in the film twenty five years ago.

Heading into John's house, we were treated to the footage he'd shot right out in front of his house. He has his own edit bay in the basement surrounded by comfortable couches. As it happens many, many people from all over the world have visited that tree, making a pilgrimage to see locations used in "Back to the Future". What was crazy is that right after we watched footage of all of these fans talking about their love of the film while standing in front of that tree, we actually saw several people show up who were there with the same mission.

John, Rebecca and I had walked across the street to say hi to one of his neighbors. As we turned back to John's house, two guys got out of their car and quickly referenced their laptop, pulling out a camera. Looking up, they saw the "BTTF" shirt I was wearing and stopped in their tracks. Turned out they were from Germany and could speak english fairly well. However some of what we were saying to them was lost in translation a bit. By pure coincidence John's wife is from Germany and teaches German at the local college. John quickly went inside and when he returned with his wife saying hello in German, the two European fans lit right up.

They wanted to take a photo of me in my "BTTF" t-shirt, then proceeded to skoot right up the tree where George McFly sat in the movie. They were pretty cool, exchanging e-mail info with us to exchange photos and providing their website address, www.zidz.com. In fact, they run THE "Back to the Future" website in Germany and organized a screening of the trilogy...with actual 35mm prints!!! Great Scott!!

After hanging with them for some time we were suddenly approached by a young couple who were there for the very same reason! John explained that this was a regular happening which is why he had so many people on camera for his documentary. Over the course of the last week I've been cutting these interviews together at my place from a stringout of his selects, giving it the passionate love it deserves from my fanboy point of view. Tomorrow there's a huge block party on John's street and he wants to show this documentary on a giant blowup screen for the event. So I"ll be cramming to finish the project tonight, then heading over to John's in the morning to put the finishing touches on. There wasn't a lot of time to work on this due to my paying gig schedule, but I certainly have been putting in as much time as I can to make it as special as possible. Hoping to have some excerpts up here soon!

2 Comments:

At September 25, 2010 at 2:52 AM, Anonymous Allen Pinney said...

This is cool! And how serendipitous for you, the BTTF fanboy that you are! Can't wait to see the finished doc.

 
At September 27, 2010 at 3:54 PM, Blogger LA Filmcutter said...

Yes, I will definitely be getting a copy and can hopefully pass it along to you! Awesome premiere night details from this past weekend are upcoming!

 

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