For BACK TO THE FUTURE Day, my 1985 interview with Robert Zemeckis

In the celebratory spirit of this unique moment called October 21, 2015, I thought I'd reach deep back into my past and unearth the interview session I had with Robert Zemeckis, director and co-writer of Back to the Future. Appearing originally in the July 23, 1985 edition of Georgia State University's newspaper The Signal, this talk was conducted in Atlanta, GA as part of Zemeckis' press tour in support of the film that would arguably emerge as his most widely-valued contribution to the popular art of movies:

If there's one phrase applicable to Robert Zemeckis, the director of Romancing The Stone and this summer's hit Back To The Future, that phrase would be "All-American.” Donned with large spectacles, his husky form and reddish-to-blonde mop of hair, the 34-year-old director certainly looks the part. And, as for his audible self, it's not so much his nasal West Coast accent that reveals his American roots; it's what he has to say about himself and his profession.

Zemeckis' very career--and the turns it's made since his days at the University of Southern California's film school more than a decade ago--is a prime example of what some people would consider the perfect Hollywood through-line. As a kid, he confesses to being struck by some typically American influences. "War movies...my favorite movie when I was 13 years old was The Great Escape," he says. "That was the greatest movie I had ever seen. And television. You know, I grew up in front of a television set. Then, any movie with monsters in it fascinated me. I remember being six years old and making my father take me to see The Blob. I had to see that, along with all those great William Castle movies--House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts. Those were my kid movies.”  

Taking a more serious tone, Zemeckis lists weightier factors that compelled him to become a filmmaker. As far as directors go, he highly praises the influential talents of contemporaries George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Coppola. But he admits to being beholden more to cinematic legends like Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, and Billy Wilder. "I think that Americans make movies better than anyone else," Zemeckis states. There exists, though, "a traumatic movie" that made him decide instantly upon his career. "I remember I was in high school and I saw Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde. Before then, I had always gone to movies and enjoyed them for the stuff that was in them. Then, all of the sudden, I was this high school sophomore and I realized what films were all about. That scene when Gene Hackman gets shot and dies right in front of us...it was like 'Wow, someone is manipulating my emotions here!' It was very powerful; I felt terrible. I remember walking out of that movie saying 'There's something more here than just stunts and action to films. I gotta check this out!'"
 

Despite the fact that many consider Zemeckis' career a model success story, he would be the first to say that his has been a less-than-smooth ride to the top. He left USC in 1973 having made a series of well-received student films, one of which, Field of Honor, gathered a multitude of film festival prizes. "It was a very, very black comedy, inspired by A Clockwork Orange, a movie that was out about the time I was in school. It was very dark and people were getting killed all over the place and it was very funny.” He laughs about it now. “My wife hates it. It has won all of these awards and my wife can't stand to look at it. She says, 'I can't believe you! You are sick!' But I made it when I was a restless young man, when I didn't hold anything sacred, when I thought anything could be lampooned."

The young Zemeckis had enough confidence in the film to show it to fellow USC graduate John Milius (Red Dawn, Conan the Barbarian, Apocalypse Now). Milius liked the film so much that he asked Zemeckis and his writing partner, another USC graduate named Bob Gale, to write a screenplay for him. That screenplay ended up being the first draft for Steven Spielberg's 1941. Zemeckis remains good-humored about that film's famous drubbing at the box office. When asked if, in the future, he would like to do either a monster movie or a war movie, he cheekily replied "Well, I did write 1941. That could be considered a monster movie and a war movie." He is also genuinely protective of the $40 million Spielberg film. "I like it a lot. I'm very proud of that movie. I think it will be rediscovered someday. I mean, how can I be less than proud? Here I am responsible for writing a screenplay which puts Toshiro Mifune, Christopher Lee, and Slim Pickens all in the same scene together. Gosh, I'm very proud of that.” He can joke about it now, but it's a sensitive point that obviously stings. “Actually, I think the end situation was that the budget was reviewed more than the movie was. It wasn't some crime against nature like some of the press made it out to be."

While Spielberg was directing 1941 ("Probably something he regrets," Zemeckis adds), Zemeckis cemented a deal with Universal for which he would write (again with Bob Gale) and direct I Wanna Hold Your Hand, a sweetly raucous comedy about a carload of 1964 Jersey kids willing to do absolutely anything to get in to see The Beatles' first American appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Zemeckis' new deal insisted that Steven Spielberg overlook the project as executive producer. The film got a majority of very good notices but a minority of viewers—an extremely sad outcome for such a brilliantly funny movie. Even so, Zemeckis leapt into another vehicle almost immediately: a pitch-black 1980 comedy entitled Used Cars, starring Kurt Russell as an underhanded used car salesman cleverly navigating a bitter rivalry with another neighboring car lot controlled by Jack Warden (who plays two radically different parts in the film). Vulgar and crude, but in a lovingly agreeable way, it elicited favorable responses from the trade (especially from New Yorker critic Pauline Kael), but it too was a box-office failure.

Just recently, however, both I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars have acquired cult status after becoming mainstays on pay cable channels like HBO. Zemeckis finds solace in that fact. "They're both movies I'm extremely proud of. I'm really happy that they're finally getting seen now. I just wish to hell all these people that love 'em now would've loved 'em when they came out," he says. But Zemeckis is careful not to be downtrodden about his financial failures; at the same time, he's also quite adamant about the success of his films. Making quieter, little-seen films is not his ideal place in the filmmaking universe. "It's okay as long as the film don't get lost," he says. "As a writer and director, you don't want to make movies that people don't see; there's no point in that. I was hoping when I made Used Cars that it was going to be a wildly successful film. I didn't want it to be a low-profile movie."

After Used Cars, Zemeckis was out of work for three years, in what was probably a welcome respite. It was during that time that he and Gale penned three screenplays, one of which became Back To The Future. After his box-office score with last year's extremely popular Romancing The Stone, Zemeckis felt it was time to rediscover one of those scripts and bring it into production. "There was a lot of pressure—the kind I'd never felt before--about what the next move was going to be," Zemeckis says. "It has to be the right one, so Back To The Future became the obvious choice because it was a story that I had wanted to do for so many years, something I had been very passionate about."' 

The film is a crowd-pleasing romp that follows Marty McFly, (played by Michael J. Fox of NBC's Family Ties), a teenage boy living in a broken-down home with his broken-down parents (played superbly by Lea Thompson and the wonderful Crispin Glover). An apprentice to local nut case Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd), Marty assists the doctor in the testing of a time machine built, amusingly, into a DeLorean. But, when trouble strikes in the form of determined Libyan terrorists, Marty is forced to escape the scene using the newly-built vehicle. A minute flashes by, and the kid finds himself roaming the promising rural roots of his hometown, circa 1955. There, he meets up with his teenaged parents: his father is a lanky, greasy and painfully shy nerd (playd perfectly by Crispin Glover), while his mother is a popular and extremely cute schoolgirl. This wouldn't be a problem, except that Marty's future mother (in another superb supporting performance by Lea Thompson) takes a sudden romantic interest in her future son, thereby threatening Marty's very existence. It's a remarkably clever movie, written to maximum effect by Zemeckis and Gale.

 
Science-fiction is not one of Zemeckis' pet genres, as one familiar with Back To The Future might think. In fact, he avidly dislikes it because of its penchant to overcome and even disguise the plotline with technology and hardware. "The problem I have with science fiction is that, in predicting the future and describing other worlds, you're completely at the mercy of the writer or the filmmaker. This is his vision of what an alien is going to look like. If I agree with it, that's fine; if I don't then what? I'm left nowhere. That's why I enjoyed doing Back To The Future so much. With this story, I was locked into the past and I couldn't tamper with it." Instead of centering in on its sci-fi elements, he prefers to focus on the movie's more personable points. "What we set out to do was to make a human, fun, comedic, dramatic story and the idea of time travel was going to be used just a devise to tell that story. I think that's what helps to separate it from other time travel movies--it's not about time travel, it's about this young man's dilemma."

Zemeckis has not been fazed a bit by the press's view of his partnership with Spielberg. He says he would feel "uneasy," though, if people started thinking that Spielberg directed the film (as they have in the case of Tobe Hooper and 1982's Poltergeist). He says his collaboration with Spielberg "has been very comfortable and supportive. It's a small price to pay to be asked if I'm concerned about living in the shadow of Steven Spielberg—it's a small price to pay for what I ultimately got for that, which was the ability to make Back To The Future the best it possibly could be under the best possible conditions.” 

The filmmaker is, however, set on doing a project without Spielberg's assistance. "I think it'll be healthy for both of us." he says. He has plans to adapt the old radio program The Shadow for the screen. Even so, he knows he's at a major crossroads. "I'm really in a quandary as to where I'm at in this point in my career. That's why I want to take some time off. I don't want to get serious about making a movie for a while. All I've been doing is working and I haven't had the chance to live a little life. You know, I just want to go home and wash my car. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the idea of cleaning my garage? I mean, I'm really looking forward to those things."

When my interview with Robert Zemeckis was finally over, I hung back and asked if, in his days at USC, he ever dreamed he'd be associated with the elite of filmmaking so early in his career. He, of course, gave a true-blue American reply: "Did I dream it? Yeah, every day!"

Film #73: Used Cars

Years before his Forrest Gump became the cultural touchstone that it is, director Robert Zemeckis was assaulting movie audiences with a recognizable, hard-edged yet invariably slapstick form of comedy. His first film, I Wanna Hold Your Hand (soon to be reviewed here on filmicability) frantically followed a bunch of New Jersey Beatles lovers and haters as they travel to New York to see the Fab Four on Ed Sullivan's stage. Zemeckis' second film, 1980's Used Cars upped the ante considerably but, like I Wanna Hold Your Hand, ended up hardly making a dent at the box office. Now it's a cult classic.

A plaid-jacketed Kurt Russell, in his first substantial adult role (after playing the lead in a few goofy Disney films like Now You See Him, Now You Don't and The World's Strongest Athlete), stars as Rudy Russo, the unctuous, unscrupulous salesmen with political ambitions who works at an L.A. used car lot owned by Roy Fuchs (Jack Warden). Roy's twin brother Luke (Warden again) owns the flashier lot across the street and, eager to expand, hungers for Roy's lot as well. When he tries to put Roy out of commission, Rudy and his crew use their most conniving moves to keep their lot from falling into Luke's greedy hands.

The rapid-fire laughs have a decidedly dark flavor to them in this, one of late New Yorker film writer Pauline Kael's favorite movies of 1980. Written with ongoing Zemeckis collaborator Bob Gale (both of whom would get Oscar nominations in 1985 for their Back to the Future script), Used Cars has some of the most cogent things to say about capitalism running rampant, but you hardly notice that subtext cuz yer laughin' so hard. Gerrit Graham is largely responsible for this. As Jeff, the superstitious salesman with a cool beagle dog named Toby (hilarious animal performance!!!) and a thing again red cars, Graham stands out as the film's MVP. His onscreen energy is tremendous, and should have netted him an Oscar nomination, if the Oscars weren't so inexplicably down on comedy. Frank McRae is also uncommonly funny as Jim, the lot's foul-mouthed mechanic (whose spirited reaction to being peed on by Toby is a highlight of Used Cars). Jack Warden is great in his demanding double role, and the film even has a smart female presence in Deborah Harmon.
Used Cars also has an amazing collection of familiar late 70s/early 80s faces in supporting roles. Look for: Al Lewis (Grandpa Munster, unmistakable as the judge in the picture), SCTV star Joe Flaherty (in an unfortunately humorless role as Luke's lawyer), Happy Days' Lenny and Squiggy themselves Michael McKean and David L. Lander as master technicians Freddie and Eddie, Mark McClure (from Superman and Back to the Future), the late Wendy Jo Sperber (from I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Back to the Future, and TV's Bosom Buddies), Scorsese and Corman regular Harry Northup, Like Water for Chocolate actor-turned-director Alphonso Arau, and character actors Woodrow Parfrey, Dub Taylor, and Dick Miller too!!!
It has some incredibly amazing spoof car commercials in it (including one I previewed on my post for Dad, Can I Borrow The Car, another Kurt Russell-related car movie that would go well as a short to see before Used Cars; see it here). That bit there is one of the greatest comedy sequences ever filmed. It not only has surprises for us, it has surprises that really register on the faces of its lead characters!! Explosive and incredible. But there are also great chase scenes (including a 200-car one), car jokes (and I hate cars), sex jokes, money jokes, bad luck jokes, and dog jokes. If "Wow, I might have to see this" is all you can say after hearing that, hear this: Used Cars is definitely one of the top 25 comedies ever made. Trust me: Dr. Dean says have a few beers, get the DVD spinning, and you'll be laughing your ass off posthaste. And you won't feel bad in the morning.

Film #41: Dad, Can I Borrow The Car?

When I was about nine years old, I tuned in to The Wonderful World of Disney one night to watch what I thought would be your typical Disney fare--cartoons, or a live-action adventure with li'l prairie dogs, or even a faboo tour of Disneyworld (an episode kids always wanted to see).

Instead, what I got was something that blew my mind, and I hope it blows yours. But first...

I was never a big fan of cars. Anyone who knows me also knows that automobiles and I have never found common ground. Other kids were drawing Torinos and Corvettes during geography lectures--me, I was drawing spaceships and movie logos. I have always found sedans to be burdensome, dangerous objects--certainly something I didn't want to control myself. A 3000-lb burnin' hunk of metal powered by fermented dinosaur juices? No way. Not for me, you can have my share. Believe me, the roads are safer without me on 'em. Besides, I think cars make people mean as hell and start them down the road thinking of other cars as mere obstacles to be vanquished rather than potentially deadly objects being controlled by other stressed-out people. It's all a big video game to most drivers. And certainly everyone's getting crabbier behind the wheel now that gas is four bucks a gallon some places. Geez, what're guys gonna be like when it hits $20 a gallon?! It'll be Mad Max all over again.

When I got to be a teen and then a young adult, living in Atlanta (the East Coast car capital of the USA) was very difficult for a guy who was not only unwilling to drive, but actually would get physically ill behind the wheel of a car. Lemme tell ya, it made dating nearly impossible, unless the girl was willing to do the carting-around, which is still seen (unfairly, I think) as a sign of male weakness (and what girl wants that?)

It became a big issue for me. Why's everybody so car-crazy? Why is life like this? And I started to think and think about it, and I came to the only conclusion, really: that it's all about sex. This love affair we have with cars is because they make sex and access to it much easier, even inevitable. Yes, ya got those people who'll tell you it's about freedom. And it is. Freedom to get sex. Freedom to make money to get sex. Freedom to pick up girls who want to have sex. That's what cars are all about. Chicks love cars. They love feeling safe and pampered, going fast and having the world at their feet. It turns 'em on. And most guys like turned-on girls (including me!)

"But it's not just that! I love to drive! It's fuuuuun!" Look, Clarence, driving ain't supposed to be fun. You want fun, go get on a rollercoaster, laughing boy. That's fun. Driving's supposed to get you somewhere you wanna go and when you get there, then you have your fun. It's this "fun" idea that causes horrible, bone-crushing, gore-gushing accidents. And stop talking on your cell phone, for Christ's sake, you ignoramus!!! Goddammit, fuckstick, turn your goddamn radio down so you can hear me honkin' my goddamn horn at ya! Hey, Mac! See this?! See this?! Yeah! You know what you can do with that finger! Yep! You got it! Right up there, too--sun ain't shinin' down there!!! WHAT?! WHAT?! I'LL KIIIILLLL YOU!!! Ahh, same to ya, jerk-off! Jesus, God, just get me home...what time is it?!


I mean, I...I...sigh...I could go on about my dislike of cars, touching on their negative environmental, political, and cultural aspects, blah blah blah. But I won't...Orson will do it for me. The movie quote below is my favorite exchange from Mr. Welles' 1942 masterpiece The Magnificent Ambersons. Joseph Cotton plays an early inventor of cars and devoted suitor to Isabel Minafer, George Minafer's mother (played by Dolores Costello). George (the young Tim Holt) hates Eugene not only because he's stealing his mother away from him, but because he sees Eugene as an agent of change from the old ways to the new. With Uncle Jack Minifer (Ray Collins) at the table, patriarch Maj. Anderson (Richard Bennett) starts things off:

Maj. Amberson: So your devilish machines are going to ruin all your old friends, eh Gene? Do you really think they're going to change the face of the land?

Eugene: They're already doing it major and it can't be stopped. Automobiles...

[cut off by George] George: Automobiles are a useless nuisance.

Jack: What did you say, George?

George: I said automobiles are a useless nuisance. Never amount to anything but a nuisance and they had no business to be invented.

Jack: Of course, you forget that Mr. Morgan makes them, also did his share in inventing them. If you weren't so thoughtless, he might think you were rather offensive.

Eugene: I'm not sure George is wrong about automobiles. With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization. May be that they won't add to the beauty of the world or the life of the men's souls, I'm not sure. But automobiles have come and almost all outwards things will be different because of what they bring. They're going to alter war and they're going to alter peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles. And it may be that George is right. May be that in ten to twenty years from now that if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine but agree with George - that automobiles had no business to be invented.

Brilliant talk there.

Anyway, this is all leading up to something much lighter. Back to Disney-time. So I'm sitting there, 1974 or so, Sunday night, and this INSANE thing pops up on screen as tonight's feature. I'll talk about it more later, after we watch it. So here it is, in three parts (it's 22 minutes long), via the wonderful You Tube (God, I love that site). From 1970 and narrated by a young Kurt Russell, get ready for: Dad, Can I Borrow The Car?



Gee, is there anything better than Dad, Can I Borrow the Car? Noooo. By far, the Disney company's coolest moment, it was directed by Ward Kimball, one of the original "Nine Old Men" who advised the Disney machine back in the day. He was an animator in the Diz biz since 1934, was the one who designed Jiminy Cricket from Pinnochio and redesigned Mickey Mouse from the '20s black-and-white little guy to basically the version of the character we know today. He'd won an Oscar the year before for another Disney short It's Tough to Be a Bird. So he was 56 years old when he produced Dad, Can I Borrow the Car? And you thought this was directed by some refugee from The Monkees or something. Nope. Kimball, pictured above, really let loose a bunch of old-guy hipness when he made this thing. That pic makes him look like a pretty funny character--I think that monster claw was even used in the movie!

The screams of laughter Dad provokes from my guttiwuts are endless--the wild-ass beginning with the "racing stripes" (if I were a rich man, I'd have exactly the car in this credits sequence, painted just like that buggy ends up); that bitchin' opening montage with that melange of oddball hotrods like a guy driving a burning cigar, a lemon on wheels, and a car hauling Mt. Rushmore away; that incredible, long B&W auto dealership commercial with all that gobbeldygook about "wrap-around hoods" and "pre-greased upholstry" (who IS that astounding actor with the fake bald wig anyway--that's the best commercial of all time!); those talking vehicles begging to be purchased (I love the old one that coughs and says "Get me soon, cause I'm goin' fast"...if only Cars could have been this cool); and, hey, was that a young, long-haired Jamie Lee Curtis as the girl who thinks he's trying to cheat off her test at the DMV? (The IMDB says Timothy Hutton's in this, too, but I couldn't spot him, could you? And, yeah, that was the Maytag repairman, Jessie White, a veteran of many a movie and TV show, doing some of the voices).

And, of course, there's all the references to sex and getting laid which, as I said, is what cars are all about. That scene with he and his friends taking the convertible under the car wash has to be one of the most suggestive things in a Disney film up to that period. I swear, some of the shots looked like soft porn! And with young Johnny watching over to the side, too! Gracious! Weird ending to this thing, too, with that kissing montage!

The killer graphic design was by John Emerson and Ed Garbert, with the stunning editing--the thing I think that first caught my young "WHAT IS THIS" eyes--is by Lloyd Richardson. And, naturally, there's Kurt Russell's funny, natural vocal performance, though I don't understand why they just didn't go on and use him as the lead actor; woulda made the movie that much better. I want to note that, though I saw this on TV, Dad, Can I Borrow the Car? did get a movie theater release, probably as a short in front of Superdad or The Cat From Outer Space or something. How do I know this? Because I have a movie poster for it!! Yayyyy! Coolest thing ever. I almost cried when I found it in this old warehouse I was helping clean up one time!! Score!!!