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Empire magazine celebrates issue 250 and Back to the Future’s birthday

Posted in Back to the Future, movies, nostalgia, pop culture with tags anniversary, Back to the Future, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, Time Travelogues on July 1, 2010 by Paxton

Back in April, British magazine, Empire, celebrated it’s 250th issue. At the same time they also celebrated Back to the Future’s 25th Anniversary. For that month’s issue they had a Back to the Future themed cover on newsstands. Here is their 250th issue.

They also had an exclusive subscriber cover. It featured the more traditional Struzan artwork from the poster.

Inside was a nice interview with Bob Gale and Steven Spielberg about making the film. Not much new information was gained by the interview, they mainly treaded the same ground as all the other documentaries and interviews they’ve given over the years. They talked about the genesis of the idea for the movie (Gale wondering if he would have been friends with his dad in high school) and Spielberg talked a bit about the troubles in getting Michael J Fox into the Marty McFly role (Fox was the original choice but couldn’t get out of Family Ties obligations). Even the pictures were mostly retreads from the souvenir magazine and the Official Book of the Complete Trilogy.

It was a nice nostalgic article, though, that also featured “Viewing Guides” for all three movies with trivia items to watch for.

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Flipping through the Back to the Future Official Book of the Complete Trilogy

Posted in Back to the Future, books, movies, pop culture with tags Back to the Future, books, movies, pop culture, Time Travelogues on June 30, 2010 by Paxton

Back to the Future turns 25 years old this week. It was released on July 3, 1985. This week on the Cavalcade of Awesome we are celebrating this anniversary with several Back to the Future related articles. On Monday I discussed the Back to the Future Official Souvenir Magazine. Today we are looking at the Back to the Future Official Book of the Complete Trilogy.

The cover for the official book of the trilogy is above. It was published in 1990 to coincide with the release of Back to the Future Part III (which celebrated its 20th anniversary this past May). As far as I know, Part II and Part III did not receive an official souvenir magazine like the original Back to the Future. The closest we got would probably be the Back to the Future Fan Club newsletter which I discussed back in May. So, with the release of the final movie in the trilogy, Universal compiled this “souvenir book” and had it cover all three Back to the Future movies. The articles and pictures in this book are what you would normally find in a souvenir magazine, but here it’s on a nicer paper stock and bound in hardback.

The book is chock full of on-set pictures and details about the making of one of the greatest trilogies of all time. The book has a lot of the photos from the Back to the Future souvenir magazine but it also includes lots of pictures from the other movies. One of the cooler articles in the book is a two page spread on the Mattel Hoverboard (click the image to make it bigger and easier to read).

This page is a great resource for one of the trilogies most memorable, and controversial, props. The text describes how they filmed the famed hoverboard chase in downtown Hill Valley 2015. The chase was filmed in at least five different ways and no two consecutive takes were done the same way. Some takes were done with the actors suspended from wires with the board attached to their feet, other takes required the actor to stand on a board that was suspended from wires. Still other takes required a crane rig with a steering wheel to be piloted by a crew member while the actors were suspended from a harness. This last one was used to execute turns and spins while on the hoverboard. It’s amazing the amount of work that went into this one sequence. The page even makes a mention of the infamous Zemekis interview in which he stated that hoverboards were real and the only reason we didn’t have them was because parent groups were blocking their distribution. This, of course, resulted in kids all over the world to lose their damn minds over the idea that parents were actually keeping something as awesome as a hoverboard from becoming a reality. For years afterwards kids wondered, “Why? Why, if my parents loved me, would they not want me to be happy. Because clearly, I won’t be happy until I have a f’n HOVERBOARD!!!” Zemekis eventually had to crush all the kids’ hopes and dreams of a happy life by telling them that he was, in fact, lying and hoverboards are not real. And neither is the Easter Bunny. Or Santa. Now get a job.

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Looking at the Back to the Future Souvenir Magazine

Posted in 80s, Back to the Future, magazine, movies, pop culture, time machine, time travel with tags Back to the Future, movies, pop culture, time travel, Time Travelogues on June 28, 2010 by Paxton

This week is Back to the Future week on the Cavalcade of Awesome to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the original Back to the Future movie on July 3. Today we look at the Back to the Future Souvenir Magazine.

In the ’80s it was fairly common practice to release souvenir magazines and books with the release of big tent pole movies. These magazines would provide story details, lots of movie stills and some behind the scenes info to help promote the movie. Along with these magazines studios would release poster books as well as novelizations. Movies like Aliens, Rambo, Superman II, Star Trek IV, Gremlins and many others received both souvenir magazines and poster magazines. As an example, I myself have the 1989 Tim Burton Batman official souvenir magazine (see above) as well as the movie novelization. I also have the James Cameron directed Aliens movie magazine (to be used in a future article). Shawn on Branded in the 80s did a great writeup on the Goonies Official Souvenir Magazine. The Goonies magazine that Shawn talked about was a goldmine of deleted scenes and concepts as you can see here. The Aliens and Batman magazines I have don’t have as much behind the scenes or deleted scenes depicted in the many, many movie stills within.

Anyway, talking about movie souvenir magazines, today I want to take a look at the Back to the Future Souvenir Magazine.

Back to the Future magazine front

Released in the Summer of 1985, this was used to promote the movie’s release (as all souvenir magazines tend to do). I bought it off the rack at our local Western Supermarket because I loved the movie (which I literally saw 10 times in the theater). However, my copy was read so often it literally disintegrated in my hands after a few years. It took me a while, but I finally was able to replace my copy with a new, very near mint copy (including the poster!).

As you can see, the cover is nice and bright with a great image of the Drew Struzan poster art. It’s interesting to note that the logo for the movie on this magazine is missing the light blue outline that can be found on the finished theatrical poster. It makes for a visual difference and I like it.

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Back to the Future turns 25 this week

Posted in 80s, Back to the Future, movies, pop culture, time travel with tags anniversary, Back to the Future, movies, pop culture, time travel, Time Travelogues on June 28, 2010 by Paxton

The original Back to the Future opened in theaters on July 3, 1985. That’s right, people, my favorite (and hopefully yours) time travel trilogy turns 25 years old on Saturday. Crazy, right? Especially since the 20th anniversary of Back to the Future Part III happened just this past May and the 20th anniversary of Back to the Future Part II happened in November. Wow, I’m getting old. I saw all three of these movies in the theater.

In celebration, this will be Back to the Future week on the blog. In much the same way I did for the Part III celebration, I’ll have two or three articles pertaining to Back to the Future this week culminating in a review of the original movie on Saturday. So sit back, relax, and let me get this blog up to 88 mpg, where you’re going to see some serious sh*t.

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Back to the Future The Video Games

Posted in Back to the Future, movies, pop culture, video games with tags Back to the Future, Cavalcade Arcade, pop culture, Time Travelogues, video games on May 28, 2010 by Paxton

So, we come to the end of my celebration of Back to the Future Part III’s 20th anniversary this week. On Wednesday I looked back at the Back to the Future Fan Club which debuted late in 1989 and lasted throughout 1990. Now, let’s take a look at the video games that were spawned by these movies.

The first game we are looking at was released in 1990, the same year as Part III. It was The Back to the Future Pinball Game by Data East. Here is a 1990 trade magazine ad for the Back to the Future Pinball Game.

The graphics and images on this machine are awesome, but completely counterbalancing that awesome is the absolutely ridiculous looking models they used for Doc and Marty. W. T. F?! They look like Abbot and Costello (or Costello and Costello…because they are both “fat”). Is Doc wearing black, white and blue leggings?! I don’t remember Marty ever wearing a ball cap…oh, except in 2010 when he was disguised as his son, but that hat was rainbow colored. My eyes are watering just staring at this thing. Horribly awesome. That’s what this is.

Here are some pics of the actual, live machine without the ridiculous looking models.

(pics via Pinball Rebel)