- 1 day ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Science fiction storytelling exists from the beginning of filmmaking and persists through
00:09two centuries. In the early 80s there was this wonderful explosion of highly imaginative,
00:15highly ambitious science fiction. Suddenly all sorts of stories that were prohibitive
00:20that because technologically they weren't possible and were suddenly possible now.
00:24When I think of science fiction I think of stories in any medium that tell us what we could be
00:33and warn us about where we're going. Escaping when you're a little kid or a teenager into the world
00:42of science fiction is a great way to start to come to terms with your own personality, who you are,
00:48where you fit in the world and they become really important benchmarks in how you remember your youth.
00:56For the next decade or so across the 80s that amalgamation of science fiction and fantasy
01:03seemed to be the driving force. Science fiction became direct, straightforward, provocative, clear.
01:11Any idea that anybody had, if you set it on another planet or set it in the future or set it in dystopia,
01:20you could get the money to do it. Art shows us what can be and what ought to be.
01:26That is what science fiction at its best is all about, is showing us the world of tomorrow
01:35and how human life can be better in the future than it is right now. That's the magic of sci-fi man.
01:56Sci-fi imitates real life, real life imitates sci-fi.
02:00We create art through our movies and our stories that is of our imagination,
02:10and then someone somewhere goes, hey, hey, what if I could do that?
02:17People in the fields of medicine and technology and science,
02:21it's very exciting to know that a lot of these people were inspired. You're watching Star Trek.
02:25Klingon mummification's lift. What were the principal historical events on the planet Earth in year 1987?
02:33I was really excited by the space shuttle program as a kid because it was putting people back in space.
02:38The first space shuttle. That had it happened in my lifetime to that point.
02:44The space shuttle was amazing because of what promise it held, which was we're going to be able to do
02:50this much more often, much more cheaply. The fact that they named the very first space shuttle
02:56Enterprise was really cool. It made me feel seen because I was a Star Trek nerd and I was like,
03:01wow, they named real science after a TV show that I liked. That's really cool.
03:07The vehicle came around the corner of the building and in tow was the shuttlecraft.
03:13And across the nose of the shuttlecraft were the words, the Enterprise. It knocked me out.
03:22That perspective just totally changed. And I said, we are genuinely, in some small way, a part of history.
03:32Suddenly, the highest form of technology in the space program became something extremely familiar
03:38to everyday people. We're not just in the audience anymore. Now we can become a part of the adventure
03:44when it's a space shuttle. You start to see these films like Life Force and Hangar 18 and Airplane 2,
03:50a space camp that have at the center of them the space shuttle. Go for a main engine test.
03:59It was this great bridge between our reality and the fantastic imagined world of the future.
04:08It was almost to the point where soon we're going to be able to get a ticket, you know, and take a flight around the earth.
04:22I was pretty close with Steven Spielberg and we would both talk about wanting to go and wanted
04:26to go because they were talking about taking an artist, taking a filmmaker, taking a poet.
04:31I'd actually like to go up and be behind the camera photographing up there.
04:38When Star Wars came out, my dad was saying, I think we're going to get a call from Paramount
04:47and they're going to want us back. Wait and see.
04:49To dad, the motion picture was a disappointing film on a number of levels.
05:00Star Trek is not as visionary as 2001. It's not as exuberant as Star Wars.
05:04Most of the industry thought that after the poor reception of the first Star Trek film,
05:09that was going to be pretty much the end of the franchise.
05:12It wasn't until Nick Meyer showed up that things got back on track.
05:21Star Trek II. The Wrath of Khan.
05:25A lot of my choices were kind of in reaction to Star Trek, the motion picture.
05:33I wanted things to be more confined, more submarine-like.
05:37Torpitos ready, sir.
05:42Star Trek II was classic storytelling.
05:44It is very cool in space.
05:49You had a wonderful actor, Ricardo Montalban, Khan.
05:57Why?
05:58Yes, he was a little bit over the top, but it called for that.
06:04And, you know, Bill is no slouch when it comes to, you know, emoting.
06:10They were a great combination, the unstoppable force and the immovable object.
06:15They're locking phasers. Ray shields.
06:18Fire!
06:20And that's what you want. You want that kind of friction.
06:22Fire.
06:27Fire!
06:28They were always at each other's throats.
06:32It was terrific character building and terrific storytelling.
06:35I didn't think we could do better.
06:37And who do we have here?
06:39Midshipman first class, Peter Preston, engineer's mate.
06:42Sir!
06:42It was the most tension-thick set I'd ever been on.
06:47It was a big film because of the risk Paramount was taking even doing the second film,
06:53given how the first one was received.
06:55As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy than to create.
07:00Bill was always acting like Kurt.
07:03He paraded around the set, seemed pompous all the time.
07:06And I just realized that he was just trying to stay in character.
07:09And I think Leonard was doing very much the same thing.
07:11Any chance to go aboard the Enterprise?
07:15George Takei was my favorite.
07:18Every single time George was finished shooting, the door would burst open.
07:22All of a sudden we would hear,
07:24Sulu got his close-up today.
07:26And posture like a superhero.
07:28Sulu looked pensively to the right today.
07:31Creating some levity on the set, which was desperately, desperately, desperately needed.
07:37And he'd warp speed in three minutes, or we're all dead.
07:40Finding out that Spock actually does die was overwhelming.
07:45I thought, they can't do this. They can't do this.
07:48But before the film came out, everybody knew that Spock was going to die.
07:53And we started getting threats about, if Spock dies, you die.
07:58Like, this is all before the internet.
08:00So how people heard about this stuff, I have no idea.
08:02The idea of this demise of Spock, which Dad just thought was an interesting idea dramatically,
08:08wasn't really even thinking about the repercussions.
08:10They thought that maybe this is going to be the last film.
08:12They're going to do two films and then be done with the franchise.
08:15Live long and prosper.
08:22He had much misgivings after that and regret.
08:28Oh, by the end, it was like, whoa, is Spock really going to be dead?
08:34And I said, hell yeah, he's got to be dead.
08:37Otherwise, we've taken advantage of thousands of people for whom this is really important stuff.
08:42And we're going to say at the end, oh, folks, it was just a dry hustle.
08:46That's terrible.
08:48And I fought it tooth and nail, that coffin on the planet.
08:53And I think I was probably wrong.
08:56Death was never really death.
08:58It was always one eye on the box office and the next incarnation of it.
09:03I always kind of looked down my nose at that.
09:07There's just plenty of room.
09:10They asked me if I wanted to do Star Trek III.
09:12And I said, what is that going to be about?
09:15And they said, well, it's about, you know, Spock comes back.
09:17I go, resurrection.
09:21I don't think I know how to do resurrection.
09:24So I didn't do it.
09:24Star Trek III, a search for Spock.
09:36The adventure continues.
09:39I believe that the major theme that runs through Star Trek III is one of family and sacrifice.
09:44Absent friends.
09:45If you count Spock, these seven people have been through so much together and they've faced down
09:54death together.
09:56We are now at a point where a decision that has to be made is going to cost them dearly.
10:01If there's even a chance that Spock has an eternal soul, then it's my responsibility.
10:06It's yours.
10:08Kirk in particular has to make tremendous sacrifices during this film.
10:14My god bones, what have I done?
10:17Christopher Lloyd as the Klingon commander is an interesting casting choice.
10:22You will tell me the secret of the Genesis torpedo.
10:28He just sinks himself right into that role.
10:29The cross of stars!
10:32He choose scenery just as well as William Shatner does.
10:34You fool, look around you.
10:36The planet's destroying itself.
10:38Yes, exhilarating, isn't it?
10:40You realize just how versatile an actor he was to go from Reverend Jim to this.
10:44And then, you know, a year later, he's in Back to the Future.
10:49Leonard, he took Spock to heart.
10:52I mean, really, really took him to heart.
10:54As soon as he passed that gate with the word paramount and scroll on top of it,
11:01he became Mr. Spock.
11:03Spock brought a lot of opportunity to Leonard Nimoy.
11:05There's no doubt about it.
11:07But does he need Spock? No.
11:11When Star Trek III came along, I think he was more than willing to walk away
11:15unless he had something more challenging to do, which was direct.
11:18What I recall is Michael Eisner trying to talk Leonard out of directing himself,
11:27making his directing debut.
11:29Leonard's calling me up.
11:30I said, are you prepared to let the ship sail without you?
11:35And he said, absolutely.
11:37I said, then sit tight.
11:38You're going to direct the movie.
11:39If he says he's not going to be in the movie unless he gets to direct it,
11:42he'll get to direct it.
11:44Period.
11:44The end.
11:45Spock is the linchpin of it.
11:47He would say to me repeatedly,
11:49the studio really only understands a two by four to the head.
11:52What they understand is leverage.
11:54And he had leverage.
11:55They realized that their box office is going to be bigger if Spock appears in the film.
11:58They kept the thumbscrews on him.
12:00Jeff Katzenberg looked over his shoulder every day
12:03to make sure he was on time and on budget.
12:06The fact is, he had no experience other than directing some episodes of TV,
12:11including TJ Hooker.
12:12You know, other than that, he was, you know, a neophyte.
12:17I didn't know what we were in for.
12:19Leonard directed by omission.
12:23If he didn't say anything, it was fine.
12:26When I got that through my head, I felt less neglected.
12:31Good.
12:31More, more, and it's dying, dying.
12:35And I had confidence in him.
12:37I felt that he knew what he was doing.
12:39He had taste.
12:40His story sense was quite good.
12:44He's a guy who prepped things to death.
12:46You try to deal with as many variables as possible during the pre-production process so that
12:50when you're in production, things hopefully run smoothly.
12:53So much so that you can have these happy accidents.
12:57Filmmaking is really a lot of it is just dealing with problems all day long.
13:00It's story.
13:01It's story.
13:03It's story.
13:04It's always story.
13:05First and foremost.
13:06You saved the ship.
13:09You saved us all.
13:10Don't you remember?
13:11Star Trek IV The Voyage Home
13:23I know a good idea when I see one.
13:25I knew that Star Trek IV was going to be an enormous success.
13:30I read it and I said, this story has it all.
13:32Do not approach Earth.
13:34The transmissions of an orbiting probe are causing critical damage to this planet.
13:40Leonard Nimoy had proven with Star Trek III that he was a capable director.
13:43So when it came time to direct Star Trek IV, he was then in a position to negotiate,
13:48I want to do something different.
13:49We're going to attempt time travel.
13:52We're going to lighten things up.
13:53We're going to have more fun.
13:54Can you direct me to the naval base in Alameda?
13:59It's where they keep the nuclear vessels.
14:01Yeah, I got to write comedy.
14:02There was a previous draft of a story that Harve and Leonard had concocted together.
14:09I was told that it had a big role for Eddie Murphy.
14:13My friend Dawn Steele, who was head of production at the time, she said,
14:17we have a problem.
14:18We're going into production in a month.
14:21We're not going to use the script.
14:22We have to start over.
14:24So I walked across the lot to their office and they told me the story about the whales.
14:30As suspected, the probe's transmissions are the songs sung by whales.
14:35And Harve said, I'll write the parts in outer space and you write the parts on Earth,
14:40in San Francisco.
14:41And I said, San Francisco, that's the same movie as Time After Time.
14:45Can we go someplace else?
14:47Why can't we go to Paris?
14:49And they said, well, because the whales wouldn't fit in the Seine or some, you know.
14:53And I took stuff that I'd cut out of time after time and threw it into this movie.
14:59You know, waste not, want not, never throw anything away.
15:07Very complicated to be in front of the camera and behind the camera.
15:10Star Trek IV is something that he worked on really heavily before they ever shot a foot of film.
15:15He really knew what he was doing.
15:16He had a clear vision going in.
15:18And I think that's what really saved him.
15:20I'll give you one hundred dollars.
15:24Is that a lot?
15:25Star Trek IV ends up becoming a very accessible film, even for non-Star Trek fans.
15:32Watch where you're going, you dumbass!
15:35I'm a double dumbass on you!
15:36Every laugh is earned.
15:38Every laugh is honest.
15:39Everybody remember where we parked.
15:42I thought the scene between Bill and Leonard in the car was just charming.
15:49It was just delightful.
15:50You guys like Italian?
15:53No.
15:53No.
15:54Yes.
15:55No.
15:55Yes.
15:57I love Italian.
15:58At the end of the movie, we took Whale Song and processed it with some electronic stuff.
16:06There's no dialogue.
16:07You have to tell the audience that this is a communication between Whale and this weird sci-fi
16:14object.
16:14There's sort of two distinct sounds of the probe.
16:17There's the danger mode.
16:18I went in with my best designs.
16:21Leonard, he said, they don't work.
16:23It should sound like this.
16:24And he went, wub, wub, wub, wub, wub.
16:26And this deep, he's got this big, deep voice.
16:29And I said, great, we're recording Leonard.
16:31And he called my bluff.
16:34And Leonard bellied up to the microphone just like this and went, wub, wub, wub, wub, wub,
16:38just like that.
16:39And that's what's in the movie.
16:45But the ultimate villain, which is in Star Trek IV, is man.
16:51Since the dawn of time, men have harvested whales for a variety of purposes,
16:55most of which can be achieved synthetically at this point.
16:58The studio wanted to know what the probe was asking or saying.
17:05And I said, that's dumb.
17:06You could never live up to the mystery.
17:09I said, we're not doing that.
17:11And I remember Dawn Steele saying, you're wrong, Nicky Meyer.
17:14And I said, well, that's just how the cookie is going to crumble.
17:19Star Trek II, III, and IV is my absolute favorite Star Trek trilogy.
17:24It tells a really wonderful story.
17:26We've come home.
17:31No one was doing anything like that at that time.
17:34So to take these three movies and really make them a cohesive trilogy is really super beautiful.
17:39Hello, computer.
17:42Just use the keyboard.
17:43Today is a day for mourning and remembering.
17:47They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths.
17:50They served all of us.
17:52They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.
17:58The dedication of Star Trek IV to the crew of the Challenger was a way of acknowledging
18:05that there is a question and a price to be paid for going boldly where people haven't gone before.
18:15When the lights dimmed in the theater and the dedication came on, you could hear a pin drop
18:26for a moment and then applause.
18:29Everyone just assumed that space travel was so safe, you know.
18:35Three, two, one, and lift off.
18:39I was shooting a TV movie.
18:42We all gathered around a television screen to watch this spectacular event
18:46because we also knew that there were civilians aboard, so it made it extra special.
18:51I was in New York editing a video production.
18:56We were interrupted.
18:57Someone came in and said,
19:00the Challenger has just exploded.
19:02Four percent.
19:03Challenger, go with throttle up.
19:05Challenger, go with throttle up.
19:11And it just like stuck a knife in my heart.
19:14Twenty-nine hundred feet per second, altitude nine nautical miles,
19:16downrange distance seven nautical miles.
19:18We were all standing there just in shell shock.
19:22It was something that was unthinkable.
19:26Absolutely devastating.
19:27In every popular way, the first teacher in the Teachers in Space program was killed.
19:32One of the first African-American astronauts was killed on the Challenger explosion.
19:38That shot of Christy McAuliffe's parents on the beach looking up at that twisted contrail,
19:43knowing something's wrong and not knowing quite what it was,
19:46that image is seared into the minds of a lot of people who saw that.
19:52I think it was our first taste of the genuine danger of it.
20:00I just remember being so afraid that this was going to be the end of human spaceflight.
20:06They wouldn't have sent a teacher up, for God's sakes, you know, if they knew that there was some,
20:12any chance at all, of it being tragic.
20:21We just wanted to honor the memories and the talents and the heroism of those original astronauts.
20:28It was not only the people who were lost, who were killed, but it was the program itself had been damaged.
20:38The human race's forward movement toward a future in space beyond this planet,
20:46something I had cheered for since the time I was a kid.
20:51Science fiction fans, they're much more focused on the possibilities than the dangers,
20:58that every mission is life and death.
21:03And the Challenger disaster was as if someone dear to me in my life had died.
21:09I said, we've got to come back from this. It will not be easy, but we've got to come back,
21:16and we've got to keep going forward. And thank goodness, that's what we did.
21:32The adventure begins in your own backyard.
21:35It was supposed to be a Wolfgang Peterson movie for Paramount, and they decided they didn't want
21:41to make it in Bavaria, which is what he wanted to do. And so they sort of kicked Wolfgang off the
21:45picture and sent me the script. I thought it was a terrific script and really fascinating,
21:51particularly I'd just come off of Grumman's and it was very grueling and time-consuming and difficult.
21:57And here was a movie about three kids who built a spaceship. And I thought, well, this is just like
22:00Huey, Dewey and Louie. This is like, you know, this would be so much fun to do after this arduous
22:05special effects movie. Well, not realizing, of course, that this was not only was this an
22:09arduous special effects movie, but had children in it, who can only work certain hours of the day,
22:15and which also didn't have a third act.
22:17Everybody was terrified that Explorers was going to be such a big hit that nobody would think about
22:29Back to the Future. Nonetheless, I made the movie, but then in the middle of making it, the studio
22:34changed hands, and the new people decided they wanted to put it out unfinished. So they just said,
22:38stop working on it. We're going to put it out because it's last year's movie from the old regime,
22:42and we don't care if it makes money anyway. Goodbye. I firmly believe there was a hell of a
22:47lot better movie in there than we were allowed to get out. In the end, it didn't matter. We could have
22:53released blank film and nobody would have noticed. I've always had a knack of finding kids that I
23:00could relate to on a personal level. If you cast your movie right, you don't have to do a lot of
23:07directing. And if you cast your movie wrong, you have to do a lot of directing and a lot of editing.
23:11But in this case, these kids were perfect for the parts, incredibly talented. And this was Ethan's
23:16first movie. He'd never been on a soundstage before.
23:23I can't stop thinking about what's up there. He picked it up so quickly that some of the camera
23:28people said, are you sure this kid isn't a professional? And now he is. Oh my god.
23:32There she is. In the original script, the kids go to another planet and they find kids just like
23:39themselves and they play baseball and they go home. And I didn't think that was enough for a feature
23:44film. And so we reworked it so that the aliens are indeed like our kids, but they're even more like
23:51Earth kids because they're a product of listening to Earth broadcasts.
23:55It's like a TV up here. Just waves in space.
23:59So they speak in catchphrases, trying to communicate with the Earth kids by
24:03using phrases that they've heard on commercials on television.
24:06Me, Ben.
24:07Me, Tarzan.
24:12This, it turned out, was not an especially popular conceit.
24:15We come in peace.
24:16When Ethan Hawke says that he's waited all his life to speak to aliens, and the alien says,
24:24What's up, Ant?
24:25He gets very confused. The audience also got a little confused. And because he became
24:31disappointed in what had been promised as a great big space adventure that would give him
24:35the secret of the universe, I think they all felt the same way.
24:38They don't make any sense.
24:42That's the way they think that we talk.
24:44It didn't help the fact that it opened on the day of the Live Aid concert,
24:46where nobody went to the movies.
24:48However, the miracle of home video kind of resurrected it.
24:51And even though it's only a shadow of the movie I was intending to make,
24:54it still has retained its popularity over the years.
24:59That was great.
25:09The Last Starfighter.
25:11The Last Starfighter is about a boy in a trailer park who is really good at a video game.
25:22It turns out to be an actual recruitment tool.
25:24Aha! A test sent out across the universe to find those with the gift to be starfighters.
25:30It's the perfect fantasy if you play video games.
25:33It was a genius idea. The fact that nobody came up with it before that is kind of amazing.
25:41You were recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Kodan Armada.
25:47Although most of it takes place in outer space, there's such a down-to-earth element about it.
25:53Nick Castle, the director, wanted to imbue it with a sort of a Capra-esque sort of quality.
25:59And I'm shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I'm gonna see the world!
26:05Forget it, man. I'm doing something with my life.
26:07He has this girlfriend. He has dreams of doing bigger things and all his dreams keep falling through.
26:16Still go to City College with your friends?
26:21Until this incredible situation comes along and he almost doesn't take advantage of it.
26:27Listen, Centauri, I'm not any of those guys. I'm a kid from a trailer park.
26:30If that's what you think, then that's all you'll ever be.
26:34Robert Preston, the music man. The music man in outer space.
26:37Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool.
26:40When we found out that he would do it, we were just so happy.
26:45Centauri!
26:46This very robust fellow, smoked like a chimney, but he had that great voice.
26:52Say hello to my assistant, Beta.
26:54Howdy.
26:55I did get to act with two Alex's, lucky me.
27:00I'm a state-of-the-art top-of-the-line beta unit put here as a courtesy replacement for while you're away.
27:08He's just comically inept. That's why it was fun to play because you can just
27:13put yourself in that position where everything is brand new. Nothing is normal.
27:17Dan O'Hurlihy, he agreed to play Grig.
27:28Grig the gung-ho iguana.
27:31He would never be seen. There would always be this prosthetic giant mask over him.
27:36He had to triple what he would normally do in terms of gestures.
27:41Ah, now you look human.
27:43I never saw him not looking like Lizard Man. And he's very distinguished looking, you know,
27:49white-haired, blue-eyed Irish guy, you know. And I just didn't,
27:52I didn't really know what he looked like.
27:54How do you do?
27:56He does this like,
27:57I was cast in Last Starfighter playing a role called Lewis's Friend.
28:09The spaceship lands to return Alex to the trailer park, and I go, Aliens! Awesome!
28:17Oh my God!
28:19They cut that scene from the movie before it was ever filmed.
28:22But I had already done a bunch of featured extra work. So every year I get a couple of hundred bucks
28:27from The Last Starfighter as a residual payment. And I get to be part of a movie that,
28:32as a fan, I was crazy about as a kid. Are you kidding me?
28:34I was not aware of the amount of pressure because of the CGI. The tension that was surrounding,
28:45oh my God, is this going to work or not? This may be a colossal failure.
28:53The very end of the death blossom sequence, I sat in a cage. It was like a carnival ride.
29:00And I could do about two of them. And then I was like...
29:07The movie didn't make any money when it came out. It was only the people that saw it on VHS or HBO.
29:14Someone told me that Last Starfighter was number one in video rentals. Thank God for science
29:20creating another avenue for people to see it and enjoy it.
29:23That's what the movie's about. The possibilities are unknown, but are out there. And all you have to do
29:35is find them and then hold on tight and go for the ride.
29:39And all you have to do is find them and find them and find them and find them and find them.
29:54By The Navigator, we wish fulfillment for every 12 year old.
29:58It's a story about time travel, about alien contact and connection, futuristic technology,
30:11creatures from other planets. And then under it, the journey of David Freeman to find his way back home
30:19to his true family. Time has changed for everyone except him. He's still 12 years old and his family
30:29has gotten older. It seems that we...
30:33It's the story of how he adjusts and how he tries to undo that problem.
30:38I've been gone for eight years. Gone where? Outer space?
30:44We videotaped hundreds of kids to find Joey Kramer. And when I saw him, I just knew that that was a kid.
30:53A key element in why I got the part in Flight of the Navigator was because of that emotional availability.
31:00Being able to connect and cry realistically. It's like a bad dream.
31:06The key to the whole movie and the reason I think it still resonates is the human drama.
31:12It's 1986, man. Eight years since that night.
31:17Randall Kleiser was an amazing director and was able to really bring things out of me
31:22so I could really immerse myself in that world.
31:26The script was children, special effects and animals, which are all no-no's, but I found it to be an
31:34exciting challenge. Just take us 20 miles from here.
31:37Compliance.
31:41What are you doing? Mark Damon wanted to make an action movie with the government trying to shoot
31:48down the spaceship and lots of explosions and stuff. And Disney wanted to make a family drama. So I was
31:54caught in the middle trying to make them both happy. And I think that made the movie a little more
31:59interesting. Can you follow it? Follow it? I can't even see it. I wanted to find a spaceship that was
32:06different from all the movies I'd seen.
32:12Wow! Cutting edge CGI. There's a little bit of it in there and it holds up.
32:17My brother Jeff is a visual effects supervisor and he worked on Tron doing the bit.
32:32So he was one of the first CGI artists and later I worked with him on Flight of the Navigator
32:37where he helped me design the spaceship morphing and reflectance mapping.
32:44This is the flying version of the ship and behind there is the hovering version of the ship.
32:49It was a maquette meaning that we took a computer and we touched it all along here to create the
32:57wireframe that was then used to wrap the backgrounds on. When I first walked into that set of the interior
33:05spaceship, that cool reflective mylar, I remember just being blown away by it. It was so cool.
33:12I am a Trimaxian drone ship from- Trimaxian? Affirmative.
33:17Okay, I'll call you Max. It's easier.
33:19We wanted this character of Max to have a personality and yet he was a robot.
33:26I'm just a kid.
33:28That is obvious, but your brain has been programmed with all appropriate star charts.
33:33Before the mind transfer, Max just sounds like an alien spaceship and he's like,
33:39sit down navigator. Sit down.
33:41You would never know that it was Pee Wee Herman or Paul Rubens.
33:46I think there's been some sort of mistake.
33:48I do not make mistakes.
33:51And then when he scans the boy's brain, we let him do the character of Pee Wee Herman.
33:58That's it?
33:59That's it, baby!
34:00Working with the puppets and that world was really cool. They were all built into the set.
34:06The space terrarium.
34:08Weird.
34:09I love the big eyeball.
34:15What's really special about Flight of the Navigator is the heart of it.
34:22Losing the family, getting the family back together has that warm Disney feeling without
34:27being saccharine, I hope.
34:29Goodbye, baby.
34:31It was so much fun. People love it. I'm so proud and grateful to be part of it.
34:35See you later, alligator.
34:38How far are you going?
34:41About 30 years.
34:52This baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're gonna see some serious shit.
34:58I love time travel. I love the idea that you could just be transported somewhere in time.
35:03There are basically two different kinds of time travel in science fiction.
35:07There's the ones where you can change the past and there's the ones where you can't.
35:12Science fiction theater.
35:13The third kind of time travel is what I call the Back to the Future mechanic.
35:17The picture in Back to the Future is the quintessential example of that.
35:20They establish that as this is the way things work and they stick to that.
35:24It's like it's been erased.
35:27Erased from existence.
35:29That's the first rule of science fiction. You establish some rules, you stick to those rules.
35:33It helps, of course, obviously, that it's a comedy.
35:35We're sending you back to the future!
35:38I'm a huge Back to the Future fan. It's a perfect movie. It's probably one of the great
35:44Hollywood scripts of all time. It's just an unbreachable screenplay.
35:491955.
35:50You're my mind. You're my mind.
35:55People say to me, what would you say are the most important aspects of screenwriting?
35:59I'd say there's three of them. Character, character, and character.
36:04If you're not with your characters, you've got nothing.
36:09When you see Doc Brown introduced in Back to the Future, you're going to say,
36:14okay, I will believe that what he invents works. You look at the DeLorean and you say,
36:19yeah, this looks like it's something that the guy actually did build in his garage.
36:24I'm from the future. I came here in a time machine that you invented.
36:29Yes, we can have fun with the bells and whistles of time travel and the clock tower and all that
36:34stuff. But at the end of the day, what we have in Back to the Future is a very simple idea, which is
36:42what would happen if I was there on my parents' first date? We had always wanted Michael J. Fox to
36:49play Marty McFly, but we couldn't get him out of Family Ties TV series. We cast Eric Stoltz,
36:55particularly at the urging of Sid Scheinberg, president of MCA. Scheinberg actually said,
37:02I am so sure that Eric Stoltz is going to be great in this, that if he's not, you know,
37:07you start the movie all over again with somebody else. Now, he never expected us to take him up on
37:13that. Eric didn't have the natural sense of humor that Michael J. Fox had. He kind of played it less
37:22for laughs. Bob Zemeckis gave Eric the bad news on Thursday night and the following Monday or Tuesday
37:29night, we were back at Twin Pines Mall. It was the first time Michael J. Fox came to work. Once he
37:35started performing, everybody could see this is Marty McFly. Are you telling me you built a time
37:43machine out of a DeLorean? The way I see it. With the co-stars, he brought things out in them.
37:51And so Christopher Lloyd was better. I finally invented something that works. Leah Thompson was
37:58way better. Oh my God, it's a dream. Wait a minute, Taki, are you trying to tell me that my mother
38:04has got the hots for me? Precisely. The scene with Marty and Lorraine in the car, that was always
38:12really critical scene to be able to pull that off. I don't worry. If this was going to work, Lorraine had
38:21to break it off. We wrote this line, I feel like I'm kissing my brother. The look
38:28on Michael J. Fox's face when she pulls away after she makes the move is priceless. It gives us
38:36permission to make that work. Would it have worked like that with Eric? I don't think it had a chance
38:43of working like that. This is why actors get the kind of salaries that they get because when they're
38:49that good, it's worth it. This readout tells you where you're going. This one tells you where you are.
38:57One of the questions ILM had for us is, well, what is it going to look like to the time traveler?
39:03And they were suggesting all kinds of elaborate effects. But at the end of the day, Bob and I said,
39:09time travels should be instantaneous. So let's just get on with it.
39:19Going back to our belief that what we were telling here really was a human story. It was not
39:24a story about technology. People say to me, why do you think Back to the Future is still as
39:33compelling and popular today as it was back in the day? Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Hey,
39:39think with fly things. It's all about the characters. These are all really powerful
39:47human elements. And that is what the movie is about.
39:51Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
39:55Bill and Ted's Excellent! Excellent! Excellent adventure.
40:09Hey, that's us. We're back in San Dimas. Yeah, only now it's not now. It's last night.
40:18What if you had the ultimate power of the gods in your hand, and yet you were such an imbecile
40:25that you did nothing with it, really? All we are is dust in the wind, dude.
40:33It was so nice to see a script written with young people who were still young.
40:39We're Wild Stallions!
40:42Who had innocence and openness, and weren't cynical and jaded, and weren't talking like
40:47characters out of a Woody Allen movie at 16. How's it going, royal ugly dudes?
40:54The reason that Keanu and I probably got hired was that we were both theater kids,
40:58and we both took the characters very seriously.
41:01Really playing them with sincerity, and not with a wink and a nod at the audience.
41:11Bogus!
41:12It's not Back to the Future, you know? We're not that big. We didn't have a lot of money,
41:18but we really leaned into the kind of ragtag, sincere, analog nature of this hyper real situation
41:26that we were in. Favorite scene from Bill and Ted is the Circle K scene when the phone movie arrives.
41:31Not bad.
41:33In terms of sci-fi conceits, acting opposite yourself was really fun.
41:38Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.
41:42Time travel, multiple versions of yourself.
41:46Sixty-nine dudes!
41:49That kind of mind screw type stuff is the most fun.
41:55Want to tweak you, Genghis Khan?
41:57Yeah.
41:58Our film is a strange movie.
41:59I'm Dalton!
42:01I'll never rule the universe with you!
42:06We didn't have a Rufus for, you know, I mean, it was well into production.
42:09Greetings, my excellent friend.
42:13I'm here to help you with your history report.
42:14They kept throwing names at us and they went after Connery, I think, because of the Time Bandits thing.
42:20Keanu and I were actually genuinely worried that they were going to cast the wrong Rufus,
42:25but we were really, really lucky with Carlin.
42:30I'm not strict about time travel rules. I just want to be entertained.
42:33The time travel mechanics are actually very, very tight and very, very realistic.
42:38Port will time travel back to two days ago, steal your dad's keys and leave them here.
42:42My favorite time travel mechanic is when Bill and Ted decide that they're going to do a thing in the future
42:47using the time machine.
42:50See?
42:51Whoa, yeah!
42:52That's the ultimate sort of closed loop time travel mechanic.
42:55We can't forget to do this, otherwise it won't happen.
42:58But it did happen.
42:59It really could have gone off the rails at any point along the way.
43:03We're history.
43:07For all of the circuits of time stuff, they just had a boot that was like a canoe,
43:10just kind of wedged onto the top of like this really rickety hydraulic pole
43:16that was very high in the air and like a shoddy soundstage outside of Phoenix somewhere,
43:21125 degrees, sweating profusely all the time.
43:25Everyone just stinking to high heaven.
43:27Looks like a bad carny ride and it's like going,
43:29er, er, er, jerking around, you know, certain we were going to die.
43:37The movie got shelved, so it came out a full year later.
43:40I'd written it off as having any success and then it just exploded.
43:44When you're in a film that punctures pop culture like that,
43:48there's really no way to be prepared for it because it is very surreal.
43:51Party on, dudes!
43:59The final countdown is about the USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier in 1980,
44:10that gets sent back in time to December 6th, 1941.
44:15That was taken less than an hour ago.
44:17I don't understand, sir. These are pre-World War II pictures.
44:20Single-handedly with the one aircraft carrier and all the modern technology they have at their disposal,
44:24could absolutely thwart the attack on Pearl Harbor.
44:27The United States of America falls under attack.
44:31Our job is to defend her, the past, present, and future.
44:35Now the question that the captain and the crew have to face is,
44:39do they do that because they are sworn defenders of the United States and this is an enemy,
44:43or do they allow history to play out as we know it did?
44:47The classic time travel dilemma.
44:49You jump back, you've now caused this weird ripple effect that you didn't expect.
44:56This is going to create a fracture in the timeline.
45:00We know where all the mistakes are going to be made for the next 40 years,
45:03and you've got the power to correct them.
45:06You stay out of this.
45:07The final countdown is a great example of that idea that, you know, do you interfere or don't you?
45:13If we could travel back in time, would we want to change history?
45:17How it would affect the future?
45:18What if you go back in time and it kills the bloodline of your grandparents?
45:22Then you never exist.
45:23I still have a gut instinct that things only happen once.
45:26And if they have happened, then there's nothing we can do to change them, nor should we try.
45:31There's all these paradoxical ideas that exist in science fiction that have never been
45:36really answered satisfactorily because we don't have the science yet to lean one way or another.
45:45It's an interesting enough storyline that draws us in and makes us think,
45:47you know, the ramifications of action or inaction.
45:50This is a United States warship, or at least it used to be, or will be, or what the hell ever.
45:57What the hell is going on here?
46:09Back to the Future 2 picks up exactly where the last film left off.
46:12And then we go to the far-off future of the year 2015.
46:21Future. Unbelievable.
46:24We were big believers in the set it up, pay it off.
46:29We thought to ourselves, Hill Valley needs to be recognizable.
46:32It's recognizable from 1955 to 1985, and in 1985 to 2015, it has to be recognizable as well.
46:42Great splendor of Back to the Future really is.
46:45Its ethos is 1950s, when in terms of science fiction, the dream was a flying car,
46:51and the cities of the future.
46:53And that, where Back to the Future Part 2 comes in,
46:55is that it's just jokes about 1950s idealization of the future.
46:59Attract! Hello, in here, please.
47:02And all those kind of consumerist ideas. Wonderful kind of humoristic things.
47:09We thought about, how does the world change?
47:11You recognize a time period on a pop culture level, based on what do products look like.
47:17Is it ready?
47:19We were very cognizant about choosing brands that would give us a change in period.
47:26All I want is a Pepsi.
47:29And that's what's going to make people feel comfortable that this is where we are.
47:38Even though 2015, as depicted in Back to the Future 2, didn't quite pan out in reality,
47:43we all still want a hoverboard, and I still want a pair of those self-lacing Nike tennis shoes.
47:50We didn't get 19 Jaws movies.
47:52They forecast our obsession with the 80s, so they were on point with that.
48:04There's a whole, like, genetic line of this.
48:08Really, really good writing as far as a villain that just carries all the things that really
48:14trigger us and push our buttons.
48:16What's wrong, McFly? Chicken?
48:23We all know a biff.
48:27Go get it!
48:30Back to the Future 2 gets real dark, real fast.
48:33Somewhere in the past, the timeline skewed into this tangent, creating an alternate 1985.
48:40Time paradoxes, man. You don't know what's going to happen.
48:44Third time's a charm.
48:45The way that you see characters have changed as a result of this new timeline and these new
48:55actions that have happened, you're very much in Marty's shoes of, like, this is not the way the
49:00world is supposed to be, and how did it get this way, and how do I fix it?
49:03Doc, what if we don't succeed?
49:08We must succeed.
49:09The cool thing about Back to the Future 2 is where they go back in time again to the events
49:16of the first movie, and you now have this second Marty running around witnessing the events of the
49:20first movie, and you get this sense that that was always happening behind the scenes while the
49:26first movie was going on.
49:31As a time travel junkie, the idea of reinserting yourself back into another set of events that
49:36you've already gone through once just cracks me up.
49:41This 80s nostalgia that existed in the sort of future 2015, which was obviously meant to mimic
49:47the 1950s nostalgia that people had in the 1980s, but when you're in the 1980s, you don't think of
49:52that that way. To see that come true, to have lived long enough to see what I grew up in become this
49:59nostalgia thing, I don't know, in one sense it makes me feel a little old, but it is also a thing that
50:05was very prescient about Back to the Future 2.
50:08We have a quaint little piece from the 1980s.
50:11These movies endure because it's a part of us we don't want to lose.
50:18As you get older, you want to relive those moments that meant so much to you as a kid. You don't want
50:24them to go away because they're actually part of who you are. I think that what you've got as artists
50:30and filmmakers are a lot of adults who are still kids. They're capable of working in an adult world,
50:37but they feel like a child and want to express that.
50:42I think every generation looks at the new technology. There's this scaredness and this
50:46hopefulness that I think always coexist. And so it comes down to do we have systems in place that
50:53allow us the beneficial aspects of technology while limiting the potential for abuse and misuse.
51:06Never miss a moment with SBS On Demand. You can stream your favorite channels live,
51:11anytime, on any device. Same shows, same times, always free. Stream now on SBS On Demand.
51:23Bye for now.
51:26Bye for now.
Be the first to comment