Honestly, when you think about Back to the Future, it is a little weird. I don't doubt that director Bob Zemeckis had a few pitch meetings go like this recreation when he was first trying to get the movie off the ground, and in all honesty, the Hollywood executives kind of have a point (that's the first time I've ever typed that, and very possibility the last). Thanks to Greg B. for the tip.
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Actually, Zemeckis pitched the movie to Disney and this was pretty much the reaction (they were creeped out by having near-incest and near-rape as major plot points). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Back in the late 1980s, I picked up a copy of Cracked (this was before the internets, it was actually a printed, dead-tree publication), and there was a bit on a guy pitching a documentary on the homeless problem in LA. By the end of the pitch meeting, the studio execs had transformed it to the Cosby Show.
To this day, I'm convinced it's what actually happened, but the only way anyone would believe the story was as satire in Cracked!
It was pretty interesting and funny, up until the end with the sycophantic coddling that turned into insults. In a way, that seems like the perfect crystallization of why the entertainment industry is so awful, you know, outside of celebrity-watching blogs.
Are their remarks about skateboarding sarcastic? I was in my teens when the movie came out and I remember being befuddled by the thought of skateboarding being cool, or anything someone over the age of 12 would do, certainly not someone in high school. Things are probably different now, but back then, if a 17-year-old rode a skateboard I would probably beat him up myself.
I seriously hope the blonde guy is wearing a wig, because, otherwise, he has one of the most unfortunate cases of hair-eyebrow contrast ever seen, and it is really distracting.
I used to find ripping into Back to the Future funny. Now it just seem like an easy joke. Repeating the same things over and over and over.
You might find the Back to the Future novelization tumblr amusing then. It's a page-by-page critique/analysis of the novelization.
Just looked it up. Today's post made me laugh hysterically, mostly because I'm currently in the process of moving and came across the EXACT playboy picture there not 1hour ago. A remnant from when my grandfather passed.
Unavoidable consequence of movies being a business and an art is that people with business and marketing degrees have the final say in what stories are told and how those stories are told. On the other hand restrictions are fuel for creative fires - look what happened when Lucas got total control.
Actually Lucas didn't have his wife around anymore to tell him what worked and what didn'twork. She shot down alot of crazy stuff he was going to put in the first Star Wars movie and she fixed alot of the characters..
Okay read it. Thanks for something in the land of hard evidence.http://secrethistoryofstarwars... LINKYIt pretty much backs up what GL himself said during the Oprah interview.
Speculation that he destroyed parts of the film she worked on is undermined by the information in the article, because she worked on editing the work together as a whole. While she gave him advice the article confirms that a lot of people used to be able to give GL advice and criticism.
Any “smoking gun” of vindictiveness on GLs part would be pretty convoluted to arrive at. More likely is that he told the truth and hejust doesn’t “get” what the movies became and has always wanted them to be the homage to those boring serials from the ‘50s.
Secret History of Star Wars has a section on Marcia Lucas.
Lucas himself used to credit the work of Marcia and others. He also used to admit that stuff like writing was something that he wasn't good at.
Note that Spielberg, when talking about the last Indiana Jones movie, mentioned that he should have said "no" to some of Lucas' more insane ideas for that film. (What Spielberg didn't mention was how he *had* been more willing to shoot down Lucas' ideas in the past. Like Lucas, Spielberg's attitude has changed as he has aged.)
I keep hearing that but have yet to see anything that supports it.
Post Oprah interview it's pretty clear that GL is just a petty control freak that surrounds himself with "yes" men or at least people who know to keep their opinions to themselves. There wasn't any one person who made the original films work it was just a lot of people doing their jobs to the best of their ability in spite of a hellish boss who believed he could do their job better than them - if only he had the time, but since he couldn't interject himself into everything constantly the films ended up being better than they were supposed to be. There are claims by former Lucas Arts employees that in every project GL would make purposefully insane decisions just to see if anyone spoke up so he could fire them. Fast forward to the time of the prequels after GL had over decades weeded out all the assertive+creative people at Lucas Arts creating an army of loyal sycophants who cared about their paychecks and bullet points on their resumes a lot more than Star Wars and that, more than GL's weird vision, is the problem with the Wars.
Does any of this preclude GL's X from being a factor in the success of the first films? Nope, but it wasn't her lone voice.
