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The Guardian
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘The film wouldn't even be made today': the story behind Back to the Future at 40
The actor Lea Thompson has had a distinguished screen career but hesitated to share it with her daughters when they were growing up. 'I did not show them most of my stuff because I end up kissing people all the time and it was traumatic to my children,' she recalls. 'Even when they were little the headline was, 'Mom is kissing someone that's not Dad and it's making me cry!'' Thompson's most celebrated role would be especially hard to explain. As Lorraine Baines in Back to the Future, she falls in lust with her own son, Marty McFly, a teenage time traveller from 1985 who plunges into 1955 at the wheel of a DeLorean car. Back to the Future, released 40 years ago on Thursday, is both entirely of its time and entirely timeless. It was a box office summer smash, set a benchmark for time travel movies and was quoted by everyone from President Ronald Reagan to Avengers: Endgame. It is arguably a perfect film, without a duff note or a scene out of place, a fantastic parable as endlessly watchable as It's a Wonderful Life or Groundhog Day. It also, inevitably, reflects the preoccupations of its day. An early sequence features Libyan terrorists from the era of Muammar Gaddafi, a caricature wisely dropped from a stage musical adaptation. In one scene the young George McFly turns peeping tom as he spies on Lorraine getting undressed. To some, the film's ending equates personal fulfilment with Reagan-fuelled materialism. It caught lightning in a bottle in a way that is unrepeatable. 'If you made Back to the Future in 2025 and they went back 30 years, it would be 1995 and nothing would look that different,' Thompson, 64, says by phone from a shoot in Vancouver, Canada. 'The phones would be different but it wouldn't be like the strange difference between the 80s and the 50s and how different the world was.' Bob Gale, co-writer of the screenplay, agrees everything fell into the right place at the right time, including the central partnership between young Marty (Michael J Fox) and white-haired scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). The 74-year-old says from Los Angeles: 'Oh man, the film wouldn't even be made today. We'd go into the studio and they'd say, what's the deal with this relationship between Marty and Doc? They'd start interpreting paedophilia or something. There would be a lot of things they have problems with.' Gale had met the film's director, Robert Zemeckis, at the USC School of Cinema in 1972 and together they sold several TV scripts to Universal Studios, caught the eye of Steven Spielberg and John Milius and collaborated on three films. The pair had always wanted to make a time travel movie but couldn't find the right hook. Then Gale had an epiphany. 'We put a time travel story on the back burner until I found my dad's high school yearbook and boom, that was when the lightning bolt hit me and I said, ha, this would be cool: kid goes back in time and ends up in high school with his dad!' Gale and Zemeckis pitched the script more than 40 times over four years but studios found it too risky or risque. But Spielberg saw its potential and came in as executive producer. After Zemeckis scored a hit with Romancing the Stone in 1984, Universal gave the green light. The character of Doc Brown was inspired by Gale's childhood neighbour, a photographer who showed him the 'magic' of developing pictures in a darkroom, and the educational TV show Mr Wizard which demonstrated scientific principles. Then Lloyd came in and added an interpretation based on part Albert Einstein, part Leopold Stokowski. Thompson was cast as Lorraine after a successful audition. She felt that her background as a ballet and modern dancer gave her a strong awareness of the movement and physicality required to play both versions of Lorraine: one young and airy, the other middle-aged and beaten down by life. 'I was perfectly poised for that character,' she says. 'I understood both the dark and the light of Lorraine McFly and understood the hilarity of being super sexually attracted to your son. I thought that was frickin' hilarious. I understood the subversive comedy of it.' Thompson has previously worked with Eric Stoltz, who was cast in the lead role of Marty at the behest of Sidney Sheinberg, a Universal executive who had nurtured Spielberg and put Jaws into production. But over weeks of filming, starting in November 1984, it became apparent that Stoltz's serious tone was not working. Gale recalls: 'He wasn't giving us the kind of humour that we thought the character should have. He actually thought the movie turned out to be a tragedy because he ends up in a 1985 where a lot of his life is different. People can argue about that: did the memories of his new past ripple into his brain, did he remember both his lives? That's an interesting conversation to have and it gets more interesting the more beer you drink.' Eventually it fell to Zemeckis to inform Stoltz that his services were no longer required. Gale continues: 'He said he thought that possibly Eric was relieved: it was not like a devastating blow to him. This is just hindsight and speculation but maybe Eric's agents thought that it would be a good career move for him to do a movie like this that had Spielberg involved. Who knows?' Stoltz's abrupt departure came as a shock to the rest of the cast. Thompson says: 'It was horrible. He was my friend and obviously a wonderful actor. Everybody wants to think that making a movie is fun and that we're laughing for the 14 hours we're standing in the middle of a street somewhere. 'But it's also scary because you need to feel like you've made a little family for that brief amount of time. So the minute someone gets fired, you're like, oh wait, this is a big business, this is serious, this is millions of dollars being spent.' Stoltz was replaced by the young Canadian actor Michael J Fox, whom Zemeckis and Gale had wanted in the first place, and several scenes had to be reshot. Fox was simultaneously working on the sitcom Family Ties so was often sleep-deprived. But his boundless charm, frazzled energy and comic timing – including ad libs – were the missing piece of the jigsaw. Thompson comments: 'He is gifted but he also worked extremely hard at his shtick like the great comedians of the 20s, 30s and 40s: the falling over, the double take, the spit take, the physical comedy, the working on a bit for hours and hours like the greats, like Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin. Michael understood that. 'Being a dancer, I was fascinated and kind of weirdly repelled because it didn't seem like the acting that we were all trying to emulate: the De Niro kind of super reality-based acting that we were in awe of in the 80s, coming out of the great films of the 70s. I feel like Eric Stoltz, who is a brilliant actor, was trying to do more of that. Michael was the face of this new acting, especially comedy acting, which was in a way a throwback and a different energy.' It was this lightness of touch that enabled Fox and Thompson to carry off moments that might otherwise have seemed weird, disturbing and oedipal. When 1950s Lorraine – who has no idea that Marty is her future son – eventually kisses him inside a car, she reports that it is like 'kissing my brother' and the romantic tension dissolves, much to the audience's relief. Thompson says: 'It was a difficult part and it was a very dangerous thread to put through a needle. I have to fall out of love with him just by kissing him and I remember Bob Zemeckis obsessing about that moment. It was also a hard shot to get because it was a vintage car and they couldn't take it apart. Bob was also worried about the moment when I had to fall back in love with George [Marty's father] after he punches Biff. 'For those moments to be so important is part of the beauty of the movie. These are 'small' people; these are not 'great' people; they're not doing 'great' things. These are people who live in a little tiny house in Hill Valley and to make the moments of falling out of love and falling in love so beautiful with that incredible score is fascinating.' Back to the Future was the biggest hit of the year, grossing more than $200m in the US and entering the cultural mainstream. When Doc asks Marty who is president in 1985, Marty replies Ronald Reagan and Brown says in disbelief: 'Ronald Reagan? The actor? Then who's vice-president? Jerry Lewis?' Reagan, a voracious film viewer, was so amused by the joke that he made the projectionist stop and rewind it. He went on to namecheck the film and quote its line, 'Where we're going, we don't need roads,' in his 1986 State of the Union address. Thompson, whose daughters are the actors Madelyn Deutch and Zoey Deutch, was amazed by Back to the Future's success. 'But when I look at the movie, I do understand the happy accident of why it's become the movie it's become to generation after generation. The themes are powerful. The execution was amazing. The casting was great. The idea was brilliant. It was a perfect script. Those things don't come together usually.' And if she had her own time machine, where would she go? 'If I could be a man, I might go back to Shakespeare but as a woman you don't want to go anywhere in time. Time has been hard on women. So for me, whenever I'm asked this question, it's not a lighthearted answer. I can only give you a political answer.' The film ends with Doc whisking Marty and girlfriend Jennifer into the DeLorean and taking off into the sky. But Gale points out that the message 'to be continued' was added only for the home video release, as a way to announce a sequel, rather than being in the original theatrical run. Back to the Future Part II, part of which takes place in 2015, brought back most of the main characters including the villain Biff Tannen, who becomes a successful businessman who opens a 27-storey casino and uses his money to gain political influence. Many viewers have drawn a comparison with Donald Trump. Gale explains: 'Biff in the first movie is not based on Donald Trump; Biff is just an archetype bully. When Biff owns a casino, there was a Trump influence in that, absolutely. Trump had to put his name on all of his hotels and his casinos and that's what Biff does too. 'But when people say, oh, Biff was based on Donald Trump, well, no, that wasn't the inspiration for the character. Everybody has a bully in their life and that's who Biff was. There's nothing that resembles Donald Trump in Biff in Part I.' Back to the Future Part III, in which Marty and Doc and thrown back to the old west, was released in 1990. A year later Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at the age of 29. He went public with his diagnosis in 1998 and became a prominent advocate for research and awareness. He also continued acting, with roles in shows such as The Good Wife and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and in October will publish a Back to the Future memoir entitled Future Boy. Thompson, whose brothers both have Parkinson's, sees Fox twice a year. 'He's endlessly inspiring. He's very smart and he's done the spiritual work, the psychological work on himself to not be bitter about something awful happening to him but also be honest: this sucks.' Time's arrow moves in one direction but Back to the Future found a way to stage a comeback. One night after seeing the Mel Brooks musical The Producers in New York, Zemeckis's wife Leslie suggested that Back to the Future would make a good musical. Gale duly wrote the book and was a producer of the show, which premiered in Manchester in 2020 and has since played in London, New York and around the world. Gale says: 'It was total euphoria. The first time I saw the dress rehearsal with the DeLorean, before we had an audience, I went out of my mind how great it was, and then to see the audience going completely out of their minds with everything was just such a joyous validation. 'I'm so blessed to have a job where I get to make people happy. That's a great thing to be able to do and get paid for that. I don't ever take any of this for granted. I'm having a great time and the idea that Back to the Future is still with us after all these years, as popular as it ever was, is a blessing. I think about it all the time that if we had not put Michael J Fox in the movie, you and I probably wouldn't even be having this conversation right now.' Why, indeed, are we still talking about Back to the Future four decades later? 'Every person in the world wonders, how did I get here, how did my parents meet? The idea that your parents were once children is staggering when you realise it when you're about seven or eight years old. 'Your parents are these godlike creatures, and they're always saying, well, when I was your age, and you're going, what are they talking about, how could they have ever been my age? Then at some point it all comes together. If you have a younger sibling and you're watching them grow up, you realise, oh, my God, my parents were once screw-ups like me!' And if Gale had a time machine, where would he go? 'I don't think I would go to the future because I'd be too scared,' he says. 'We all see what happens when you know too much about the future. My mom, before she was married, was a professional musician, a violinist, and she had a nightclub act in St Louis called Maxine and Her Men. I'd like to travel back in time to 1947 and see my mother performing in a nightclub. That's what I would do.'
E&E News
02-06-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Trump takes aim at EPA staffing levels, popular programs
The Trump administration is seeking to cut deeply into traditional — and sometimes politically popular — EPA programs, while following through on Administrator Lee Zeldin's vow to return the agency's core workforce to levels last seen during Ronald Reagan's presidency. A detailed version of the administration's fiscal 2026 budget blueprint released late Friday would slice the ranks of 'full-time equivalent' EPA employees from 14,130 this year to 12,856 in 2026, a 9 percent drop. That would be the lowest total since 1985, according to official numbers posted online. Helping to take up the slack, the proposal suggests, would be more reliance on artificial intelligence. Advertisement 'By leveraging AI to transition from paper-based and analog processes to digital ones, the Agency can speed up and automate administrative and operational tasks as well as improve data analysis and collection,' the request says.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Poll finds when was the greatest time to be American - Gen X and Elder Millennials rejoice!
A new poll tasked Americans with picking the best time to be alive in U.S. history, and the results are good news for Gen Xers and elder Millennials. According to the YouGov survey, the highest-ranked decades for overall quality of life in the U.S. were during the 1980s and the 1990s. The poll broke up U.S. history into 16 periods — beginning way back during the British colonial era in the 1600s — and asked its 1,139 respondents to rank the periods from best time to be alive to the worst. The survey found that 57 percent of respondents said the Reagan Era (1980-1991) was excellent or good in terms of quality of life, and thus it was viewed as the best time to be alive. The second best was the Clinton Era (1993-2001), with 55 percent of respondents saying that time was excellent or good. The third spot went to the Postwar Baby Boom era of 1946-1964, with a 51 percent rating. Just in case you aren't seeing the pattern: the largest population groups in the U.S. pick the eras that represent their childhoods — times when they had less to worry about and the world seemed more hopeful and less miserable — as their personal best times to be alive. Millennials are currently the largest age demographic in the U.S. — especially if Gen X is lumped in with their younger counterparts — and span both the Reagan and Clinton years. Baby Boomers are the second largest. Outside of the childhood eras of both of the largest generational groups in the U.S., the other 13 eras on the list received less than a 50 percent favorability rating. Only 46 percent thought the Counterculture Era of the 1960s was the best time to be alive, and only 40 percent of respondents thought the Post-9/11 Era of 2001-2008 was the best time to be alive. The Great Depression was near the very bottom of the list, with only 17 percent of respondents saying it was an excellent or good time to be alive, and the Civil War period of 1861-1865 came dead last, with only five percent of respondents giving it a good or excellent rating. Some of the other eras included the Gilded Age from the 1870s to 1900, the Reconstruction Era from 1865 to 1877, World War II, and the Great Recession. The present day also rated well when compared to the worst-rated ages in U.S. history. Thirty-two percent of respondents said living today was excellent or good, and another 29 percent said it was "fair" to be alive today. Once the poll's respondents are broken down by party affiliation, it's fairly unsurprising how things shake out. Democrats ranked the Clinton Era the highest, with 75 percent saying it was good or excellent with only 41 percent of Republican respondents sharing that view. Likewise, 82 percent of Republicans said the Reagan Era was excellent or good, and only 35 percent of Democrats agreed. Democrats and Republicans had shared feelings about the Great Depression, with only three percent on each side saying it was a good or excellent time to be alive, and they were close on the Counterculture Era, with 44 percent of Democrats saying it was a good or excellent time, and 49 percent of Republicans sharing that sentiment. Respondents were also asked to rank the eras based on their political stability. In that ranking, the Reagan Era again won out — despite much of it playing out during the Cold War and U.S. clandestine action throughout the global south — with 18 percent saying it was the most politically stable time. The Clinton Era came in second, with 14 percent saying it was the most politically stable time in the nation's history. Thirty-one percent said the least politically stable time in U.S. history is the present, even somehow beating out the Civil War period when Americans were killing each other in pitched battles with cannons. The survey has a four-point margin of error and was conducted between April 9 - 11, 2025. Respondents were selected from YouGov's 'opt-in panel.'
The Independent
09-05-2025
- General
- The Independent
Poll finds when was the greatest time to be American - Gen X and Elder Millennials rejoice!
A new poll tasked Americans with picking the best time to be alive in U.S. history, and the results are good news for Gen Xers and elder Millennials. According to the YouGov survey, the highest-ranked decades for overall quality of life in the U.S. were during the 1980s and the 1990s. The poll broke up U.S. history into 16 periods — beginning way back during the British colonial era in the 1600s — and asked its 1,139 respondents to rank the periods from best time to be alive to the worst. The survey found that 57 percent of respondents said the Reagan Era (1980-1991) was excellent or good in terms of quality of life, and thus it was viewed as the best time to be alive. The second best was the Clinton Era (1993-2001), with 55 percent of respondents saying that time was excellent or good. The third spot went to the Postwar Baby Boom era of 1946-1964, with a 51 percent rating. Just in case you aren't seeing the pattern: the largest population groups in the U.S. pick the eras that represent their childhoods — times when they had less to worry about and the world seemed more hopeful and less miserable — as their personal best times to be alive. Millennials are currently the largest age demographic in the U.S. — especially if Gen X is lumped in with their younger counterparts — and span both the Reagan and Clinton years. Baby Boomers are the second largest. Outside of the childhood eras of both of the largest generational groups in the U.S., the other 13 eras on the list received less than a 50 percent favorability rating. Only 46 percent thought the Counterculture Era of the 1960s was the best time to be alive, and only 40 percent of respondents thought the Post-9/11 Era of 2001-2008 was the best time to be alive. The Great Depression was near the very bottom of the list, with only 17 percent of respondents saying it was an excellent or good time to be alive, and the Civil War period of 1861-1865 came dead last, with only five percent of respondents giving it a good or excellent rating. Some of the other eras included the Gilded Age from the 1870s to 1900, the Reconstruction Era from 1865 to 1877, World War II, and the Great Recession. The present day also rated well when compared to the worst-rated ages in U.S. history. Thirty-two percent of respondents said living today was excellent or good, and another 29 percent said it was "fair" to be alive today. Once the poll's respondents are broken down by party affiliation, it's fairly unsurprising how things shake out. Democrats ranked the Clinton Era the highest, with 75 percent saying it was good or excellent with only 41 percent of Republican respondents sharing that view. Likewise, 82 percent of Republicans said the Reagan Era was excellent or good, and only 35 percent of Democrats agreed. Democrats and Republicans had shared feelings about the Great Depression, with only three percent on each side saying it was a good or excellent time to be alive, and they were close on the Counterculture Era, with 44 percent of Democrats saying it was a good or excellent time, and 49 percent of Republicans sharing that sentiment. Respondents were also asked to rank the eras based on their political stability. In that ranking, the Reagan Era again won out — despite much of it playing out during the Cold War and U.S. clandestine action throughout the global south — with 18 percent saying it was the most politically stable time. The Clinton Era came in second, with 14 percent saying it was the most politically stable time in the nation's history. Thirty-one percent said the least politically stable time in U.S. history is the present, even somehow beating out the Civil War period when Americans were killing each other in pitched battles with cannons. The survey has a four-point margin of error and was conducted between April 9 - 11, 2025. Respondents were selected from YouGov's 'opt-in panel.'
Miami Herald
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
When was America great? The most popular era wasn't that long ago, poll finds
For years, President Donald Trump has campaigned on and popularized the slogan 'Make America Great Again.' But when, specifically, was America great? Not too long ago, according to a new poll. In a YouGov survey, respondents were asked to assess 16 periods of time throughout U.S. history — starting 400 years back — based on quality of life. Two consecutive periods ranked the highest: the 1980s and the 1990s. Meanwhile, the least popular era came about 100 years ago, when the country was plagued by the Great Depression. Breaking down the poll In the poll — which sampled 1,139 U.S. adults April 9-11 — 57% of respondents said the Reagan Era (1980-91) was excellent or good in terms of quality of life, making it the most favorably viewed period. Coming in close second was the Clinton Era (1993-2001), with 55% of respondents saying it was excellent or good. Following this was the Postwar Baby Boom (1946-1964), which garnered a 51% positive rating. The other 13 eras received favorable ratings of less than 50%. Among those that made up the middle of the pack were the Counterculture Era (1964-1974) — with 46% — and the Post-9/11 Era (2001-2008) — with 40%. The early years of the country — and the time before the nation's founding — ranked among the bottom in terms of quality of life. Just 11% said the Colonial Period (1607-1776) was good or excellent, and 5% said the same for the Civil War (1861-1865). Just 3% said the same for the Great Depression (1929-1939), making it the least popular period. When broken down by partisan affiliation, responses diverged somewhat, according to the poll, which has a margin of error of about 4 percentage points. For example, Democrats rated the Clinton Era the highest, with 75% saying it was good or excellent. This was followed by the Postwar Baby Boom, with 49% labeling it favorably. In contrast, Republicans gave their highest rating (82%) to the Reagan Era, which was also followed by the Postwar Baby Boom (59%). Quality of life wasn't the only metric used. Respondents were also asked to rank the 16 eras based on political stability and global influence. On these questions, no consensus was reached. But a high of 18% said the Reagan era was the most politically stable, and 14% said the same for the Clinton Era. Additionally, a plurality, 31%, said the present period is the least politically stable, easily outstripping the 17% who selected the Civil War. A high of 14% also said the U.S. had the most global influence during World War II (1939-1945). This was followed by the Postwar Baby Boom, the Reagan Era and the present — all three of which received 13%. And 23% said the country had the least influence in the world during the Colonial Period, followed by 16% who said the same for the present.
