..was using young actors to play themselves old.
At the time, there were executives that thought...
...maybe we should find actors
thatlooked like them...
...to play them older.
We went through quite a lot of makeup tests
to prove that...
...it could be done this way.
Normally, certainly at that time...
...this wasn't done. You didn't take
an 18-year-old or 22-year-old...
...actor, and put makeup on them
and make them look like they were 47.
So we did a lot of extensive makeup tests...
...with Ken Chase, we hired.
He'd done all the prosthetic makeup on Roots.
Ken always told us
thatit would have been easier for him...
...if he were making these 18-year-olds...
...look like they were 75 instead of 45.
Then he could have put
full makeup on all over their face...
...but he had to create these appliances
so the actual face of the actor...
...would be able to move, and everybody
didn'tlook like they had too much Botox.
It's a tribute to all the cast...
...that they were able
to create things in theirperformance...
...that made you buy them at age 47.
It wasn'tjust the makeup,
it was theirposture and their body language...
...and their wardrobe, of course.
Can you tell us about working with Dean Cundey,
your director ofphotography...
...and Larry Paull, the production designer
on Back to the Future?
I had worked with both Dean and Larry...
...on Romancing the Stone,
and got along with them great.
The design of the movie, basically....
The thing we started with was the town square.
We wanted to make this cynical statement
about what...
...it used to look like, and whatitlooks like now.
That was a lot of fun to do...
...and to be able to just take it from there.
We actually considered
shooting that on location, remember?
-Right.
-We scouted Petaluma.
We went to Petaluma,
which is where Joe Dante made Explorers...
...which came out a couple weeks
before our movie did in 1985.
It had this greatlook to it,
but when we started realizing...
...all the headaches we would have
trying to change...
...the light fixtures, the streetlighting...
...everything, every business
that had to be bought out...
...to change a modern-day town
and take it back 30 years....
It ended up thatit was pointless
to do anything exceptshootit on the back lot.
In terms of the car...
...Michael J. Fox talks
about how demonic that car was.
Do you have any memories about
how difficultit was to work with it as a prop?
Oh, yeah, it was a terrible car.
The frame is plastic.
They had a four-cylinder Volvo engine
in that model DeLorean.
It didn't have any pickup at all.
It was impossible to shoot around.
We had to cut one apart
because it was too small to get a camera in.
So all the scenes that we have inside...
...the DeLorean, where Michael
is sitting in there and driving it...
...were a process done on the stage.
We actually had to...
...cut the car apartso we could pull
the back wall out and get the camera in there.
Yes, but all movie cars are like that.
As soon as you bring a picture car...
...on the set, itjust doesn'tstart.
Orit runs out of gas. It never fails.
It'sjust one of those curses.
I've never had it not happen.
One of the problems that we had a lot was...
...and nobody would have
ever thought of this one...
...we'd be shooting outside on the back lot,
and at night...
...it got cold out there.
It was winter when we were shooting it.
The way that the DeLorean gull-wing doors
stayed up was...
...there were these little gas-jet things,
like you use to open up a door.
When we left the door open for a while...
...the gas would condense in the cold...
...and the door would start to drop down
in the middle of a take.
Finally, in between takes,
we had the special effects crew out there...
...with portable hair dryers...
...and they were in there
heating up those valves...
...heating up that gas so that the car door
would stay open through an entire take.