a lot.
When the movie came out, he said,
"Thatscreenplay is like a Swiss watch. "
He's right. There is not a single...
...frame of that movie thatisn't...
...doing what they told us
we're supposed to do in film school:
Advance plot or character.
It's really economical, this movie.
Can you discuss the deleted scenes...
...that were in the movie
and were taken outprior to the release?
God, I don't remember.
I know what they are, because we pulled
them out to put them on the DVD.
The Darth Vaderscene was a whole lotlonger.
-Right. But that wasjustshortened.
-That was shortened.
That was two minutes longer.
Everything was pretty much lifts.
There was a scene where Doc Brown...
...in the '50s, opens up the suitcase
that we see him putin there.
He's going through
all of his personal belongings...
...and he wants to know, "What's this thing?"
and he pulls out this hairdryer.
He's got this fixation on underwear,
so he pulls out this pair of underpants...
...and he's disappointed that they're cotton...
...and that the underwear of the future
isn't made out ofpaper.
We had a little scene where...
...as a stall to get...
...George McFly out to the car...
...the kid in the red hair...
...that cuts in at the dance,
locks him in a phone booth.
When he looks at the clock,
to see what time itis...
...he decides he'd better be sure and calls...
...the time and temperature
to find out exactly what time itis...
...and ends up being locked in the phone booth.
That turned out to be a scene that we didn't need.
How'd he get out?
We showed Strickland coming over and saying:
"See what happens to slackers, McFly?"
We filmed them letting him out,
but we didn't ever use it.
You'd see him come out and knew
that Strickland must have let him out.
This is how dangerous itis,
how you can getso self-destructive.
We almost cut the whole
Johnny B. Goode scene out of the movie.
-Do you remember this?
-Yes.
It was the eleventh hour,
and it was because of this thing:
It's the only place in the movie...
...where the storyline stops.
For Michael to do this performance.
I actually had Artie liftit,
and I looked at the movie withoutit...
...and it worked okay, and then Artie,
my editor, said:
"Why don't we leave itin for the preview?"
These things are scary, what happens.
You lose your focus, and you're thinking:
"Maybe I should make the movie shorter. "
And, "It doesn't advance anything.
"It's fun to watch this, but.... "
Once the audience went crazy, then, you know.
It's really a shame
that we can'tpreview anymore, because...
...previews are so important.
You can't because...
...the movie is reviewed
on the Internet the next hour.
It's a terrible tool that's been destroyed.
It's so important to be able to do that.
One of the end sequences,
with Doc in the car, uses fusion.
Itis a contemporary concept now,
but how did you know aboutit then?
Fuel cells.
We knew about that. We read about that.
Fusion was something
that everybody's been experimenting with.
I think aboutsix or eight months
after the movie came out...
...was when those scientists in Utah claimed
that they had figured out cold fusion.
That was all over the news
for four or five months, until...
...nobody could replicate those experiments.
It turned out they didn't know
what they were doing.
We actually got a letter
from the Defense Department...
...when the movie came out.
They wanted to know what we knew...
...about fusion power.
-Very scary, kids.
-The government, that's how it works.
The sneak previews wentpretty well,
and, obviously...
...there was greatpotential for the movie,
but were you still...
...concerned somehow that the movie
would lose money and not turn a profit?
It's the studio's money,
and the way we rationalize itis, we say:
"The studio has decided thatit's worth...
"... $20 million to them to make this movie. "
We're going to realize it as best we can...
...but they