pushed the button
and said we're going...
...to write this check against this movie
and hope thatit works.
Otherwise, you'd drive yourself crazy.
You have better odds ifyou took
your $20 million, went to Las Vegas...
...and put the $20 million
on the come line at the crap table.
Your odds are better
than making money on a movie.
That's the business we've chosen, so...
...there's nothing we can do.
We have to do this gambling.
You have a little more control, because
you do actually make the movie yourself.
But, as far as the odds of what movies
make money and what movies don't...
...most movies actually lose money.
Bob Zemeckis, at the time
you were developing this screenplay...
...your name was attached
to the project as director.
Was that a plus in getting the project made?
Before I made Romancing the Stone,
it was a hindrance...
...and after I made Romancing the Stone,
it was a help.
But the script was the same.
The script was the same,
but nobody ever read the script and said:
"We'd like to give this script
to this other director to make. "
Because nobody liked the script.
All these rejection letters
that Bob has in his archives...
...we got 42 or 44 of them
from studios and differentproducers.
It wasn'tlike anybody
was calling us up and saying:
"I'll do anything to make thatscript
Back to the Future. "
There wasn't anybody that was interested.
That wasn't a decision
that we ever had to wrestle with.
Bob was going to direct the movie,
end of conversation.
Before Romancing the Stone,
I was getting the worstpossible reputation...
...which is: His movies are good,
but they don't make any money.
Man, that was the kiss of death.
Bob Zemeckis, you mentioned earlier...
...thatyou noticed a few flaws in the movie...
...things that the average viewer would not catch.
Whatis your take on that?
That'sjust me seeing all the little flaws.
That's the way itis. I look at movies
that I love and I think they're perfect.
Then I talk to the filmmakers
and they don't know what I'm talking about.
It's always the same in all the arts.
A painter will look at his painting...
...and he'll look at that tree limb
that he never got right.
That's the only thing he'll focus on.
When everybody else...
...is looking at the whole canvas, saying,
"What a greatpainting. "
I don't think you'll ever find a director that...
...will say, "I made the perfect movie. "
If they do say that, the movie is
probably a complete piece ofjunk.
At the end of Back to the Future...
...Marty returns to a new and improved 1985.
Was it always written that way?
Yeah. It was 1985.
You've got to look at that ending
in historical context.
It was a very '80s ending.
The fact that things changed for the better...
...as a result of his actions,
was always something that....
It's the story of a kid who teaches his father
how to be a man.
Yes, but things changed for the better,
they were material things.
They were possessions. He had a truck.
His father had a BMW.
But his fatheris a successful author.
Come on.
Yeah, butit was the '80s.
It's interesting. There were a couple
of reviews that came out of Europe...
...that keyed in on the blatantidea that...
...how can these filmmakers
equate this kind of happiness...
...with material possessions?
But not a single critic, that I remember,
talked aboutitin America.
There's a lot ofproductplacementin the movie.
Was this meant to be a directslam against
the materialistic attitude that we had in the '80s?
In terms of creating an image of the past...
...one of the ways thatyou create the past
is through brand names.
We made a conscious effort...
...to find products that had
a differentlogo in the past...
...so that we could use those.
It used to be, in the '60s or the '70s...
...they'd make a movie,
and a car would pull into a gas station...
...and there would be no name on the gas station.
We would say,
"That's ridiculous. It has to be...