Back to the Future: DeLorean time machine origins
Before Marty McFly could drive into the past, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale considered sending him there inside a refrigerator. The passenger would climb in, close the door, and begin the journey. Zemeckis later explained why they abandoned it: children might imitate the movie by shutting themselves inside refrigerators. The DeLorean time machine emerged after the writers decided that their vehicle through history needed to move. A sports car offered mobility, and the DeLorean's gull-wing doors offered a visual joke before the journey even began.
Zemeckis and Gale started drafting their screenplay in the fall of 1980. They were fascinated by time travel and changing history, but wanted an adventure that required no special historical knowledge. Their solution was to make the past personal. Marty would visit the town where he lived and meet his parents before they were married. Released in 1985, Back to the Future sent him to 1955, where his interference threatened the relationship that would eventually bring him into the world. His task was to get Lorraine Baines and George McFly together while finding a way home.
Michael J. Fox played Marty, with Christopher Lloyd as Dr. Brown, Lea Thompson as Lorraine, and Crispin Glover as George. Thomas F. Wilson played Biff, the bully whose behavior persisted across the decades. Fox's work on Family Ties created a demanding production schedule: he spent days making the television series and nights shooting the movie. Filming took place at Universal Studios and around Los Angeles. Zemeckis admired Fox's comic timing, while Steven Spielberg had been drawn to his dry humor on television. The teenager crossing generations on screen was being played by an actor crossing between two productions.
The DeLorean time machine also needed to look like something an eccentric scientist had assembled in his garage. The filmmakers asked their design team for a homemade appearance and a nuclear reactor. Artist Ron Cobb, illustrator Andy Probert, and production designer Larry Paull helped develop the vehicle's appearance. Construction coordinator Mike Scheffe searched for unusual parts for the flux capacitor, dashboard, vents, and side coils. Special effects supervisor Kevin Pike and his team modified three DeLoreans purchased for the film. Four firejets sent flames from the car as it accelerated toward its journey through time.
Paull's team had a different transformation to manage: Hill Valley had to exist in two periods. They turned a large section of the Universal backlot into a grassy town square surrounded by small shops. A travel agency, florist, and turquoise malt shop helped establish the earlier town. Paull studied photographs, magazines, and high school yearbooks to develop its appearance. The transportation department selected cars from the late 1940s and early 1950s rather than filling the streets with pristine new vehicles. The DeLorean time machine would arrive in a place whose everyday objects made the change of era visible.
After weeks of filming in the earlier square, the company moved to other Los Angeles locations. Paull's crew then changed that same space into its 1985 counterpart. When filming returned two and a half weeks later, the grassy courthouse surroundings had become a parking lot, and the malt shop had become an aerobics gym. A Studebaker dealership now belonged to Toyota. Paull linked those changes to businesses moving toward suburban shopping malls and older town centers deteriorating. Doc Brown's home underwent its own contrast: a mansion in the earlier period became a modest garage squeezed between commercial buildings in the later one.
The performers' faces needed to carry the years as well. Makeup artist Ken Chase aged Thompson, Glover, and Wilson from teenagers to middle-aged adults, while keeping them recognizable. He explained that creating a person in their forties could be harder than creating someone extremely old, because foam rubber and exposed skin had different textures. Applying the aging makeup took three and a half hours for each actor. Thompson found the gradual process useful for entering Lorraine's older personality. For the school dance, a Hollywood church gymnasium became the underwater-themed setting, with fishnets, bright colors, and extras dressed by costume designer Deborah Scott.
At the November 1955 dance, Marty performs Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode, released on March 31, 1958, although rock and roll was already nationally popular. Music also accompanied the film beyond Hill Valley, with Huey Lewis and the News performing "The Power of Love" and "Back in Time." The DeLorean time machine later carried the series in the opposite direction. Back to the Future Part II, released in 1989, sent its travelers to October 21, 2015, into a future populated by imagined technology that included video calls and flat screens.