It's Grand Getting LOST in Back to the Future

I’m a geeky 80s child, so it should come as no surprise that I love the Robert Zemeckis era-hopping romp Back to the Future. What may be surprising is the fact that I saw the second movie about a mad scientist, his time-traveling DeLorean and the hapless teenager caught up in the craziness before I saw the first. When I did see the original movie for the first time, it was fun to pick out all of the references that filled the second movie. They were that much funnier now. My experience of watching Back to the Future this time around was similar, but instead of looking at it through the lens of the second movie, it was through the lens of LOST. I hadn’t watched the movie in years, so this was my first time watching specifically looking for places where Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse and other writers of my favorite show took their cues for their own epic. It may be kind of a goofy way to watch a movie, but it’s certainly fun.

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is an ordinary teenager in 1985. He lives with his parents, wimpy George (Crispin Glover) and world-weary Lorraine (Lea Thompson), along with two quarrelsome siblings, and he has a girlfriend who plays a more significant role in the second movie. Like Daniel, the title character in The Karate Kid, another 80s staple, Marty spends a lot of time hanging around with a late-middle-aged man who has a lot to teach him. Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) is a genius. Of course, he’s also borderline insane, which Lloyd brings across in a way few other actors could. Marty is a trusting soul to put his life in the good doctor’s hands, trusting that his experiments aren’t going to get him killed. Then again, sometimes he has no choice.

After the combination of a freshly fine-tuned time machine and the threat of a band of Libyan gangsters who furnished Doc Brown’s plutonium leads Marty to take a little jaunt to the 1950s, he finds himself in a strange yet familiar world. It’s his own hometown, but the clock’s been dialed back, and it’s now 1955. In no time at all, he manages to make one of the classic blunders; just after Never Get Involved in a Land War in Asia and Never Go In Against a Sicilian When Death Is on the Line, I believe you would find Never Go Back in Time and Let Your Own Mother Fall In Love With You. Yup, that’s a pretty big problem, and not just because of what something like that is bound to do to poor Marty’s psychological health. Because if the teenaged Lorraine is head over heels for suave Marty, how is she ever going to hook up with pathetic George, who spends all of his days cowering in fear of lunk-headed Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson)? If that doesn’t happen, Marty will cease to exist. Oh, and the paradox will tear a hole in the very fabric of space and time, and the universe will collapse upon itself. So, no pressure, kid.

After his accidental run-in with his mother, what Marty really needs is to touch base with Doc Brown, the one person who can help him get his bearings. He does, and after he manages to convince him that his time travel babble is the truth, he leaves the Doc to tinker with his machinery so that when the famous bolt of lightning strikes the town’s historic clock tower in a few days, Marty in the DeLorean will be able to harness that energy to get him home. It sounds complicated, and it is, but Marty still has the tougher task: making a man out of his lily-livered dad, who’d much rather curl up inside with a good sci-fi novel than defy brutish Biff or ask Lorraine out. The scene in which Marty convinces him to show a little gumption demonstrates Marty’s cleverness and always reminded me a lot of the scene in Dumbo in which Timothy the mouse uses the power of subconscious suggestion to get his flying friend his big shot in the circus. But getting George on board is only half the battle…

Looking at the movie as a LOST fan, the most obvious nod in the show was when Hurley came right out and mentioned Marty’s disappearing hand in the scene in which he plays the guitar at the dance where his parents are destined to fall in love with each other. This moment became the cornerstone of one of the funniest exchanges in the show’s most mind-bending season, one that attempted to establish the parameters of how this time-hopping stuff worked and that openly acknowledged that suspension of disbelief was a must. But there are other references too. For instance, everything in the film builds up to the moment when the lightning strikes that clock tower, and on the show, Desmond’s first premonition involving Charlie’s death involves him getting struck by lightning. In the movie, Marty writes a note to Doc in hopes that he will read it and prevent a future tragedy; in the series, Daniel writes a note to himself so that when his hour is darkest, he will remember who it is that he can call upon for help.

That who would be Desmond, and it’s the relationship between Desmond and Daniel, so beautifully established in season four’s The Constant, that I found myself thinking of most as I watched this movie. Desmond, like Marty, is out of chronological synch with the rest of the world, and he’s totally disoriented. He badly needs a mentor. He finds one in the form of Daniel Faraday, who he met in the future. While he and Daniel were barely acquaintances in the future, as opposed to Marty and Doc, who were already firm friends, there’s enough of a connection there to build on. Both Desmond and Marty seek out younger versions of their mentors and get very skeptical receptions from these eccentric scientists. Both gain their trust after furnishing numbers that are key to the proper functioning of an audacious experiment. Both Desmond and Marty end up on a mission that involves bringing together two people whose love is deep but endangered – in Desmond’s case, it’s himself and Penny, while in Marty’s, it’s his parents. And in both cases, I find the friendship between the unwitting time traveler and the one person best equipped to help him navigate his strange situation to be extremely touching.

Another point of similarity is the fun Spot the Differences exercise when it comes to the beginning and end of the movie. At the beginning of season six, everyone noticed that in the controversial Sideways world in which 815 doesn’t crash, there are changes in these long-established characters, as well as their circumstances on the flight. That game of figuring out what was different about each person continued throughout the season, but it’s the two Flight 815s that really seem an homage to Back to the Future. Cursed Hurley considers himself lucky. Nervous flier Rose is the one reassuring Jack. Self-serving Sawyer’s looking out for his fellow man. What’s going on? In Back to the Future, we get to see Marty’s family before his journey and afterward, in which each member ends up changed as a result of Marty’s actions 30 years earlier. The main impact: Dad, played with such marvelous fidgety awkwardness by Glover, now has some self-confidence, and Lorraine is taking better care of herself. He changed just a tiny bit, but not enough to negate his own existence.

Back to the Future is one of those essential 80s movies, but you don’t need to have grown up in that era to appreciate its humor and fun, and you certainly don’t need to have watched LOST to understand why Marty and Doc make such a terrific team. Then again, it sure doesn’t hurt!

This Little Piggy Learns a Lesson in Crispin: The Pig Who Had It All

When I see the name Crispin, the first person who always comes to mind is Crispin Glover, an actor who excels at portraying characters who are extremely socially awkward (though judging by the interviews I’ve seen with him, I’m not sure that’s much of a stretch for him). So as I began to read Crispin: The Pig Who Had It All, a picture book by Ted Dewan, I couldn’t help comparing him with jittery George McFly and brooding Willard. He has a certain kinship with those characters.

Crispin, as the title indicates, is a little pig with a seemingly endless supply of possessions. The trouble is that he always gets tired of them, and he leads a lonely existence in his fancy home surrounded by broken toys. Then, one Christmas, he receives a most unusual present from Santa: a giant box with nothing inside. Like Dudley Dursley, the spoiled rotten cousin of Harry Potter, Crispin is accustomed to getting whatever he wants, but an encounter with this emptiness alters him. When the sight of his box on the front lawn attracts some neighborhood children, he begins to understand that friends are much more valuable than stuff.

Dewan’s paintings are colorful and exceptionally detailed, from the first page of the story, in which he slips in visual references to Pringles, Green Eggs and Ham and the Velveteen Rabbit. On most pages, there is ample white space, upon which the text is printed. But some illustrations take up a full page or even two. These two-page spreads are the most lavish portions to pore over, and Dewan makes especially good use of light, with tiny bulbs blinking out at the reader from the page. The effect is especially striking in the almost gothic image toward the middle of the book of Crispin’s home in the midst of a downpour, with strings of white lights covering the bushes and trees that surround the extensive property.

Most pages feature somewhere between one and half a dozen sentences, and aside from some odd names of high-tech fictional toys, there’s little here likely to trip up a tot’s tongue. The print is large, and there’s some repetition as Crispin responds to various changes in his circumstances, each time fearing that the friends he has made will abandon him. The book effectively shows how friendships can begin and develop and also demonstrates the value of imagination. While Crispin has some undesirable traits, they dissipate as he becomes less self-absorbed.

Though Christmas is a key element of this book, very little time is spent on the holiday itself, and the its lessons are important in any season. So while I would especially recommend Crispin: The Pig Who Had It All at Christmastime, Dewan’s tale of a little nothing going a long way is worth perusing all through the year.

Crispin Glover and His Furry Pals Crank Up the Creep Factor in Willard

I was hoping that this weekend I might finally catch Ratatouille at the dollar theater. Alas, I never managed to fit it in, but my brother Nathan came trotting home for the day with a most rat-tastic movie in tow, and now that I've seen it, I think it might be a while before I can embrace Remy and his fellow rodents with the proper amount of enthusiasm.

Glen Morgan's Willard is a 2003 remake of the 1971 film of the same name. When they realized what we were watching, Mom remarked that the original had given her nightmares, while Dad had avoided it altogether. Nathan had assured me, however, that while this version was certainly creepy, the gore was minimal, so I decided to chance it. After all, I've always found rats to be unfairly maligned creatures. I expected that when they showed up, I would find them lovable rather than disgusting, and I was right. For a while...

The focal point of the film is Willard Stiles (Crispin Glover), an extraordinarily awkward man who lives with his mean-tempered elderly mother (Jackie Burroughs) and works for the tyrannical Frank Martin (R. Lee Ermey) at the company his father founded. He remains friendless until he is moved to rescue a white rat from the adhesive trap his mother demanded he put up in the basement. He names the rat Socrates, and he is giddy with the thrill of finally having some companionship.

If it ended with this bright-eyed, philosophic rat that seems genuinely fond of the eccentric misfit, this might evolve into a touching story. Sadly, Socrates does not fly solo. Willard feeds him and his family, and every day more and more rats turn out for chow time. Initially, they do whatever he tells them to, taking their orders from Socrates, who evidently understands Willard's instructions. But how long can he maintain control over the ever-growing horde?

Back when this movie hit theaters, I saw an interview with Glover, who I knew as the nerdy, gutless George McFly in Back to the Future. I've seen plenty of strange interviews in my time; this one would have to rank in the top five. The guy just came across as a total oddball, almost as off-kilter as the character he was portraying. Now and then, I'll see a really offbeat interview with somebody like Johnny Depp or Viggo Mortensen and think, "Wow. He's so strange. I'd love to spend an afternoon chatting with him sometime." With Glover, I thought, "Wow. He's so strange. I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley."

Whether he consciously cultivates that image or he's genuinely that odd, Glover seems like the perfect choice to play the unhinged Willard, who swings between victim and villain, sympathetic and diabolical. His expressive face, which usually registers some combination of rage and fear or occasional maniacal glee, is almost ghostly pale. Every word spoken with his soft voice is impeccably pronounced. Watch for hyperventilation, beads of sweat and murderous gestures in response to the maddening behavior of his mom and boss.

Burroughs, heavily made up to look as grotesque as possible, is bone-chilling as Willard's mother, who hollers throatily at him from her room in the large house they share. Though she is dependent upon him for her well-being, she still calls the shots around the house, and she wants to be sure he knows it. She wins sympathy points for her medical condition and the loss of her husband, but her despicable treatment of Willard cancels out any automatic sense of goodwill we may have toward her. Ermey pours even more unpleasantness into his role; Mr. Martin seems about ready to have a coronary at any given moment, so eager is he to ream Willard out with an explosive temper tantrum. It's no wonder Rat Boy is so messed up when he's surrounded by people like this.

The only person who treats Willard with kindness is Cathryn (Laura Harring), the new girl at work who unknowingly displaces him when she arrives. Her first impression of him involves him getting berated by his boss, and she feels sorry for him, aghast that he is being treated so unfairly. She continues to extend her hand in friendship throughout the movie. But what will happen when she finds out about Willard's Pied Piper-like tendencies?

I like rats. And I found myself quite attached to Socrates, much as I did with Mr. Jingles, the mouse in The Green Mile. He's a terribly sweet little thing. But his friends are not, particularly when engaged in the mob mentality and when led by Ben, a defiant Rodent of Unusual Size. Not since Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective have I come across such a vicious rat, and cinematographer Robert McLachlan does an impressive job of making him look distinctively ominous, while Shirley Walker's eerie score sends shivers in all the right places. As the crowd of a couple dozen rats swells to thousands and they stop obeying the restrictions Willard places upon them, the situation gets really hairy in more ways than one.

So while I found Nathan's assessment of the film pretty accurate - only two scenes are really grotesquely gory, while another two hint darkly at blood-curdling calamity - it wasn't exactly a comforting movie. It may be enough to leave me with the creepy crawlies all week, and if I catch myself jumping at small noises, especially from the general direction of the basement, I'll know why...