Insights · February 6th, 2015
My goodness, 2015 is already a month in. I’ve been really busy with programs and travel, and behind on blogging, so have some catching up to do.
The year began with more interviews about the film, Back to the Future II, which as noted before in this blog, involved time travel to the year 2015. I did featured interviews about the film and what it got right and wrong in its anticipation of the future for both the Washington Post and for Newsweek.
Newsweek did the best in-depth piece with several experts that I have seen, both interesting and entertaining, and and you can check it out here.
A sample from Newsweek…
Glen Hiemstra: They’re in his future house with his future self. And they make the pizza. And then a thing comes down out of the ceiling, which is a big garden thing that has fresh fruit and herbs and other vegetables in it. We do microwave a lot of things. You can go to any outdoor [camping supplies] store and get a pretty wide array of dehydrated food that isn’t that far off from that small pizza.
Syd Mead: No, I don’t remember [how the film depicted food]. I hope it wasn’t pills. [laughs] That was a fixture in future films. Popping steak or spinach or whatever in a pill. I hope it never comes to that.
Newsweek also did a follow-on piece in which they asked Bob Gale, Back to the Future writer and producer, what we’d see in 2045. Really fun, here. A sample…
Of the 1989 sequel, Gale added, “We did a lot of research. We didn’t want it to look completely silly, at least not to audiences of the day. And a lot of the humor is making jokes about the present day. So I’d guess that in the year 2045, there’ll be a Cafe 2015. People will have a big wave of nostalgia about this decade. All of our iPads and electronic devices—they’ll be sitting in antique stores.”
The Post did a video interview and you can check it out here.
From hover boards to flying cars, from self-adjusting and drying clothes to bio-implants, Back to the Future II had it all and was wonderfully imaginative. The more I looked at it, the more amazed I was how a piece of entertainment has stimulated so much thought about the real future.
