Back to the 80's

Ralph Macchio, best known for his role in the Karate Kid trilogy, turns 48-years-old today. Under-appreciated for his other roles in semi-classics such as The Outsiders, Crossroads, and even My Cousin Vinny, it's hard to believe that Ralph Macchio is a mere seven years younger than my parents. I suppose this means that he's old, and so am I.

This got me thinking about Back to the Future, another three-part movie franchise from the 80's that played a role in defining my childhood. Here's some trivia about BttF that you may find interesting if you enjoyed the movie as much as I did:

* Michael J. Fox is only ten days younger than Lea Thompson, the actress who plays his mother, and is almost three years older than his on-screen dad, Crispin Glover.

* The school that served as Hill Valley High was Whittier High School in Whittier, CA just outside of Los Angeles. Before filming, the school was better known as Richard Nixon's alma mater.

* When Marty pretends to be Darth Vader ("from the planet Vulcan"), he plays a tape labeled "Van Halen" to scare George out of his sleep. The screeching guitar riffs are from an untitled Eddie Van Halen original written for a movie called The Wild Life (1984), which starred Lea Thompson.

* When Doc Brown first sends Einstein "one minute" into the future, the time elapsed between when the '81 DeLorean DMC-12 disappears and reappears is actually 1 minute 21 seconds, just as the reappearance occurred at 1:21 AM via the Flux Capacitor-required 1.21 jigowatts of electricity.

* The device originally considered for use as the time travel machine was a refrigerator. Director Robert Zemeckis said in an interview that the idea was scrapped because he and Steven Spielberg did not want children to start climbing into refrigerators and getting trapped inside.

* The set for Hill Valley is the same one used for Gremlins (1984). The set for the Courthouse Square was also used for Bruce Almighty (2003), and the clock tower is the same one that is seen in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).