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Crispin Glover on how he'd preferred Back to the Future to have ended

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Could you link it? Can't actually read any of the text, too small.

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I realised afterwards, sorry about that. I've added the link.

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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Totes agree with C-Glove.  Glorified '80s materialism = bad moral-of-the-story.

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Reading between the lines of the interview, it sounds like Glover was quite unhappy when Eric Stoltz was fired and replaced by Michael J. Fox. That probably contributed to his distaste for the film.

“That Darth Vader, man. Sure does love eating Jedi.”

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Interesting perspective, but George becoming successful was a side effect of being inspired by Marty to write his book. And it was arguably a better fate than the original timeline of being in a pity marriage, dead end job, and constantly psychologically beaten down by the same bully from high school.

And it's Marty thinking of personal gain that causes no end of trouble in the sequel. That goes against the grain of 80's materialism.

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JayArgonaut said:

I realised afterwards, sorry about that. I've added the link.

 Thank you.

I read the article, and it reinforced what I already knew from old interviews. Crispin Glover is a pretentious character actor who fancies himself quite the thespian, and who seems to have missed the point about "Back To The Future".

He says he hasn't seen it once since it first came out, he should. Although with his pre-conceived notions it might be hard to change his mind.

The ultimate goal is not money, nor does the movie ever teach "more money = happy life". The movie portrays a character, George McFly, who's bullied and has no self confidence. He likes to write science fiction, but due to a lack of confidence he will forever keep his stories in a drawer and chalk them up to "silly dreams", thus later in life settling for an office job, and ending up working for his bully.

Calvin Klein gave him the confidence to stand up for himself, end the bullying, and become a better person. George McFly becomes a writer, and publishes his first novel. He's happier, but not because of the money, he made money because he's a happier person than he was when he was bullied.

If you're forever miserable that reflects on your economic condition. Why do you think homeless people are homeless? Many of them deal with mental illness, but a good number of them, say, lose their job and they can't deal with it. Their life shatters, family members leave them.

I just don't think you can dismiss "Back To The Future" as a materialistic movie, or whatever you wanna call it.

JEDIT SilverWook is always faster! Maybe if I go back in time and post 10 minutes earlier... Hmm. BRB need some plutonium.

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Your post is more eloquent though. :)

Also, Marty getting the sweet cherry ride plays right into the accident that leaves him a very different person in the original 2015. So making things better for his folks had negative consequences too.

I can understand Glover being upset over an actor being made up to look like him in BTTF II though.

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SilverWook said:

Your post is more eloquent though. :)

Thank you. :)

I can understand Glover being upset over an actor being made up to look like him in BTTF II though.

 Yes, that I can agree with. I liked Jeffrey Weissman, but it's a shame they didn't give him proper compensation nor ask for his permission to use his footage, he was right to sue. SAG rules changed because of this matter.

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Leonardo said:

I read the article, and it reinforced what I already knew from old interviews. Crispin Glover is a pretentious character actor who fancies himself quite the thespian

I wonder if he's repressed the memories about his involvement in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

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DuracellEnergizer said:

Leonardo said:

I read the article, and it reinforced what I already knew from old interviews. Crispin Glover is a pretentious character actor who fancies himself quite the thespian

I wonder if he's repressed the memories about his involvement in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

He probably did enough LSD to delete a lot of the 80s from his memory. 

Don’t do drugs, unless you’re with me.

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DuracellEnergizer said:

Leonardo said:

I read the article, and it reinforced what I already knew from old interviews. Crispin Glover is a pretentious character actor who fancies himself quite the thespian

I wonder if he's repressed the memories about his involvement in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

 You're right! From now on, if I ever come across another one of his interviews and he's blabbling about studios having an agenda and other such balderdash, I'll just imagine him talking while doing this:

http://media.giphy.com/media/oUGjhAohdWAU0/giphy.gif

Bob Gale's take on the issue:

I tried twice to contact Gale about Glover’s claims, but he was unavailable. However, I interviewed him last year for my book and he had nothing but kind words to say about Glover’s performance. He said that he and Zemeckis had originally envisaged George McFly as “a young Jimmy Stewart” but, to their enormous credit, they immediately recognised at Glover’s audition that he would “make the part so much his own that I can’t even recall what we were thinking when we wrote it”. I also asked him about the film’s equation between money and happiness: “The point was that self-confidence and the ability to stand up for yourself are qualities that lead to success. In a movie, you look for images to depict what you’re trying to say and this was a way to show that George had indeed become a better man,” he said.

Glover points out that Zemeckis and Gale happily recast the actor who played Marty’s girlfriend when Claudia Wells, who played her in the original film, couldn’t do the sequel. That they didn’t do the same for George McFly, he says, is proof that the filmmakers were trying to punish Glover for his belligerence. It strikes me, though, that it’s more likely to be an indication that they knew all too well how central Glover’s performance was to the appeal of the original film and were trying to work around his absence as best they could in the sequel.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/30/crispin-glover-the-carrier-interview

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Yeah, that "'80s materialism" thing has come up before, and there's plenty of movies where it's true, but I think it's been played up too much here. They live in the same house in the same neighborhood. The tennis rackets just means they play tennis together and are still active. Shit, the truck is a Toyota not a Porsche or something.

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Baronlando said:

Yeah, that "'80s materialism" thing has come up before, and there's plenty of movies where it's true, but I think it's been played up too much here. They live in the same house in the same neighborhood. The tennis rackets just means they play tennis together and are still active. Shit, the truck is a Toyota not a Porsche or something.

Yeah.

I mean, has Glover even seen the beginning of the film in the last 30 years? Marty's home and family at the start of the film appear to be just barely over the poverty line. It's hardly "80s materialism" to want to have a sound roof over your head and enough money to put food on the table.

“That Darth Vader, man. Sure does love eating Jedi.”

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Crispin's viewpoint seems reasonable to me, and less extreme than it has been presented in the past. It's a worthwhile point and it doesn't ruin the movie to him, he seems like he still has respect for it despite his one objection. I do think having it be more about the love and family, without being so tied in with materialism (or using materialism as proxy) would be a bit stronger and more in line with the rest of the film. It's not a make or break kind of thing, in a movie series that is loaded to the teeth with product placement.

Plus, in 2+3 we see that Marty's downfall was his temper and recklessness. Although this gets him fired, the readout for his success wasn't necessarily wealth, but how disjointed his family was.

We don't (and probably won't) know how much of an ass Crispin was about this during filming. If he was trying to leverage a different ending to fit in what he thought was a better ending, he might have had valid points but it's obviously out of line for an actor to pull that. Especially late in the filming process. And we don't know if Gale's retaliation was as real or vile as Crispin leads us to believe. 

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ATMachine said:

I mean, has Glover even seen the beginning of the film in the last 30 years?

Literally no. He's says in the article that he only saw the film once, back when it was originally released. 

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SilverWook said:


I can understand Glover being upset over an actor being made up to look like him in BTTF II though.

 I can't.   If I star in the original as Marty's father, but refuse to come back for the sequel, I can expect that whatever actor is going to be playing my part is going to be made to look like me.  After all, it is supposed to be the same guy!

But perhaps he is right, since actual footage of him was used and a cast of his face, he deserved some compensation.   Still, he could have avoided the problem and just agreed to appear in the sequels.

towne32 said: t's a worthwhile point and it doesn't ruin the movie to him,

 sure seems like it does.  He hasn't seen the movie in 30 years.  That kinda tells me he doesn't like it all that much.  

I don't know why he doesn't like the ending.   What is wrong with thinking it is a good to be able to have more money and live in a nicer house and be able to afford nicer cars and stuff.  What is wrong with that?  

Also was the ending he wanted not to going to depict Marty's father as a successful science fiction write?  Just how were they do to that and not depict the family as having more money?

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Leonardo said: but a good number of them, say, lose their job and they can't deal with it. Their life shatters,

true : (

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Unless you stuck around for the closing credits, some people may have thought Glover's replacement was actually him. (Glover's credit, with the tiny mention of it being stock footage, is at the very bottom of the cast list.) And as Leonardo pointed out, there was an issue of compensation for using stock footage of an actor for a new film, and Screen Actor's Guild has rules about it now.

Marty's girlfriend changed and nobody noticed. ;)

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SilverWook said:

Unless you stuck around for the closing credits, some people may have thought Glover's replacement was actually him.

well isn't that what we are supposed to think?    If you had to recast a role in a sequel, wouldn't you try to get the replacement actor to look as close to the original actor as possible?  I know I would.  They are supposed to be the same guy!

(Glover's credit, with the tiny mention of it being stock footage, is at the very bottom of the cast list.) And as Leonardo pointed out, there was an issue of compensation for using stock footage of an actor for a new film, and Screen Actor's Guild has rules about it now.

Warbler said:


But perhaps he is right, since actual footage of him was used and a cast of his face, he deserved some compensation.   Still, he could have avoided the problem and just agreed to appear in the sequels.

Marty's girlfriend changed and nobody noticed. ;)

 I did.  And the replacement  did kinda look like the original(at least enough that not everyone noticed)

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It all boils down to an actor wanting control over their likeness. If it was a bad performance, you wouldn't want people thinking that was you?

If not for the bad blood between Glover and the filmmakers, things might have been ironed out in advance. His replacement didn't get a large credit either.

I don't know what was said when BTTF II came out, but the filmmakers certainly were not drawing attention to the Glover situation, at the same time not making a secret of reshooting the ending of BTTF, to incorporate the new Jennifer.

Nobody was thinking sequel when the original film wrapped.

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SilverWook said:

It all boils down to an actor wanting control over their likeness. If it was a bad performance, you wouldn't want people thinking that was you?

no I wouldn't.  But if I was the film maker,  I'd want the guy the 2nd movie to look like the guy from the first.  They are, after all, supposed to be playing the same guy. 

SilverWook said:

If not for the bad blood between Glover and the filmmakers, things might have been ironed out in advance. His replacement didn't get a large credit either.

true, and that is a problem.

I don't know what was said when BTTF II came out, but the filmmakers certainly were not drawing attention to the Glover situation, at the same time not making a secret of reshooting the ending of BTTF, to incorporate the new Jennifer.

I didn't know it at first that they had re-shot the ending of BTTF and as I said before, the new Jennifer did kinda look similar to the old one. 

Nobody was thinking sequel when the original film wrapped.

 they weren't?  did you see the same ending to first movie that I did??

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Warbler said:

Nobody was thinking sequel when the original film wrapped.

 they weren't?  did you see the same ending to first movie that I did??

They actually weren't, the movie was supposed to be a self contained story. If you're referring to the "To be continued..." title card, that was added in the vhs release, it wasn't in the theatrical release.

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That's a cool shot of the first Doctor(s), but I don't think anybody in 1983 or 2013 was under the impression William Hartnell was still alive.

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of course not!  My point is that the his replacements look very much like him and no one should be shocked that they do.