We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy by Caseen Gaines

As a big fan of the Back to the Future trilogy, I can hardly let October 2015 go by entirely without comment. I've been a fan of the movies ever since I got the first one on VHS from a McDonald's promotion in 1994, so I've been looking forward to this futuristic year for two decades. But I'm not going to write another list about what Part II got right or wrong about our present; there have been plenty of those already. Instead I read a book by a fan that was released earlier this year, the most comprehensive account of the famous film series written to date.

We Don't Need Roads is a relatively straightforward, chronological delineation of the inception, production and impact of the Future trilogy. Thanks to DVD commentaries, special features, and the Internet, there are not that many bits of information that have never been heard before, but the author's research and interviews add credence to these anecdotes. He remains unbiased about the events, allowing those involved to speak for themselves with numerous direct quotes.

The concept for Back to the Future was not immediately accepted by Universal Pictures. In the early 1980s there had been a few unsuccessful time travel films, and usually when a comedy starred a teenage protagonist it was raunchy like Porky's, not family-friendly like Future. Then executive producers Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall, and Kathleen Kennedy came on board and convinced the studio it was worth funding. One amusing piece of trivia is that studio head Sid Sheinberg wanted to change the title because he thought it didn't make sense, but he denies the common allegation that his proposed title was "Spaceman from Pluto."

Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale had not intended to make a sequel when they shot the ending of the original movie, which was intended as a jokey "here we go again" type of conclusion. They struggled to come up with a continuation of that unintended cliffhanger, but soon the ideas of different time periods piled up so much that the script, with a working title of "Paradox," had to be split into two movies. The first obstacle was that Claudia Wells would not be able to reprise her role as Marty's girlfriend Jennifer due to her mother's sickness, so Elizabeth Shue filled in. Unfortunately Jennifer turned out to be more of a prop than a character but hey, no movie series is without flaws.

There are a few events that get special attention in Gaines' book. One is the replacement of Crispin Glover when he wanted a higher salary to appear in the sequels. Jeffrey Weissman was chosen to become the new George McFly because he was able to impersonate Glover's voice and mannerisms, but he never felt like he was a respected member of the cast. Lea Thompson in particular felt a loyalty to Glover so she seemed to resent that another actor was playing her on-screen husband. Then there was the matter of Glover suing the filmmakers for using his likeness without permission, and Weissman inadvertently provided fuel for that lawsuit when he spoke to Glover about his experiences on set.

Another noteworthy incident was the accident that caused a stuntwoman to be injured. It was during the scene of Part II in which Griff Tannen and his gang are tricked into flying head over heels into the plate glass of the 2015 clocktower. The stunt performers were supposed to be released from cables and fall on to an airbag behind the window, but Cherly Wheeler-Dixon's cable sent her into a pillar and on to concrete, breaking bones in her face and wrist. Without the resources to reshoot the sequence, the moment of impact appears in the finished film.

I could go on and on about the behind-the-scenes factoids this book discusses; let it suffice to say that if you are a fan of the Back to the Future trilogy or the process of filmmaking in general, it is well worth reading.

To find out more about the author or purchase his books, including ones about Pee-Wee's Playhouse and A Christmas Story, go to www.caseengaines.com/.

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

I have been a long time fan of Stephen King, who has earned a reputation as horror writer, but I think he's just as compelling when stepping outside of that genre. Mr. Mercedes is what King calls "his first hard-boiled detective book," being the story of a retired police detective who is taunted by a killer who got away with his crime.

Bill Hodges is deep in self loathing and considering using his father's revolver to end his life when he gets a creepy letter. The writer alleges to be behind a vehicular massacre that occurred a year earlier, mowing down a crowd waiting to get in to a job fair. The Mercedes-Benz used in the crime was stolen from a woman named Olivia Trelawney, driven to suicide from guilt when she became convinced that she left her keys in the car. Hodges falls in love with Olivia's daughter Janey while she helps him unravel the case, and a teenager named Jerome who lives in the neighborhood also provides some ahead-of-his-age wisdom.

The reader gets almost as much time in the mind of the retired detective as we do with Brady Hartsfield, who in the letter to Hodges refers to himself as the "perk" who ran down those unfortunate people. Brady, like Psycho's Norman Bates, is obsessed with his mother to an unhealthy degree, and gets headaches that signify his murderous urges. Brady works both in an ice cream truck and at an electronics store in the local mall, so he's the type of bad guy who hides in plain sight. Most of the suspense of this novel arises because we know from Brady's chapters exactly what he plans to do, and subsequently we see how Hodges is just a step behind.

This cat and mouse aspect keeps the story engaging, and the characters all have believable personalities. Brady has unwittingly given Hodges a reason to live instead of making the "fat ex-cop" end it all. Hodges and his companions make some human errors during their investigations, and Brady causes some deaths that he didn't intend but still delights in. King gives us plenty of reasons to hate Brady Hartfield, but a flashback gives him a little humanity as well. At the risk of giving too much away, I thought it was interesting that the two main characters never come face to face like you might expect.

The author says this book is the start of a trilogy, which surprised me because it's rare that Stephen King will write sequels, with the exceptions of The Dark Tower series and the recent (and disappointing) sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep. I enjoyed Mr. Mercedes, and I definitely look forward to reading the continuing adventures of Detective Hodges in Finder Keepers and the upcoming End of Watch.

For more about Stephen King, try stephenking.com.

The Martian (film), directed by Ridley Scott

As I said in my review of the book, I was very much looking forward to this adaptation. If you want a spoiler-free recommendation, I will say the film did not disappoint and will keep you on the edge of your seat the whole time.

For the rest of this space I'm going to discuss the differences between the book and the movie, so let that serve as your warning if you prefer surprises left intact.

First I'd like to address the elephant in the room: Yes, Matt Damon also played a stranded astronaut in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, which also starred Jessica Chastain. So let's pretend The Martian is like Murph Cooper went back to rescue the unethical Dr. Mann! Oh, did I just digress into spoiling a whole other movie? Rest assured, Damon's character here is completely different from Mann and you won't be comparing this film to Interstellar while sitting in the theater.

The first difference from the book, I noticed in the very first scene. Andy Weir's book begins on Sol (solar day) 6, but Drew Goddard's screenplay has the fateful sandstorm occur on Sol 18. I couldn't think of a reason that this minor change was made

The next difference was made in the interest of keeping a PG-13. Due to the MPAA's arbitrary guidelines for strong language (that's a whole different blog post), it can vary how many uses of the F-word are allowed in a PG-13 movie. It would seem The Martian was allowed exactly two instances and used them up in the first five minutes. The rest of Mark Watney's moments of colorful language, given free reign in the book of course, were either censored in text with dashes, translated via other characters' euphemisms, and in one case silenced by the vacuum of Mars. I'm not going to say it was necessary to hear all the F-bombs, but the edits of them seemed all the more obvious and occasionally jarring, considering much of the dialogue was taken verbatim from the novel.

Some aspects of the adaptation process were absolutely necessary and welcome, such as making Watney's daily written logs into video logs, which is preferable in the visual medium of film. There were a few too many scenes of characters reading aloud while they typed or received messages, but this was justified by the other characters in the room needing to hear what the correspondence said. It was also a little awkward when NASA authorities were shown making important decisions very quickly without much deliberation, while in the book a few days were allowed to pass. There are also fewer obstacles encountered during Watney's journey from Acidalia Planitia to the Schiaparelli crater. In the book he encounters another sandstorm, a loss of communication with NASA, and a devastating tumble of his rover into the crater, which are not depicted on-screen. However it is understandable to do this for more economical storytelling so these were understandable sacrifices.

The largest changes come during the rescue sequence at the end of the story. In the book, Watney makes a joke about flying around like Iron Man by poking a hole in his spacesuit glove, while in the movie he actually carries out this plan. At the same time, the movie's Commander Lewis (Chastain) goes outside the Hermes to grab Watney herself, but in the book this is done by Dr. Beck. One aspect that gave me a laugh was that the whole crew comes to join Watney after he's pulled in; this must be a nod to the quote in the book in which Watney says: "If this were a movie, everyone would have been in the airlock, and there would have been high fives all around. But it didn't pan out that way."

The screen version also adds an epilogue after Watney is rescued, similar to something Weir says he had in the first draft of his book, and deleted when he decided it felt too artificial to introduce a time jump. However, in a movie it doesn't feel unnatural to see what each of the crew members did after they returned to Earth.

Overall, the movie stuck pretty close to the book, and those making it clearly put as much research into the scientific accuracy as Andy Weir did. The few tweaks made by the filmmakers can serve as an example of the right way to adapt a text to the screen. Both the book and the film are proof that science fiction can be intelligent and realistic, while remaining highly entertaining.

Insane City by Dave Barry

Usually when I choose a book to read, I have heard a little about it beforehand and I have a notion that I'm going to enjoy it. However, in the case of this one I chose it because I knew Dave Barry as a humorist and was curious about his fiction writing.

Insane City takes place during the weekend of Seth and Tina's destination wedding in Key Biscayne, Florida, near Miami. Seth is accompanied by his immature Groom Posse who inevitably convince him to drink irresponsibly during his bachelor party. This was all too reminiscent of the movie The Hangover, with the exception that the groom is the protagonist of Barry's hijinks rather than being relegated to a side character.

The debauchery at local bars leads Seth to be separated from his groomsmen and for the Groom Posse to be separated from their luggage and some of the clothes they were wearing. After smoking pot with his fiancee's sister, Seth saves a Haitian family in the ocean who we'd been introduced to in some earlier, humor-free chapters just so they wouldn't joining the narrative out of "nowhere." Seth sets up the refugee family in his hotel room along with a "stripper" his friends hired and her intimidating but lazy "boyfriend." (Really a prostitute and her pimp.)

Through a series of contrived circumstances, Tina's wedding ring ends up in the hands of an orangutan named Trevor, with Seth trying desperately to retrieve it. Meanwhile, Tina's rich father buys a couple of restaurants after getting high on pot brownies brought to the rehearsal dinner by Seth's mother. And Seth has a series of misadventures with a wannabe model who both think the orangutan is a gorilla.

I'm sorry to say that most of Barry's attempts at comedic situations felt predictable and his characters were all cliches. From the drug humor to the wedding shenanigans to the very presence of a primate, it all seems like things I've seen before and have no desire to ever read again.

The Martian by Andy Weir

Sometimes, a lot of scientific and mathematical details in a work of fiction would turn readers off. In Andy Weir's first novel The Martian, the more specifically the calculations are given, the more we feel the tension around his hero's survival.

Mark Watney has been left for dead on the surface of Mars. As he makes sure to explain, it was not the fault of his crewmates, it was just the bad luck of a severe dust storm that forced them to leave and an  impaling that was not as lethal as it looked. Fortunately, he is well equipped intellectually for survival as the crew's mechanical engineer and botanist. He is able to fix broken equipment and figure out a way to grow more potatoes from the limited supply he starts with. Unfortunately, Murphy's Law is in full effect; in other words he has a lot of problem solving to do in the harsh environment.

The novel starts out as the daily logs written by Watney, who has a dark sense of humor about his situation which makes it an even more fun read. After Watney eventually re-establishes contact using the Pathfinder rover, the perspective occasionally shifts to the NASA headquarters on Earth. Alternating between the first-person and third-person narratives gives us more than one side of the story, and Weir is careful not to repeat any exposition, keeping the plot moving forward.

The most admirable aspect of this book is the scientific research that went into it. It presents a plausible method of manned missions to Mars, in having the habitat, supplies, and Ascent Vehicle deposited on the surface by unmanned crafts before the astronauts arrive. Andy Weir has admitted to two major departures from real science in his story; one being that no actual Martian sandstorm would be as powerful as the one that serves as the caveat for Watney's stranding, and that radiation shielding would have to be be much more substantial than is implied. But these are forgivable oversights and the details about how much food, water, and oxygen Watney would need to survive all ring true.

Since this book rekindled my interest in space travel, I recently watched (or re-watched) a few movies in the genre. Apollo 13 was an especially notable influence on this book, which is summarized in this xkcd strip:

 There is even a reference to a bit of dialogue from Ron Howard's film when someone in The Martian is referred to as "a steely-eyed missile man". To say any more would spoil an exciting plot development.

Like the comic character, I'm excited to see the movie adaptation, as The Martian was one of my favorite books I've read this year. The situation is unique, the protagonist is relatable, and the climax is a breathless page-turner.

For more about the author and his book, check out his website.