Finally. Last week, the Secret Cinema organisation royally messed up the timing of its latest offering, a huge onsite theatricalised presentation of Robert Zemeckis's 1985 gem Back To The Future, in which Marty McFly, a feisty teen played by Michael J Fox, travels back in time to the 1950s, only to discover that his mom, now a total babe, has the hots for him.
The first week's performances had to be cancelled at short notice as the whole thing wasn't ready in time, resulting in social media fury and hundreds of disappointed punters forlornly wandering the east Londonstreets in 50s dress.
Well, maybe Secret Cinema was having its Eric Stoltz moment: I like to think the delay was an elaborate postmodern joke about the fact that Back To The Future was originally cast with Stoltz in the lead role – an actor who was sacked after five weeks because he wasn't funny enough – and filming had to start all over again with Fox.
As a Secret Cinema virgin I found the event engaging and entertainingly bizarre: faux-American and yet very English in all its fancy-dress eccentricity. It isn't exactly an immersive, wraparound experience – you could get that better by seeing the film at an old-fashioned cinema showing. But it turned into an impressive festival of fan love, a Comic-Con-ish event in which so many audience members dressed up in 1950s clothes which were as authentic as those of the actors employed by the production, that everyone was a co-contributor: it was virtually a user-generated live event.
The stores glimpsed on screen are meticulously reconstructed – the Texaco gas station, the Hill Valley Telegraph office and the cinema showing Cattle Queen Of Montana. Photograph: Al Overdrive /Secret Cinema
A huge patch of ground near the Olympic village in east London had been transformed into a passable approximation of the 1955 Hill Valley town square in which Fox finds himself. The town hall itself, with its fatefully stopped clock, is a huge facade at one end – it forms the screen on which the film is shown – and the stores glimpsed on screen are meticulously reconstructed – the Texaco gas station, the JD Armstrong Realty office, the Hill Valley Telegraph office and the cinema showing Cattle Queen Of Montana with Ronald Reagan – and stocked with period-specific stuff.
It was here that we milled around for a couple of hours before the movie began, looking in at the repro shops and queuing for ages for hot dogs and shakes. Not many were availing themselves of the freedom to smoke although there were a few vapers.
Bizarrely, while the site is still in daylight, buildings bearing names such as John Lewis and Westfield loom prominently and surreally over everything. Nightfall helps the period effect.
Actors cavort around playing jocks, nerds, cops, bobbysoxers – all interacting with the audience. Lou, the proprietor of Lou's Diner, was telling people not to jaywalk; a couple of guys in workmen's overalls came out of the high school and proceeded to do Chuckles Brothers-type comedy with a ladder, to everyone's alarm. I had that feeling familiar from the Edinburgh Fringe – trying not to catch the eye of an actor who wants to make you the foil for the wacky routine he's got planned.
Before the actual screening of the film, we get someone impersonating Marty McFly demonstrating how to skateboard behind a speeding car – and then there's some live 50s rock'n'roll, inspired by the prom scene.
The 50s prom kids are of course stunned and even scared as Marty's guitar riffs morph from classic rock'n'roll to alien 80s metal. Photograph: Will Cooper/Future Cinema
Secret Cinema reminded me how much I loved that scene – and the movie generally. The 50s prom kids are of course stunned and even scared as Marty's guitar riffs morph from classic rock'n'roll to alien 80s metal: Marty tells them their "kids will love it".
I like to think this moment secretly inspired Oliver Sacks – who later consulted with Fox over his Parkinson's – when he famously took an amnesiac rock fan named Greg to a Grateful Dead concert in 1991: Greg's condition meant he couldn't remember any of the band's newer stuff, only the songs from before he became ill. As the band progressed from their early material on through to their latest compositions, Greg became silent and thunderstruck, finally murmuring: "This is like the music of the future."
I'm not sure exactly what Secret Cinema seriously offers the business of film distribution and exhibition – but in our digital downloading age, we increasingly yearn for live events, real communal happenings, and Secret Cinema caters to that.
And it was a great pleasure to have Back To The Future back on the big screen in this celebratory context: an American classic to be compared with Groundhog Day and It's A Wonderful Life.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jul/31/secret-cinema-back-to-the-future-olympic-park
