What happens when a potato goes 88 mph?

How the lockdown inspired an insane, homemade, feature-length remake of Back To The Future Part II

TAYLOR MORDEN WAS three weeks into selfisolation when the idea hit him like a speeding Delorean. “I’d been talking with other directors about a project that might add up to something bigger, and it kinda just came to me,” says the Oregon filmmaker responsible for ‘Project 88: Back To The Future Too’ — a crowdsourced remake of the time-travel sequel. (He chose the sequel over the original because “it’s more absurd. And, well, hoverboards.”) Made up of 88 different scenes, shot by over 300 DIY directors and film fans spread around the world, it’s a bit different from Robert Zemeckis’ original: for a start, as far as Empire can recall, at no point in the 1989 movie was Doctor Emmett Brown played by a cat, toddler, Lego figurine or potato. “It’s a total clusterfuck,” laughs Morden, “but kind of beautiful too.”

Morden actually put the call out in March, creating a website inviting people to get involved. The rules were simple. “You had one week to make it, you had to follow the original script and you had to follow social-distancing guidelines,” he explains. Every clip that came in was wildly different. “The range of quality and types of scenes was so vast, it’s like trying to watch Back To The Future II on a crazy drug trip. It reminds me of Rick And Morty’s ‘Interdimensional Cable’.”

After stitching all 88 clips together and posting to the web, the film went viral: more than 100,000 people watched it on Youtube within its first few weeks online. All this attention was just a bonus for its creator. “The point was to give people a creative outlet during what’s a very dark time. Every time a scene came in, I got this joyful feeling of connection. Here’s 300 people who all have two things in common: we’re stuck at home and we love this movie. It was special.”

Word of the project reached talent involved in the original: Jeffrey Weissman, who played George Mcfly in the sequels, shot a cameo, while Zemeckis himself approved. “He wrote back: ‘Very cool!’ That was pretty huge,” says Morden, who says he may not be done yet. “I’ve been inundated with messages. People ask every day when we’re doing another one and it’s mostly people who ran out of scenes to film. So maybe the answer is every year just to do Back To The Future II all over again.” Great Scott, indeed.