[Previous entry: "Stressed"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Reith Lectures"]
04/15/2001 Archived Entry: "Hoverboards"
While on my weekly visit to Snopes.com to disprove the various (but thankfully decreasing in number) chain emails I receive - this time it was some rubbish about what Neil Armstrong said before he went on the Moon - I picked up this gem of an article about the hoverboards in Back to the Future 2.
It seems that Robert Zemeckis, the director, was asked so many times how they filmed the hoverboard sequences, he said, "What do you mean, how did we do it? It's a real hover-board. It flies. Michael [J. Fox] just practiced a lot." Since a large number of people in this world fail to appreciate a good joke when they hear it, this was taken to be an admission that hoverboards actually existed; that, coupled with the fact that there was a 'Mattel' hoverboard in the film (so they must exist!) led many people to believe that they could buy one.
From the article:
Mattel was besieged with inquiries about where and when buyers could purchase hoverboards. "In most cases, we make it clear it was made specifically for the movie,'' said Glenn Bozarth of Mattel back in 1989 when the phones were ringing off the hook. "But if they've got a sense of humor, we tell them to wait until 2015.''Come to think of it, a while back on Vavatch I talked about the possibility of creating real-life hoverboards in a theme park by laying superconducting magnets under the ground and permanent magnets on the boards. Unfortunately I have a feeling this would cost a rather large amount of cash and create no end of difficulties with people wearing earrings, fillings, watches, etc.