Build It With Some Style: Unauthorized Tales of the Time Machines From Back to the Future (Regular Edition) by Tom Silknitter

In 1985, film director Robert Zemeckis introduced the world to a time machine built out of a DeLorean sports car in the film, Back to the Future. While Back to the Future was a blockbuster success, the film itself almost never got made. It is hard to think of a world without Doc Brown and Marty McFly having adventures through time, but that is the world we almost lived in. Back to the Future is a testament to the creative collaborative process. Each failure, false start, and change all aligned for the film's eventual success.

One of the most popular icons to come out of the Back to the Future film series was the time machine itself. Where did this time machine come from? How does one go about creating a fictional time machine that film audiences would believe could actually travel though time?  The creation of the time machine starts with the filmmakers themselves. This is the story about how director Zemeckis was able to bring to life a time machine “with some style!”

With numerous interviews and research, this book details the creation of all the time machines used in the film series and beyond, including the 2020 musical.

Learn about how the time machine started out as a time chamber, and how a marketing executive wanted Doc Brown to drive a Ford Mustang. Explore how ILM created a flying DeLorean and how in the third movie they put a DeLorean on railroad tracks. Even the time traveling "Jules Verne" train's creation is explored. Find out what happened to these time machines after filming, some were left to the elements and were nearly "erased from existence."

• Detailed narrative of the creation of the film series and all the time machines.
• Contains pages of original unpublished photographs
• Includes full interviews with Kevin Pike, Andrew Probert, Ron Cobb, Lawrence G. Paull, Tim Flattery, Gene Winfield, Michael Lantieri, John Bell, and Michael Fink.
• Independently published (January 12, 2021)
• 261 pages
• Measures 6 x 0.62 x 9 inches

Back to the Future and the film itself and all the concepts are the copyright of Universal Studios/Amblin. The book, author and this page has no affiliation or endorsement with Universal Studios/Amblin. This book is for scholarly research of the creation of the film series.

About the Author:
Tom Silknitter is an award-winning photojournalist who's worked for such publications as Sports Illustrated and the New York Post. He was born in Coatesville, Pennsylvania and graduated from The Rochester Institute of Technology in 1999. He spent ten years as a full-time photojournalist where he was part of the APME award-winning team for coverage of the prison escape of Norman Johnston. While not photographing daily, he still accepts select assignments. He's been on the staff of BTTF.com/BacktotheFuture.com since the early 2000s serving as the "DeLorean Historian", providing interviews and written content. When the "A" car was restored, he served as the historian and consultant for the restoration team. He was also an associate producer and archival consultant for the documentary OUTATIME: Saving the DeLorean Time Machine. He currently still lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with his wife Amy, and their household full of cats and dogs (where yes, there is mass hysteria).