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A review by tylergfoster
Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History by Randal Atamaniuk, Michael Klastorin
4.0
I imagine if you put this and the Ghostbusters Visual History in front of most fans of both movies, they wouldn't detect a significant difference in the amount of new details that fans can only hear about in this book, but Klastorin's approach feels a little less sentimental, more rooted in technical details and bits that are generally passed over in the many DVD and Blu-ray documentaries that have been produced (and especially Caseen Gaines' underwhelming We Don't Need Roads) in favor of more anecdotal material. Another plus is that Zemeckis and Gale are not nearly as sentimental as somene like Dan Aykroyd, who will still tell you Ghostbusters II is a good movie, so this has plenty of Zemeckis discussing his concerns and issues during both shoots, and a great wealth of photographs from the Eric Stoltz period on Back to the Future. The volume of work Stoltz did on the first movie has been widely discussed, but Klastorin and his co-writer Randal Atamaniuk's archival material really clarifies it through photos of Stoltz in so many of the movie's scenes. It also gave me a renewed appreciation for the effort put into the Western details of Back to the Future Part III.
Although I hate to admit it, the two best sections of Gaines' book aren't covered here (Weissman's miserable experience as a Gale / Glover middleman isn't mentioned at all, and the terrifying stunt-gone-wrong involving Cheryl Wheeler-Dixon on Back to the Future II is summed up in an inch-long paragraph), so that book can't totally be thrown out of the conversation. Nonetheless, this is the clear winner of the two -- a wealth of detail, a great collection of images, and no agonizing "first person" prose.
Although I hate to admit it, the two best sections of Gaines' book aren't covered here (Weissman's miserable experience as a Gale / Glover middleman isn't mentioned at all, and the terrifying stunt-gone-wrong involving Cheryl Wheeler-Dixon on Back to the Future II is summed up in an inch-long paragraph), so that book can't totally be thrown out of the conversation. Nonetheless, this is the clear winner of the two -- a wealth of detail, a great collection of images, and no agonizing "first person" prose.