George Barris, Batmobile Creator, Dies on BTTF Day

Syncs in time have a way of catching up with people. Synchrocinematic ones are often rather special.

The man credited with being the Batmobile's creator and developer has died on November 5, 2015.  That's quite a coincidence.  This same individual had a checkered history of softly promoting himself in the same fashion as he did with the Batmobile, with the Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine. And it is on a famed "BTTF Day" on which he has died - November 5, 2015.

George Barris and the Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine

These are photos of VIN 02831, converted by George Barris into a Back to the Future car....The photos show it on display at the Grand National Roadster Show in San Mateo, 2003.
The first [at top of this posting] and last photos are of display photos placed with the car. The first one is of Barris posing with the VW modified car (or what's left of it). This 'car' is sitting on the backlot of Universal Hollywood. The last photo is an old picture of Steven Spielberg with the #1 BTTF car. That's the car you first see at 'Twin-Pines Mall' in the movie. Universal still owns that car and it is serviced by the DeLorean Motor Center.
Bob Gale went on record at the Pigeon Forge DeLorean Car Show stating "George Barris had nothing to do with the making of the Back to the Future DeLoreans". The car was recently sold (5/2005) at auction for $40,250. Source.

Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine Controversy

Over a decade after the release of Back to the Future Part III, one of the DeLorean time machines stunt cars used in the film was sent to Barris for restoration purposes to be put on display at the Petersen Auto Museum in Los Angeles. The car was returned to Universal Studios in 2003. Barris later purchased a stock DeLorean DMC-12 and converted it into a time machine, which he used to promote himself and his company. While Barris never officially stated that he had anything to do with the Back to the Future films, he did like to indulge in stating that he had built a Back to the Future DeLorean time machine, but never disclosed that it was a replica car.
In 2007 Universal Studios officials sent Barris a cease and desist order demanding that he never again make misrepresentations regarding any involvement with the Back to the Future films. They called upon Barris to remove images of the flying DeLorean from his company's website and restrict his display of replicas of the gull-wing car used by Michael J. Fox in the popular 1985 movie and its sequels. Back to the Future writer/producer Bob Gale went on record stating that "George Barris had absolutely nothing to do with the design or construction of the DeLorean time travel vehicle. "The DeLorean was designed on paper by Ron Cobb and Andrew Probert, and it was built under the supervision of special effects supervisor Kevin Pike and construction coordinator Michael Scheffe."
Barris also came under fire from DeLorean automobile historians, when he proclaimed in a 2003 interview with Maxim magazine that he worked with John DeLorean on the actual car. Barris also had no involvement with the original DeLorean Motor Company and it's sole automobile the DMC-12.

George Barris dies on November 5, 2015.

George Barris was married to Shirley Nahas from 1958 until her death in 2001. They had two children. He died on November 5, 2015, in his sleep at his home in Encino, California, at the age of 89.

 11054 (= flipped, it was 4+5 = 9/11), in Bell, California

George Barris, the creator of the Batmobile and other TV and movie vehicles, died Thursday [November 5, 2015], his son, Brett, announced on Facebook. He was 89.
“Sorry to have to post that my father, legendary kustom car king George Barris, has moved to the bigger garage in the sky,” his son wrote. “He passed on peacefully in his sleep at 2:45 am. He was surrounded by his family in the comfort of his home. He lived his life they way he wanted til the end.”
Along with designing the Batmobile driven in the ’60s “Batman” TV show, Barris also designed the Green Hornet’s car, the “Beverly Hillbillies” jalopy, the Munster Koach and K.I.T.T. from “Knight Rider.”
The car customizer’s first shop was Barris Kustom Shop located on Imperial Highway in Bell, Calif. It was later moved to Lynwood, Calif., but Barris continued his association with North Hollywood, Calif. Barris Kustom Industries remains there. Source.

The significant of November 5th in Back to the Future... and beyond.

Alan Kistler in Newsarama, in 2010, wrote:

When Marty checks the newspaper, the date says that it is Saturday November 5, 1955. It is accurate that November 5, 1955 was a Saturday and this was deliberately researched. In different interviews, Bob Gale has explained that he wanted to make sure that Marty’s arrival date was on a Saturday so that he would run into his parents during the day and not have to wait until they were out of school and so it would be more realistic that he could hide the DeLorean on a construction site and not have it be discovered because no one would be working that day. Likewise, it is accurate that November 12, 1955 also falls on a Saturday, a day that seemed likely for a school to have a dance. Gale chose November as the month because he believed it would be reasonable for a school to have a large, formal dance towards the end of the semester.
November 5 is Guy Fawkes Day and in 1955 it was also the day that racial segregation was outlawed on trains and buses in Interstate Commerce in the U.S.A. By sheer coincidence, it is also the birthday of [screenwriter] Bob Gale’s father. Source.

This is the model of the DeLorean Time Machine that came into my life on November 5, 2015. For more that, and other information on November 5th and Back to the Future, click here.

November 5th, Mary Steenburgen, and Syncs

A lot of people have been talking about Back to the Future and October 21, 2015, because that was the day that Doc Brown and Marty McFly traveled to in the future.

I've been reading a good deal about the movie, the predictions with the Cubs, and such, but I forgot all about what today was until late this afternoon. I was with my wife Jenny, doing errands, and she suggested with go to a nice antique shop on Route 1, just for the heck of it.

Okay, I said, and before I know it, I find myself looking casually at various items. Included in this place was a nice bunch of old Hot Wheel cars and such. One of the cars jumped out at me. It was obviously an excellent scale model of the BTTF DeLorean time machine, down to opening and closing doors and all. It was $5, and I purchased it.

I had just watched, on demand, Back in Time (2014) this week, and respected what careful restoration collectors had done with full-sized DeLorean time machines. Cool, I thought. I found a small one. As it turns out, this model was a Corgi (2001-2005), quite an attractive collectible.

But, wait, what is today? It is November 5, 2015. How could I have overlooked the date? It is an amazing time sync that I would discover this model car on this date, by pure chance.

According to the Futurepedia, this is a special date in BTTF history, of course.

Saturday, November 5, 1955, is the date when "history is changed."

On November 5, 1955, Marty McFly used the DeLorean time machine to escape Libyan terrorists and accidentally traveled back in time to the very day Dr. Emmett L. Brown conceived of the possibility of time travel: Nov. 5, 1955. Where the Twin Pines Mall would someday stand, Marty arrived at the Twin Pines Ranch and crashed into Otis Peabody's barn.
Marty escaped gunshots and ran over one of the two pines at the entrance of the farm. Apparently, this caused the Mr. Peabody to rename his ranch as the "Lone Pine Ranch," and the mall to be renamed "Lone Pine Mall." (Those familiar with Joe Alexander's documentary will appreciate these details in terms of the 9/11 and Twin Towers metaphors.)

November 5, 1955, was the day Marty was hit by the car instead of George, changing history.

November 5, 1955, also was the day when, while hanging a clock in his home bathroom, Dr. Emmett Brown slipped and hit his head on the porcelain sink and had an epiphany: a vision of the flux capacitor, which he theorized could make time travel possible. He was only able to realize his dream after 30 years of toil and, in 1985, he built a time machine out of a DeLorean.

So, today, marks 60 years, for BTTF, since these famous fictional points in history.

As it turns out, I saw another movie earlier in the week that recalled for me the strange overlaps between that film, BTTF, and November 5th.

This movie starred Malcolm McDowell, who has a connection with  Stanley Kubrick, who cast McDowell as the lead in A Clockwork Orange (1971). The film I watched was Time After Time. (It was a movie ahead of its time, because it forecast what I wrote about in 2004 in my book, The Copycat Effect, but more of that another time.)

Jack the Ripper: It's catching isn't it, violence.

Time After Time (1979) is an intriguing examination of time traveler and much more. As Wikipedia nicely summarizes, in 1893 London, popular writer Herbert George Wells (Malcolm McDowell) displays a time machine to his skeptical dinner guests. After he explains how it works (including a "non-return key" that keeps the machine at the traveler's destination and a "vaporizing equalizer" that keeps the traveler and machine on equal terms), police constables arrive at the house searching for Jack the Ripper. A bag with blood-stained gloves belonging to one of Herbert's friends, a surgeon named John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner), leads them to conclude that Stevenson might be the infamous killer. Wells races to his laboratory, but the time machine is gone.

Stevenson has escaped to the future, but because he does not have the "non-return" key, the machine automatically returns to 1893. Herbert uses it to pursue Stevenson to November 5, 1979, where the machine has ended up on display at a museum in San Francisco.

Reasoning that Stevenson would need to exchange his British money, Herbert asks about him at various banks. At the Chartered Bank of London, he meets liberated employee Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen), who says she had directed Stevenson to the Hyatt Regency hotel.

Time machines, November 5th, Mary Steenburgen. Why does this show so familiar? Because in the BTTF franchise, we revisit all of this in the near future past of 1985, 1955, and 2015.

As one online forum exchange noted, the number 115 (specifically as 11/5, November 5th) is the day that Marty goes to in BTTF, as a time 1:15 is when Marty is to meet Doc (Marty gets there as the clock changes to 1:16...upside down 911).

The fact that November 5, 1979, turns up as the date of significance in the time travel of Time After Time is weirdly compelling.

Mary Steenburgen's character, Amy Robbins is the love interest of Malcolm McDowell's character, H. G. Wells. And because they met on the set of Time After Time, they would actually fall in love in their future, marry in 1990, have children, and divorce ten years later, in 1990. Where was Mary Steenburgen in 1990? Starring in Back to the Future Part III.

Mary Steenburgen/Clara Clayton would, in 1990, play Christopher Lloyd/Doc Brown's love interest in Back to the Future Part III. Steenburgen's father Maurice Steenburgen was train conductor who worked at the Missouri Pacific Railroad. In BTTF 3 Clara and Doc travel in a time machine made from a train, with 4-6-0 ten wheeler steam locomotive.

There's something to this Mary Steenburgen angle that remains unexplored, I feel.

Mary Steenburgen would meet her next husband, Ted Danson, in 1993, when filming the 1994 Pontiac Moon, about the 1969 landing of Apollo 11 on the Moon. They were married in 1995.

Happy November 5th, everyone.

See also George Barris, Batmobile Creator, Dies on BTTF Day [November 5th]

Back to the Future II: 2015 ~ The Cubs Win The World Series

Have you noticed the onslaught of BTTF (the "in" way of noting the Back to the Future films) documentaries and YouTube videos with conspiracy examinations? Watch for more. One project is Back in Time from Jason Aron. Another is an unnamed new doc in development from Joe Alexander.

The Year 2015 is of some significance in the BTTF series. Take a look at the times punched into the BTTF computer.

In Back to the Future II, in 2015, the Queen of England is Diana. That's wrong. She died in 1997, thanks to the world of the paparazzi.

But the BTTF movies predicted an amazing array of things, from a baseball team in Miami to the iPad, from video conferencing to televisions hung on your wall at home, from wireless video games to the public's modern love for sequels of old movies in 3D.

It missed out on email and Twitter, sure, but you can't predict everything in one series of movies.

It also has the Cubs winning the World Series in 2015.

There is still a chance the Cubs could win the World Series in 2015. You know, there really is, like a 14 to 1 possibility. Cubs' fans, do not give up hope. 

There actually were 14 things that did come true in the Back to the Future movies. Was there others?

Some indepth work has been done analyzing the BTTF films, especially as related to 9/11. While all do not agree with what is seen, and one of Joe Alexander's past films was roundly criticized, it is worthy of watching.