And so, my Time Travel Week begins…

Time travel can be quite a heavy subject so I thought I would kick things off with a review of the event that inspired me to do a week about time travel in the first place. Secret Cinema, for those who don’t know about it, is an organisation based in London that organises special and unique cinema experiences. You often don’t know what film is going to be shown and you normally don’t know where it’s going to be shown. You just get told what to wear and where to meet. One example I’ve heard about was a showing of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest where people were told to meet in a strange part of London and were walked round the corner to an old hospital, told to put on white gowns, and given drinks and sweets in little white cups just like in the movie. Actors playing hospital staff as well as actors playing other mental patients. It’s a total immersive experience which obviously culminates in a showing of the movie at the end of the night. Pretty cool stuff.

This year they chose to tackle a behemoth of popular cinema culture. Back to the Future. They were going to recreate Hill Valley itself. 1955 Hill Valley that is. This was the biggest night they had ever planned and as a result they did actually have a few teething problems. The demand was huge and they put on about 60 nights in total which is much more than normal I believe. But their ambition, while impressive, got the better of them for the first few nights as people, some of my friends included, were told their showings were cancelled, some of whom had already booked transport and hotels in London etc. They didn’t get very good press for the first week. Luckily my booking was during the second month and all the teething issues had been sorted and I got to experience the night without any hitches.

All photos below are from the Secret Cinema Flickr account.

Let me walk you through what happened. First of all there were many emails and web links shared with us all before the event. There were multiple Facebook pages of fake Hill Valley organisations. There was a pop-up shop in London specialising in selling ‘50s clothes and doing ‘50s makeup. And each person was given a unique identity, a name and a job, more about which would be revealed on the night. It was very impressive how much work had gone into it. Personally I found that I didn’t quite have enough time to read it all but I think if you really got into every aspect of it and had the time to read the plethora of spoof emails and Facebook posts then it would really have helped to set the scene before the night itself.

I went with my brother-in-law and we turned up to the Tube station that we had been told to go to. I started getting the vibe on the way there because the closer you got the more people you saw on the public transport with hair slicked back and wearing jock jackets etc. When you walk from the Tube station and follow the crowd to the venue itself you very quickly become aware that you are already in the midst of many actors. I nearly got knocked down by a Biff Tannen lookalike who told me that I owed him money. I’m not always very good at responding in ‘mockulife’ situations like that and I think I made some failed attempt at a joke using the word ‘density’ which I immediately regretted. Later you had policemen patrolling the lines holding up a mobile phone saying that no ‘calculators’ were allowed inside.

It’s all very strictly organised. They were very strict that no mobile phones are allowed, I think because they want to A) give people more of a 1955 experience without having lots of the attendees taking selfies all night and B) it stopped the ‘secret’ aspect being spoiled over social media. Although to be honest, as my sister-in-law was pregnant, we did manage to sneak a phone in just in case of emergencies.

Once inside I have to admit it was pretty damn impressive what they had done. I’ve been to the Warner Brothers movie studios in LA and this set pretty much was a scaled down version of the actual Hill Valley square in those studios. There must have been about 20 or more shops that had been built from scratch. A 1950s style travel agents, a bank, a comic shop, a clothes shop. The list goes on. There was also a Hill Valley High School building where you could go inside and enjoy the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, complete with a Mr Strickland walking around patrolling the hall. In the main square outside you would regularly see a Marty McFly skateboarding behind an old 1950s car. Or a guy dressed as Doc Brown walking around looking stressed whilst holding rolls of paper. They also had loads of people acting as 1950s youths just milling around or getting beat up by Biff etc. All in all I think I estimated they must have had well over 200 actors involved in the whole night.

There were also pretty detailed recreations of people’s houses from the film. Very authentic 1950s memorabilia everywhere. It’s incredible the amount of detail they went into. If you ‘played the game’ like the organisers hoped you would then you were meant to go to your designated shop or venue depending on the character you had been assigned. I think my brother-in-law was meant to go to a travel agents, and we saw people there getting taken through the holiday booking process and then given an in-flight safety briefing on a mock ‘50s aeroplane seat row, and I was meant to be a high school student and if I had gone to the Hill Valley High School at the right time and reported in then I could have gotten a ride on the yellow school bus which did a couple of laps around the square.

I’m glad I read some of the reviews earlier because I knew that you are a bit of a captive audience inside and all the drinks and food are certainly not at 1950s prices, so I had eaten well before going. But it was still nice to get a few beers and a bottle of red wine to sit down and watch the film with. There was also a retro fairground with a big wheel, which was a good way to see the impressive site from above, and lots of little game and food stalls. We had about 3 hours in total I think of enjoying this 1950s experience before the film started.

The film itself was just great to watch on the big screen. It is such a classic film that I would take any opportunity to watch it on the big screen anyway. But the really cool stuff was the immersive bits that they organised while the film was on. For example, when the DeLorean made its first appearance in the film, rolling out of the back of the truck in the Twin Pines Mall car park, a door opened underneath the cinema screen, smoke bellowed out and a real DeLorean drove out onto the stage. The crowd obviously went wild at this. Then when the Libyans came you saw the Marty McFly lookalike jump in the car and then drive it round the square where we were all seated, being chased by the Libyans camper van, screeching round the corners and complete with flashes and fire when he hit ‘88mph’ (and the car sneaks off in the darkness). It was awesome to see this happen in real life only metres away from where we were seated.

Other little interactive things like this happened from time to time but the big finale had Doc Brown slide down the wire from the clock tower which was above the cinema screen and put the cables together just as the DeLorean was speeding up around the square. It certainly was an amazing immersive cinema experience and it is a great way to watch a movie, particularly one that you know very well.

I have to say, and especially if you were one of the people who really went to town on dressing up in 50s gear etc, it kind of was like stepping back in time for a night and enjoying everything from the 1950s (apart from the prices) without modern day distractions. It maybe is the closest we can get to proper time travel. It really did kickstart my latest time travel obsession. It was a bizarre experience but one that I would certainly try again when they do another film (Alien would be cool as a Secret Cinema I think!).

To be honest, I’d actually love to see a 1985 Hill Valley recreated next time. Maybe for Back to the Future 2?!

Tune in tomorrow for the next instalment of Time Travel Week, where we have possibly the most in-depth post of the whole week – Time Travel Styles. In this post I will look into all the main methods of time travel that have been depicted in popular cinema, and I discuss the pros and cons and even in some cases the scientific possibility (or at least I attempt to) of each method. See you tomorrow!

#timetravelweek

UPDATE:
7 days after posting this article, Secret Cinema has just released a video of the Back to the Future from this summer. Here it is…

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