Back To The Future Prank Has Marty McFly And Jennifer Face-to-Face With Themselves
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I’m a big fan of the New York-based improv group Improv Everywhere. Over the years they’ve staged stunts such as freezing dozens of people in place inside Grand Central Station, staging a talk show interview in a working subway car, and talking a “suicide jumper” down from a four-foot ledge. Nevertheless, I gave them a mixed review last week for two of their recent stunts. The Ghostbusters prank that had three ghosts invading a library, only to be chased out by guys with proton packs, that was awesome. Their slow-motion Matrix fight in the middle of a department store, however, left something to be desired. Now they’ve fully redeemed themselves in my eyes with the clever Back to the Future stunt up above.
Honestly, they went all out on this. It would have been funny enough just to have “Marty and Jennifer” interrupted by a frantic Doc Brown. Having him actually arrive in a DeLorean? Everybody loves some production values. But having a “time loop” where a duplicate Marty and Jennifer (identical twins, natch) show up and threaten to destroy the time-space continuum? That’s what separates the (improv) amateurs from the true (improv) professionals. Here’s the group’s official intro to the stunt:
For our latest mission we brought the movie Back To The Future to life in a public plaza near the Met Life Clock Tower in Manhattan. A time traveling Delorean suddenly appeared, and Doctor Emmett Brown leaped from the vehicle to warn Marty McFly and Jennifer Parker that they were about to see themselves from ten minutes in the future, the consequences of which could be disastrous. Moments later a second Marty and Jennifer (played by identical twin actors) arrived on the scene.
Apparently the IE folks are uploading a new “Movies in Real Life” video each Tuesday, although it’s unclear how long they plan to keep it up. If the rest of them are as good as this one, hopefully they’ll keep doing them until they run out of good ideas. Next week they’re going to tackle “Jurassic Park in real life.” How are they going to come up with a dinosaur? No clue, but I look forward to finding out.
If you guys are taking suggestions, how about a Terminator riff where Kyle Reese comes to save Sarah Connor from a murderous cyborg? Probably would have to do it without guns, however, which would lessen the impact but probably lead to fewer arrests or gunshot wounds.
Finally, I know we’re all science fiction, all the time here at GFR, but I’m going to step outside of our mandate for a moment because this “Indiana Jones in real life” video is hilarious.
