If you have not been on the internet for the past year, I’m going to let you know now, THIS IS THE YEAR that Marty from Back to the Future II arrives in the FUTURE. Now, whether you celebrated on New Year’s, in June, or on another date, I can forgive you, because there are a ton of different memes going around, and it’s all very confusing.
A wonderful source that keeps all the different timelines straight is Back to the Future Wikia, which also has any and every trivia thing you could every want about all three movies. According to the Wikia:
- October 26, 1985 is when Marty went back in time to November 5, 1955
- October 26, 1985 is when Doc grabs Marty and Jennifer to have them do something about their kids, and takes them to Wednesday, October 21, 2015
No matter whether you want to celebrate Marty’s arrival to 2015, or the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future, October is going to be an awesome time to throw a Back to the Future program.
FILMS
If your library has a public performance license from Movie Licensing USA, you are in luck- they hold the public performance license to all three of the movies. Show one or all three in a marathon! If you don’t belong to Movie Licensing USA, give them a call and see if they will let you have a one-time license. Getting permission is better than getting busted for illegally showing movies.
FOOD
One of the best things about having parties in the library is that you can completely sugar up the tweens and teens and then send them home! YOU do not have to deal with the resulting sugar crash afterwards. With a Back to the Future Party, you get to delve within two of the BEST decades for food craziness: the 80’s and the 50’s.
For your 80’s side, rock the sugar out with pop rocks, nerds, pixy stix, jawbreakers, lemonheads, and now & laters.
For your 50’s side, go for M&M’s (peanut M&M’s were released in 1954), Ruffles (1958), fruit punch, brownies, caramel corn, and mock-tails.
If you really want to go all out, for your 1980’s side have a rocking pizza party, while for your 1950’s side go back to the malt shop have a sundae bar.
FUN
Setting the Mood
Think about having a costume contest. You could have winners in all sorts of categories in any of the three decades represented in the films- the 1980s (all of the films), the 1950s (Back to the Future featured 1955), and the 1880’s (Back to the Future III featured 1885).
For the 80’s you could have best punk, best rocker, best Madonna, best Marty, best Doc, and best Bif. For the 50’s, you could have best poodle skirt, best greaser, best straight, best Doc, best Chuck Berry, best young Elvis, best Harry Belafonte, best Rat Pack, etc. For the 1880’s, you could have best dressed or best Steampunk versions of everything from gunslinger to barmaid, train engineer to schoolmarm.
Photos and Backgrounds
What’s a party without a photo op? Set up a corner where your teens can take pics with their phone, and have them use a special hashtag for the party along with the library’s tag so that you can find them later. A simple backdrop of stars and a poster of your party theme along with props would work for teens who don’t want to dress up, or if you really want to get into it, companies like Urban Decal sell removable Delorian wall stickers, and All Posters sells the Enchantment Under the Sea dance poster.
Games
I’ve found that I’m working with a lot of hidden disability teens, a few diagnosed and a lot self diagnosed. With ADHD, mild Asperger’s, and others, we’ve had to find a happy medium when it comes to movies, because while some need absolute quite for a movie, a lot of my teens want to DO something while watching movies: it’s not enough to just WATCH the movie, they have to do something along with it, especially if it’s one they’ve seen before. And I am not going to kick one group out to placate the other group- it doesn’t work like that for me, even if it works with some other librarians.
I’m lucky enough that my programming space is large enough that I can project our movie on a huge wall or our large flatscreen, and then parcel out the room into designated areas. The area closest to the screen in the quiet area, no talking allowed. The area farthest away is the one for quiet talking and texting, and if they get loud, they get warned. Between the two, I scatter areas (sometimes on the floor, sometimes on tables) for games (tabletop and card), and everyone is happy.
For the 1880’s section, bring out the playing cards, and have them learn how actually to play poker, gin, pinochle, and other card games that you can find in Hoyle. For your 50’s board games, bring out games like Battleship, Checkers, Chinese Checkers, and Monopoly. For the 1980’s section, bring out games like Risk, Guess Who?, Operation (without the sound), and Life. For the 2015’s, bring out favorites like Clue, Fluxx, Munchkin, Chess, and Go.
Music
Don’t have a public performance license for the Back to the Future movies or just not enough time or willpower to show them? Play music from the different eras instead. You could go all out and bring the karaoke machine and tempt your teens to showcase their talents, or take a page from Lip Sync Battle on Spike TV and make a battle part of the program, but as a backup, create a public playlist using one of the 5 most recommended playlist services. They’ve already gone through the hassle of getting public performance rights for the music, unlike ripping CDs from the library’s collection for your iPod, so you’ll be completely safe creating an 80’s and 50’s mash-up to dance the night away.