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Kai F. McNeil
The Hallway of Fountain Dining Hall is decorated with posters and led lights on October 21st for Foutain's "Pack to The Future Dinner".
Marty McFly visited the future in the movie, “Back to the Future Part II” Oct. 21. University Dining jumped at the opportunity to organize a themed dinner at Fountain and Clark Dining Halls. They called it “Pack to the Future.”
“We just thought it would take advantage of the date when the movie goes back into the
future to create a fun and exciting event,” said Keith Smith, director of the Board of Operations.
University Dining was supposed to screen the movie on the day of the event, but the university was denied the rights to show it Oct. 21 due to a contract with movie theaters across the nation.
Instead, the movie will be screened today at 7:30 p.m. on Stafford Commons.
“We wanted to be sure to show the movie so that students can see how the decor was related to the movie,” said Lindsay Hester, University Dining marketing manager. “We wanted them to have an overall complete experience.”
University Dining’s team watched the film repeatedly in order to capture the details it would show at the dinner.
“We watched the movie several times and pinpointed several aspects of the movie we wanted to show, like the [fake shark and the hydrated pizza],” Hester said.
The menu was elaborated in correlation to the movie, with “Back to the Future” language and a timeline. The buffet offered Biff’s Meathead Meatloaf, Café ‘80s, Apple Crumble, MTVegan Chow Mein and Nobody Calls Me Chicken à la King.
“I just came for the tang; I use to have it all the time,” said Justin Braunsdorf, a junior studying business management.
Students appreciated the details that allowed for a full immersion into the movie’s atmosphere.
“The clever naming was cool,” said Nicolas Tessener, a freshman studying civil engineering.
Fountain Dining Hall was divided into two parts: a future and past. The futuristic section emulated the 2015 part of the movie and the past section was decorated like the 1955 part of the movie.
In the futuristic area, hover boards hung all around the dining area.
“I recognize some stuff of the movie like the hover boards, obviously,” said Kat Bygate, a sophomore studying materials science and engineering.
In the past area of Fountain Dining Hall, blue tinsel strings hung like those in the first movie behind the band at prom. A giant balloon octopus and fish also filled up the space.
“They really hit with the theme of enchanted sea, like prom in the first movie,” said Quinn Turk, a freshman studying criminology. “I like that they did future and past.”
Posters with quotes from the movie hung on the walls highlighting certain scenes such as “You built a time machine out of a DeLorean?” and “Roads? Where we are going we don’t need roads.”
University Dining used the movie as inspiration for marketing the event. Hester and one of her interns handed out flyers designed the same way as the ones to save the clock tower in the film.
“We wanted to go hand in hand like in the movie to draw attention,” Hester said.