Ep. 120: Oliver & Terry Holler: Building the BTTF DeLorean Time Machine for Charity

Welcome into the Bama Geeks. We are thrilled to have you guys here tonight with us. I'm Brock Parker and way over the other side of the screen. That's my wife, Jess. Of course, Kevin and Bo are here and we are joined by the incredible and lovely Oliver and Terry Holler. In the center square this evening. That's right. The place of honor. They're supposed to be funny, aren't they? Yeah. No pressure. Yeah. Well, they are from to the future dot org, and they would do a lot with our friend Steve Clark over at back to the future dot com. I've had the privilege of knowing Oliver and Terry now. Fifteen years. Wow. You haven't changed a bit. Oh, I'm about fifty pounds lighter, thankfully. Taking care of yourself. You look good. Well, thank you. I'm trying to. And you guys look wonderful as always. So happy to have you here. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Yeah, we're excited. Excited to get you on here. And we'll talk about in just a little bit, we're going to get to see you in person in just five short days. Live. Live in person. Yeah. That's right. We'll tell you all about that coming up. But I just want to do some quick housekeeping. Anything you need to know about the podcast, just go to BamaGeeks.com. That's where you find all the audio and video episodes and whatever little knickknacks you can find. Kevin, we need to put some Easter eggs on that site. I don't know what, though. I'm all for it. We need to do some fun. But you can also visit us on social media at Bama Geeks everywhere. And if you're on Facebook, then just search out Bama Geeks Front Porch. And that's our own private little group. We'll let you in there and you can have some some behind the scenes fun with us. And of course, our top Patreon members for well over four and a half years. Thank you so much to Jamie and Mike and Darnay and Jack. We appreciate your longstanding support. And if you want to know how you can join the Bama Geeks, then just go to bamageeks.com. That'll tell you how to do it. But again, we're happy to have Oliver and Terry Holler with us. If you guys have questions for them, if you want to know more about what they do and you're about to learn all about it, then just pop into the chat and we'll bring you, bring it up on screen and they'll, they'll, They'll answer the questions for you. Yes, we said all about it, Oliver. That's right. All about it. There, read the book. That's right. I brought my notes. That's all right. That's perfectly fine. Yeah. So Oliver and Terry, like I said, they're with ToTheFuture.org. They do a lot with the Michael J. Fox podcast. Help me with the full name. Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. There you go. And Team Fox, they raise a lot of money. They do a lot of driving. Spend a lot of time behind the wheel of an actual DeLorean. Yeah, we do. Michael says that I think we spend more time behind the wheel in a DeLorean than even he has. So that was a true statement. Mm-hmm. Well, how did you get started with this? Let's start from the beginning. Where did the love of Back to the Future come from for you guys? Well, as you might imagine, the movie. Nineteen eighty five. Forty years ago, Back to the Future came out. It was the number one movie of the year. And I was, I guess, in high school. about the same age as the character, Marty McFly. So I was learning about cars and all that kind of stuff. And the movie just really struck a chord in me. A few years later, I met Terry and as legend has it, we were on a date and asking each other those dating questions that you do. What do you like? What do you like? What do you like? What's your favorite movie? And we both said Back to the Future. Yeah, kind of a thing. So, yeah, you got to be careful, as I say, when that happens. Trapped. Oh, no. Put a ring on it. And we've been time traveling together ever since. I guess this January will be our thirtieth wedding anniversary. Oh, fantastic. Congratulations. It's shocking. Time really does fly. I mean, as you age, perhaps you can relate. It almost seems like time starts to speed up. And, you know, it just seems like just yesterday, you know, we were in high school or college or doing whatever we were doing. And It's quite a phenomenal experience getting the privilege of aging, I guess. Right. Yes. Yeah. I agree. It's funny you say that, Oliver. Before we do our formal episode, we do a members-only episode where it gets recorded and broadcast to our members. We were actually talking about that, like things just when you're younger, that it seems like, oh, man, I can't wait till I get to become an adult and get to do adult things. And then when you get to be an adult, then things just go to light speed. You're trying to slow everything down. And it's really good that you that you, you know, thirty years in, you found the person that you want to be with and that you want to continue to be with. You know, it's that huge. It makes the ride, even though it keeps the speed up, it makes the ride even better. Oh, it does. It really does. You know, to be able to share experiences and all you know, we remember for each other too. That's true. We help each other. It's like, where was that? Who was that? We met. Yeah. Left brain, right brain. Any brain. It's like, it's like the car, you know, uh, people ask us about the DeLorean and all. And, and, um, I really believe that, you know, having something isn't really, uh, as cool as you might think, what I think is important is sharing what you have and sharing the car with others, sharing the experience with your life partner, your bride. When Ali said he wanted to build a time machine, I said, that's fine, but don't let it sit in the driveway. That place would have taken us around the world with the car. It's been an amazing flying carpet. It is. It's like a magic carpet. People ask us recently, somebody said, well, you trailer the car, right? And I said, if you had a magic carpet, would you roll it up into a trailer and haul it around with a truck? And they were like, no. I said, you'd ride it, right? You'd ride your magic carpet. And that's what we do. Yeah. That's right. So when did you start building your magic carpet? Yeah. Okay. I should know the date. Well, Oliver had a catastrophic situation. He was diagnosed with cancer August fourth of two thousand. Oh, you got that date. Oh, yeah. That one's etched. Um, and, uh, the doctor said, get your life in order. Cause you don't have much time. Yeah. They said it was the best worst case scenario. There was nothing to be done. And, uh, he didn't have to go through chemo or any, any drug situations like that. But, uh, wow. Hearing those words of get your life in order. It was like, all right, well, what do you want to do? We'd really only been married a few years. Um, It was all crazy. It was a bummer. I bet. So anyway, it made us take inventory and figure out a bucket list. And really, one of the things I had wanted to do was build a time machine from a DeLorean. Because I've always built things and made things. And because of the movie, movie influence, I just always thought that would be the most fun car to drive. Yeah. It's kind of a fantasy thing. Terry said, uh, go for it. Let's, let's do it. Um, and, uh, we've, I've, we, we looked around, I found one on eBay. This was back in the dial-up days where you, you know, Oh, wow. Before you had these. Oh, no, you don't remember that. Oh, we do. Oh, yeah. Oh, we do. We do. And, uh, before the auto bidding apps, all that kind of stuff. And, and, uh, I just kept clicking refresh and bidding up until I reached the point of the credit card limit. That hasn't changed. But after I refreshed, it said, congratulations, you are the winning bidder, blah, blah, blah. And I called Terry up and I said, hey, we have a DeLorean. And then the process of building began. And that was a thrilling moment. Three and a half months. I was working day and night on the car. And Bob Gill, He says he thinks the building of the car kind of saved my life. It certainly gave me a focus and a purpose and, you know, something to work towards. Yeah. Just twenty five years later, you are still driving that car. That's right. You are here and you are driving that car. Yeah, I call this my bonus round. That's pretty good. Twenty fifth anniversary of having a bonus bonus round. Yeah. I can't complain. But yeah, every evening, Terry would come home from work and she would say, What did you make for me today, honey? Yeah, and I said, I bent these pipes at just the right angle. That's great, honey. She would pretend that that was very impressive. It was, but. She would play along. And sometimes I would have some metal prepared in a vice or something. I'd say, I need your help to help me bend this. She would help. It wasn't a vice. It was on the ground in the grass. And he said, can you stand on this and help me bend? I was the vice. Nice. Well, maybe so. It's a DeLorean and I helped. Yeah, we definitely built the car together and we would rummage the scrap yards and electronic surplus shops. And she found the flux capacitor. Oh, that was a good story. But the funniest story is when he was looking for a metal plate to go over the engine because he needed to build all that time machine stuff on it. And he was saying, I need this, this, this, this. And I went, are you standing on something? That might be that. And he looked and he went, I am. And then he just had to look down. oh that's great it was that kind of thing if if he needed it we found it if we didn't find that we found something close and he made it look as close to what he thought he saw in the movie what we thought we saw in the movie because we were watching a vhs tape for the kids watching that's a It comes on a cassette kind of thing. Notoriously poor visuals. Exactly. But the saying goes, it's Ali's car, so it's Ali accurate. It's what he saw, and that's what we built. Years later, Michael Chaffee, one of the build people on the movie itself, He paid us a nice compliment. He said he wished he had had us on his team during the build. Some of the things we did and our creativity and ingenuity. That was sweet. He's a nice person. That's great. Yeah. So that's validating enough for me. You know, if it's accurate, I go, Hey, you know, you'd be the judge, but we love it. That dude said it was canon. And he should know. He built it. Okay. So out of, out of a dire situation with your health, you were able to channel every bit of that and turn it into something to benefit others who may be suffering with their health. Yeah. Well, we kind of fell backwards into it. You know, we'd take the car out to get gas or ice cream or, you know, just enjoying it. He liked showing it off. Yeah. Of course. Come on. The car is not camera shy. But, you know, we'd pull up into a parking lot and people would say, hey, man, can I get in your car and take some selfies for TikTok or whatever the thing was. Well, it wasn't TikTok back then. It's the ghost. What was the little ghost thing? A Snapchat. Snapchat. Okay. Yeah. And I go, yeah, I guess. But after a couple of times, I thought, well, we should do something that's a little more meaningful than just letting people be. get likes or feel cool or, or whatever. So I started saying, uh, sure you can climb in the car, but where you want to, uh, cure Parkinson's. So how about making a donation to the Michael J Fox foundation and, and I'll, I'll take your camera. I'll help you take pictures. We'll do a whole photo shoot and people be like, oh yeah, man. Sure. Cool. And, uh, it just kind of started to snowball and we developed, you know, there was no blueprint. you know, on what we do. We just kind of made it up as we went along and learned as we went and developed the routine. Well, and the Michael J. Fox Foundation, being a very corporate-focused foundation, kind of really didn't know what to do with folks like us. I would call and they would say, well, you can send the check back but we really don't know what to do with you. So before team Fox and then team Fox got developed. And that's the place that's the grassroots branch of the, the, the Michael J. Fox foundation. And that's where all the, all of us fall into line for, uh, Like, you know, lemonade stands and marathon runners and folks that give up their Starbucks to make a donation. So there's all different folks out there that make up Team Fox and Team Fox is amazing. a wonderful way to make donations because a hundred percent goes to research. They don't take out for an office. They don't take off or copy charges or anything, or even the person answering the telephone, all that is paid for by an angel and whatever money rolls in rolls right out to research. Excuse me. It's been interesting, you know, as we've developed the use of the car, the foundation has been developing the way they operate. as far as their fundraising is concerned. We, we found out pretty quickly that using like a QR code, you know, with the, well, yeah, In the past year, I guess, you know, Venmo and all that kind of stuff. Oh, everything went digital, especially during COVID. Everything became a digital donation. So we developed a QR code. And then, I don't know, just a week after we did, we get the notice, this is your new QR code for your team. Okay. And we're like, okay. Well, that is the coolest thing. Thank you very much. We've been neck and neck in adapting to the technology and all that kind of stuff. In the beginning, we had to make our own t-shirts. And since then, they have the Fox shop where it's official and people can go there to get official t-shirts. designs and t-shirts and all that kind of stuff. So it's been quite a ride. It's wonderful though. It's a great group of folks to participate with. I'm going to stop and try not to use the word work because I just had a really close friend say, so you're not working for the Fox Foundation anymore. And I said, it's not. It's never been work. This is not our job. This is what we do. It's a hell of a hobby, folks. We emphasize that we're volunteers. We're not workers for the foundation. Yeah. In building the car, I remember when I first met you, you had built a Mr. Fusion for the back of the car, and that's where people would put the money into. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't take trash no more, mister. It's only cash. That's right. So not very different from modern day cars. I got you. Yeah. Only the money goes to research. Yeah, I've rebuilt Mr. Fusion a couple of times. We call it Mr. Compassion. It's a passive way of fundraising. We've never been really... know aggressive uh fundraising people we we're a pretty soft sell we present an opportunity for people to give and and uh it's usually uh you know we we offer something in return like a picture or or something like that uh but uh yeah mr fusion is great because uh uh it kind of rewards people who stop and take notice of what we're trying to do how does it people Well, if you put money in the top of it, it plays a clip from the movie and it's a different clip every time. So people say, oh, wow. Does it say something different? I'll go, yeah, try putting a hundred dollar bill in there. Just keep trying, judge. Just keep popping those dollars in there. You'll see. Yeah, exactly. That's been a wonderful kind of thing. And like I said, I've rebuilt it a couple of times. I'm about ready to build a third one just because it... you know, it takes wear and tear. It's, it's kind of thing. I'm not sure what you're doing back there, but stop. I'm jiggling. Whoa. Now this is PG rated. Okay. It's the fundraising aspect of it we did sort of fall into. But it's been really amazing to hear how far the Fox Foundation and Team Fox has come. They've raised with the help of really all of you on the screen and many of you that might be watching over two point five billion dollars. Wow. Billion. Billion. And we're coming up on being responsible for one million dollars of that. We are hugely proud of what this group has been able to accomplish. Back to the Future fans are amazing. They are. They truly are. One dollar at a time. Absolutely. Now, I know when you guys do conventions or go do stops and everything with your car, you've added not only a Mr. Fusion, Mr. Compassion. Thank you. But for a few years now, you've had some different things, little accessories for your display system. Oh, are you talking about being able to hoverboard? Maybe. We've tried to be creative about that. We have options. You know, people who want to. We decided to make a tier of donations just to make it kind of fair and for everybody and fun. So, you know, for a certain level, you can stand by the car and do the poster, the famous poster pose, you know. For another donation, you can climb into the cockpit where Christopher Lloyd himself has driven the car, you know, and really get the feeling that you're in the movie. And then for another donation, you can actually ride a hoverboard and have some photos taken that'll just blow your friends' minds. It's a great illusion. Yeah, it's like a physical effect that is really cool looking. And I don't know if we're going to have that in the upcoming show because we're going to be outdoors, but It's a lot of fun to set up for conventions and things. That made me think I was going to break up. That's when I met you guys. I had to look on my phone to double check, but that was fifteen years ago where we met Ernie Hudson. I met you, and that's one of my favorite memories. I made the donation, but you sat down with me in the cockpit. The coolest thing, that's one of my favorite memories I have from this is seeing my birthday on the Times broadcast. Yeah. Oh yeah. My favorite little details. I absolutely love is just seeing my birthday on the time circuit. So that's nice. I'm going to, I'm going to bring this photo up real quick. And that's a, see, that's when we were in Huntsville with you guys. So that's what we're referring to there. It's all you, Miss Jess. You got circles there. Look at that. And I love that. I love that courthouse backdrop you guys bring too. Yeah. So that was a, Little example there for what we're referring to. That's very cool. That's very cool. You can do that. I think for the, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but for the Alabama thing, we're going to have some posters and some Hot Wheels cars, DeLorean cars, and even some Blu-rays or DVDs of Back in Time, which is a really cool documentary. So we're going to have some extra little things that if people want to take something special home with them, they'll be able to do that. Okay. I still have that first that first piece of art, that small poster that you did back in twenty ten. That was for the twenty fifth anniversary, right? It was. Yeah. Yeah. Back then there wasn't a whole lot going on. It wasn't much fan art or anything like that. And I thought, you know, there should be some kind of commemorative poster or something to mark the twenty fifth anniversary. And Drew Struzan has always been an inspiration to me before Back to the Future. He's the poster artist who did all three films. Yeah. Many, many others. Many, many others. All the best movie posters. Absolutely. He's a legend. Oh, yeah. And so I did it, you know, somewhat in his style. Yeah. It was kind of fun. It was kind of neat to be able to pay tribute to both my favorite artist and my favorite movie. And mark the occasion. Yeah. Well, that was that was in twenty ten, like you said, for the for the twenty fifth anniversary. And that's where I first met you guys at the Shoals Theater in Florence, Alabama, near the campus of the University of North Alabama. I had known Steve Clark, who runs back to the future dot com and who we've had on here a couple of times. I'd met him in ninety eight, ninety nine, just by ordering stuff off his Web site back then. And. and then got to meet you guys back in twenty ten at at that event. And if you are in and around Florence, Alabama, this upcoming Friday night, December fifth, you're going to be right back there at that same spot. We're going to be there with you. And so if you want to come see the car in person, just go to the Shoals Theater there in Florence. I know on Steve's backtothefuture.com Facebook page, he's got a link to where you can buy tickets to the screening. Oh, yeah. Come see the movie on a big screen. That's not something offered often. I know. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And you don't have to be just in the area. We're driving in from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. So if you're anywhere within the United States, the right forty eight states, come on out because we're going to be doing something that we have rarely ever done. You won't be able to just see the car. We're going to have a silent auction. And the winner is going to get to time travel as my co-pilot with me in the time machine throughout the town. And we're going to travel, I don't know, twenty minutes into the future and sightsee and, you know, plug in people's birthdates or anniversaries, things like that. And we're just going to have a great time tooling around in the DeLorean. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Very nice. And as, as somebody who has been in your DeLorean, you probably need to give some advice on how to get in and out of that. The leading cause of headaches for time travelers is hitting your head. It's going to be a lot of fun. It will be. Yeah. Uh, we're, we're looking forward to it. Um, this'll be, is this your first time at the Jess at the Shoals theater? This will be my first time at the show. Yeah. Mine as well. I visited Florence, but I didn't go to the Shoals yet. Yeah. It's a great opportunity if you haven't been, or, you know, if you've been before, you know, it's a, it's a great theater and, uh, uh, it's, it's going to be a good time. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, in, in, uh, I know Leah Thompson was supposed to be there, but I had another filming commitment. But James Tolkien and Claudia Wells and Bob Gale were all there, which was a huge treat. They had a lot of props inside the library, screen use props inside the UNA library there. What can we expect this time? Do you know? Yeah. Well, like I said, we're going to have a few things available for donations that people can take with them before or after the movie. We're going to do this silent auction for a trip into the future as a co-pilot in the car. Stephen has arranged a really cool showing directly from the Michael J. Fox Foundation of something that was kind of privately shown to just volunteers at one of their annual gatherings in new york city oh yeah bring your tissues because it's just really a great special thing uh it's in high res it's going to be big on the screen larger than life and uh just expect to see a lot of familiar faces on this uh special video i don't know if steven talked about it but uh Yeah, this time we get to see the movie and this tribute. Last time, all we got to do was meet the people because it was part of the Alabama Film University's Film Festival. Oh, that's right. Yeah, the George Lindsay. Being seen, but not Back to the Future. That wasn't performed. I think it was. Brock, you were there. Did they film the movie? I'm trying to remember because we were outside. Yeah. Yeah. you know what this is this is the joy of getting older the memory goes but we'll get to see the movie this time yeah well nice yeah they wouldn't let us in come on we've got the car let us in i mean we brought the car the least yeah watch the movie Oh, my. Well, tell us a little bit about, you know, you go into all these different places. You guys have had so many adventures. Tell us about some of those, some of the road trips you've been able to take in support of all this. Well, let's cast a broad net. We've we have traveled. We've driven the car to all fifty states. That was that was the original simple goal. Simple. It was only supposed to take us a year. Well, we're still we're still working with the states. So we then we. Did Canada and Mexico, not the entire countries, but quite a bit of both. Most provinces in Canada. And then, uh, twenty-eight other countries, uh, including Canada and Mexico. Right. So, it's, it's really taken us in some unexpected directions. Well, the car is, um, okay, so she's been on a boat. She's, uh, been shipped to, um, Other countries. Germany and Japan and Hawaii. Oh, wow. But the cool thing is that she is truly a flying time machine because in twenty eleven and twelve, she spent time in Argentina and they were there. OK. She was flown to Argentina and flown back and had a great time. Buenos Aires. You can go to YouTube and look up Garbarino DeLorean. And you'll see a series of commercials starring Christopher Lloyd and our car. Yes. And that was just a chance of a lifetime thing. They flew us in the car down. We did really a whole year's worth of commercials for a company called Garbarino. An electronics company, kind of a combination of Best Buy and Sears. Okay. It was TVs, dishwashers, things like that. But they filmed Mother's Day, Christmas, all the holidays, all within about a week's time. And the final day we were there, I think they debuted the very first introductory commercial of the series. And it was Doc Brown arriving in Buenos Aires. It's a black and white security camera style video. And also like a first person, like cell phone footage and stuff. Anyway, the very next day they had our car set up in the store where it was filmed in situ and with the skid marks on the sidewalk, you know, as the car crashed into the store, supposedly, as the story goes. And people showed up from all over the place to see it, you know, because they had seen it on TV. So they went to the store and there was the car, just like, you know, they had seen in the commercial. And they were like, where's Doc Brown? Where's Doc Brown? And they're like, well, he's not here right now. The car's here. But it was phenomenal. It started just an avalanche of people. And it was such a huge hit that just the very first commercial, we were scheduled to head home and they had a meeting. They were like, we need to talk. They had an idea that this was a landslide success of a campaign and invited us back. They said, we want to do a tour. We want to bring the car to all of our locations around the entire country of Argentina, all the key stores. And what do you think about that? And we're like, well, yeah, that sounds great. But we need to get home with the car and get things in order and prepare for this big tour. La Gira is the tour. So we did. They flew the car back in a plane, flew us home. No, Christmas was something different. But anyway, we flew back and we and we did a tour for how long was it? It was three months. Three months. Wow. And it was exactly three months because the day the car shipped back, the police came to our hotel to be sure that it went back. There are such strict rules in Argentina we knew nothing about. They didn't share that with us until it was hot. So they left out that little small detail, huh? It was not driven on the roads of Argentina. Not legally. Is the statute of limitations expired now? It's been seven years, so maybe we're out of time. Statute of limitations. Statute of limitations. I wouldn't mess with this too much. It was quite an experience, beautiful country. It's, you know, it's another America. Yeah. And where we traveled were so similar, like the Rockies, the Chilean mountains, the, um, Everything was so similar and yet vastly different. Yeah. Just really a beautiful, beautiful country. And the idea that we got to tour it, bringing people a time machine that was greeted like the Beatles visiting. Yeah. It's true. The Argentinians are very passionate. They're Latin. They're Latin, and they're all about the dance, the tango. It was a very passionate dance. And every Garbarino location we went to, people would line up around the block to see the car and to touch the car. Well, to the point where the security of the stores became security of the car. There's always a representative around to make sure that it was safe, and they kept putting up stanchion posts. Yeah, and I said, don't put any stanchion posts around the back of the car. Let people touch the back of the car because it gives you that feeling of connection, and it makes it really cool. And and people want that. I've got a picture of myself in nineteen eighty five at Universal Studios touching the a car that they had on display. Something about it, touching it makes it real. Yeah. But what was truly amazing is, well, as you mentioned, Mr. Compassion, Mr. Fusion was available to them and it was without prompting. people found out who we were and they started donating yeah their pesos was less than a quarter of our american dollar and paper pesos were being dropped in there like mad wow it's just it it's a country that was really in trouble financially, but people wanted to show their appreciation for the car, for the movie, for the commercials, because they had to have fun and know that it was in their country. It was really quite amazing. And their love for Michael. If you just provide an opportunity, you know, I'm sure they don't get opportunities like that to have that kind of experience and experience something like that. So, yeah, you know, it's very it's very Beatles like, you know, the Beatles, the Beatlemania, you know, come and it's just like something that they love and they have an opportunity, like you said, to see something in person that they love so much like that. people were were hugging the car they were kissing the car they were going through lines the line over and over there were three girls that kept passing but passing by the plate glass window so i would see them coming they'd come and see the car and they'd go and the next time they came by they had chocolate bars So I'm making faces at them because they're eating chocolate. Oh, it looks so good. And they came back around the third time with chocolate bars. It became so much fun. People, truly, you don't get to see the beauty of humanity in everyday life if you don't open your eyes. Just open your eyes and people are beautiful. Yeah. It was quite an experience. We've had so many. That's just one. That's just one time travel adventure. I hear that over in Japan, that it's massive, the fandom over in Japan for Back to the Future, too. Oh, and it's just grown. It's just grown. They've really taken to it over there in a major way. Yeah, we were lucky enough to visit Japan. The car was invited to HollyCon, I believe it was called, hosted by... They had the car shipped over. We did all the shipping arrangements, but they could afford it because they were paying for it. Here we are. The car is being shipped to Japan. We're being flown to Japan. Tokyo. And we go to pick up the car at the shipping dock. This car was unrecognizable. The car was not just sitting out on the dock. It was wrapped and wrapped and wrapped again so no one would touch it. The dock workers took such good care of it. They treated it like a treasure and they wrapped it in soft cloths just to protect it. It was kind of shameful when we look at how we ship. Is it snowing? We'll wash it when we get there. And the tow truck driver, their tow truck was a flat bed, but the bed came down to the ground level. Okay. Rolled onto it. I'm not sure you could even drive it there. They had to push it onto that. It was raised up, put back on the truck, and then driven to the hotel where the convention was. Okay. It was amazing and wonderful and fun. And I tell you, again, the hosts were terrific. The fans, gosh, dressed up everybody in all manner of costumes. It wasn't just Back to the Future. Claudia Wells was there and Christopher Lloyd were there, but it was an all-out comic. This was fun. Yeah. Yeah. And it was another fundraiser. We raised a lot of money for the foundation and it was a great adventure. Oh, we sang karaoke, like karaoke and stuff. We went to the robot restaurant. It no longer exists, I believe. I think it's gone. But it was just Disneyland quality floats in the basement. Like you had to walk down three levels. But it was a crazy, crazy time. And folks were excited and fun and generous. And yes, we had sushi and all that fun stuff. Wonderful. Jim Collison, So getting the, you know, getting, getting to see all the people who adore the car and you guys and, and all, it's, you're doing things for another beautiful person, Michael J. Fox. So what interactions have you had with him in regards to all this? We've been really lucky. When we built the car, we never set out to be like autograph hounds or try to get our picture with famous people or anything like that. We just built the car out of love for the movie and selfish reasons. I wanted to drive a DeLorean time machine. DeLorean does attract attention, though. It sure does. It's not camera shy on its own. And we've just fallen backwards again into meeting people. you know a majority of the cast and crew from the movie including michael yeah meeting michael the the first time we were we had qualified as team fox members and raising a certain amount of money and we were invited to a dinner it's a friday night um We don't know anybody at this dinner because we're brand new to this community. We're meeting people, having fun. And then the photo line starts. So everybody gets in line to have a picture with Michael. So everyone's polite and nice. And we walk up and the host is introducing, like the photo host is introducing everyone to Michael as they're coming up. And she says, hey, these are the hollers. And he says, they're from South Carolina. He knew who we were. That was beyond humbling. And how we smiled in a picture where both of us are crying. I don't know. Who is this guy? He was conversational and kind. And it all happens in a second. But he's so smart, so smart, so fast and genuinely funny and very sincere and kind. And from that point on, though, there haven't been a lot of those interactions. He knows who we are when when he sees us. Yeah, we you know, we we made made his radar screen, which is pretty cool. I guess a year or two later, he. we got a dvd in the mail like this from the fox foundation it must be like a psa or a commercial or something like that and we pop it in the machine and it's michael uh introducing the hollers to the world and saying thank you yeah whoa this is this is on y'all's website this is on the website you know we at first we were like well should we just keep this to ourselves it's But we thought, well, no, let's share it. It's not just us. So many people helped get this to happen. And we shared it, and Ollie's mom cried instantly. We put it on the DVD player in the house. But the fact that it was unsolicited, and he and the folks, I guess, at the foundation thought it was... important to do, it just really knocked us backwards. So the foundation, I know we don't have a whole lot of time left, but if you don't mind us talking just a little bit about what they do and how they do it. Michael's goal was basically to go out of business as soon as possible with the foundation to find a cure. And he gave it like a ten year window. Well, it's been twenty five years, but they've accomplished so much in the twenty five years. And he says that in the next five years, they're going to be able to accomplish anything. leaps and bounds compared to the first twenty-five, just because technology is accelerating. Kind of like we talked about before the show, you know, how time seems to accelerate. I tell you, we used to joke these kids are going to be the ones that solve this mystery. And those kids are now the scientists. This is twenty-five years later. They're in the lab. They're making these things happen. The foundation funded the PPMI, I believe. It's initials. I get those confused. But it was finding the biomarker within the person to diagnose clearly much more clearly if you have or potentially will have Parkinson's. Well, definitively, yeah. Yeah, the biomarker was a huge discovery because before then, it was basically, a diagnosis was basically a doctor's best guess. Yeah. That's, you know, that's, he would look at you, maybe perform a few, you know, physical tests or whatever and say, yeah, you know, it looks like, you know, maybe it's possibly Parkinson's. having a biomarker is everything because once you can make a clear diagnosis, you can start working the problem. Right, right. I think since twenty fifteen, they've been able to bring seventeen treatments to the market, you know, that they've been made available to patients. And by treatments, I say It helps manage symptoms. Right now, more than one hundred and seventy potential therapies are are in clinical studies right now on humans. One hundred and seventy. So great things are happening. And it's it's about money. It's about funding. And the Fox Foundation is the largest funder next to the United States government. And I believe they're about to surpass the United States. Wow. Fantastic. And remember, that funding is coming from people. Sure, some of it might be corporate donations and things, but the fact is somebody is signing a check to say, get this cure. Yeah. So it's, again, it's a humbling situation to be in. A chance that we can all be part of this and have been is a fantastic, fantastic achievement, again, for humans. It's not us alone. It's so many people involved. And they've really, you know, before the foundation, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, it was a little bit scattershot, but they've clearly defined an agenda that they've drawn a roadmap for for everyone to come together and follow the first part of the agenda basically is is making a clear diagnosis and and they've they've accomplished that they've they've got the biomarker continuing communication between the pharmaceuticals the doctors the scientists and the patients getting the community to to communicate Everybody, you know, they've brought all of these different entities together to share data and information. And that's huge. That's really, really helpful. And it's a great blueprint for other people. Yeah, other research for other diseases. You know, the neurological disease, the neurological community has rallied together. Because this was found for Parkinson's, does it have a use for ALS? Does it have a use for muscular dystrophy or MS? There are so many neurological diseases. This thing up here, this brain is... But many are really complicated and can do so much more than we're using them for. Absolutely. So they've cut through a lot of pipelines of treatment. Yeah. And they've cut through a lot of red tape in research too. They've streamlined the research process and can fast track the most promising research of the moment. And if it produces results, good results, then they keep going. If it doesn't look like it pans out, they can spin on a dime and go in a different direction really quickly. And they know how to talk to Congress. Yeah. They've got a... They've got a group that goes in with each bill and each hope for a new pharmaceutical situation. Those folks are in there. Team Fox has learned to be very, in a sense, bureaucratic, that they know how to present. You know, ten, fifteen years ago, twenty-five years ago, they were new to this. How do we tell Congress that this is really important? Michael went in himself. And since then, others have gone in with even stronger arguments because they know how to present now. Well, you know, getting the FDA to approve therapies and things like that takes some lobbying and pushing. So, yeah. Anyway. So that's about the Michael J. Cox owners. We're very proud of them. Absolutely. You should be. There are many, many organizations that need help, but you can definitely be proud to be behind this one. They've got excellent ratings and all that. Yeah. That's wonderful. It's amazing what just the love of a movie has blossomed into. Yeah. Bob and Bob, boy, did they cause a big fire. In fact, back in twenty fifteen, I think somebody asked Bob Gale a question at the Shoals Theater. You know, how do you think this has affected blah, blah, blah. And he was like, look. At the end of the day, it's a movie. It's not like we're curing childhood cancer. And I stood up and said, yeah, but you're helping cure Parkinson's. And he couldn't repeat that. He said, every year I do write a big check to the foundation. Yeah. that's amazing it's just it's like you said little did they know when he sat down to write that movie what what would just come out of the movie itself i mean it's how to be talking about it forty years later as if you know it's brand new yeah some people truly have never seen it on a big screen and that blew my mind That's how I saw it first. I did too. I saw it when it came out. Seven years old, but I was there. Good for you. My family took me to see it. I'm going to be honest with you. I saw it on TV as a kid and I fell in love with it. When they started doing the fourth showing, I had to sit back and I'm like, have I actually ever seen this on a big screen? Yeah. I don't know if I have. So we're going to be going in together. And so me and my younger brother went in and saw it on the big screen. So it was huge. Nice. The only large format I remember seeing is when I came down to visit you one time, Brock, and they showed it down there at one of the parks down there, the Parks and Recs down there where you used to be. Oh, down in Auburn. Yes. Yeah, Auburn Parks and Recs, yeah. That's the largest I've seen. So this will be the first time on an actual projector I can remember. So am I the only one of the Bama geeks that has seen all three movies on the big screen? I saw two and three. I saw the first one on VHS. That's a flex. I like it. Hey, I'll flex on that. Since then, I've seen it a few times on the big screen. Very cool. We didn't get to see the IMAX release. Oh yeah. At some point because we were far, far away and they weren't offering it where we were. And the, and the D box apparently is very impressive where you chair. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing it this weekend on the, on the big screen and the two of you seeing y'all again. Yeah. And for any listener that's showing up, uh, Put your bid in, and after the movie, you can ride the movie. There you go. Exactly. We'll go zipping around in the time machine around town. That's awesome. Visit some sites. I don't know what we'll see, but we'll see the future. yeah absolutely it's florence you never know maybe we'll get stopped and get a speeding ticket just just curious well i'll touch on this subject before we close out how many speeding tickets have you gotten can you say Or is it just the opportunity for the cops to get a picture? You know, I can hear it's like... No, we got pulled in Poland, but we didn't get a trophy. We just were warned. We've been stopped in just about every state and every country, but rarely get a speeding ticket. I think once was legit. We were... Coming home, we were on ninety five in a storm. OK, two. Two speeding tickets. I was going to tell a different story. My story is better. We were in California coming up over a hill and there had been a lot of construction. So it was just crawling traffic, crawling traffic. Finally, the roads opened up. Construction was empty. Downhill run. Downhill run, big wide open roads. And we're, I don't know, we're going seventy miles an hour or something like that. He'll tell you in a minute. We come up over the hill and And all I see are blue lights all the way down for a mile. It was a speed trap. Yep. Cars were pulled off left and right, you know, and then the police had, had them all. And I was like, Oh no. You know, after about a minute, of course we slowed down, but there was a car on us and we pulled over and, He said, you know, a few more miles an hour and we wouldn't be having this conversation. California had a sense of humor, but he still gave us a ticket. I bet you he framed his copy of it. I bet that is framed in his office. I pulled over a DeLorean. Not just a DeLorean, but a time machine. That's the majority of stops. We're law-abiding citizens. Oh, yeah. Don't speed. We've been on the German Autobahn over a hundred miles an hour. Well, there you go. But that's legal. So. Right. As you should. Yeah. Yeah. Over the years, I've loved seeing all the pictures that you've taken of either through the rear view mirror or holding it behind with all the police behind you every time. Have you noticed that their cars are perfectly positioned? So their camera is really recording some fun stuff. oh yeah yeah absolutely it's it can be fun and then it can be very scary but yeah it all depends on the the roadway and how crowded it is and the humor we were pulled in las vegas but we were not just pulled in las vegas we were pulled with a camera crew in las vegas They wanted us on the Bad Boys, Bad Boys show, but we didn't sign the paper for that. Now there's an episode of Cops I would want to watch right now. They weren't even going to make a donation, so no. Oh, my goodness. Well, I'm sure you, speaking of time, you have to build in time when you're traveling because you know you're going to get stopped and, you know. Oh, yeah, you do. You do. You add you add some time and you can't really can't really go, you know, buy milk in a time machine because it'll be sour by the time you get home. Talking to people and taking pictures and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, not the best guy to take to the grocery store. Yeah, I know. I was just when we had the chance to visit with y'all when we were up there where y'all live and went out to eat and sitting in the restaurant looking outside. We were sitting right at the window and the car was right there and you could see all the people just coming through and taking pictures. It's not camera shy, like I said. Definitely not. Well, I know we've kept you for an hour. We certainly appreciate your time. We'd love to have you back on and hear some more stories because I know you all are full of them. but uh the stories slow down i told y'all pge okay we don't know the answer we make stuff up you guys are very creative the older we get the better the stories get as always that's that's life for sure yeah But again, if you want to meet Oliver and Terry in person and see our good friend Stephen Clark from backtothefuture.com, we're all going to be in Florence, Alabama this upcoming Friday night at the Scholz Theater. When we get done, I'll throw up a link to the tickets. uh, that people can click on. I'll include it in the audio description when this, the audio episode of this will come out Wednesday. Uh, so if you're listening through the audio version, just look in the show description and show notes, you'll be able to see the link for that. And of course we'll include, uh, links, uh, on behalf of all of our interior where you can donate to team Fox and the Michael J. Fox foundations. Absolutely. Parkinson research. Did I get it right? Yeah. Very good. Yeah. All right. But yeah, we'll include links. Make sure you guys help out. Donate. It's for a wonderful cause. Oliver and Terry put in countless miles. Who knows? Almost a million kilometers. Well over a million kilometers. Well, they know. They put in a lot of miles and kilometers and a lot of years and wonderful effort into this charity drive. So We'll leave the links. Make sure you go and donate. Certainly be appreciated. Be a huge help. But again, if you're watching the live stream after the fact, then as always comment, leave an emoji. You got a back to the future memory. Yeah. Something you love about the DeLorean comments and engagement. Have at it. Are you a police officer who's pulled them over? We'd love to hear your story. But again, this Friday night, December fifth in Florence, Alabama, just go to any of the, I don't know if Steven's got it on his website, back to the future.com, but the social media definitely has a lot more information. And we hope to see you guys in Florence. um and and on our behalf as jess said leave us a like uh leave us some comments subscribe to the channel if you enjoyed this if you're listening on the audio version subscribe to the show there and hit up bamageeks.com that's where you can find out everything about uh about our show and also on social media at bamageeks and if you're looking uh on facebook the bamageeks front porch join that little private community we have a lot of fun in there And again, as always, thank you to Jamie and Mike and Darnay and Jack. Four and a half years, you guys have supported us a little bit extra financially, not just watching. So we appreciate you. Thank you. But we're going to get out of here. Everybody's got work in the morning. So we've got to get back to it. But I hope you guys had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Oliver and Terry. Thank you again. We love you guys so much. Thank you so much. And we look forward to seeing you in person yet again, this upcoming Friday night. So for, for Jess and Kevin, Bo, Oliver and Terry, I'm Brock. We're the Bama geeks. Have a wonderful night and we will see you in the future.