‘Framing John DeLorean’ Tells The Tragic True Story Of An Iconoclastic Auto Executive’s Remarkable Fall From Grace

“There aren’t a lot of people like him today.”

The DeLorean car is one of our most indelible pop culture artifacts, largely owing to its central role in the Back To The Future film series. If you’re a child of the 1980s, the steel-clad, gull-winged automobile is practically imprinted on your brain, a vision of what the future once looked like. But few people today know the real story behind the car itself, and the story of its brash, iconoclastic creator. Both in how he designed cars and how he did business, John DeLorean took an ambitious eye toward the future. His movie-worthy flaws, risk-embracing style and some truly bad decisions kept him from realizing that vision, but he left a story every bit as dramatic as Marty McFly’s.

Framing John DeLorean, a wildly entertaining documentary/feature hybrid available now on Hulu, opens with a quick-fire barrage of people telling their versions of the story of John DeLorean, and that’s what he is — an almost-mythic character straight from a movie script, a man perfectly of his time, a swashbuckling, brash businessman of the wildest 1980s dreams.

Before we get back to the future, though, we have to understand the man, and how he built his ultimately tragic empire. Jumping between archival footage, on-screen interviews and lighthearted reenactments — featuring a convincingly made-up Alec Baldwin portraying DeLorean — the movie takes us through his rise through the ranks at General Motors as one of the company’s most talented engineers in the 1960s and 1970s. “Everything he touched turned to gold — by the time he reached the executive level, if he just plays his cards right, he’s poised to be the next president of the largest corporation in the world,” DeLorean historian Tamir Ardon notes.

He struck huge successes at General Motors, but his lifestyle outside of the boardroom caused concern internally. He ran through several marriages, dated actresses and models many years younger than him — living the life of a Hollywood leading man rather than that of a corporate president. This brash style carried back into his work, too. “He had big aspirations. He wanted to take the company in directions they weren’t willing to do, because they were comfortable being the fat cats, being the largest company in the world.” This resistance manifested in a public speech denouncing the company’s quality, a Jerry Maguire moment that, much like that fictional tale, led to his ouster from GM. For some executives, this would’ve been a major career setback, a time to retreat and reconsider. For DeLorean, though, it was time to launch his own empire, free of the constraints of people who didn’t share his brash vision.

Taking the bold step of launching his own self-titled upstart automaker, DeLorean unveiled a prototype car that represented his take on the future. “He wanted to build a contemporary, sophisticated-looking car for the masses,” Ardon notes. DeLorean’s vision was for something he termed an “ethical car” — sturdy, built to last, accessible to the masses. It was immediately lauded by the Detroit press as a gamechanger on par with Henry Ford’s early models, a car that would revolutionize the staid industry.

Right off the bat, his decisions broke from conventional wisdom. He opened the company’s first assembly plant in then-violence-plagued Northern Ireland. Questionable bookkeeping and strategic disagreements roiled his leadership team. The company’s financial situation teetered, and faced the threat of assets being seized by the British government. DeLorean reassured his team that he had a plan. That plan — a planned drug deal with what turned out to be undercover agents — would lead to his very public downfall.

Was John DeLorean set up, entrapped by government agencies overstepping their reach? This debate, and the protracted, sensationalized trial that followed, makes up most of the documentary’s back half. Interviews with his business associates, prosecutors and journalists provide context — framing the story of John DeLorean, as the title’s double meaning alludes to. Perhaps most compelling are interviews with his now-grown son, the one figure most personally affected by the automaker’s hubris. He clearly saw his father as a god, but also recognizes that despite his eventual acquittal on procedural matters, his father knowingly took the risks that put him in his position.

In the years since the rise and fall of DeLorean and his company, there have been a handful of attempts to turn his story into a feature film — and it’d be easy to envision that, something in the vein of The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s a manic tale of a man very much of his era, but one that likely works best in this format. Combining documentary footage and interviews with Baldwin’s convincing reenactments (and truly, who better to play another ’80s raider than Baldwin?), the true story is allowed to shine through, the fact stranger than fiction.

The 1980s vision of the future predicted by Back To The Future never came true. We didn’t get our hoverboards, our double-ties, or our Mr. Fusions. The vision of the future that John DeLorean offered — a tragic man undone by boundless ego — remains as alive as ever.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and internet user who lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, two young children, and a small, loud dog.

Where to stream Framing John DeLorean