Monday, Oct 27, 2014
Assistant Director of Creative Services Buddy Losavio built a Delorean as part his son’s costume
by Adam Grybowski
What are you dressing up as this year for Halloween? We want to see! We’re inviting students, staff, faculty, alumni and their families to send their Halloween photos to [email protected] or share them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Be sure to tag us so we can see your creativity in action, and read on to see how one University staff member is celebrating Halloween!
All it took was three cans of silver spray paint, one piece of cardboard and a black Sharpie marker for a University staff member to transform a plastic toy car into a time machine.
This month, Assistant Director of Creative Services Buddy Losavio modified the push buggy normally used on walks with his son, Albert, to look like the Delorean from the Back to the Future movies. For Halloween, Albert’s dressing up as Marty McFly, the hero of Robert Zemeckis’s 1980s time-travel trilogy.
Collaborating on the homemade costume with his wife, Lynn, Losavio had previously dressed Albert, now 2 and a half, as Albert Einstein and a piñata. For those efforts, Albert has won prizes in Pennington Market’s annual Halloween costume contest for his age bracket two years in a row.
“It took off from there,” says Losavio, who is responsible for the bulk of graphic design and other creative services that come out of the Office of University Communications and Marketing. “The pressure mounts each year to top the previous year. Now we have to go over the top with it.”
Details matter. Lynn scoured the web to make sure Albert’s outfit matched Marty’s down to his suspenders. The Delorean replicates the vehicle’s license plate and, of course, the Flux Capacitor, which — in Hollywood, at least — makes time travel possible. “I can’t help myself, I can’t do it halfway,” Losavio says. “It’s all or nothing. It took a couple late nights.”
With less than four days before Halloween, the costume isn’t quite complete. The Delorean will have working LED lights and, while Lynn’s costume for Jennifer, another Back to the Future character, is complete, Losavio is still working on his. He’s going as Marty’s wild-eyed friend, the inventor Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown.
Buddy and Lynn, the registrar for The Sculpture Foundation, have been married since 2007. They met as undergraduates at The College of New Jersey. “We’ve always come up with creative, homegrown outfits going to Halloween parties, but we’ve never taken it to this level,” Losavio says. “Albert is our excuse to get obsessed.”