In addition to his visual effects work, Backes is a partner in Oxonian LLC, a media company he founded with author Michael Crichton and computer scientist David Smith. In late 1998, he began writing an untitled computer-animated feature film with Mark Dippe, the director of Spawn.
Became friends with Michael Crichton after his then-wife, Martha Coolidge, directed Crichton's then-wife, Anne-Marie Martin, in the pilot episode of Troppo forte (1986). The two women became friends, and later expectant mothers at around the same time, and decided they should introduce their respective husbands.
