Gale and Zemeckis had always wanted to come up with a compelling time travel story, but they could never figure out a hook for the story. According to Gale in “Tales from the Future: In the Beginning,” a featurette on the Back to the Future Thirtieth Anniversary Edition DVD set, Gale found himself in Missouri visiting his parents during a press tour for Used Cars. Gale and his father both went to the same high school, and Gale uncovered his father’s high school yearbook in his family’s basement. While thumbing through the pages of the decades-old time capsule, Gale learned something he was totally unaware of: his father was the president of his graduating class. Gale compared his father to the president of his own graduating class (class leadership being something that Gale would have nothing to do with) and thought that he and his father would not have been friends if they had been in high school at the same time.
When Gale returned to California, he told Bob Z. the story of his dad’s yearbook, and both of them thought this might be the hook they were searching for to tell their time travel story. Price had told the Bobs to pitch their new ideas for films to him first. The Bobs set up a meeting with Price and pitched a story about a boy going back in time and attending school with his parents. They expanded on the story by adding the boy’s mother would fall in love with him instead of his father. Price loved the idea and inked a deal with the Bobs to write two drafts of Back to the Future.
Gale and Zemeckis worked expeditiously on their new idea and came up with a draft to pitch to Frank Price. The idea was still the same—Marty McFly, a video pirate running a black market operation, with Professor Brown and his chimpanzee, Shemp, travel back to 1952, and his mother, Eileen, falls for him. He must make his parents fall in love with each other at the Springtime in Paris Dance. This was not exactly what happens in the Back to the Future we know and love, but it was close. Even as a die-hard Back to the Future fan, I never knew these details until I read Caseen Gaines’ book We Don’t Need Roads, which I strongly recommend.
Frank still loved the concept but felt like it needed some extra work. The Bobs returned to their office and continued to refine the script. Gale stated that they used the index card method of plotting. In this method, index cards are placed on a bulletin board to help the writers figure out the major story points. Gale gives an example of this method when explaining that the Bobs had an idea for Marty McFly to invent rock ‘n’ roll. Gale states that in order for him to invent rock ‘n’ roll, they must establish that Marty likes and plays rock ‘n’ roll, so they placed two cards on the board; one read “Marty plays rock ‘n’ roll” and was placed before the card that said “Marty invents rock ‘n’ roll.” This was a helpful tool, because it allowed the Bobs to know what points they needed to hit and what exposition was needed in the story. Zemeckis recalls not having any fun while writing Back to the Future and said the process was a lot of “back-breaking work.”
In the early spring of 1981, the Bobs finished their second draft of Back to the Future and took it back to Price. Price liked this version a lot more but wasn’t sure if it was the right teen comedy for the studio to produce at the time. Raunchier teen comedies were big hits with young audiences, and Back to the Future seemed a little too sweet of a love story for the studio to greenlight at the same. The Bobs were not defeated by Columbia passing on their script. The writing team went on to pitch the idea to several film studios but were met with the same sentiment. Each studio asked the two Bobs if Spielberg was involved in the film, and, each time, the Bobs replied that he was not.
This was true at the time, but the Bobs did meet with Spielberg regarding the script. He read the story and felt that is was a very fun, yet unusual story that still kept to traditional themes of family, coming of age, getting your first car, and the dreams and desires you have for your life. Spielberg wanted to be involved, but the Bobs wanted to do this movie without the help of Spielberg. If it was not successful, they would never get another job and just be looked at as Spielberg’s friends who helped them get their projects off the ground. Spielberg understood where Zemeckis and Gale were coming from, and the duo went on to find a studio to produce their future story.
As the rejections continued, Zemeckis told his writing partner he needed to direct. The next decent script he read he would direct. That script was 1984’s Romancing the Stone starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito. Zemeckis worked very hard on making the film a hit because he knew that if Romancing the Stone was financially successful, more doors in Hollywood would open. And that is exactly what happened, Romancing the Stone was critically and financially a massive success, earning over seventy-five million dollars at the domestic box office. All of the sudden, the film studios who thought Back to the Future wasn’t a good idea now thought it was a great idea. The Bobs were able to make their film with virtually anyone they wanted, but they chose to go back to the only person who initially saw their script’s promise—Steven Spielberg. The band was officially back together, and they were ready to create a memorable time travel start that would last for generations.
Chapter 2
Once the studio greenlit the picture under the watchful eye of Universal executive Sid Sheinberg, the Future team had to cast their key roles in the film. But, before they did that, Sheinberg had a few suggestions. First, he didn’t like the name Eileen and suggested Lorraine—the name of his wife who had worked with Steven Spielberg and the Bobs before on 1941. He also wanted to change Professor Brown to “Doc” Brown and to change Shemp the chimp to Einstein the dog. All were solid suggestions that the Bobs had no problem changing. This would not be the last of Sheinberg’s requests, but these were the first and foremost notes to address.
Now that casting had begun, the producers had to find the perfect actors to play the lead role of Marty McFly. The producers and casting agents did an exhaustive search according to Frank Marshall, who served as an executive producer on the film alongside Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy (who is now the head of Lucasfilm), and Marshall said that every young actor in Hollywood wanted to play the rock ‘n’ roll loving teen.
At the same time the producers were searching for the perfect Marty, a Canadian-born actor named Michael J. Fox was working on a film called Teen Wolf. Fox was a very familiar face to filmgoers, as he portrayed Alex P. Keaton in the wildly popular Gary Goldberg-created television show, Family Ties. While filming Teen Wolf in Pasadena, California, Michael J. Fox had heard a location scouting crew was just down the road working on the new Spielberg-produced time travel film. Fox recalls being covered in “wolf drag” and feeling miserable. When Michael learned his friend Crispin Glover had already been tapped to be in the film, he was happy for Crispin but couldn’t help but want to be in the film instead of having rubber and hair glued to his face on a daily basis.
Michael J. Fox was unaware he was indeed the first choice of the filmmakers to play McFly, but they were told he could not do the film due to his commitment to Family Ties. After begging Goldberg allow Fox to do both the movie and the TV show, Goldberg told them there was just no way. According to Zemeckis, the filmmakers had a deadline to cast, shoot, edit, and produce the film. If they were unable to meet that deadline, the entire movie would be canceled. With their backs against