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STEVEN SPIELBERG PRESENTS: By the mid-1980s, Spielberg had moved beyond the role of director (though he never entirely deserted that job) to oversee a vast entertainment empire. He mentored Robert Zemeckis in the creation of a delightful Twilight Zone–inspired comedy/drama, starring Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox. Courtesy: Universal/Amblin.
CREDITS
Universal Pictures/Amblin Entertainment; Robert Zemeckis, dir.; Zemeckis, Bob Gale, scr.; Gale, Neil Canton, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall, Steven Spielberg, pro.; Alan Silvestri, mus.; Dean Cundey, cin.; Harry Keramidas, Arthur Schmidt, ed.; Lawrence G. Paull, prod. design; Todd Hallowell, art dir.; Sam Adams, Richard Chronister, William A. Klinger, Kevin Pike, F/X; Andrew Probert, DeLorean designer; 116 min.; Color; 1.85:1.
CAST
Michael J. Fox (Marty McFly); Christopher Lloyd (Dr. Emmett Brown); Lea Thompson (Lorraine Baines); Crispin Glover (George McFly); Thomas F. Wilson (Biff Tannen); Claudia Wells (Jennifer Parker); Marc McClure (Dave McFly); Wendie Jo Sperber (Linda McFly); George DiCenzo (Sam Baines); Frances Lee McCain (Stella Baines); James Tolkan (Mr. Strickland); J. J. Cohen (Skinhead); Casey Siemaszko (3-D); Billy Zane (Match); Harry Waters Jr. (Marvin Berry).
MOST MEMORABLE LINE
History is gonna change.
MARTY TO MR. STRICKLAND
BACKGROUND
The team of Robert Zemeckis (1952–) and Bob Gale (1951–) had been attempting to score big in Hollywood for some time with youth-oriented films such as I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) and Used Cars (1980). They had hoped to sell this script to the post–Walt Disney (who died in 1966) company but were rejected, even as Spielberg had been with E.T. Even then in the process of reinventing old-fashioned family entertainment for an entirely new audience, Spielberg came to the rescue. His top production team of Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall brought Back to the Future to the screen with the required nostalgic tone and contemporary spirit. Spielberg is listed as the film’s “presenter,” precisely the title Disney once received.
This moderately budgeted (less than $20 million) movie grossed more than $350 million worldwide, ranked as the top U.S. box office hit of 1985, and spawned two popular sequels (1989 and 1990). Spielberg knew he could now consistently franchise his unique brand of updated family fun as the reinvented equivalent of the old Disney vision.
THE PLOT
At 1:15 in the morning on October 26, 1985, lovable loser Marty McFly meets his eccentric mentor Doc Brown in the deserted heart of their small town. Doc reveals that he’s transformed a DeLorean DMC-12 into a time machine that runs on plutonium. The terrorists who were duped out of the plutonium by Doc attack him and Marty. Marty escapes in the vehicle only to discover that he’s gone back thirty years in time to the 1950s.
He prevents a geeky fellow, George, from being hurt in an auto accident. The problem: this is Marty’s father as a teenager. If he had been hit, George would have been helped inside the home of Lorraine, and the two would have come together as a couple. Instead, Lorraine falls for Marty. If such a changed situation continues, Marty and his siblings can never be born. Desperate, Marty seeks out the young Doc Brown for help.
The film, along with Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984), was one of the final movies to be shot on the old Universal Studios famed small-town America set that had been used for decades. Spielberg and Zemeckis rightly sensed that if they filmed Back to the Future on location, it would look “too real.” What they wanted (and fully achieved) was a small town in the movies, rather than in real life, to add a Hollywood fairy-tale aura to the piece.
THEME
Like many films of the mid-1980s, including The Terminator, Back to the Future was inspired by The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling’s monumental TV series (1959–1964). One recurring Zone theme had been the concept of time travel: could the future be changed if one were to go back? In episode after episode, small things involving individuals who didn’t influence history could lead to different conclusions: for example, the bad guys get their just desserts and things turn out better for the downtrodden. Zemeckis and Gale’s script might have been titled Twilight Zone: The Movie, as it comes closer to recapturing the magic of Serling’s show (or at least its light-hearted episodes) than did the failed 1983 film of that name. The McFly family is, as a result of Marty’s tinkering with the past, well off when he returns, whereas the dad’s 1985 mean boss, who was also his high school bully in 1955, is humbled. All’s well that ends well, though it takes some time travel of the type that H. G. Wells first imagined, then Rod Serling effectively updated, to get it all right, both in their classic works and in such classic films as the violent Terminator and charming Back to the Future.
TRIVIA
Though Zemeckis always wanted Fox for Marty, it seemed all but impossible considering the young star’s commitment to his TV series, Family Ties. Eric Stoltz worked for four weeks before it was decided he was wrong for the role. At that point, Fox came back on board, shooting his series from early morning to late afternoon, then heading directly to the movie set until late night. Between the firing and rehiring, Ralph Macchio was offered, but turned down, the part.
Characters in 1955 cannot believe the cowboy star from TV’s Death Valley Days will be president in thirty years. In fact, Ronald Reagan did not take over the hosting job on that series until 1964.