All three entries in the Back to the Future trilogy were written by Bob Gale, and the series remains his magnum opus, and one of the most beloved franchises in cinematic history. The original film released in 1985, and the ambitious sequels were shot back-to-back and released within six months of each other in 1989 and 1990. Combined, the trilogy grossed a staggering $970 million worldwide and catapulted its stars, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, into pop culture superstardom.
To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the original Back to the Future, the entire trilogy has gotten the full 4k restoration treatment, with a new limited edition Blu-ray set packed with special features including screen tests, documentaries, commentary tracks, deleted scenes, and more.
While promoting the Back to the Future 35th Anniversary 4k Blu-ray set, writer Bob Gale spoke to Screen Rant about his work on the iconic trilogy, from coming up with a family friendly tone that nonetheless treated its young demographic with respect, to coming up with a believable, yet fantastical, version of the far-flung future of 2015. He also discusses his and director Robert Zemeckis' protectiveness over their franchise, and how they have been able to prevent the Hollywood machine from producing remakes or reboots of Back to the Future. Finally, Gale talks about Back to the Future: The Musical, which both he and Zemeckis played integral roles in developing. There may never be a Back to the Future: Part 4, but he sees The Musical as the latest iteration of the time-traveling adventure that began 35 years ago.
The Back to the Future 35th anniversary 4k Blu-ray set releases October 20.
Hi Bob!
How you doing, Zak?
I'm doing great, especially now that I get to talk to one of the architects of my VHS-filled childhood! I was a VHS kid, I was born in '91, and there were a big handful of movies that were always in and out of my VHS, and one of them was Back to the Future.
Alright!
Being a VHS kid, my Back to the Future ended with the message, "To Be Continued." Maybe you can say whether or not the 4K 35th anniversary has that, or were you opposed to when they added that, or is it like, "Eh, whatever."
The story about how that got added is... Remember, in... When did that come out on VHS, probably '87 is when it was released, '86 or '87... This was how we announced that there was going to be a Back to the Future Part II. When we made the first movie, we had no idea if anybody was even going to go to the theater. We thought they would, but even if they did go to the theater, we were not thinking, "sequel." Making the first movie was such a grueling experience, all we wanted to do was get the movie finished and get it in theaters. We were not thinking about a reprise. By the time it was time for it to come out on home video, we had decided there was going to be a sequel, and what better way to announce it than to put "to be continued" at the end of the video tape? When the movie was finally released on DVD in... When was this... 2002, we decided to take that off. And every video release subsequent has had "to be continued" at the end of part 1 removed, because it was never really there in the theatrical release. I can't tell you how many people have sworn to me, up and down, that they saw that in the theater, that it said, "to be continued."
(Laughs) Right?
Memory is the second thing to go, and I can't remember the first.
(Laughs) So, I want you to take me back a little bit... It's so funny, having seen this movie and having passed it down to so many kids that I've watched or just ran into randomly, parents and stuff are sometimes taken aback at how Back to the Future's got some edge to it, it's got some kick, it's got some spice. "Let's see if you bastards can take 90!" But it's also definitely a step back, in terms of that content, from, like, Used Cars. Did you do this as counter-programming to that script? Tell me a little bit about the tone.
Sure. Used Cars was "Hard R." That's what our intention was. The subject matter just determined that there was no reason for this to be an R rated movie. If you're gonna make an R rated movie, just like if you're going to watch HBO, you want to see women with their tops off, you want to hear lots of profanity... That's what you're paying for. If it says "R," I want the R experience! PG, well, no. We're not going to give you an R experience. Is there edge to it? Yeah, there is! Is it a family picture? Yeah, but it's a family picture with edge, because we thought, okay, even Disney's animated stuff has edge. Dumbo gets drunk! That fabulous "pink elephants" scene, one of the greatest scenes of all time, Dumbo is drunk! You know? The crows are smoking cigars! You have Pinocchio, the scene where the kids get transformed into donkeys... That's horrific! And the kids are smoking cigars. It's edgy, it's dark, and it's rated G today! These are movies Bob and I grew up on, all the classic Disney stuff. We thought to ourselves, "You know what? We're not going to talk down to our kids who go see this." We don't want to talk down to our audience. We'll talk to them like we would talk to each other and figure that they will figure it out! If there's stuff that goes over their head, okay. Yeah, when you're nine years old, you're not thinking that Biff is actually going to rape Lorraine when he gets into that car, but when you see it now, it's kind of creepy! But it needs to be creepy, because if it isn't, then the moment where George rescues Lorraine isn't as powerful. These were things we were very conscious of. We are going to have Doc Brown machinegunned to death at the Twin Pines Mall. It's powerful, it's horrifying, it's something you don't want your four-year-old to see. Great. It's PG. Parental Guidance. Your four-year-old isn't supposed to see it. But it makes such an indelible impression on Marty McFly, that he's seen his best friend get machinegunned to death, that it informs everything that happens in the second half of the movie. Marty's gotta figure out, "How am I gonna save Doc's life?" If that scene wasn't as horrific as it is, it wouldn't be as powerful. So yeah, it's edgy and... I think, about a year ago, there was a very good article in the Atlantic Monthly, where somebody was bemoaning the fact that today's family films are not like Back to the Future and Goonies and some of the other 80s family films that had edge to them, where people do die or get hurt, where we're actually going there, but it's still intended for a more general audience. Things are too compartmentalized. Somebody asked me if I thought whether Back to the Future could get made today, as it was. The thing I think about is that the relationship between Marty and Doc, which you completely buy in the movie... Today, studio executives would be overthinking that and say, "Wait, is Doc a pedophile here? Why is he hanging out with this kid? Why is this kid hanging out with Doc?" Nothing of the sort, of course, not one iota of that. We see the movie and you just kinda get that, okay, these are both rebellious characters who feel a connection with each other, and there's nothing else beyond that other than Marty thinks Doc is a really cool guy, and Doc thinks, "Hey, Marty is a kid who maybe I can give him something, he's the son I never had. He's inquisitive, he doesn't judge me." That's what their relationship is based on: mutual respect.
Totally. I want to jump forward a little bit to the future-proofing of Back to the Future 2. Some stuff happened, some stuff didn't happen by 2015. Obviously, we don't have flying cars. We do pretty much have Biff in charge of stuff, but that's a whole other discussion.
Well that was not 2015, that was 1985-A.
Oh yeah, that's true (I always make that mistake!). But can you talk a bit about taking that approach of, "Some of this stuff is going to be plausible, but some we're going to run wild and have fun with it."
Those were the marching orders we gave ourselves. We said, nobody ever predicts the future correctly. It's not going to happen. So, instead of trying to predict the future correctly, let's not be unaware of what people think the future might be like, but let's just have fun with it. "Wouldn't it be cool if this? Wouldn't it be cool if that?" Hoverboards were a way of us saying, "What would a skateboard in the future be like?" We were always using the iconography of the first movie to say, "How would we do this in the second movie?" We've got two dinner table scenes in the first movie, that means we've got to have a dinner table scene in Part II. So, what kind of goofy stuff could we have? Well, a pizza hydrator. That would be crazy, that would be fun. Nobody's ever seen that before! It's kind of unfortunate we don't have food hydrators today. I don't think anybody's working on them. But on the other hand, we thought video conferencing, that's something people were talking about. We show that, and what are we doing? The same thing that Marty and Needles were doing! You know, we're doing it on our computers and our tablets, not on our TV, but it's not really any different. We knew some stuff would be right, we knew some stuff would be wrong. The one thing we knew for sure we would get right is that people in 2015 would be nostalgic about the 1980s. That was an easy call. So yeah, we have Cafe 80s in various locales in America. People wanna relive the 80s today.
Perhaps to the chagrin of executives here and there, you and Bob Zemeckis have been very protective of this property. It's funny, I recently interviewed the writer of Bill and Ted, a post-Back to the Future time travel movie, and they similarly, when they were trying to get their third movie made, they were constantly told, "Why don't you reboot it instead? We'd rather do a reboot than a sequel," and it was such a hassle to get their movie made. I imagine that every year or so, around October 21, someone shows up, sends you an e-mail, goes, "Hey, we want to go to Reboot City, are you in?" And you've constantly said no. Tell me a little bit about being so protective of this trilogy.
For one thing, when Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's, that put a major nail in that idea. You don't want to do a Back to the Future movie without Michael J. Fox. That took so much off the table. And what about a reboot? Well, why? If somebody else wants to do a time travel movie, be my guest! What's stopping you? But if you're gonna call it Back to the Future, no, we're not going to do that. Because Back to the Future means so much to so many people. And to call it Back to the Future, for it not to involve Michael J. Fox... I mean, Bill & Ted, they have the original guys. We couldn't do that, even if we wanted to, which we don't. We feel that with Back to the Future III, we said everything we wanted to say. Both Marty and Doc have grown as people. We have the comic book series for people who want more Back to the Future. It spins-off a lot of stuff from the movies, and tells some backstories and tells how Doc invented the Time Train and lots of other interesting tales. So that's a good medium for that sort of thing.
And the video game!
Yes, the video game, as well! We set a really high bar for ourselves. We've seen movies where they go back to the well one two many times, or two or three too many times! And we don't want to do a money grab. They always say, "Hey, you guys could make a whole lot of money!" I say, "Well, yeah, okay... We've got a lot of money." We're not gonna sell our children into prostitution here! It's just not right. Instead, we've done Back to the Future: The Musical. We've taken the essence of Back to the Future, the story of Back to the Future, and we've translated it into a stage musical. And I will tell you, it is fabulous. I've been involved with it from the very beginning. I wrote the book, I attended all rehearsals, all workshops. I worked with the director and the cast, with Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard to get the songs right. The director, John Rando, all the production people... The play, the musical, it is really a wonderful celebration of Back to the Future. If you're a Back to the Future fan, you will love it. Even if you're not that big of a Back to the Future fan, you'll still love it! We had people attend in Manchester who, believe it or not, had never even seen the movie. I didn't think that was possible, but there were at least six people who came up to me and said, "I didn't see the movie, but this is so good. I loved every minute of this!" So there you go. This is how we will keep Back to the Future living on for audiences around the world.
That's awesome. That's a Coronavirus PSA: put on your masks so I can finally watch the musical! Bring it to Broadway, I live in New York, I want to see it!
Let's get Broadway back up and running. Let's get New York back up and running, that will have to happen first.
I've got a couple of quick rapid fires and then I'm gonna let you go because I know you've got places to go, people to see, things to do. This is very important. I was asked by multiple people to ask this: does Doc Brown's mind-reading device work?
No. No it does not. And he says it, "This damn thing doesn't work at all!"
(Laughs) I already know what you're gonna say, but what does the Flux Capacitor actually do?
Well, a capacitor is an electrical device that stores energy and then releases it at a particular moment. What is the flux aspect of this capacitor? I can't tell you that, because if somebody figured out how to build one, the entire space-time continuum could be at risk.
Fair enough, you're doing God's work.
(Laughs)
Last thing, really quick, I think it's my favorite take in cinema. Doc Brown saying he's got to send Marty back to the future, and he looks directly at the camera, and then he just glazes off and looks into the distance. It's such a meta... I don't know. Is that you, is that you, is that Chris, is that Zemeckis? What is the magic of that little tiny moment that you might not even notice?
You know what? It's all of the above. I'd say, that extra little moment, that's Chris. That's pure Chris. We shot that several times. You know, the blocking is classic Zemeckis. People moving back and forth in space, you see that in all of Zemeckis' movies. It's how he adds dynamism to what would otherwise be a standard camera shot. But Chris would always do something interesting in every take, and it was always right. The editors would always say, "We have an embarrassment of riches here." Because anything that Doc did, that Chris did, that was a little bit off, a little bit different, it still worked! At some point, Bob and the editors are looking at these takes in the cutting room, and Bob always said, "That's the one. That's it. Put that in the movie."
Well, Bob, this has been a real treat for me. I said it before, you are an architect of an entire generation in many ways.
I appreciate that, thank you.
And now it's been 35 years, we're getting a big 4k... Well, I've still gotta get a 4k television, but that's a whole other thing.
They're really cheap now!
That's what they keep on telling me!
I've gotta tell ya... Listen, my TV in my bedroom blew up, literally. I turned it on and *boom* there was a spark... And this was an old plasma TV I'd had for nine or ten years. I said to my wife, "okay, time to get a new one!" We got a Samsung for $700. It's unbelievable how sharp and wonderful it is. 65 inches, it's terrific! Spend the money, it's like the lights come on. You'll see how clear these things are. But then, for a 4k, to get the max out of a 4k disk, well, you need a 4k player, too. But one at a time. Get the TV first. They're great, and they're cheap!
And now this interview is unofficially sponsored by Samsung. So Samsung, if you're listening, give me a TV.
(Laughs)
It's been so amazing to talk to you, and I'll catch you on the next one!
See you in the future, Zak! See you at the Broadway premiere of Back to the Future: The Musical, or come to London and see us over there. You won't be sorry!