Wonkette Movie Night: Back To The Future
'If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour ... you're gonna see some serious shit.'
Michael J. Fox was not the original Marty McFly. Filming started with a talented actor who is not known for comedic acting, Eric Stoltz. Stoltz himself wondered why he had been cast; after filming for a month, Fox was hired and Stoltz was dumped β though Stoltz received his full salary. It would be difficult to imagine anyone but Michael J. Fox as the time traveling teenager.
It is also impossible to imagine the film without the other two important characters, that of Doc Brown, portrayed by Christopher Lloyd, and of the time traveling machine itself, the DeLorean. The script was written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. It was turned down by Columbia because its president felt it wasnβt raunchy enough, as was popular for mid-1980s comedies. Columbia allowed other studios to opt in, but the script was rejected forty times. The only one to support it was Stephen Spielberg.
With that support, eventually the film went into production, with a budget of $19 million; it went on to earn a box office gross of approximately $388.8 million. It was nominated for four Academy awards and won one. It spawned two sequels, video games, amusement park rides, a Broadway musical, and an animated series.
A surprising detail is that Bill Nye was part of this animated series.
Michael J. Fox was still filming Family Ties during the first four months of production and worked himself to exhaustion. He was dedicated to the role, training with professional skateboarder Per Welinder and learning choreographed guitar moves based on Pete Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, and Chuck Berry.
Christopher Lloydβs mad professor look was based on Albert Einstein and conductor Leopold Stokowski. Lloyd was originally hesitant to join the cast but after encouragement from a friend took on the role that he would become most known for, that of Doc Brown.
Some fun was had during filming as witnessed by this blooper reel.
The time machine was a 1981 DeLorean; three were designed for the movie. The DeLorean was picked for its futuristic looking gull-wing doors. It currently resides at the Petersen Automotive Museum.
Back To The Future is available for free on the Internet Archive. $3.99 in the usual places.
Back To The Future stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F. Wilson, Claudia Wells, Marc McClure, and Wendie Jo Sperber. Directed by Robert Zemeckis.
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The animated short is Macropolis by Joel Simon.
Our next Movie Night selection starts December off with Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, available for free with ads on OK.RU, $3.99 in the usual places.
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In 2010, during a cast reunion, Michael J. Fox said that strangers still call him "McFly!" constantly. Fox said that the most remarkable instance was when he was in a remote jungle in the South Asian country Bhutan, located between China and India in the eastern Himalayas. A group of Buddhist monks passed him and one of them looked at Fox and said, "Marty McFly!"
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The parts of the script with references to President Ronald Reagan needed to be reviewed by the White House for approval, so as not to offend the president. Producers had some concerns over Reagan's reaction to Doc Brown's famous line mocking the improbability of his being president in 1985, but Reagan was said to get a real kick out of it.
Apparently, Ronald Reagan was amused by Doc Brown's disbelief that an actor like him could become President, so much so that he had the projectionist stop and replay the scene. He also seemed to enjoy it so much that he even made a direct reference of the film in his 1986 State of the Union address, "As they said in the film Back to the Future (1985), 'Where we're going, we don't need roads.'"