When Back to the Future was released on DVD, the one part of the franchise that was missing was the animated series. In the concluding part of our interview with Bob Gale, the focus is on that show, the relationship between Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd and whatever discussions there had been regarding Back to the Future Part IV.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: The chemistry between Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd was just amazing to watch.
BOB GALE: What’s particularly wonderful about it is that these guys come from completely opposite schools of acting. Christopher Lloyd is a theatrically trained actor. Chris needed to have his lines at least three days in advance, and he needed to know that they weren’t going to change, because that’s what you do when you’re trained theatrically. He liked to memorize the whole script and know it a week before we started shooting. He had a hard time with last minute changes. Whereas Michael, who’d gotten so used to doing Family Ties, where they were changing the script every ten minutes, never learned his lines until he was about to do the shot.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Did he improv at all?
BOB GALE: Not really. Bob would always tell the actors, make the parrt yours, so he would throw little things in, he might switch some words around, or change the words to make it more the way he was comfortable saying it, but as long as he was saying the right things, it was okay. Sometimes he might change something, and we’d say, “No, you can’t change that line, you have to say that line exactly as written, because it’s important for something later on.” But there wasn’t a lot of improv, we’re not talking a Tarentino movie or a Scorsese movie here.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: But it is interesting, because you look at Doc and Marty and you ask yourself, “What are the odds that these two would become friends?”, and you can say the same thing with Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox.
BOB GALE: It just worked out so beautifully. You just saw that relationship and said, “OK, somehow this kid and this crazy crackpot guy got together and became friends,” and you just can see so clearly they enjoy being with each other, you don’t ever question it.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: What I find funny is how addictive the films are. You can be channel surfing, come across one of them and you feel compelled to watch.
BOB GALE: There are a bunch of movies like that. Whenever I come across a Godfather, I think I’ll only watch one or two scenes, and I end up watching the whole movie. Whenever Patton is on, it’s the same thing. Dr. Strangelove, too.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I was expecting that Universal would release the Back to the Future animated series on DVD…
BOB GALE: What was interesting in trying to put this package together is that Universal wanted to keep it to three discs in the set. We certainly could have put together a fourth one, but they felt that it was important to keep the price point down, and I don’t disagree with that decision. Because we don’t have anything in there about the ride either, and that would have been great to have, too.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: When the cartoon came out, my hope was that it would be a little more adult, with more traditional animation.
BOB GALE: Well, you’re stuck with whatever the vendors can put together. They do all that in the Far East and it’s easier for them to do the goofier stuff. My whole reason for wanting to do the cartoon show is that I remember watching Mr. Wizard as a kid, and there were kid shows that had some content. My daughter had just been born, and I thought, “We’ve got to have a science experiment in every episode, just because kids should get turned on to science. We’re traveling to the past, so let’s sneak some science and history in.” So that was my whole big deal with the studio and with the network, if we didn’t have that there was no reason to do it. And they went along with that, though CBS didn’t like it. But what was gratifying for me was that I would get letters from science teachers, and elementary school teachers — and the guy who did the science experiments was Bill Nye the Science Guy. So Bill went on to big things. But I would get letters from these teachers saying how great it was that we had these simple experiments that could get their kids excited about science, and that made it all worthwhile.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Was there ever any serious talk about a Back to the Future IV?
BOB GALE: Bob and I, about four or five years ago, had a conversation to the effect that we ought to sit down and brainstorm whether we could do a Back To The Future IV. This was before Michael J. Fox announced that he had Parkinson’s. We thought it might be interesting because everyone was older, plus we had such a good time making the movies. What could we do with all these characters by the time they were 15 years older? But when Michael came out and made his announcement, there was no chance, and as I’ve said before, they keep asking me about it, but who would want to see Back to the Future 4IV if Michael J. Fox isn’t in it? That’s insane.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Then it’s a money-making venture…
BOB GALE: Yeah, then you’re just being a whore. I’m sorry, but I can’t say with a straight face that the world is better off because George Lucas has made the Star Wars prequels.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: When I talk about Back to the Future with people, the common complaint I hear is that they didn’t like part two. I’m shocked at that, because I thought it was brilliant.
BOB GALE: I think the mistake that happened with part two is that the film, on a certain level, is like fitting a square peg into a round hole in that we didn’t have any idea we were going to make a sequel, so we ended part one with all the characters riding off into the sunset with this joke about your kids in the future. And suddenly Bob and I had to pay that off. So it didn’t come out of where you would normally start with a movie, which made it a little bit off. But the bigger problem that most audiences had with the picture is that they didn’t know it was to be continued at the end. And they felt that because the movie didn’t end, they got ripped off, and I understand that. I had many arguments with Tom Pollack at Universal regarding the marketing of the picture; that we should represent it as part two of a three-part Back to the Future trilogy, and get in front of that issue so that people would know there was going to be a third one. Instead of them assuming the movie was going to be complete in itself. But Pollack was adamant that audiences already got that impression. Unfortunately when you get into a fight with the head of a studio, you lose. And I think that left people with a bad taste in their mouths, because I was in some of those audiences, and you could just feel it at the end when it said, “To Be Concluded,” and audiences were let down. If you know that going in, then it’s no problem, but that opening weekend, which was Thanksgiving Day weekend in 1989, there were a lot of unhappy people because they thought it was cheap that we did that.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Of course I knew that part three was only six months away, which is why I was so delighted when Doc sends Marty into the future, and then Marty comes around the corner a second later.
BOB GALE: I think it’s great, and I think when people watch the three movies back to back to back, they will see things in them that they didn’t see before.
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