VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Do you find it amazing that people still hold these films in such high regard?
BOB GALE: It is. I hadn’t seen the movies myself until we re-mastered them. I guess the last time I’d seen them was when we had the big trilogy screening in LA. We had them in about 15 screenings around the country, and that was the last time I’d seen part one and two, and I guess I’d seen part three afterwards, in a foreign situation. But I was actually amazed at how well they held up myself, and I think the reason is it’s basically just a human story. The idea that your parents were once kids is something that crosses all cultures, it crosses everything. When your kid suddenly comes to the realization that mom and dad were once children, that’s such a big idea for a little kid to understand and make sense of. I think that’s the appeal; it just goes past all the other stuff.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: That works for the first movie, but after that it becomes something different, doesn’t it?
BOB GALE: It does, and all I can attribute it to is that you just love those characters so much that you want to spend more time with them.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Obviously there’s no way you guys could have imagined this thing becoming what it became…
BOB GALE: Oh, no chance. We wrote Back to the Future right after Used Cars was released, we pitched it to Columbia in September of 1980, and we wrote two drafts there. I think the second draft we did at Columbia was dated March or April 1981, and they passed on it. They said they wanted something raunchier. It was too nice, it was too sweet. We submitted this thing everywhere. We got over 40 rejections on this project over a period of three years. So yes, you’re right, we had absolutely no idea that anyone would want to see this movie. At the time we were coming out, we were perceived as a movie in trouble because we’d re-cast the lead role. Within the industry, everyone said that just smells bad. And the movie everyone thought was going to be the big, big hit that year was Joe Dante’s Explorers. Nobody had the slightest clue that Back to the Future was going to make a dime.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Did you and Robert Zemeckis feel that way, too?
BOB GALE: We started thinking maybe we had something going on with the film. We’d shot down at Whittier High School, that was the high school we used, with Eric Stoltz… this was over Christmas holidays in 1984. And there were some local kids who would come by and try to see what we were doing. We went back to Whittier during Spring Break of 1985, because we had to get into the school when it wasn’t in session, with Michael J. Fox. The first night we were there, the kids were lined up seven or eight deep to catch a glimpse of Michael.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: That was because of the success of Family Ties?
BOB GALE: Of course. The truth is, you never realize how much exposure someone gets from being in television. And Bob and I couldn’t believe it. We said, “Holy shit, this kid is a much bigger star then we ever imagined.” We knew he was popular, we liked him, but we had no idea that kids would come out and line up like that, and scream. And we started thinking, maybe we've got something here. Maybe we did something smart. And then we had our first sneak preview, and the audience went nuts, they really got into the movie, and the last shot of the movie with the flying car, that was still in black and white, it was real sloppy, just an unfinished shot, but it didn’t matter. That shot brought the house down. And then we thought, “This just might work.”
The original release date for the movie had been set for the middle of August 1985, and that first sneak we had was up in San Jose. About a week or two later we had another one at Universal. For the first one, we had not invited Sid Sheinberg, the CEO of MCA Universal, just because Sid has certain opinions and ideas and we wanted to have a screening for ourselves, without the studio presence so that we could evaluate what we thought needed to be done. And as a result of that screening, we cut out six or seven minutes, which are, of course, in the deleted scenes [of the DVD]. So then, after we made those cuts we had another screening and this was at the studio, and then we invited all the Universal execs. And there had been this superstition at the studio, that you should never have a sneak preview at the Alfred Hitchcock Theater at Universal, because it was a cursed theater, no one had ever had a good preview there. And we just didn’t have time to do it anyplace else, so we said, well, “Screw it, the movie is what the movie is.” And of course it had an even better reaction at that screening than the previous one.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: And Sid Sheinberg was at that?
BOB GALE: Sid was there, and we said to him, “Well, Sid, I guess this dispels the curse of the Hitchcock Theater,” to which he responded, “The curse of the Hitchcock Theater has only ever been that shitty movies have been previewed there,” and then he said, “Can you guys get this movie out for the fourth of July?” “You want to spend the money?” And he said, “I’ll spend whatever it costs.” Because we said, in order to do that we have to have our sound dubbing go 24 hours a day, with pre-dubs being done at night. And we would do the real dub during the day. He said, “I’ll pay for it, if you guys can do it.” So we went to our sound guys and said, can this be done? And they said yeah, if you’ll pay for it we’ll do it, and we did it. And Sheinberg just knew that movie would play so well, that it needed to play for as much of the summer as possible. And we are the guilty parties for ruining post-production schedules in Hollywood, because the movie was in theaters 9 1/2 weeks after we wrapped principal photography. It was that close. We had two editors and we all knew what we were trying to do, and of course the movie was being cut all the time, while Bob was shooting it, so he’d go into the editing room on weekends and work with the editors on different sequences. That’s how tight it was, but we pulled it off.
Tomorrow Bob Gale discusses the casting and replacing of Eric Stoltz in the role of Marty McFly. And if you can't get enough of BTTF, check out this exclusive offer: http://www.bttf.com/ads/flash/exclusive.php
I don't think there's anything to be afraid of. Failure brings great rewards -- in the life of an artist. Do you agree?
Posted by: Air Jordan | February 18, 2011 at 06:29 PM