Original subtitles

In 1985, a modestly-priced 19-million-dollar movie...

Okay, cut.

...had a rising star.

A time machine...

Built out of an old refrigerator.

...and a title... Spaceman from Pluto.

What? ...that nobody liked.

In fact, this movie went on to change...

...well, nothing, because they didn't make that one, but they nearly did.

Look, this is a bit complicated.

Can we go from the top?

In 1985...

...a modestly-priced $19 million movie had a rising star...

He's charming. He's likable.

...a time machine...

It looks like a spaceship.

...and a title...

Back to the future!

...that absolutely everyone loved.

This film is about time.

Despite its box office blowout...

My mother would clip out how much money it was making.

...and critical acclaim... It's a roller coaster ride.

...the making of Back to the Future

seemed destined to fail.

Bob Zemeckis said, "We're making the wrong movie."

But through the perseverance... Working seven days a week...

...of a pair of Bobs...

And here we were doing this thing that you're never supposed to do.

...this film defied the odds. They're gonna shut us down.

...and made its own density. Sorry, that should be "destiny."

Oh.

This is the story... Boom!

...of how a series of decisions... I think we want to reshoot that.

...good and bad... You did what?

...blazed a trail and left its mark...

The biggest lightning bolt in cinematic history.

...on the careers of everyone who strapped in, despite the risk.

Liquid nitrogen? What could possibly go wrong?

You never know what the future will bring.

These are The Movies That Made Us.

Great Scott! Back to the Future,

the story of a typical 1980s teenager...

McFly, you're a slacker.

...with a pretty sweet ride...

You built a time machine out of a DeLorean?

...who inadvertently travels back in time,

where he befriends his dad, kisses his mum,

he shocks a doc...

...and pretty much everyone else.

Rock and roll.

For Marty McFly to go... Back to the future!

...he has to make his parents fall... Dad!

...in love, to stop himself from being...

Erased from existence.

...and all before he's...

out of time.

But before we set the flux capacitor for 1985,

and find out just how this '80s mega-hit was made

and renamed from...

Professor Brown Visits the Future.

We need to go back...

November 5th, 1955.

No, not 1955. Forward a bit, please,

to the '70s.

Specifically, the campus of the University of Southern California,

to meet two officially graded...

B or B-plus.

...student moviemakers named Bob Gale and Bob Zemeckis.

Bob wanted to be a director. I wanted to be a writer.

But unlike their artsy-fartsy fellow students...

We'd hear the graduate students pontificating about the French New Wave

and how great the last movie of Jean-Luc Godard was,

and we didn't care anything about that.

We were more interested in talking about James Bond and...

Dirty Harry.

And ultimately, more interested in making those kinds of movies.

Well, do ya, punk?

Regular movies that regular people can enjoy.

So when it was time for their graduate film,

called A Field of Honor...

We were doing these car stunts, this bus scene, firing automatic weapons...

And with no Godard influences whatsoever...

Hey! ...student director Zemeckis went big.

Bob might have only got a B or B-plus on it. It wasn't...

serious enough, I guess, or whatever.

But as new graduates, it was now time to get serious.

We just wanted to get out of school, start making movies.

Keeping their ambition alive,

the Bobs stayed afloat by working in television,

whilst toiling away on their first movie script called 1941,

which they pitched to literally anyone in town who would listen.

Our agent got us a meeting with John Milius...

The guy who wrote this...

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

...and directed that.

We told him about this fake LA air raid that took place in 1942.

And John Milius then told someone else about it.

John told Steven how great it was. You don't mean the Steven?

Steven Spielberg, one of the hottest directors.

Steven Spielberg, who, at this point in the mid-'70s,

was really only just warming up.

After making one of the most successful movies of all time,

he was looking for a new project to sink his teeth into.

So, thanks to this guy, when Steven saw Bob and Bob's script for 1941...

He loved it. He wanted to make it.

Wait. So, this is happening?

Steven Spielberg wanted to make a movie written by these two Bobs?

Right. Yes. Well, that's good.

Especially because he actually did.

And suddenly, Bob Gale and Bob Zemeckis' dream...

We wanted to make movies.

...came true.

1941 was the first of Steven Spielberg's films...

To win an Oscar? No.

To make a billion dollars? No.

Um... To flop.

Which left Steven Spielberg, and Bob and Bob,

with a somewhat uncertain future.

Instead, the Bobs thought they'd rewrite the past and have that graduate film...

Field of Honor.

...reassessed by Professor Spielberg.

Let us start from the beginning.

But unlike those artsy, yeah, fartsy USC professors...

Steven was blown away.

...not only did they get top marks, Robert Zemeckis became the teacher's pet

because after seeing Field of Honor...

Steven was convinced that Bob was really a director and knew what he was doing.

Yeah, but did he though? Spielberg gave us the chance...

Bob got his first directing gig. ...to find out.

Which is kind of amazing. This is someone right out of film school,

and all of a sudden, he has one of the hottest directors

that signs on to executive produce his debut film.

A film called I Wanna Hold Your Hand.

Like always, written by Bob and Bob.

But now, with Zemeckis' directorial debut,

surely, success would be just around the corner.

It's a huge disappointment commercially, critically,

and certainly, also for Bob Zemeckis.

You know, this is the kind of thing that could screw me up permanently.

Indeed. With two flops to their name, that's a flop a Bob,

the Bobs were gaining a bankably unbankable track record.

But come on, to be fair...

You know, with a movie, so much can go wrong.

Right. This guy would know. Well, my name is Frank Price.

I was head of Columbia Pictures.

He gave the bad luck Bobs' flailing careers

a bit of a tune-up with the movie Used Cars,

again written by the Bobs, and like last time, directed by Bob Zemeckis.

And... It performed moderately.

And once again... It's an amazing...

...flop. Shit!

Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale just can't get a hit going.

That's three for three. Come on, Bobs.

Yep. But Frank Price was willing

to see if they could make it four flops.

He said, "When you have your next idea, please bring it to me."

Well, as it turns out, Bob had a little idea in his back pocket,

one he had while working on the not-great movie, Used Cars.

In order to promote Used Cars,

the publicity department wanted to do "Hometown Boy Does Good."

Bob returned home a hero, or at least,

a semi-successful scriptwriter with no actual hits to speak of.

So, I went back to my hometown, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri,

and I did a bunch of publicity.

While I was visiting with my parents, I was digging around in the basement,

and I came across my father's high school yearbook.

Now, my father and I went to the same high school 29 years apart.

I was amazed to find this yearbook!

I said, "This is cool." It'd be kind of like going back in time

and seeing what my school was like in 1940.

And it was here, deep in his past,

in the house he grew up in during the '50s,

that Bob discovered something that would drastically change

the course of his future.

I discovered that my dad was the president of his graduating class.

I had no idea.

And I thought to myself,

"Would I have been friends with my dad if I'd been in high school with him?"

This is it!

And boom! There it is.

That was the lightning bolt that struck me.

A kid ends up in high school with his own father.

And with Bob's basement discovery, Back to the Future was born.

I go back to California. I tell this story to Bob.

He gets really excited.

He says, "Hell, yeah!"

"And what if your mom went to the same high school

and all the things she told you that she never did with a boy...

And he can sleep in my room.

...she did 'em all."

After Bob and I kicked enough ideas around for this thing, we said,

"Hey, let's set up a meeting with Frank. Let's go in there and tell him about it."

Marching into Columbia HQ,

Bob and Bob began their pitch for Back to the Future.

It's kind of a difficult concept. But to be fair...

It's a half-baked idea. But to also be fair...

Great premise. That premise being...

A kid goes back in time, encounters his parents in high school,

and interferes with their relationship.

If he can't get 'em back together, he's never gonna be born.

So far, the exact plot to Back to the Future,

minus the ending, you know. That's the same, right?

Bob wanted to keep telling him more scenes.

And I kept going, "Stop, stop, he's buying it."

Exactly. Because Frank did buy it.

Bob and I would write the script together. I'd produce and Bob would direct.

Bob and Bob turned that... Half-baked idea.

...into the fully-formed story we love. With a start, middle...

I'm from the future.

...and, of course, that ending,

where Doc Brown... Professor Brown.

Professor Brown gives the glorious DeLorean time machine...

Time machine was built out of an old refrigerator.

Right. Yes, a fridge. Well, in any case, Doc...

Professor. Yeah.

...harnesses the power required to send Marty back to the future with...

Nuclear energy from an atomic bomb test.

Okay, I don't remember that. But, anyway, it succeeds.

And the ending had Marty arriving in a revised future

that had some resemblance to the Futurama 1939 World's Fair.

Oh, yeah, and one other thing...

Professor Brown had a pet chimpanzee...

...named Shemp. It turned out that nobody liked that.

No, including Frank Price. Hmm.

But their problems were soon very much bigger than Shemp.

Frank decided not to make the movie.

Uh, no.

We didn't know why.

Having come so close, Back to the Future

and Bob Zemeckis's career were back to the drawing board...

Bob was so despondent at that point that he said,

"I've gotta have something to direct. I'm just gonna say yes

to the next decent script that comes along."

Almost tailor-made for Zemeckis' résumé...

The studio had no faith in this project whatsoever,

which is why Bob Zemeckis gets asked to direct it in the first place.

I'll do it.

Zemeckis is flattered to sign on,

and when, in March of 1984, Romancing the Stone premiered...

Somehow, Romancing the Stone ended up being this amazing hit for Fox.

Finally, for Bob Zemeckis, his series of flops flipped.

And suddenly...

Everybody and their uncle wants to be Bob Zemeckis's best friend.

He already had one of those. A best friend, not an... not an uncle.

Bob comes to me and he says,

"You know, we can get Back to the Future made finally."

Actually, maybe he did have a kind of uncle.

Friendly uncle Spielberg.

And Steven was more than interested because he had just set up

Amblin Entertainment at Universal.

And with Universal's support, Back to the Future's future

seemed inevitable.

Rock and roll.

But there was one spoke in the wheel.

We have to get the project back from Columbia.

Yeah, 'cause even though Frank had passed...

We didn't know why.

...Columbia still owned the script, which was a problem for both Bobs.

Damn! But, come on!

With Spielberg behind them,

surely, the studio head at Universal could get something done.

Who's the president of Universal at this point?

Great question. Our good friend, Frank Price.

Is it? Oh, dear Hi.

Damn! Having left Columbia,

Frank found himself the head of Universal Pictures.

Damn, damn!

Which is actually the reason

that he pulled the plug on the project back at Columbia.

Because I left.

Which meant Frank actually still liked it.

He just didn't feel like it was wise for him

to commit the studio to something that he wasn't gonna be there to oversee.

That's the way I am.

And just like that, Back to the Future was back in business.

Or should we say, "monkey business"?

Movies with chimps in them don't make money.

Or so says Sid Sheinberg, Frank's appointed overseer of the project.

He was basically like a godfather, professionally, to Steven Spielberg.

He gave Steven Spielberg his first professional job.

And he gave Bob and Bob a very specific note to lose Shemp.

I said, "Well, Sid, what about the Clint Eastwood movies?"

He said, "That, sir, was an orangutan."

Okay, Doc Brown has a dog instead of a chimp. Not a big deal.

But something that would require just a touch more unpicking

was Sheinberg's biggest problem.

The ending.

Yeah, well, no one really liked that.

The futuristic ending didn't end it on the right note.

Well, Sheinberg sorted that out, too.

Marty would come back to a world in which his parents had improved,

but the rest of the world was the same.

Yeah, okay. Not a big deal.

Sheinberg had more notes. He didn't like Professor Brown.

We said, "Okay. How about Doc Brown?"

Sid said, "Okay."

He made us change the name of Marty's mother to the name of his own wife.

Lorraine.

So far... Not a big deal.

...just one more note.

Sid never liked the title Back to the Future.

No. No, not again. Come on!

He just said, "It doesn't make any sense."

"How can you go back to the future?"

I still don't understand.

But he made his view clear to everyone, including producer...

Hi. Yes, hello, Neil Canton.

And so, he sent a memo to Steven, and he copied Bob and Bob on it.

And the memo's instructions were simple.

It said Sheinberg wanted the movie to be called Spaceman From Pluto.

We turned white. It's just horrible.

I think it's terrible!

We said, "Steven, what do we do? He's serious, isn't he?"

Steven said, "Yeah, he's serious."

So was Spielberg. Steven said, "I know what to do."

"Dear Sid, thank you for your most hilarious memo."

"We all got a big laugh out of it. Keep 'em coming."

That was it. We never heard about that problem again.

"Problem." Not a problem.

So with the name of the movie locked in,

attention turned to other names.

Namely... Who is going to play Marty?

That's easy.

Bob and I knew that the perfect kid to play Marty McFly was...

Michael Fox...

This young actor had become a superstar

as everyone's favorite conservative, Alex P. Keaton,

in the worldwide television smash, Family Ties.

He's charming. He's warm. He's likeable.

He's busy. He's very busy. The answer was, "No."

Come on! By this point, Back to the Future

was decades in the making.

They couldn't wait until Family Ties untied?

Universal wouldn't let us wait for Michael, right?

They wanted the movie to get done,

and they wanted the movie to come out around Memorial Day.

And with that, Michael J. Fox himself became a memory.

At least, for now.

So, with Michael off the table, we read every young actor in town.

And this being Tinseltown, there were quite a few.

You'll find their pictures in here.

C. Thomas Howell.

You don't mind if we park for a few minutes, do you?

Jon Cryer...

Um...

Some kind of tiny version of Ben Stiller.

Lorraine, lately, I've come to the conclusion

that I don't know anything about my parents.

But as for Sid Sheinberg...

"Problem." Not a problem.

...well, he was causing problems that were probably going to be problems.

Sheinberg was very bullish on an actor named Eric Stoltz.

I've got this real strange disease.

Sheinberg was convinced that, because he was so good in Mask,

he could do anything.

A good actor.

His performance was terrific. But...

But, uh... But it's not funny.

He said, "I'm so sure that Stoltz is gonna be great

that if he doesn't work out, you know,

you can put somebody else in the movie and start over again."

And... And...

With reluctant enthusiasm... Eric Stoltz became Marty McFly.

Yeah, surely, you know, he'll be good.

So, that was, that's what we did. Um...

But there was plenty more to do

because Eric Stoltz couldn't put 1.21 gigawatts of power

into a time machine all by himself.

There was the rest of the cast to cast. There was Marty's dad.

Hey, you, get your damn hands off her.

Crispin Glover was absolutely in a class by himself.

And Marty's mom.

When Lea Thompson walked in, it was like... that was it.

Marty's girlfriend.

Melora Hardin, a very wonderful, effervescent, young actress.

T here was one of cinema history's greatest bullies.

Oh, hi, Biff, how's it going? No, not Billy Zane.

Don't change the subject, McFly. I told you never to come in here.

The bully with the most punchable face

was stand-up comic...

Tom Wilson. Tom?

He's got the physicality. He's got a great sense of humor.

And, of course, Christopher Lloyd.

Oh, yeah!

He was gonna bring something to it that was gonna be different

than what anybody else was gonna bring.

Exactly. Christopher Lloyd is Doc Brown.

Well, he would be.

He tossed the script into a trash can. He didn't bother to read it.

I've been busy.

Theater was very important to him.

As was the advice of his wife.

She said to him that, "You sure you wanna do that?"

"Steven Spielberg's company is offering you a big role in a movie."

"Maybe you should just read it." With that, the doctor was in.

When the cast was fully assembled, reading was exactly what they all did.

Around a table, at a table-read.

They're trying to find their character. You make sure the dialogue is working.

Your Uncle Joey didn't make parole again.

It seemed to be.

And they get to the last page...

That last page, with the ending that everyone,

especially Sid and Frank, were so happy with...

Eric's face sinks.

Eric Stoltz may well be a very fine actor,

but he couldn't hide his feelings about the script.

Eric declared that he thought that the movie was a tragedy.

He says, "Well, this is so sad."

Everyone kind of turns to him and says, "What's so sad?"

He said, "Marty, everyone that he knows, remembers a life that he didn't live."

"You know, he has to live the rest of his life pretending to be

someone that he's not."

Bob sort of had a quizzical look on his face, as if to say,

"We're supposed to be having fun here. You're going too deep to a dark place."

So, with irreconcilable differences about the script,

Eric Stoltz was replaced.

No, just kidding. That would be crazy.

And while they weren't rethinking their star, yet,

there was one crucial part of the script that their enthusiasm was cooling on.

The time machine was built out of an old refrigerator.

Well, about that...

Bob said the logistics about putting this refrigerator on the back of a truck,

and taking it off, wouldn't it be better if Doc built the thing into a car?

Welcome to my latest experiment. This is a big one.

The one I've been waiting for all my life.

"Yeah, that would make a lot of sense. Let's make the time machine into a car."

And so, they did, but not just any car.

Ford Mustang called and wanted to pay us to use Mustangs in the movie.

Mustang attitude.

Bob, I'll say, "politely" turned them down.

Just say no.

And politely pulled up the doors on the real deal.

Are you telling me that you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?

If you have a DeLorean,

and it has gull-wing doors, all of a sudden, it looks like...

A seagull!

It's a spaceship. Yes, of course, a spaceship.

If you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?

And with a few tweaks and a tune-up

by legendary designer Ron Cobb,

to put the final touches on this iconic design was this guy.

A legendary designer in his own right.

I just did some tweaking here and there, and then, my drawings went

to Kevin Pike's special effects shop.

But it wasn't just the drawings that showed up on Kevin Pike's doorstep.

Here they came.

Three stock DeLoreans to turn into time machines.

We collected parts from all over.

Used car parts, aircraft parts.

Find something that might look like something in the sketch.

Things like...

Part of the plutonium chamber that we made,

we needed something that looked like a fan of some kind,

and we ended up finding a Dodge hubcap that just fit the bill.

So while Kevin and his team got to work on three DeLoreans,

a valid question began to surface.

How much is this gonna cost?

According to Sid Sheinberg...

Twelve million dollars.

But according to unit production manager, Dennis Jones,

whose job it was to formulate a realistic budget...

It came in at around 18-plus million dollars.

To which Sid Sheinberg said...

We don't want to spend this much money. You need to take money out.

Do you know what this means?

With just months until principal photography began...

Then it became a question of, "What do you take out?"

What about Eric Stoltz? No.

Not yet, fine.

What can you do dramatically to save money?

Well, there was one thing.

The ending, nuclear energy from an atomic bomb test.

Yes, that's right. This was still the ending.

To achieve that, we had to build maybe an 80-85 foot tower

to then drop something, flying down,

and then, ILM would do the effect of the bomb

and it was just monumental.

Damn! In other words...

It was very expensive.

Like, six million dollars too expensive.

Damn, damn! So, obviously...

They end up scrapping this whole idea.

Which, of course, kept the budget from blowing up.

But it left Bob and Bob with a scientific conundrum,

which they contemplated quietly as they looked around Hill Valley Square,

otherwise known as the Universal Backlot,

which was prepped and ready for action in just a matter of weeks.

What if we put a clock on the top of the Universal courthouse?

It'd be cool to have a big lightning strike.

An idea that actually worked out pretty well.

It seemed to be a much cheaper result.

Great Scott!

The creativity that you draw on when you don't have the budget,

come up with better ideas.

We got it down to 12, so we went full blast ahead.

And so, when filming began in late November...

I think we had 65 days. We had to be in the theaters by the end of May.

At least it wouldn't be a particularly tough shoot.

Rolling. Quiet, please.

Pretty much everything about this film was going to be tough.

Have it your way.

You've got actors playing older and younger versions of themselves.

Quite convincingly, apparently.

Lea was doing a makeup test

when the doctor came in to give her her health exam.

Standard industry practice, of course.

Except Lea was still wearing her makeup.

And he said, "She's in remarkable shape for a woman her age."

Girls these days, smoking pot, drinking booze.

Okay, so, they didn't have to worry about makeup,

but there were plenty of other things that could go wrong.

Stunt cars, fire effects,

same sets redressed for two different periods.

It was a very ambitious undertaking.

To make things easier, Bob Zemeckis called up his old buddy

from the jungle.

No, not Shemp. Shemp's gone, relax.

Dean Cundey, his DP from Romancing the Stone.

I couldn't stop thinking about you.

The first thing we shot was the scene where George McFly

is outside of Lorraine's house, climbing the tree.

Oh, hang on, not that Marty. Still this Marty.

It's only the first week of shooting...

You start to get this nagging feeling that something's not quite right.

What?

We do these various takes with Eric,

and some of them were good and some of them were not.

It seemed to be evident that he was taking it very seriously.

He had approached it as if he had actually gone back into time.

And is it scary, and is it apprehensive?

Emotions the producers were feeling quite a bit too.

You kind of trick yourself into thinking you'd never use a whole take.

If we took this moment from this take... Oh, he was okay here at this moment.

Combine it with this moment from that take.

You're hoping that there's enough takes and enough pieces in the performance

that it's going to cut together.

You make it sound so easy.

But is it really that easy to fix things in post?

We kept on going because the idea of replacing an actor

was not even in our consciousness, 'cause nobody does that!

And anyway, the rest of the cast were a breeze.

Crispin Glover would drive the crew nuts.

Maybe not him. Not that one. Crispin was a character.

Oh, no!

Crispin asked Lea Thompson

if she wouldn't mind coming over to his apartment

so that the two of them could read the script and sort of get into character.

He takes out this easel and wants the two of them to paint a volcano together.

What? And when they're done, he says...

Oh. "Okay." And that was enough for him.

Yes, I'm George.

I think he's one of those actors that has it in his own brain

how his character is, and the director's sort of immaterial to that vision.

That's why we gotta show her that you, George McFly, are a fighter.

Somebody who'll stand up for yourself.

Yeah, but not to the director!

He and Bob would fight a lot.

Yeah, but I've never picked a fight in my entire life.

Not fight, like, openly, but, you know, it was always Bob trying to get Crispin

to do something that he wanted him to do, and Crispin didn't do it how Bob wanted.

For example... There was a scene where he wanted him

to open a door, and that was a discussion about the theory of opening a door.

Like, you know, just walking through it, for instance.

Crispin said, "My character wouldn't come through the door."

Bob said... "Yes, he needs to."

Oh, no, no, no. "Crispin, just do the scene."

"Something's on the other side that we need to film."

To which he respectfully disagreed.

And not you or anybody else on this planet is gonna make me change my mind.

And yet...

It went back and forth. Crispin finally did it.

And you're right. You're right.

Yes, he sure was. For now at least.

I'm afraid I'm just not very good at confrontations.

While the on-set tussles continued...

Ah, Dad! ...the first wave of dailies were being

wrestled with by the editing tag team of Arthur Schmidt and Harry Keramidas.

We were working in a double-wide trailer right on the lot.

Where they'd edit a scene for Bob Zemeckis to look at.

And he would say, "I think we wanna reshoot that."

That's never a good start. So what was the problem?

It would be mostly about Eric Stoltz's performance.

Yes, Eric was still taking this comedy very seriously.

In fact, there was one shot in particular that stood out for Bob Zemeckis.

It was that iconic shot where Marty McFly walks out to the Hill Valley Square

and everything about it just looked lifeless.

And Zemeckis just said, "Oh my God, we're making the wrong movie."

So Bob started making phone calls.

"I think we got a problem. He's not Marty McFly."

So Bob and Bob took their big problem to the bigwig,

Steven Spielberg.

Why are you so nervous?

And everybody agreed that Eric wasn't working out and we had to recast.

But ultimately, it all came down to just one Bob.

"Well, what do you wanna do, Bob?" To which that Bob said...

"I wanna get rid of Eric and I wanna get Michael J. Fox to play the part."

Before they got on with the very uncomfortable task

of replacing Eric Stoltz...

We should find out if Michael J. Fox wants to do this before we ask Universal.

And we just have to pray that Michael will wanna do this.

But to do that, they'd have to get through Gary Goldberg first.

The executive producer and patriarch of Family Ties.

And I think we may have literally gotten on our knees.

And he said, "If Michael wants to do this,

and if you guys are willing to accept the notion

that Family Ties always comes first..."

And if it does? Then...

Michael J. Fox is brought into the producer of Family Ties' office.

The mood was so serious, Michael assumed he was getting fired.

And then Gary takes out a manila folder that has the script to Back to the Future,

and says, "Take it home, read it, but they need to know by tomorrow

whether or not you can sign on."

Michael J. Fox holds the envelope, feels the weight of it,

compares it to the script of Family Ties that he has in his other hand

and says, "Yeah, I'll do it." So he signed on sight unseen.

With Gary's permission, of course.

God bless you, Gary. Gary Goldberg, thank you.

Praise Jesus.

Standing back up and wiping the dust from their grateful knees,

the producers got to work...

Let me show you my plan.

...on their covert operation.

And so now, we had to go to Universal. There was a meeting.

And in the meeting was a very serious-faced Sid Sheinberg,

to whom they said...

"Look, Sid, we have a problem."

"We don't think it's what Back to the Future is supposed to be."

And they reminded him of what he definitely said during casting.

"If he doesn't work out,

you know, you can put somebody else in and start over again."

And...

And after hearing them out, Sid Sheinberg said...

"I think you're wrong." And...

"And history will probably show that you're wrong."

Here we were, doing this thing that you're never supposed to do.

I thought Sid was gonna shut the movie down, fire us, and this was...

That our career was over.

Yeah. But?

But... Sid said...

"I'm willing to do it because you all believe in it."

And in the opposite of dropping to their knees,

the Bobs, Neil, and Steven Spielberg jumped for joy.

We're elated.

"Oh my God, we made this happen. It's insane, but it's gonna happen."

And now...

Bob has to break the news to Eric Stoltz.

Uh-oh.

And just how Eric would take that news was anyone's guess.

When I went into Bob's trailer, Bob was in the midst of telling Eric,

and I actually believe that I saw a smile come to Eric's face as a sense of relief.

And with that, Eric Stoltz was officially out of the picture.

But Eric wasn't the only cast member caught in the crossfire.

Melora Hardin, who we had cast as Jennifer,

she was about three inches taller than Michael.

And that meant...

Bob Zemeckis isn't quite sure if this is gonna look right on screen.

Are audiences gonna react weirdly that Marty has a taller girlfriend?

He decides to poll the female members of the crew.

Yes.

And hands down, women on the set said

there is no way a teenage girl is gonna date a teenage guy

who's shorter than them. So Melora was out.

But replacing Melora Hardin on short notice was a tall order.

I got a phone call from my agent, and she said, "Claudia,

they've recast the role of Marty. They fired Melora, and they've hired you."

And I'm like... Why shouldn't you be happy?

Claudia Wells had caught the eye of no less than Steven Spielberg

during the initial casting, and really, it was love at first sight.

We fell in love with her immediately. Technically, second sight.

She was shorter. Only just.

Claudia is exactly the right height to play Jennifer against Marty McFly.

But with the imminent arrival of two new cast members on set,

the excitement quickly turned to panic for basically everyone on the crew.

People, you could hear their hearts pounding.

There was tears.

Not so much for Eric and Melora, but...

"Guys, we've shot six-and-a-half weeks of it."

Everything we've done for the last six weeks,

we're gonna do all over with a new talent.

Uh, what the hell does that mean?

But the real question was... How are we gonna do this movie now?

There was a mad scramble.

We're redoing, essentially, the whole movie that we had done.

Eric Stoltz to Michael J. Fox was day to night.

And not just in how they played Marty.

We had to work with him on this sort of, these crazy hours.

Juggling being a TV star by day and a movie star by night.

He'd work during the day on Family Ties,

get in the car, and come work with us at night.

I'll be working until about 4:30, 5:00 in the morning.

God knows when the poor kid slept.

Neil knows this one.

He'd sleep going from one set to the other.

And the first set he arrived to was...

Twin Pines Mall. And with millions of dollars

and everything riding on Michael J. Fox's puffy shoulders...

Wait a minute, Doc, are you telling me that you built a time machine...

out of a DeLorean?

The kid got his first laugh with the very first line.

"You put a time machine in a DeLorean?"

Michael J. Fox was that good right out of the gate.

It's great. The whole company knew

that the whole show was gonna change.

It was just night and day.

Again, technically, more night than day.

And as the crew scrambled to redo everything with Michael J. Fox...

Creatively, how can we do this?

...the solution was to do what they could without Michael J. Fox.

We had to do something before Michael came.

Well, under the steady, sturdy hands of Bob Zemeckis...

We had Michael come, and we laid out the master shot...

Then they grabbed his close-up, and then they wrapped for the night.

First thing the next day, they got this shot and this shot.

It's a testament to how good a director Bob Zemeckis is,

so that when we integrated Michael into it, it's seamless. You can't tell.

Okay, cut.

But with all the inserts, keeping track of who was in which take

was sometimes a little confusing. For instance...

Was it really, uh, Michael J. Fox...

What's that?

...or was it Eric Stoltz who threw the punch?

Tom Wilson, who played Biff, said he didn't remember reshooting that.

That would mean that this... Could actually be Eric Stoltz.

If you look at Tom Wilson's eyeline and you look at the height,

there's no way that's Michael J. Fox.

It was not Eric Stoltz. Or not.

I went back to the line script and checked and it was indeed reshot.

Who's this man? How'd he get on set?

Um... I don't know.

I think it's a stunt double.

That actually makes sense when you think about it.

But sifting through all that footage, Harry did know one thing.

We had an advantage in some ways of shooting six weeks with Eric Stoltz

because the structures of the scenes were the same.

It allowed us in editing to be a little more quick in putting together the cut.

What? You're George McFly.

Yeah, who are you?

And so, when they were shooting the skateboard chase,

I was putting it together in pieces.

Which gave them an unusual luxury.

Bob could realize that something's missing or could be made better.

For example... The sparks on the skateboard.

After we had put together the scene, they did the insert cut

of the skateboard dragging on the ground, shooting up sparks.

Something else that could use a makeover?

The wardrobe we came up with for Eric was designed to blend into the '50s.

We're missing a whole level of comedy here.

Wouldn't it be more fun if he didn't blend in?

So the black jacket went away. They put him in this bright, puffy jacket.

In the '50s, you'd think that was a life preserver.

While reshooting with Michael was giving them new life,

Crispin was, well, he was being Crispin.

They were filming in the backyard where Crispin is sort of talking

with Marty at the clothing line.

There's actually more to this scene.

Give me a shot. Right here... I'm not gonna hit you in the stomach.

They couldn't quite get it. It's just an act!

Crispin keeps kind of wandering in and out of frame.

She'll believe that. I know she will. I'm fine.

The crew is saying, "Listen, you've got marks. You can't leave the frame."

Then, much like with the door, Crispin had other more Crispin-like ideas.

He says, "Well, this is where George McFly wants to go."

So the crew...

Builds a box, an actual, like, planter's box

so that Crispin can't leave his bounds.

And they said, "Okay, well now George McFly wants to go right there."

However, the one and only truly important mark

that they all needed to hit was the deadline.

We had a release date of middle of July. So we didn't have much time.

Well, whatever time is... We were racing towards our preview.

Within a matter of months...

We were ready to take the movie and put it in front of an audience.

Well, "Ready" is quite a strong word, isn't it?

We put in some temp music for the preview.

There were temp effects. It wasn't very finished.

But even still, they were all there,

from Bob and Bob, to Neil, to Spielberg, and, of course, Sid Sheinberg.

We didn't want anyone from Universal to come and see it.

Okay, so Sid wasn't allowed. But nevertheless...

You've worked really hard.

You've spent countless hours to get to this place,

and then someone's gonna now judge what you've done.

But when, for the first time in human history,

an audience saw this scene...

They get the exact opposite reaction that they wanted.

There was this hush over the theater.

But what was their problem?

They actually thought that they had killed the dog.

It could have been worse. It could've been Shemp.

Look out! Upon realizing soon after...

The dog is fine. ...everything changed.

And you could just feel the audience going, "Oh, this is so great!"

The audience was with us. I had never been in a preview,

before or since, that saw an audience rise up and be so involved in the movie.

I finally invented something that works!

Suddenly, they changed their tune

about keeping it secret from Universal, who universally agreed...

The movie's gonna be a hit.

...and began immediately rewarding the efforts

of these now quite smug moviemakers.

"Your reward for the big hit is we're moving your release date up

from the middle of July to the July 4th weekend."

Oh my God. Can you do it?

Can you get it out three weeks early? Which wasn't enough time.

This is nuts.

Well, again, what is time? Relative.

The clock was ticking down. Yes. Relatively expensive.

We had everyone working seven days a week, 24 hours a day,

just trying to get to the finish line.

A relay race mostly being run by the effects wizards

of Industrial Light and Magic, the effects masters behind this and this.

So at least on that front, they were in safe hands?

"Camera holds on Marty as he watches his hand begin to disintegrate."

You know Bob hates that shot.

That shot never worked the way we intended it to work.

Because it looked like a clean hole in the guy's hand.

There were some other shots

that people had a hard time getting fired up about.

The fire burning across the cable that's strung across the street,

it had to be hand-animated 'cause there wasn't any fire on it.

It doesn't really look like fire. When I see that shot, I cringe.

But there wasn't time to obsess over the details.

Because this has to be in the movie tonight...

Talk about cutting it close.

...in order for us to go into the theaters for opening.

And what an opening it was.

The theater was sold out. We had a couple of seats in the back.

The audience went to their feet in hysterical, giddy glee.

People are clapping at the end of the movie. People don't usually clap.

When you work as hard as we did on that show to achieve everything,

then to go see it and all of it come together so well...

You look great. Everything looks great. Yeah, well, he says that now.

When the movie premiered, Michael J. Fox wasn't even in the country.

He was actually overseas with Family Ties,

and he gets this phone call from his agent.

Michael J. Fox is immediately apologetic.

He assumes that the movie was a disaster, because he said,

"I know I was sleep-deprived and I didn't give my best."

"I promise I'll do better next time."

And his agent says, "No, Michael, you don't understand."

"This is the number one movie at the box office."

It pulled in 11.3 million dollars that first weekend.

Universal was through-the-moon happy.

My mother would clip out how much money it was making.

And then we became the highest-grossing movie of the year.

And would go on to make 385 million dollars worldwide.

Wherever you went, it was Back to the Future.

Sid was just over the moon, jumping up and down.

Right, yes, the Sid who said...

Spaceman from Pluto. ...was the better title. That guy, right?

He never said he was wrong.

It's hard not to wonder if the making of Back to the Future

was just a series of events that happened to go right

where fate and destiny, or density,

forged a path through space and time itself

to create a movie that sort of defies description.

Back to the Future is a comedy, adventure, science fiction, time-travel love story.

It's just got everything in it.

Yeah, it's an action comedy adventure coming-of-age film. Musical.

Or maybe a spaceman from Pluto did indeed visit planet Earth

to make sure that Sid Sheinberg absolutely did not get his way.

Or it might be that the right people came together at the right time

to make a movie that's kind of timeless...

Action!

...even decades later.

My God, has it been that long? Things have certainly changed around here.

Actually, you'd be surprised.

We wet all this down, remember?

Oh God, it was amazing, everything that we did here.

This is the Twin Pines Mall,

an actual, well, mall in Puente Hills just outside LA.

I remember that! That's clearly where the terrorists were chasing the DeLorean.

But it was here in this parking lot

where cinema history really was made...

This whole straightaway, it's all the same.

...when Michael J. Fox turned up on set for the very first time.

For me, people always ask me what was the most memorable day.

For me, it was the first day Michael worked.

Sure.

Because this was something unprecedented we did,

replacing an actor after five-and-a-half weeks of shooting.

With a new actor. It was a Thursday night, I remember.

Yeah. It was a Thursday night. We got the whole crew together

and explained to them that we were replacing Eric.

And after we'd talked to the crew, my beeper goes off. It was my wife.

I had to run into the mall to the pay phone and call her up.

And she told me she was going into labor.

My daughter Gabrielle was born over that weekend,

and when I came back to work the following week,

I had a new leading man, Michael J. Fox, and a beautiful baby daughter.

So when anyone ever says to me, like,

"What's the most memorable weekend of your life?" That's it.

I was here when it started.

Well, for Back to the Future, this is only where it started.

It's probably one of the most perfect films that we've ever made in Hollywood.

Because this film was so perfect...

Wow, look at him go!

...that soon enough, there was Back to the Future 2.

Something very familiar about all this.

And after Back to the Future 3,

this trilogy combined for nearly 1 billion dollars in box office worldwide,

launching careers of the crew

and flipping Bob Zemeckis' flops to hits.

Life was like a box of chocolates.

With the immense success of Back to the Future,

it's easy to forget that Bob and Bob's original idea...

It's a half-baked idea.

...had its own future that was anything but certain.

The screenplay was rejected, and it would have been easy for us

to just say, "Well, this one isn't gonna get made."

But we always thought that, "This movie has to be made."

"And, goddamn it, somehow, we're gonna figure out how to do that."

From name changes to face changes,

these filmmakers overcame every obstacle and left nothing to fate.

And it's kind of the message of the making of the movie as well as the movie itself.

We all have the ability to control our destiny.

Like I've always told you, put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.

And it's a message that rings true,

no matter how difficult life's obstacles can be.

In 1991, Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's.

It was unbelievably devastating. You know, this young guy...

Yeah.

...had this debilitating disease, and he'd managed to cover it up for several years.

You know, in hindsight, he told us there were moments on both Part II and Part III,

when redoing the "Johnny B. Goode" scene,

his fingers weren't playing the notes exactly.

Or he had a limp when he was running down the Western street.

Right.

When he was diagnosed, Michael J. Fox was told

that his acting days would soon be over.

But like Marty McFly himself, Michael decided to write his own future,

which included three more decades of award-winning performances...

Parkinson's.

...while also taking on a lead role in the fight against Parkinson's.

But as roles go, it all began with Marty McFly,

because it was Michael J. Fox's first major film role

for which he was the first choice for this duo's first big hit

and this first-rate crew.

But when looking back at this first film in the trilogy...

You're gonna see some serious shit.

...it's really a story about seconds.

Time is the only thing money can't buy,

and it can't be replaced in any way.

I'm late for school!

Time goes only one way so far, and we never get it back.

You never know what the future will bring.