Now, of course, the fantasy of going back in time, that’s something that everybody’s thought about. And what if your mom went to the same high school? And what if it turned out that your mom who said she never did any stuff with guys, she did all of that stuff with guys? Wouldn’t that be fascinating to have that.”Īnd so those human things are captured beautifully in Back to the Future, and that’s what makes everybody identify with the story. So when I came back to California, I told this idea to Bob Zemeckis, and he immediately loved it. What if a kid from today could go back in time and ended up in high school with his dad?”
We were just in completely different circles.Īnd I wonder to myself, “Gee, was that the kind of guy my dad was, like my school president? If I had gone to high school with my dad, would I have even been friends with him?” And boom, that was the eureka moment, the lightning strike, if you will, that made me think, “Now, there’s a movie. And I’m thinking about the president of my graduating class who was just somebody I would have nothing to do with. And I’m looking at this picture of my dad, and he’s very proper and straight. I said, “Well, this will be interesting to see what my high school looked like 29 years before I went there” and lo and behold, I discovered my dad had been the president of his graduating class. So here was a high school yearbook from the year 1940. I attended the same high school that my dad did. I was digging around the basement and I found my father’s high school yearbook. In August of 1980 I was visiting my parents at the house that I spent half of my childhood in, where they were still living. Was there a similar eureka moment for you when you were first coming up with the film’s concept? In the original Back to the Future, Doc obviously comes up with the idea for the flux capacitor when he hits his head on the sink.
In conjunction with this release, we had the opportunity to speak with writer Bob Gale about the history of the future… This new 4K Ultra HD set features stunning A/V and enough archival and new special features to ensure that your, um, time is well spent. So maybe this explains how it seems like Marty and Doc have been with us forever, a feeling that is heightened by the release of Back to the Future: The Ultimate Trilogy. After collaborating on the inventive (but underperforming) films I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale struck creative gold in 1985 with Back to the Future, easily the most popular sci-fi comedy in history.īut then again, what even is history? As the popular franchise - which also included 1989’s dark and weird time-jumping odyssey Back to the Future Part II and 1990’s charming Western Back to the Future Part III - illustrated how time is more mutable than any of us could possibly imagine.