Exclusive Never-Before-Revealed Secrets from the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy!
In celebration of tomorrow, October 21st, 2015—the future
date to which Marty McFly traveled—here are some previously unshared secrets
from the Back to the Future trilogy!
* It’s become common knowledge that Marty McFly was
originally played by Eric Stoltz before the creative team realized he wasn’t
the right fit. But not many people know that before that the role had been cast with none other than Andre the
Giant. Director/co-screenwriter Robert Zemeckis had been impressed when he saw Andre hit Hulk
Hogan with a ring-bell in a 1982 wrestling match. “He had the perfect charisma
for Marty,” Zemeckis says. “But after shooting a couple days of footage, we
realized it just didn’t work. It’s called Back
to the Future,” he added, lightly chuckling, “not Back to the TALL.”
* In
early drafts of the screenplay, co-screenwriters Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis
had indicated the DeLorean would travel into time once it reached a speed of 33
mph. “33 was Patrick Ewing’s jersey number,” Gale says, “and it
was very important to us to squeeze in that cool reference.” Universal
Studios, however, had other ideas. “They told us it had to be faster,” Gale
says. “Make it bigger! More explosions! Classic
studio stuff.“ Gale and Zemeckis fought tooth and nail but ultimately lost
that battle. “And you know what?” Gale says. “They were right. Now I hate the
number three. And Patrick Ewing.”
* Elsa Raven—who portrayed the Save the Clocktower Woman who
shouts at Marty and Jennifer early in the movie—had a brief but powerful love
affair with Christopher Lloyd. “I was only shooting for a day, and none of my
scenes were with Chris,” Raven says. “But he happened to be hanging around the
crafts services table, and we just clicked.” Within a few days, the
relationship burned out, but both still look back on it fondly. “She was a very
skilled lover,” Lloyd says. “Certainly don’t need a time machine to remember
that.”
* Once, while being driven from the set of Family Ties to the set of BTTF, star Michael J. Fox realized the
car was stocked, not with his preferred beverage, Diet Pepsi, but with 7Up. The
driver apologized, explaining this was the beginning of his shift and the car
had been like that when he picked it up. Fox said he understood but asked why
the driver couldn’t have checked the beverages before leaving headquarters. The
driver again apologized, saying he’d been running late so there wasn’t time for
a beverage check. Fox said it wasn’t that big a deal, but he definitely didn’t
drink any of the 7Up, instead staring out the window moodily for the rest of
the ride.
* The shooting script for BTTF Part II featured some future inventions that ultimately didn’t
make the cut, including something Zemeckis dreamed up called the DataGrid,
which was very similar to what we now know as the internet. Gale had forced
them to take it out because it was “too far-fetched.” “Yeah, he won’t let me
forget that,” Gale says. “Like, seriously. He’ll just pound me with direct
messages on Twitter: ‘Oh, look, Bob, I’m
talking to you via the DataGrid. Not so far-fetched now, is it?’ ‘Hey Bob, how
could someone ever imagine that information could be exchanged in such a
ridiculous way as this?’ That sort of thing.” “I don’t want to be a dick
about it,” Zemeckis says, “but it does get my goat. I mean, nobody knows that I
thought up the internet, just with a much better name.”
* Though Huey Lewis and the News are now forever associated
with BTTF, it didn’t seem like such a
sure thing at first. “I’ll admit, when they approached me about writing a song,
I was skeptical,” Lewis says. “I’m a music guy, you know? I write songs that
play out of music things, like radios and stereos. A song that played out of a
movie? At the time that seemed pretty dumb.” Zemeckis and Gale finally
convinced Lewis by pointing out the songs he wrote for the movie could also
play out of a radio or stereo. Lewis says it’s the best decision he ever made. “Now
everybody’s playing music out of movies,” he says, “But we were there first.”
* Right up until shooting, Marty’s last name was not McFly
but TimeDude. “There was something so evocative about that,” Zemeckis says.
“You have this teenager who ends up being a time traveler, but it’s actually
been foreshadowed in his last name the whole time: Time Dude.” Lea Thompson,
who portrayed Lorraine McFly, was the one responsible for the
switch. “I said it made no sense that I would be called Lorraine TimeDude,” Thompson says. “Because my character
didn’t travel through time. Also I’m not a dude.” Zemeckis and Gale realized their error. In a rush
to come up with something else before shooting started, Gale looked down at
their fast food lunch and said, “Um, I don’t know, how about McFry?” “Perfect!”
Zemeckis said, though he had actually misheard it as McFly, which, of course,
was what it went on to be. “I still think about that sometimes,” Gale says. “If
it had been McFry, the movies might have been even more successful.”
