Robert Zemeckis

Robert Zemeckis is a god among filmmakers. There’s not a dud among his bunch. It’s doozie after doozie for Bob. Go on, revisit his IMDB! You’ll see he gave us the comedy classic “Used Cars”, the highly-romantic adventure epic “Romancing the Stone” (Still one of my favourite films), the technically-ambitious and visually-stirring “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and, of course, a little film called “Back to the Future”! Not too shabby, huh!? To celebrate the 25th Anniversary release of the classic time-traveling comedy on Blu-Ray and DVD, Moviehole caught up with Mr Zemeckis to talk everything “Back to the Future”…. at a speed of 88mph (of course).

Can you believe it’s been 25 years?

No, time flies! It flew by really quick.

Do you watch the trilogy often?

No, no, no.

What if it’s on TV?

Yeah, sometimes if it’s on TV, you know, I’ll watch some of it. It holds up really well.

Did you have any idea when you were making it that it would become this cultural juggernaut?

No. As a matter of fact, it was completely the opposite. We were so terrified it was complicated and, you know, not in the mainstream of what was being made that we were just praying we would break even, that it wouldn’t be a complete disaster. So it was all a great thrill, but, no, we had no idea.

Was it a difficult movie to pitch, since it’s a sci-fi movie, but also a comedy and a drama?

Yeah, the story is legendary. It was turned down by every single studio, and the main reason was that it was too complicated. No one understands time travel. Nobody cares about it. It was all about that sort of thing. It’s so difficult for studio executives to feel all the things you’re describing, you know, the tone and the way the whole movie feels. It’s very difficult for anyone to really glean any of that off of a screenplay.

I read you originally pitched the idea: “If I met my father in high school, would I have gotten along with him?”

Right. When we pitched the idea to get the deal made to write the screenplay, that meeting was, like, five minutes. You know, we pitched it to Frank Price at Columbia and we said, “A kid goes back in time and meets his parents in high school.” He said, “I love it, go write.” That was that meeting. That pitch was easy. The screenplay and my directing and getting the movie green-lighted was the hard part. This was in the time of Animal House, you know, and most studios didn’t think I was raunchy enough, except for Disney, who thought it was too dirty because of the Oedipal thing. So it wasn’t a raunchy teen comedy, and basically that’s as far as their thinking could take them. But it’s fun to have all these rejection letters in my file.

Did you save them all?

Oh, yeah, every one.

What was the feeling on set when you were shooting?

I personally was in a constant state of exhaustion. When people look at films that are wildly entertaining to watch, the comment that you get a lot is, “Gosh, that must have been really fun to make,” and it really wasn’t fun to make at all. I mean the cast and the crew were fantastic, but Michael was shooting Family Ties during the day, so we shot the entire movie at night except for on the weekends—that was the only time we could shoot during the day. So we were shooting seven days a week, and on Saturdays and Sundays we were shooting during the day, then on Monday we would start turning around to half nights, and then by Tuesday we’d be on full nights again. That’s how we had to make the movie. It was incredibly exhausting, but luckily there was a lot of night stuff in the movie, so it wasn’t as bad.

A lot of it does take place at night.

One of my memories of it was that I never saw the sun. You know, I’d get up and go to the stage—we even had to shoot on the stages at night, because that’s when Michael’s schedule would allow him to work. It was a good thing that he was young and energetic. But, yeah, I remember so many days when I never saw sunlight. I would sleep all day, and then I’d get up and the sun would be setting, and we’d go to work, work all night, and drive home before the sun came up.

Was the stuff in the ’50s shot first and then the stuff from the ’80s?

No, it was very much mixed up, although the one thing we did have to turn around was the courtyard square set. So if I remember right, we had to shoot the 1980s version of the courthouse square at the beginning of the movie, then we had to shoot the end of the movie, and then we went and shot other stuff. Then the art department came and turned that around to be the ’50s and we shot the middle of the movie. So we shot the end, we bookended the ’80s first, then we turned it around and shot the ’50s.

Scripts always have someone checking continuity, but because of the time travel aspect, was that something you guys were extra cognizant of?

That mainly was Bob Gale and I. We actually love the idea of writing really complicated screenplays, so we personally paid attention to a lot of that ourselves. It was even a bit daunting for professional continuity people, but we were able to keep pretty much all of it straight. It got very, very complicated in the second movie when we started going into the alternate universe, but for us that was really fun.

Are there any parts where you’re like, “Whoops! That doesn’t make sense.”

Yeah, we kept getting letters from this kid in Japan. And this was in the days before DVDs, so I don’t know how he did it. He would point out any minor continuity things, and there are a few. You can go on those Back to the Future fanatic Web sites and find a few, but that’s what makes it. It’s imperfect.

Is there one particular that gets your goat a little bit?

No, none of them do, actually. I mean, I guess the whole “88 miles an hour” thing, that the one thing Doc didn’t keep in mind was calculating the time it would take for the car to accelerate, that’s not factored in. So we get letters from people who are mathematicians or pilots or people like that who just can’t help but do math. But most people don’t like to do math in their head while they’re watching a movie. No, there’s nothing in the movie that I cringe at, let me put it that way. There are little flaws here and there if you want to look for them under a microscope. It’s pretty tight.

When you say “Back to the Future” to someone, there are certain things that come to mind, like “1.21 gigawatts.” Where did that number come from?

Because there was so much mathematics involved, Bob and I spent a lot of time trying to come up with numerology that felt poetic. Like, it would roll of your tongue: “1.21 gigawatts,” rather than “785.53,” which no one would remember. Same with “88 miles per hour.” Rather than it just sounding like a bunch of tech talk, which no one pays attention to, the audience also had to remember it. Those two numbers, actually, have been seared into the pop culture mentality.

And so has the flux capacitor.

Well, you have to have a flux capacitor for a time machine to work, you know? [laughs]. There’s a thing called a “flux gate” in a compass, so we sort of went off that. I can tell you this: When I was making Contact, I was spending a lot of time with Carl Sagan, and he paid me the highest compliment. He said, “Your movie has the best time machine science since the original Time Machine,” and I said, “Thank you, we really worked hard on that.” As outlandish as it is, it is rooted in as much as we know about time travel and as much as science fiction writers know. It very much sticks by the rules of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine.

Did you ever meet John DeLorean?

No, but he sent us a fan letter. He was very proud that his creation is seared into the pop culture or something like that. Bob Gale I think has the letter.

Why a DeLorean?

In reality it should’ve been a tracked vehicle. Bob and I struggled with that. If you really want to be able to build a time machine into a vehicle, it should either be a giant four-wheel drive, or it should have tank tracks, because how will you know what kind of terrain you’re going to end up in? Luckily our hero gets to go on paved roads everywhere he goes, but the joke was that we wanted people in the past to think this machine was from an alien planet. We wanted it to look like a spaceship, and that was a car that looked like a spaceship because it had gull-winged doors and was stainless steel. You can believe that if that dropped into 1955, people would pay attention.

Did you ever hear anything from Chuck Berry?

Chuck Berry was very happy. It was really tough to negotiate getting the rights to that song because of his history with getting ripped off, but once we made the deal with him, he was thrilled and very proud that it became this signature piece.

Did he know when he gave you the song that there would be the implication that Marty “invented” rock’n’roll?

I don’t know if he paid that much attention or read the script personally. Certainly the people at his record company read the script, and they didn’t seem to have any problem with it or they didn’t understand it. It’s very hard to read screenplays. They’re like looking at mechanical drawings, basically. So, yeah, we had no problems or complaints; everything was very copacetic.

Is that Michael J. Fox singing?

No, no. Michael J. Fox can’t sing, but that’s him playing. Oh, yeah, he can play…He really plays. If you look at the movie, he’s hitting every one of those notes perfectly.

Now, what about the skateboarding?

Yup. Well, obviously there are always stuntmen. Michael’s a really good skateboarder. That was a great plus.

Is it true that Tony Hawk did some of the skateboarding?

Yeah, he did some of the more elaborate jump stuff. That takes a great deal of skill, so he did a lot of the stuff where he’s coming off the ramps and those kinds of things.

Now he’s a cultural icon.

Yeah, he’s like a big thing, I know. When we were making the movie, skateboarding wasn’t a big thing. It was in a real lull, and then I don’t know if it exploded because of the movie or because of the invention of neoprene wheels. But it all timed out really well.

You mentioned earlier the Oedipal thing between Marty and his mother. That scene in the bedroom is classic.

What really makes that scene cool is the way Lea Thompson played it so hot. She just went for it. I mean, the humor comes from Michael—he knows how to react for comic effect—but it was Lea playing it like this sex kitten that makes it so great.

Did you ever talk to a psychologist about the Oedipal stuff?

No, no one talked to them, but I guess if someone wanted to do a thesis or paper on this, they could. The thing I thought was really fascinating was the line, “Are you telling me that my mother’s got the hots for me?” That was in every single TV spot and bit of advertising. Even if the spot was 15 seconds long, that line was in it. So someone in the marketing department knew that it would somehow touch the world. Like, “I gotta go see this movie.”

And then it’s great how quickly it turns off as soon as she kisses him.

One of the things I remember vividly when we were writing the screenplay was thinking, We got ourselves into this, now how are we going to get ourselves out? How do we end this? We just went for months and months. We assumed we had to write ourselves out of it using the Marty character somehow, but then we got the burst of inspiration that it’s the mother who is turned off by the kiss for some cosmic reason. Then I knew how to do the scene. It’s funny, because it also folds the science fiction onto itself—some weird thing happens through time. It’s kind of perfect in that way.

Were there any big differences in the early drafts of the story?

The fans know that, originally, the end of the movie was supposed to be set at a nuclear test sight, and the time machine was built into a refrigerator—all the stuff that was in Indiana Jones 4. We were going to blow up this 1950s town. That was in the original script. Then the studio said, “We’re not gonna give you the money to do that.” But I’ve never regretted that, because then we had to scratch our heads and figure out how we were going to do it. I think that turning the ending into lightning made the movie much more romantic. So actually it’s kind of like the madness to the Hollywood method. “We don’t care how you do it, you’re just gonna have to cut this scene out of the end or we’re not making the movie.” That kind of insanity they put filmmakers through sometimes does improve, creatively, the work.

The score is such an important part of the movie, especially in that particular scene.

Oh, yeah, you gotta have it. The music is just driving, and Alan, he’s done all my movies. He looks at it, and he gets it. He says, “OK, I know what we gotta do here,” and I say, “Hey, Al, this thing’s just gotta be pounding.” He’s great.

I’m curious about the switch in the casting from Eric Stoltz to Michael J. Fox. It wasn’t going in the right direction?

No, I just realized that as great an actor as Eric Stoltz was, his comedy sensibilities weren’t the same as mine. Everybody’s got different creative ideas, and the tone of the humor in the movie that we were making wasn’t gelling with the style of comedy that Eric brings. That’s really what it was. It was a very painful thing that we all went through. I felt horrible about it, and I still do. The fault was totally mine as a novice director not having enough experience to spot that earlier on. So I take full responsibility, and it was painful for everybody.

Will this version of the DVD have any of Eric Stoltz’s scenes?

I believe there are a couple of clips. I don’t know for sure. This DVD, by the way, it’s gigantic! They’ve done a documentary where they talk to everybody. If there’s anything you ever wanted to know about Back to the Future, it’s in this DVD pack. It’s really cool.

Are there any deleted scenes that you wish had been in the film?

No, I never feel that way. I feel that the movie I made is the movie I made. I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve said, “Oh! I should’ve put those scenes back in. What was I thinking?” I guess there are a few deleted scenes there, but I feel like the movie should exist the way the filmmaker made it at that point. I’m not a big believer in going back and doing re-edits or things like that. The only time I sort of regret that type of thing is when the censors make you take things out because they’re too bloody or something. Then I think it’s OK to go back and reconstitute them. But as far as narrative scenes, as a filmmaker you should know what you’re doing.

Are there any deleted scenes that fans would see and think, That’s funny?

I’m racking my brain trying to think of scenes I actually cut out of the movie. There is a bit of a longer scene, I think, when Marty McFly dresses up in the radiation suit. I think that scene went on for another minute. Our script was so tight that we really just trimmed things. There weren’t, like, giant scenes or characters that were lifted or anything like that.

What was it like working with Crispin Glover?

Crispin’s great. He’s got his ideas, and he really comes into the thing knowing what the character is going to be in his mind. It’s great as long as he’s on the right track. If it’s not on the right track, then you’ve really got to unravel it. But Crispin completely understood what we were trying to do with this, so he was great to work with.

Was George McFly’s laugh his?

Oh, yeah! [laughs] It is. Oh, yeah.

The “Back to the Future” Trilogy is on Blu-Ray and DVD October 27