Exclusive Interview With Back to the Future Scribe Bob Gale
by Rich Handley
On Dec. 10, 2012, screenwriter Bob Gale reached out to express his appreciation of A Matter of Time: The Unauthorized Back to the Future Lexicon, saying he was impressed at how it turned out. (Actually, what he said was that I'm insane.) Given Gale's public comments that same day regarding Mattel's fan-disappointing hoverboard replica (as reported in an interview with Beyond the Marquee), I was quite pleased to receive that e-mail. Naturally, I did what any writer would have done: I requested an interview. And graciously, Mr. Gale agreed.
GALE: Bob Zemeckis and I are delighted and amazed at the
enthusiasm people around the world still have for these films. Back in 1985, we
didn't know whether anyone would even show up to see the first one, so the fact
that today's parents—who were kids when they first saw the films—are now
showing them to THEIR kids... it's wonderful!
HANDLEY: To what would you attribute the continued love
being shown to Back to the Future, compared to other comedies made in the
1980s? There's no Peggy Sue Got Married video game, no Look Who's Talking Lego
sets, and no Bill and Ted encyclopedia (though maybe there should be, in the
latter case). So why Back to the Future?
GALE: With BTTF, we definitely caught lightning in a bottle—a
perfect marriage of an excellent script, a perfect cast, great directing,
fabulous music and top-drawer filmmaking. At its heart, BTTF has great,
memorable characters with whom audiences identify, and dramatizes a question
that no doubt occurs to every person ever born: "What were my parents like
when they were kids?" That's a question and concept that crosses all
cultures and all generations.
HANDLEY: I'm often impressed at how well each of the three
films holds up to this day. All too often, film sequels end up being inferior
and cheap-looking compared to their predecessors—but not Back to the Future.
How did you and Robert Zemeckis avoid that all-too-common pitfall when you made
Parts II and III, even after suffering a setback that can often kill sequels:
namely, losing some of your original cast? Why did you succeed where so many
filmmakers have historically failed?
GALE: Well, the only cast member whom we didn't get back
was Claudia Wells, who had some personal issues that prevented her from doing
the sequels. Crispin Glover had chosen not to participate before we even
started devising the story, so the sequels were written with the assumption he
wouldn't be back.
I think a key reason the sequels turned out so well is that
we got most of the proverbial band back together, both in front of and behind
the camera. When the original creators stick with a project, there's a much
better chance for the results to be good. And Bob Z. and I were passionate
about wanting to do quality sequels—we weren't doing these simply for the
money. We had a great cast and crew who all loved the first movie and shared
our desire to do a great job. And everyone came through.
Beyond that, the basis
for the sequels were the characters—it's a family saga, and I think that's an
intrinsically rich and interesting area to explore... something we learned from
The Godfather Part 2!
HANDLEY: Originally, the first film featured Marty surviving
a nuclear explosion in the 1950s, using a time-machine built into a
refrigerator. That sequence was ultimately cut, but the same concept (sans time
travel) was revisited by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in Indiana Jones and
the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Were you aware, prior to seeing the film,
that this story element would be included? And what was your reaction upon
finally seeing that concept realized on the big screen, three decades later,
albeit in someone else's movie?
GALE: Neither Bob Z. nor I knew that this concept had been
incorporated into Indy 4. Our inspiration for it had come from a movie called The
Atomic Kid, starring Mickey Rooney, which we'd both seen as kids—and I
understand is finally coming to DVD in the spring, courtesy of Olive Films. As
to what we thought of the sequence? We thought ours was better!
HANDLEY: How heavily involved were you in developing the
storylines for the brilliant Back to the Future video games from TellTale
Games? And are you happy with how it turned out?
GALE: I was heavily involved regarding the content from the
very beginning, and stayed involved during the entire process. The folks at
TellTale were terrific—they were huge fans, they brought a lot to the party,
and they wanted to do it right. And they did. I'm very happy with the way it
turned out, and this game, unlike the other BTTF games, truly deserves to be
associated with the franchise.
HANDLEY: In envisioning what 2015 would be like, you
naturally had to make a number of assumptions and extrapolations. Some, such as
the prevalent use of fax machines and pay phones, as well as the invention of
hoverboards and flying cars, have not panned out, while on the other hand, you
pretty much nailed it in terms of modern televisions.
In essence, you
accurately predicted not only wall-mounted large-screen TVs, but also
voice-over-IP services and instant-messaging clients, as well as the
integration of computers, phone service and television—long before anyone
outside of MIT even had a clue what those concepts meant. Were you just lucky
when it came to the TV technology, or was this an area of particular interest
for you, enabling you to predict with confidence what was coming on the
horizon?
GALE: Bob Z. and I knew that everyone always predicts the
future incorrectly, and we knew that we would, too. So our approach was to have
fun with it and do the best we could by extrapolating trends and technology
that we thought was cutting-edge in 1988 (when the script was written). We
wanted a positive, optimistic future that was clearly built on the present (as
opposed to something like Bladerunner, in which it seems like there are no
vestiges of the present).
We knew there wouldn't be flying cars or hoverboards
or food hydrators, but these elements made for the right tone. Yes, of course
we researched as much as we could. Being in the entertainment business, we were
certainly following trends in home video technology, so we combined certain
elements we observed and got a good approximation of where we are now.
Interestingly
enough, we chose NOT to depict the home video stuff as HD, not because we didn't
think we'd have it, but because we thought it would look very "special-effecty"
on film and would draw attention to itself. We created the Cafe '80s with the
assumption that people today would be nostalgic for that period—and we were
right.
HANDLEY: Finally, it's no secret how disappointed you were
with the quality of Mattel's hoverboard replica. Given the company's hype over
the product, why do you think such an inferior product ended up being released,
instead of what you'd anticipated Mattel producing? Would creating a
screen-accurate hoverboard replica be too expensive, or did Mattel simply cut
too many corners in order to maximize profit?
GALE: I don't fully understand what happened with the Mattel
hoverboard replica. Clearly, they bit off more than they could chew, but rather
than admit it, they pretended like the product they released was what they had
promoted. Sadly, this is typical corporate behavior.
The tragedy here is if
they had come to me and/or the fan community when they were having problems, we
all would have tried to help them solve those problems. And again, I apologize
to everyone who bought one based on my involvement. It's certainly not a bad
product, but it's not what it was supposed to be, and I think it's overpriced
for what it is.
Thanks so much to Bob Gale for taking the time to answer these questions.
Labels: Back to the Future, Bob Gale
2 Comments:
Great interview!
We all love u Bob Gale! ... I got one of the Mattel hover boards and hate it but have done some upgrades to it that make it look a lot better ! I love that u came out saying what u really thing of it and that's just one of the reasons we all love u and the BttF movies ! :-) hope to meet u some Day
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