Back to the Future one of the most beloved films of the last 30 years came about because, writer Bob Gale mused whether or not he would’ve got along with his father if they met in High School… as you do! He and the films director Bob Zemeckis wrote the screen play and got the one and only Steven Spielberg to produce it.
They always had one actor in mind to play the lead character of Marty McFly and that was Michael J Fox, unfortunately he wasn’t available so they looked elsewhere for the part auditioning the likes of Johnny Depp, Charlie Sheen, John Cusack, Ralph Macchio and C. Thomas Howell who was the front runner for a while but they just couldn’t see him as Marty. Which I think we can see was the right call, in the end they decided on Eric Stoltz who was known for his work on the Mask.
However eight weeks and nearly half way through shooting director Zemeckis, was feeling that something just wasn’t right. Stolz was playing Marty too seriously, he just didn’t quite seem to be getting the comedy angle right. Steven Spielberg had sent the script to the producer of Family Ties the T.V. show Fox was filming, that kept him unavailable for Back to the Future. Hoping to pursued Michael to sign on, they started limiting the amount of close ups and shot of Stolz, they filmed in order to reduce the amount of reshoots they would have to do.
Finally the producer of Family Ties called Michael into his office and handed him the script for Back to the Future, Michael had already met the producers on the Teen Woolf set so knew about the film. The producer on Family Ties made it very clear he wasn’t going to release Michael from his obligations to the show, so if he took the part of Marty McFly, he would have to shoot Family Ties all day and then Back to the Future into the early hours of the morning.
Obviously Michael agreed and Universal agreed to foot the bill for the re-shoots, on the condition that the film met it’s original release date. Starting a crazy 12 weeks for both cast and crew of Back to the Future in his autobiography Michael states that a lot of the filming was a blur, he’d be about to make his entrance on Family Ties searching for Marty’s video camera. He would be shuttled between the two sets in a station wagon which had a bed in for him to get some sleep on the journey between sets.
Michael wasn’t the only one working all day and all night, whilst he was filming Family Ties during the day, the rest of the cast and crew were shooting as many of the shots without Marty in them as possible and getting them to the editing team to meet the release date. As Zemeckis was prioritising all the reshoots, which proved that Michael was perfect for the role of Marty as it’s such a reactive character, that’s where the comedy comes from, Michael’s reactions as Marty were perfect and he was putting 110% into shooting despite working two jobs.
He made sure he knew every single note to ‘Johnny B Goode’ so in between shooting both a T.V. show and film he was working with a guitar coach, so that Zemeckis could film his hands playing the guitar and it looked realistic.
I think it’s fair to say that with anyone else in the role of Marty or even Doc Brown -Christopher Lloyd wasn’t keen on the script at first – that Back to the Future wouldn’t be the beloved film it is today.
Gotta Do The Truffle Shuffle 
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