Back to the Future writer Bob Gale on bringing his beloved film to the stage as Back to the Future: The Musical | 09.24–10.06.24, The Fabulous Fox

Caden Brauch (Marty McFly) and the Company of Back to the Future: The Musical. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman, 2024

Winner of the 2022 Olivier Award for Best New Musical, four WhatsOnStage Awards, including Best New Musical, and the Broadway World Award for Best New Musical, Back to the Future: The Musical is adapted for the stage by the iconic film’s creators, screenwriter Bob Gale (Back to the Future trilogy) and screenwriter/director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) and directed by the Tony Award®-winner John Rando with original music by multi-Grammy® winners Alan Silvestri (Avengers: Endgame) and Glen Ballard (Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror”), alongside hit songs from the movie including “The Power of Love,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Earth Angel,” and “Back in Time.” We sat down with Bob Gale (a Saint Louis native) to discuss the iconic films, their legacy, and the act of adaptation to the critically acclaimed musical premiering at The Fabulous Fox Theatre September 24 running through October 6, 2024. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit fabulousfox.com.

Pictured (L-R): Don Stephenson (Doc Brown) and Caden Brauch (Marty McFly). Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman, 2024.

The Arts STL: When you were writing the Back to the Future sequels, obviously you knew you’d have Michael J. Fox and you could write for him directly, to his specific strengths. And so, what is like producing a character like Marty in other mediums? Without it being Fox? You got the cartoons, the games, the comics, the musicals. What are the essential elements of Marty for you? What does Marty need to be? What are you looking for? 

Bob Gale: Marty is, well, he’s a bit of an outcast. He’s a bit of a rebel. He wants to go his own way. He has his own ideas about what is right and what is wrong. Obviously, music is a driving force for him. One of the questions I often get asked is about the relationship between Marty and Doc Brown. It’s truly interesting, because when people watch Back to the Future, they don’t have any problem with the idea that Marty McFly and Doc Brown attract. Today, if Bob Zemeckis and I were pitching this, they’d say, “What’s the deal with this old man and this kid?”, and they’d start thinking about pedophilia and shit like that [laughs]. But nothing can be further from the truth. These are two kindred souls; Doc Brown is an outcast, like Marty. And Doc Brown represents the father that Marty wishes that George was. [Doc]’s a guy that builds big speakers, giant speakers in his laboratory so Marty can practice rock n’ roll on the biggest damn speaker in the world, right?

You co-wrote the first film with Bobby Zemeckis. On the second film, you’re credited as the sole writer. Obviously, Zemeckis has a story credit but I’m curious about the designation of powers with you two—was there ever any disagreements or concerns about having the second film end with kind of a ‘Sizzle Reel’ for the next installments? Were there ever any concerns about maybe undercutting the dramatic stakes?

Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely there was.

Tell me more.

Well… we had ideas for two movies and the plan when we decided we were going to do two movies was that they were going to be released six months apart. There wasn’t this “we leave Han Solo” thing, because I walked out of Empire Strikes Back and I was…pissed off. I said, “what the hell kinda ending is this? When is there going to be a part three? Is there going to be a part three?” and I don’t even know if George [Lucas] knew there was going to be a part three.

And so, the flip side of that was that Richard Lester did the movie The Three Musketeers and the next year did The Four Musketeers. They were all shot at the same time. Originally, supposedly it was going to be one giant 3 ½-hour movie, and if you’ve ever read the novel, it bisects exactly where the movies bisect. And I remember seeing The Three Musketeers and at the ending there’s a trailer for The Four Musketeers… It had a reasonably satisfying ending and goes on and it’s “Oh my god! There’s going to be another one! And this is what it looks like!” and I said, “I can’t wait! Can’t wait for The Four Musketeers! So, the idea that we would do that was always part of the conceit.

Now the thing I had a big fight with the studio about was that I wanted to advertise Back to the Future Part II as part II of a trilogy, so that when the audience bought their ticket, they knew, before they sat down, before the logo came up, that there was a third one. And the head of studio, Tom Pollock, was dead set against it. He said, “No, I just want people to go and see Back to the Future Part II and they’ll find out about part three.” I said, “Tom, we’re going to be pissing off the audience.” He said, “I don’t care.” I wish I would have fought harder. I do. But when you get in a fight with the head of the studio, you usually, well, you lose…

So that was, when they ask me what the one thing you would do differently or if you could do it again or what do you have regrets about, that would be it. Of course, today that would never happen. Everybody knows when there’s a Dune Part I that there will be a Dune Part II and soon to be a part III. But I was annoyed by that, that was part of the debate. We wanted the studio to promote it as a three-part franchise.

Speaking of that, you’ve been the shepherd of this franchise for three decades now. There’s never been another authorized reboot or remake in this age of non-stop reboots and legacy sequels. Let me ask you: How do you deem which spin-offs are worthy of the legacy? You know, you got the Telltale video game for example, obviously that met that bar, but what narrative or creative beats need to be satisfied for you to justify an adaptation of the property?

Well, there hasn’t really been one of these things that I have not been involved in. When they wanted to do the Telltale game, they came to me first and said, “we want to set this 2010,” and I said no, no, no. If we’re going to sell a video game and create a video game of Back in the Future, the fans, they want to see the characters that they know and love. They don’t want to see Marty McFly in his late 40s. They want to see Marty at age 18. So if we set it in 1986, that’s totally fine, but we cannot set it 2010. And I said, “If you don’t want to do it that way, then let’s not do it at all.” So that’s kind of a [laughs] persuasive argument. So yeah, they came around, they realized it feels right; that’s what your audience wants to see. It’s true to the story.

And you know, that was the same thing with the musical: they said, “okay, we’re going to a musical version of the story of the first movie.” And when we were trying to get it off the ground, we actually did meet with a director who wanted to make it in the present day. I said, once the show opens, it’s a period piece. Because if it’s set in 2011 or 2012, Which is when we were thinking about it at the time, when we put it out there, it always has to be set in 2012, because we’re traveling through time. So I said, “Forget all that, let’s use the timeline from the movie,” because that’s what people want to see. [laughs] Needless to say, we didn’t hire that guy, because he clearly didn’t understand the concept, but we were steadfast about that.

In terms of what are the things I authorize, IDW did a comic book series of 36 issues. I was a consultant on that, I co-wrote a couple of them, it was pretty good. It does capture the spirit of Back to the Future, and again, it does so because it stays within the universe of the movies and the timelines we created. For example, The Universal Tour in Florida, they did a Back to the Future escape room and didn’t get me involved on it until it was way too late in the process, and I said “Guys, it’s not very good” [laughs]. [I said,] “You shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that,” etc. and they said, “Well, it’s too late.” So, if you read the fan reviews of the escape room, they say it’s not really representative of Back to the Future and it’s a rip off. So I washed my hands of it and I washed my hands of the 8-bit Nintendo game. They didn’t want to consult with me on that…What they did with that one, LJN Toys was owned by Universal and they had the license for it, and they said, “Well, we bought this game that someone else was developing and we’re just going to put some Back to The Future iconography on it.” So, they have Marty McFly grabbing cherries, he jumps to get cherries like Mario jumps. I said, “At least have him get clocks.” Anyway, it was garbage and that was actually the moment, the motivating factor for me to say, “Y’know what? I don’t want crap out there for Back to the Future.” Back to the Future is a respected brand and I want it to stay respectable and if that means I have to keep my fingers in that pie for as long as I live, then that’s what we’re gonna do. So yeah, sort of by default, I became the gatekeeper on it and you know, it’s ok. It IS a respectable franchise because we don’t do too many spin-offs, well we don’t do ANY spinoffs. We do quality control.

You were in your early 30s when writing original Back to the Future—of course, we all see the world differently as we get older. Looking back decades later, were there any things you wanted to change or update for the musical—either to satisfy an irk you always had or to update for a more contemporary audience?

Nothing ever irked me in terms of the content of the originals. Of course, the 1980s was contemporary [when working on the films], we were not thinking about what was iconic about the ’80s. I mean, to a certain extent, there as a little bit of that because we were always trying to make a distinction between the 1950s and the 1980s. But when we went back to look at it from the perspective of the 21st century, The Musical really exaggerates the fashion. You’ll see people dressed in some ridiculous clothes [laughs] and some ridiculous hairstyles—and they’re all accurate! But we wanted to make a statement about how people looked in the ’80s. Not everyone in the ’80s of course, but it makes the statement “This is THE ’80s.”

And there were things that we figured out after the ’80s about the ’50s. For example, we don’t do [the ’50s song] “Mr. Sandman.” Now, “Mr. Sandman” is a period song, it’s a great song…but for the musical, you want the songs to help set the stage, to help tell the story. And the four songs from the movie that exist in the musical are “Earth Angel,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Power of Love,” and “Back in Time.” You can’t have Back to the Future: The Musical without those songs. And we put lyrics to the theme, because we knew we needed that, but in place of “Mr. Sandman,” we have a number called “Cake” (like, have your cake and eat it too) in which, the people of the ’50s are singing about how great it is to be living in 1955, “when we have leaded gasoline, cigarettes (which your doctor says are good for you), where we spray DDT to get rid of pests and we use asbestos as a great insulation device substance.” [laughs] and the people say “oh it’s great!” But these are things that we weren’t thinking about when we did the original movies and it’s a lot of fun.

We do poke fun of the 1950s because there is an aspect to the movie, all three of the movies really, but especially the third one, where some people say “oh, great nostalgia! The best! Wouldn’t it be great to live in 1955?” And we say, “Well… no. If you’re black [laughs] it’s not really good. If you’re a woman and you want to explore your opportunities, you may not really have that many.” And we touch a little bit more on that, we wanted to make it clear that in the Wild West, it’s even more pronounced! You know, we wanted to show that if you’re Black or you’re Chinese, if you lived in California in 1885, it…it may not be the best [laughs] you may not be living your best life.

The musical has been very well received. If there was an opportunity, do you ever envision a movie version of the musical, a la Hairspray: The Musical?

Well… [pauses]

You’ve got to have been asked this before.

Well, the musical is really designed for that medium. I think it will be really interesting to see what happens with the Wicked [movie]. I know Wicked has a large fanbase, and they’re making two movies out of it, maybe it should be one, I’m kind of nervous about that… and I don’t know if you’re familiar with Wicked, but when you see the Wicked show, act one ends with defying gravity and she flies. It’s pretty great, right? But you put that in a movie and it’s like, “wait a minute…Superman flies. Ironman flies.” Ya know, all these superheroes are already flying all over the place and the question becomes: how do they make this powerful? I don’t know? And y’know, I hope they do, I hope they figure it out.

But again, you see the Back to the Future musical and you’re thinking “how are they going to do the DeLorean? How are the going to create the illusion that it’s going 88 miles per hour?” Well, we do it! And because it’s happening right in front of you, it’s really, really impressive and powerful. Now we do that in the movie already. How do you do that any better? I don’t know that you can? But because [the show] is live and it’s happening right in front of you, your expectations are different. And when you can meet those expectations and succeed or even exceed, you’re really impressed! Take the clock tower sequence, “how do you do that?” Well, we did it! It’s really impressive.

Yeah, I’ve seen some behind the scenes footage, it’s very inventive.

You need to go see the musical for a couple of reasons. First, off it’s good. It’s really good. Also, it’s different having an audience experience. That’s one of the things people don’t get. When watching the movie at home—when you’re streaming it on Netflix, or DVD or Blu-ray or whatever—you’re not seeing it with an audience. So when you go see it at The Fabulous Fox Theatre, you’re going to be seeing it with a couple of thousand other folks, fans who are laughing and cheering and applauding: that’s what it’s about. That’s the way it was when the movie came out. When people come see the show, they’re amazed at how often there’s applause sequences—well, when the movie came out in 1985, there were five or six points in the movie, with a full house, where the audience applauded. And you can’t replicate that.

Yes, I’ve read about the mythic test screenings of the original film and how well received they were. There’s definitely something to be said about the communal experience. Especially after the last couple of years with covid.  

Yes, you get that communal experience. Nothing like it. And a good comedy, when you’re seeing it with an audience, is always more fun than when you’re seeing it by yourself. So, there’s another reason to go see the show. Also, whether you have seen the movie or not, it doesn’t matter. You’re gonna have a great time.

That was one of the marching orders we had for ourselves: “Whether you’ve seen the [original] or not, it’s gotta work.” If you have seen the film, you’ll get some jokes out of it that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, but I’ve had people come up to me and say, “Y’know, I’m really glad I did not see the movie because I didn’t know how it was gonna turn out. I didn’t know what was going to happen!”And of course it works, we spent a lot of time trying to get this right and making sure it was right for exactly this reason. It’s called “Back to the Future.” And if, at any point, Bob Zemeckis and I came to the conclusion that this is not going to be any good, we would have pushed the red button. We would have shut it down and said “Ok, we’re not doing this.” But because it is good, we say yes, you gotta go see the show. And I’ve had people come up to me and say, “I’m afraid to see the show, I don’t want it to, y’know, spoil my experience with the original movie.” And I say “no no no,” that’s why I have been personally involved in the process, every step of the way, to make sure that if you are a fan of the movie, you’re REALLY gonna love the show. It was really important.

It’s got to work on both levels.

Exactly, it’s got to work on every level. It’s not a money grab. Because if we were only interested in making money, we would have made a Back to the Future Part IV. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about, well, we understand how important Back to the Future is for so many people. We’re not going to ruin your childhood. [laughs] You’re going to go see this and you’re going to have a great time! [laughs] And you’re going to tell your friends ‘Oh yeah, you gotta go see this!’

Finally, what are you watching for pleasure these days?

I love 3 Body Problem on Netflix. I think that’s good. I liked Ripley on Netflix, too… Those are the two shows that I’ve watched like in the last 90 days that I, y’know, think kind of work. | Joseph C Roussin

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