Back to the Trivia.23:42 Sep 07 2005
Times Read: 4,047
Well I just got done watching "Back to the Future" and as with a few films before now I decided that I enjoyed it so much I was going to enter some trivia in relation to the movie.
I had written a longer introduction to this trivia but VR burped as I clicked “submit entry” so now you have to suffer a condensed version.
Old films are better then modern films aimed at younger audiences of the same genre. Young actors today are idiots as are modern film makers. E.g. *Cough cough* linsey lohan in the new herby film
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Trivia for
Back to the Future (1985)
• Michael J. Fox had always been the first choice for Marty, but scheduling conflicts due to his work on "Family Ties" (1982), initially prevented him from taking the part. Eric Stoltz was initially cast as Marty, but Michael replaced him, driving straight to the movie set after taping of the show was finished every day. He averaged about one or two hours' sleep during production. The bulk of the production was filmed from 6pm to 6am, with the daylight scenes filmed at the weekend.
• Michael J. Fox had to learn to skateboard for the film.
• The time machine has been through several variations. In the first draft of the screenplay the time machine was a laser device that was housed in a room. At the end of the first draft the device was attached to a refrigerator and taken to an atomic bomb test. In the third draft of the film the time machine was a DeLorean, but in order to send Marty back to the future the vehicle had to drive the DeLorean into an atomic bomb test.
• The DeLorean Time Machine has "Good Year" tires.
• When the DeLorean goes back in time for the first time, it stops by crashing into a barn, which we soon learn belongs to a farmer named Peabody. We know this because as the DeLorean speeds off the property to escape being shot, we see buckshot shatter the mailbox bearing his name. Farmer Peabody's son is named Sherman. Sherman was the name of the little boy time traveller in each of the "Peabody's Improbable History" sections of Jay Ward's cartoon show, "The Bullwinkle Show" (1961). The dog who "owned" Sherman and the time machine was named Mr. Peabody.
• The device originally considered for use as the time travel machine was a refrigerator. Director Robert Zemeckis said in an interview that the idea was scrapped because he and Steven Spielberg did not want children to start climbing into refrigerators and getting trapped inside.
• The "main street" is the same one used in Gremlins (1984).
• According to the Universal Studios back lot tour, the clock tower is the same one that is seen in the movie To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). The area is referred to as Mockingbird Square, and it is a stone's throw away from other famous filming locations, such as the exterior of the Psycho (1960) house and the "Red Sea" that was used in History of the World: Part I (1981) (it is incorrectly sometimes noted as where The Ten Commandments (1956) was filmed).
• The "Mr. Fusion Home Energy Converter", which is sitting on the DeLorean when Doc returns from the future, is made from (among other things) a Krups coffee grinder.
• The script never called for Marty to repeatedly bang his head on the gull-wing door of the DeLorean; this was improvised during filming as the door mechanism became faulty.
• The school that served as Hill Valley High was Whittier High School in Whittier, California just outside of Los Angeles. It's Richard Nixon's alma mater.
• The Twin Pines Mall is, in fact, the Puente Hills Mall in the City of Industry, California.
• In the film's script the word "gigawatt" is spelt "jigowatt". Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis had been to a science seminar and the speaker had pronounced it "jigowatt".
• The device in Doc Brown's lab that Marty plugs his guitar into is labelled "CRM-114", which was the name of the message decoder on the B-52 in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), and the serial number of the Jupiter explorer in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), both directed by Stanley Kubrick.
• A marketer hoped to get a prominent placement for California Raisins somewhere in the film. He suggested putting a bowl of raisins on a table at the Fish Under the Sea Dance. He had also told the California Raisins board that this would do for raisins what E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) did for Reese's Pieces. Bob Gale informed him that a bowl of raisins would photograph like a bowl of dirt. The only thing that appears in the film is Marty jumping over Red, sleeping on a bench that is advertising California Raisins.
• The date Marty travels back (November 5th) is also used in the movie Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982).
• According to Back to the Future Part III (1990), the clock in the clock tower started running at 8:00 p.m. on September 5, 1885. The date is provided by the caption on the photograph that Doc Brown gives Marty at the end of Part III. The time is provided by the mayor in Part III, who starts it. The lightning strikes the clock tower at 10:04 p.m. on November 12, 1955. This means that the clock tower operated for exactly 70 years, 2 months, 7 days, 2 hours, and 4 minutes.
• The newscaster on TV in the opening sequence is Deborah Harmon, who appeared in director Robert Zemeckis' Used Cars (1980).
• The license plate on a car outside the band audition (which says "FOR MARY") is a tribute to Mary T. Radford, personal assistant to second unit director Frank Marshall.
• Doc Brown's "man hanging off a clock face" depicts the famous scene in Harold Lloyd's The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947)), which itself is a remake of Lloyd's film, Safety Last! (1923).
• Displayed prominently at the head of Marty's bed is a brightly coloured magazine named "RQ." This is "Reference Quarterly," of interest only to professional librarians.
• The mall where Marty McFly meets Doc Brown for their time travel experiment is called "Twin Pines Mall". Doc Brown comments that old farmer Peabody used to own all of the land, and he grew pines there. When Marty goes back in time, he runs over and knocks down a pine tree on the Peabody's property. When he comes back to the mall at the end of the film, the sign at the mall identifies the mall as "Lone Pine Mall".
• The dialogue where Lorraine says that when she grows up she'll let her kids do anything they want was cut. That dialogue is re-inserted in Back to the Future Part II (1989) when the second Marty creeps past the car the first Marty and 1955 Lorraine are in. Lorraine states she'll let her kids do anything, Marty replies, "I'd like the have that in writing."
• Another deleted scene shows Marty peeking in on a class in 1955 and seeing his mother cheating on a test.
• The scene where Marty asks if he and Jennifer become "assholes" in the future was re-shot for television.
• Doc Brown's dog Einstein arrives from the world's first time-travel excursion at 1:21am. Coincidentally, the DeLorean requires 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to travel through time.
• The DeLorean time machine is a licensed, registered vehicle in the state of California. While the vanity license plate used in the film says "OUTATIME", the Delran’s actual license plate reads 3CZV657
• The chime of the Clock Tower in 1955 is intentionally the same as the chime in the 1960 movie The Time Machine (1960) based on the story by H.G. Wells.
• Among the various clocks in the opening scene, there is one clock portraying the famous clock tower, with a man hanging from one of the clock's hands. This "scene" is acted out in 1955.
• When Robert Zemeckis was trying to sell the idea of this film, one of the companies he approached was Disney, who turned it down because they thought that the story of a mother falling in love with her son (albeit by a twist of time travel) was too risqué for a film under their banner. In fact, Disney was the only company to think the first was risqué. All other companies said that the film was not risqué enough, compared to other teen comedies at the time (e.g. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Revenge of the Nerds (1984), etc)
• Character name of Emmett comes from the word "time," spelled backwards and pronounced as syllables (em-it).
• Doc Brown's middle initial is "L" but no name was ever actually given. Bob Gale, the film's writer, was asked about this and gave him the name "Lathrop" (almost "portal" backwards - see above).
• A very brief scene was cut in-between the scenes of the McFly family dinner and Marty being woken up by Doc's phone call. It involved Marty preparing to send his demo tape to a record company. Marty decides not to do it, and leaves the empty manila envelope on his desk. But in the film, a scene when he goes to breakfast, he can be seen carrying the sealed envelope; suggesting he decided to send it in.
• The house used for Doc Brown's home is the Gamble House at 3 Westmoreland Ave., Pasadena, California. It was the home of the Gamble family until 1966, when it was turned over to the University of Southern California. It is now a historical museum.
• Earlier versions of the script had the time machine getting the required power from a nuclear test in the Nevada desert. The scene was considered too expensive to film, so the power source was changed to lightning.
• Canadian pop singer Corey Hart was asked to screen test for the part of Marty.
• At the beginning of the breakfast scene in which Uncle Joey's cake is served (because he didn't get out of jail), George McFly pours himself a bowl of what might appear to be cereal, and then offers some to Marty. In fact, this is not cereal at all, but peanut brittle. This relates to a deleted scene, in which Marty is upset with his father for not being able to stand up to people. A girl scout and her father visit the house to sell the McFlys some peanut brittle, and the girl's father signs George up for an entire case, knowing that he wouldn't balk.
• When Marty is trying to re-start the DeLorean in 1955 as he prepares to return to 1985, the car's headlights flash the Morse Code for "SOS".
• The opening sequence with the ticking clocks is a direct lift from The Time Machine (1960).
• The DeLorean used in the trilogy was a 1981 DMC-12 model, with a 6-cylinder PRV (Peugeot) engine. The base for the nuclear-reactor was made from the hubcap from a Dodge Polaris. In the 2002 Special-Edition DVD of the BTTF Trilogy, it is incorrectly stated that the DeLorean had a standard 4-cylinder engine.
• C. Thomas Howell was considered to play the role of Marty McFly.
• Apparently Ronald Reagan was amused by Doc Brown's disbelief that an actor like him could become president, so much so that he had the projectionist stop and replay the scene.
• In the opening sequence, all of Doc's clocks read 7:55 (25 minutes slow) except for one clock. It is on the floor next to the case of plutonium and it reads 8:20.
• Michael J. Fox was allowed by the producer of "Family Ties" (1982) to film this movie on the condition that he kept his full schedule on the TV show - meaning no write-outs or missing episodes - and filmed the (majority) of the movie at night.
• Alan Silvestri's orchestra for the score of the film was the largest ever assembled at that time.
• Ron Cobb was originally hired to design the DeLorean time machine but left for another project and was replaced by Andrew Probert.
• When Lorraine follows Marty back to Doc's house, she and Doc exchange an awkward greeting. This marks the only on-screen dialogue that Christopher Lloyd and Lea Thompson ever have, though they have appeared together in five movies and one TV movie.
• Billy Zane makes his first on-screen appearance in this film as "Match", one of Biff's cronies.
• Melora Hardin was briefly cast as Jennifer when Claudia Wells initially dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, but was fired because she was taller than Michael J. Fox.
• In the original script, Marty's playing rock and roll at the dance caused a riot which had to be broken up by police. This, combined with Marty accidentally tipping Doc off to the "secret ingredient" that made the time machine work (Coca-Cola) caused history to change. When Marty got back to the 1980s, he found that it was now the 1950s conception of that decade, with air-cars and what-not (all invented by Doc Brown and running on Coca-Cola). Marty also discovers that rock and roll was never invented, and he dedicates himself to starting the delayed cultural revolution. Meanwhile, his dad digs out the newspaper from the day after the dance and sees his son in the picture of the riot.
• The prefix "giga" was formerly more commonly pronounced as jiga, just as Doc Brown pronounces it.
• In French version, when Marty wake up in 1955 in his young mother's bed, she calls him "Pierre Cardin" instead of "Calvin Klein". In Italian version, she calls him "Levi Strauss".
• When this movie was previewed for a test audience, Industrial Light and Magic had not completed the final DeLorean-in-flight shot, and the last several minutes of the movie were previewed in black and white. It didn't matter, as the audience roared in approval of the final scene anyway.
• Universal Pictures head Sid Sheinberg did not like the title "Back to the Future", insisting that nobody would see a movie with "future" in the title. In a memo to Robert Zemeckis, he said that the title should be changed to "Spaceman From Pluto", tying in with the Marty-as-alien jokes in the film. Sid Sheinberg was persuaded to change his mind by a response memo from Steven Spielberg, which thanked him for sending a wonderful "joke memo", and that everyone got a kick out of it. Sheinberg, too proud to admit he was serious, gave in to letting the film retain its title.
• John Lithgow was considered for the role of Doc Brown.
• The two red labels on the flux capacitor say "Disconnect Capacitor Drive Before Opening" (at the top) and "Shield Eyes From Light"
• When Marty pretends to be Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan, he plays a tape labeled "Van Halen" to scare George out of his sleep. It is an untitled Edward Van Halen original written for a movie called The Wild Life (1984).
• The inspiration for the film largely stems from Bob Gale discovering his father's high school yearbook and wondering whether he would have been friends with his father as a teenager.
• There are only about 32 special effects shots in the entire film.
• The production ultimately used three real DeLoreans.
• It took three hours in make-up to turn the 23-year-old Lea Thompson into the 47-year-old Lorraine.
• Playing at the Hill Valley cinema is Cattle Queen of Montana (1954) starring Barbara Stanwyck and Ronald Reagan; the latter of course was the President of the United States in 1985, the year the film was made.
• The "Tales From Space" comic book reappeared in at least two episodes of "Oliver Beene" (2003).
• Though the film Marty (1955) won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1955, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale say in the DVD Q&A session that they were not aware of this fact when they named their main character Marty.
• The coincidences with the film Marty (1955) are not limited to the name of the protagonist; note that in both films, the cafe-owner's name is Lou.
• The lion statues in front of the Lyon Estates subdivisions were inspired by two like statues in the University City Loop in St. Louis, where writer Bob Gale grew up.
• Sid Sheinberg, the head of Universal Pictures, requested many changes to be made throughout the movie. Most of these he got, such as having "Professor Brown" changed to "Doc Brown" and his chimp Shemp changed to a dog named Einstein. Marty's mother's name had previously been Meg and then Eileen, but Sheinberg insisted that she be named Lorraine after his wife Lorraine Gary
• Marty's Guitars used throughout the movie:
Erlewine Chiquita ("big amp" sequence)
Ibanez black Strat copy (scenes of Marty's band performing in the 80s)
Gibson ES-345 (Marty performing at the dance)
• Doc's phone number in 1955 is Klondike 54385.
• When the McFly family is sitting down for dinner before Marty travels back in time (early in the movie), Michael J. Fox is seen drinking a can of a very prominent soda that he was a major endorser of back in the '80s and '90s.
• Director Robert Zemeckis used the same beginning as The Time Machine (1960) as a homage to that film. Having the destination timeframe, current timeframe and recently departed timeframe readouts on the panel in red, green and yellow LEDs respectively was a nod to the time machine from that film having red, green and yellow lights on the top of its console.
• Christopher Lloyd based his performance as Doc Brown on a combination of physicist Albert Einstein and conductor Leopold Stokowski.
• Michael J. Fox is only ten days younger than Lea Thompson, the actress who plays his mother, and is almost four years older than his on-screen dad, Crispin Glover.
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