Ya know, that old, tried-and-true formula. Yes, it’s a coming-of-age tale (though one that needs to travel back to press forward), a father-son story flipped on its head, maybe the most problematic ’80s love story this side of Big, and a buddy comedy between a slacker teen and a geriatric mad scientist. Yes, it’s a science-fiction adventure, but one only interested in a single family tree and a small town of no consequence to anyone else the stakes are huge but on about as small a scale imaginable for a would-be blockbuster. Nothing about Back to the Future made it an easy sell in the early ’80s. And that disinterest isn’t really surprising.

However, that element was just one of the many reasons the script received so many polite no-thank yous early on. The whole incestuous love triangle thing? Yeah, that was actually in there from the beginning - purportedly the earliest story contribution from Zemeckis. What gets lost in that abridgment, though, are fun tidbits like Doc Brown’s DeLorean originally being a time-traveling refrigerator, Einstein was a chimpanzee, and the production infamously started filming with actor Eric Stoltz - and not schedule-conflicted Family Ties star Michael J. Long story short, Gale and Zemeckis would secure funding for their movie and partner with old friend Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment after Zemeckis raised his profile by scoring a box-office hit with his 1984 rom-com adventure, Romancing the Stone, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. Intrigued by Gale’s premise, filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, yet to have a film project not flop at the box office, teamed with him in late 1980 on an initial script deal with Columbia Pictures. The creative jolt came when Gale found his father’s senior high school yearbook while rummaging through his parents’ basement during a visit. No, the idea for the movie didn’t come to writer-producer Bob Gale while standing on his toilet trying to hang a clock. The story behind how Back to the Future got green-lit might actually be a longer and stranger journey than Marty McFly’s own adventures through time.

Today, as part of Blockbuster Month, Editorial Director Matt Melis goes back in time all the way to 1985 … time circuits on.

Songs That Made Movies Classics is a feature in which we analyze how the use of a single song helped make a film a modern classic.

Power of love song