As Back to the Future: The Musical was in rehearsals prior to its debut at Manchester Opera House in February 2020, book writer and co-creator Bob Gale and producer Colin Ingram participated in a panel discussion. They were joined by actor Christopher Lloyd who originated the role of Doc Brown in the movie franchise and Olly Dobson and Roger Bart who originated the roles of Marty McFly and Doc Brown respectively in the musical. Excerpts of that conversation follow:

Moderator: Did you ever dream of one day turning [Back to the Future] into a musical? 

Bob Gale (BG): We had a hard enough time getting the movie off the ground as a movie. The idea people say, “Well, you must have known there was going to be more than one movie.” No. The script for Back to the Future was rejected over 40 times — 40 times! So, the idea of putting your mind to it, focusing, persevering. That’s not only the story of the movie, it’s a story behind the movie.

Moderator: So how did it all come to pass? Where did you get the idea for Back to the Future?

Back to the Future: The Musical National Tour. Ethan Rogers, Caden Brauch, Burke Swanson and Company. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

BG: The idea for Back to the Future came to me in the summer of 1980. I was visiting my parents in the town that I grew up in a suburb of St. Louis, MO. I stumbled upon my father’s high school yearbook in the basement and had never seen it before. I attended the same high school that my dad did, and I’m thumbing through it [to see]…what did my dad look like in 1940? He was a president of his graduating class. My God! I had no idea…. I was on the student committee to abolish student government, so I knew that I would have never [have] had anything to do with the president of my class. I wondered, was that the kind of guy that my dad was? Was he one of these “rah rah” school spirit guys that I couldn’t stand? Would I have been friends with my dad in high school? And then the proverbial bolt of lightning hit me — that is a movie! What if a kid could go back in time and be in high school with his own father? And here we are.

Moderator: You spent years and years working with Back to the Future and now turning into a musical, which I guess has taken a long time as well. Why did you want to turn it into a musical?

BG: Lots of people have been saying, “Hey, is there ever going to be a Back to the Future Part 4?” No. Let’s get that out of the way right now. No Back to the Future Part 4. No Back to the Future reboot. Instead, we’re doing this. This is a way to revisit Back to the Future in a completely different medium.

Don Stephenson and Caden Brauch in Back to the Future: The Musical National Tour. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

It’s the story of the first movie, adapted to take advantage of what theatre does so well. So people can get more Back to the Future, but we’re not going to screw up your childhood by messing with the franchise. The trilogy is great the way it is. At the rate Hollywood is going, it may be the only trilogy left before too long. So that’s it. We just said, “You know what people want? More Back to the Future.” There have been a lot of successful shows based on movies. This is a perfect idea because our main character is an aspiring musician. It’s a good reason for him to sing. And here we are.

Moderator: How does creating a musical differ to creating a movie?

BG: You need to look at the tools that you have. When you’re thinking about cinema, your universe is pretty big. When you’re thinking about the stage, it’s not quite so big and you have to say to yourself, “OK, what does the stage do well? What does it not do well?” Car chases, skateboard chases…not so much on the stage, but singing and dancing…oh, yeah. So, some of the iconic scenes that you love from the movie aren’t going to be in the show. Instead, we’re giving you numbers…that will get you really excited.

The musical is not a slavish adaptation of the movie. If you want to see the movie, you can see the movie. It’s a reinterpretation of it, and I’m keeping my fingers in the pie to make sure that all Back to the Future fans will rest easy knowing that we’re not screwing this thing up.

Moderator: What was the most exciting part?

BG: To me what’s been really exciting about this is our extraordinarily talented cast are all young people who grew up watching Back to the Future, so the idea that here’s a cast that wasn’t born when we made Back to the Future. Their experience of Back to the Future is a little bit different than everybody else’s than it was for us when we made it, and yet here they are interpreting these characters. They’re bringing their own energy and their own excitement, and to me it’s thrilling to know that these characters that Bob Zemeckis and I created have a life that goes beyond the movies and will live on in theater.

Moderator: Can you define the most important traits of Marty McFly? Was Marty based on yourself?

Caden Brauch in Back to the Future: The Musical National Tour. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

BG: There’s a little bit of both myself and Bob Zemeckis in all of these characters. He’s a bit of a rebel. He’s a little bit of a troublemaker. He wants to do things his own way. He’s got his own ideas about stuff, and he’s infinitely curious about everything, which is one of the things that attracts him to Doc Brown. And he’s a damn good rock and roller too.

Moderator: Why do you think the film has endured all these years, and why has it taken to the hearts of so many?

BG: There are a couple of things. First of all, the whole idea when all of us — no matter what culture you’re in — when you’re about eight or nine years old, you finally understand the concept: my parents were once children. That’s huge. That is a huge revelation that every kid has at some point.

Then when you get a little bit older, there’s another thing that you start thinking about, which is what did my parents do on their first date? What were the actual circumstances of me getting? Here sometimes you don’t want to ask too many of those questions, but we all think about it so the story of Back to the Future taps into all that.

And then…the idea that you have some control over your own destiny. Your future is not written. You can make decisions that affect your life, and the movie shows us the George McFly life that he has when he doesn’t stand up to Biff versus the one that he does when he learns to stand up to Biff. And that’s I think a very important lesson. It’s something that we kind of all instinctively know that we have some control over our lives, but to have it presented in this way, it’s very comforting and it’s very inspiring.

Zan Berube, Burke Swanson, Caden Brauch, and Company in Back to the Future: The Musical. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Moderator: The slogan of the show is that this show will change history. Do you think it will?

Colin Ingram, Producer: I think what we’re going to do on stage hasn’t been done in a musical before. I mean, literally, this musical will change history. We’ve been working very hard. Some of the technology just gets better…. Everything in terms of videos of projections and what you can do. Of course, we want to keep the reality of the scenery as well, and it’s not all special effects.

As I said, it’s the story and the characters that make it, but I really do think that people will see something they’ve never, ever seen before, and it will feel incredibly immersive.

I think the thing you really want in a musical…is you want the musical to be better than the film. I mean that’s maybe not achievable, but there could be parts of it that are so emotional and so incredible because this is live theater and because it has a really raw connection as an art form. Live always is going to be here…. You know cinema’s dying because everybody’s watching television at home, and the music industry is very difficult now.

But live entertainment is just getting better and better because we’re all so detached from each other, and that’s what theater does. It gets us all in one room, and we’re all enjoying theatre together. We’re all laughing together, we’re all going through this journey together, and there’s something incredibly powerful about that which I think film can’t do.

DETAILS
Back to the Future: The Musical
Jan 22 – Feb 9, 2025 • Buell Theatre
Tickets