Bob Gale – How To Write Your Favorite Movie

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How to Write Back to the Future part 2

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Make a movie so popular that the studio threatens to make a sequel. I mean they offer to make a sequel with you and your buddy, but if you say no, they’ll make it anyway because it is impossible for Hollywood to not make a sequel to a movie that grossed over $100 million domestic box office. You both say ye$.

2 – The Genre. Same as the first one. Sci-fi adventure buddy comedy, but with more time travel! So much more time travel. And while both of you come up with the story, let’s have the one with the typewriter actually write out the screenplay while the other one directs a movie about framing rabbits.

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? Well, you have to go to the future now because of that little joke you made at the end of part one. So start with that. Then get out of it because you don’t want people writing articles about how inaccurately your movie predicted the future when the real 2015 rolls around and everyone is angry that we don’t have hoverboards or flying cars. And to make things worse, we stupidly put Jennifer in the DeLorean. Ugh, girls. Find a way to knock Jennifer unconscious for most of the movie. Also change the actress to someone more comedic. Okay now we need to get back to the past so we can get Back to the Future. But which past? Marty’s conception at Woodstock, with Marty messing up his parents having sex? No, that’s just the same movie different details. Let’s get more creative with this.

4 – The Fun Stuff. There has never been a time in Hollywood that your characters get to go into their own movie, so let’s have the most fun going back into Back to the Future. The last half of the movie takes place conveniently on the night of the famous Hill Valley lightning storm we know and love so well from part one. Doc says that the day could be important to the space time continuum, or a coincidence, but either way, you’re the writer, so you get to write whatever you want as long as you admit to your chosen conveniences. Go back into your own movie. There are now two Martys at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance and two Docs trying to get their Martys Back to their respective Futures. Paradox. We get to recreate scenes from the first film, but to save money only change one side of the street or something. Only build what the camera can see. Thank goodness Lea Thompson saved her dress. Okay let’s figure out how we get from the future to the past.

5 – The Device. Grays. Sports. Almanac. Every sports result from 1950-2000 in one little book. This book gives Biff the power to eventually become Donald Trump. Sorry to say that name, but he is the real inspiration for the terrible Alternate 1985 casino-owning Biff, even when writing this movie in the mid 1980s. The Almanac is our MacGuffin, as it drives the plot and then is destroyed at the end. Oh and how the DeLorean time travels needs to change – we travel a lot so simplify it with Mr. Fusion and whatnot. Seriously, we go from 1985 to 2015 to Alternate 1985 to 1955 to a trailer for part 3 in 1885. It’s a lot of time travel, so the machine works for most of the film. It won’t really break again until part three.

6 – The Marty. George McFly is the protagonist of part one, meaning his character goes through a change. We don’t particularly want to work with Crispin Glover again, though, so make George hang upside down in the future or cast someone else or both. We also need a protagonist, so give Marty something personal to deal with. Ah, he’s chicken. Yeah. His insecure machismo ruins his music career, so Marty has something to learn. There is no mention of Marty’s hatred of being called a chicken in part one. We’ve gotta add it in part two, so hide the first “nobody calls me chicken” in the familiar cafe before the hoverboard chase. The audience will be too distracted by the “I remember that! It’s the same but different!” to notice that you’ve added a previously nonexistent character flaw to Marty. Sneaky.

7 – The Jokes. Same but different. Everything in 2015 is a joke of the projected culture from the mid 1980s. Advertisements for tourism to “Surf Vietnam”, weathermen that can predict the weather, Ronald Reagan as your tv waiter in Cafe 80s, flying cars, and the abolishment of lawyers. And then, more same but different – in Alternate 1985, we need a way for Marty to wake up with his mother again, but how? “The easy way.”, meaning we just knock him unconscious. There are actually fifteen separate instances of a character getting knocked unconscious in this film, so we really do use “the easy way” quite a bit. It’s fine, as long as we call it out. Make it a joke. Laughter distracts. And then, in good ole’ 1955, even more same but different. Same movie, more of the same characters, different perspectives. Pretty cool.

8 – The Title. Paradox. No, but that is what we will use during filming so no one invades the set of Back to the Future part 2. Also add Doc to the poster, you know, because two people. Part two.

9 – The Ending. Part two is really just the set up for part three because we are successful movie nerds now and we want to make a Western and play with horses and trains and guns for three months. Foreshadow part three when Alternate Biff watches Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars, inspiring Marty to mimic Eastwood and defeat Buford in part three. It also lets the audience know that Marty knows that reference. Assume that no one in the audience knows your references, you movie nerd, so you must make all references self-contained within the movie, meaning it is set up before it is revealed. And now that we’ve set up the real ending in part three, let’s end part two with a lightning strike, but instead of Marty in the DeLorean, it’s Doc in the flying DeLorean – same but different, am I right? We can have fun with the Western Union guy and have 1955 Doc faint at the sight of another Marty after seeing him go Back to the Future. But really, the most important thing, as per the director’s request, is that there is a teaser for part three tagged on before the credits of part two. The audience needs to know that this story isn’t over. There is more. One more. But no more. Never any more. Trilogy forever.

10 – The Heart. Part two really builds the friendship between Doc and Marty, and the opening sequence inspires the first scene in the popular adult cartoon Rick and Morty. It also gives Marty a character flaw, and gives Doc something to hope for in discovering women. It gives two film school buddies the chance to make cinema history and go back into their own movie. Also, hoverboards.

*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write Back to the Future part 2. Bob Gale did from a story he and Robert Zemeckis developed.

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How to Write Back to the Future

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Go home to visit your parents. Snoop through their old stuff. Find your Dad’s high school yearbook and ask fun questions like, “Would I be friends with my Dad if we were the same age at the same time?” Good question. Good movie idea. Thanks, Dad.

2 – The Genre. The easiest way for a teenager to meet his parents as teenagers is to go back in time. Voila! A time travel movie with some comedy and cool special effects and maybe some incest if we are lucky. Now what?

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? If you meet your parents before they are your parents – well, you may accidentally prevent them from becoming your parents, thus endangering your own existence. Whoopsies. And just to clear something up, make sure that Marty never “has the hots” for his Mom. It’s his teenage Mom that has the hots for her son! Get it right, comedians. And I’d rather sit in a car with my yet to be born teenage son than that bully Biff any day. Also, please remember you can name villains in your movie after people you don’t like in real life.

4 – The Fun Stuff. Skateboarding and Rock & Roll, baby. Have Marty invent things that eventually become popular but maybe let’s not be too culturally inappropriate (sorry, Chuck Berry). Where do you put the two most fun scenes? The midpoint and just before the climax (the climax being Marty actually going “Back to the Future”). Then you have to show that Marty knows how to skateboard and play the guitar in the 1980s, so add a couple set-up scenes. Wow, we have four scenes already!

5 – The Device. A refrigerator. No. A car. A cool car. A DeLorean. Yeah. Super cool. You can make stuff up like “the flux capacitor is what makes time travel possible” because you’re the writer and don’t have to explain it beyond that. Also make up some rules, like plutonium, 1.21 jigawatts, and 88 miles per hour. Make it leave flames in its tire tracks and fly at the end. Yeah.

6 – The Doc. Once we have Marty, his parents, and the time machine, now we need someone who can actually operate said time machine that is an adult in both time periods. Someone Marty can go to for help that isn’t family. Super convenient if the inventor of the time machine is also friends with modern Marty, and just so happens to have thought of the flux capacitor the day this strange Future Boy shows up in the past. That’s why Doc is so much older than Marty, people. It’s not weird. It’s efficient screenwriting.

7 – The Jokes. Even sci-fi period-piece family films need some comedy. Keep the jokes in the same “game”. For those of you who haven’t started Improv 201 yet, the game is the one weird, hopefully funny thing in a scene that gets played over and over again. In this case, it is generational differences. The future President used to be a B-List actor. Asking for a Pepsi Free is an insult when a tab wasn’t a Tab and the only drink without sugar was coffee. Saying “Daddy-O” is an easy way to cover up for accidentally calling your new teenage friend Dad. There are so many jokes in the “generational differences” game, so just keep ‘em coming, like reruns.

8 – The Title. You know exactly what happens from the title. Marty gets Back to the Future. It’s perfect and nobody cares that it gives away the ending. And while a studio exec might suggest the title “Spaceman From Pluto” by reminding us that Marty’s Dad is actually the protagonist who changed his life after being visited by an alien, stick to your wits. How can you go “Back” to the “Future”? Makes you think. Makes you spend money to go back to see the movie again.

9 – The Ending. Write what you will, but things will change when filming starts. The studio doesn’t care that you wrote the best ending of all time – a DeLorean driving into the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb test site. It makes sense for the time period. It’s gonna look great on film. It’s going to be incredibly expensive. So when money must be saved, writers gotta change. Use some place you have for free, like the backlot of the studio that you’re already using. Perfect. Take an ending from a movie you wrote previously that no one really saw. Awesome. Put the inventor of time travel inside of a clock and then let a fortunately timed lightning strike be the hand of God that saves everything. Great.

10 – The Heart. Back to the Future is a movie about a teenager who learns how to like his parents. It answers the original inspiring question “Would I be friends with my Dad if we were the same age at the same time?” Yes. But only after fixing his life for him. Thanks, Dad, and you’re welcome.

*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write Back to the Future. Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis did.