Never seen Back to the Future? Where have you been for the past 40 years?! Jump in the DeLorean and prepare for a very quick – 88mph, to be exact – masterclass, as Rosanna Spence speaks exclusively to one of the ingenious, award-winning minds behind the original story. Bob Gale’s hit stage musical version of the family favourite film is kicking off its tour in Bristol at the Hippodrome later this year; he talks to us about recreating movie magic on stage, how adding songs has given even more insight into his beloved characters, and why one person has seen the musical 19 times…
If you’re ever asked to list the most iconic, classic family-favourite films ever written, Back to the Future is more than likely going to be on there rubbing shoulders with the greats. Co-written by Bob Gale and Robert (Bob) Zemeckis at the turn of the 1980s, Back to the Future remains one of cinema’s most memorable moments.
Fast forward 41 years since its 1985 release, and with multiple award nominations and wins under its belt, a storyline firmly engrained in the minds of most Millennials, plus an unusual blend of both mainstream fandom and die-hard cult status… and the DeLorean is skidding onto stage at Bristol Hippodrome for Back to the Future: The Musical – along with Marty McFly and the Doc like you’ve never seen (or heard) them before.
Bob Gale – yes, the Bob Gale – is sitting smiling at me from his LA home. And after we swap tales of UK heatwaves (the tarmac melted on Heathrow’s runways during a previous visit to us, so he was sympathetic to our unsavoury flavour of temperature), I immediately doubt myself. What on earth could you possibly ask the person who’s been interviewed about Back to the Future non-stop for the past 40 years?!
But all fears of inferior questions were immediately settled. For Bob, the answer is simple.
“You know what? There’s always someone reading who doesn’t know the story. I’d rather have people talking about it than not.”
Phew! Well, then Bob. Seeing as we’re on the topic of time travel, if you could go back to the 80s and tell yourself that the screenplay you were writing would one day become a hugely successful international stage musical, what do you think your reaction would have been?
“Oh my God,” he chuckles. “If Bob Zemeckis and I travelled back in time from 2026 to our office in 1980 or 1981, when we were struggling to write this script, and said, ‘Do you guys know what’s going to happen? We’re from the future, and this is going to become a stage musical that’s performed all over the world,’ we would have called security and said, ‘There are two drunk old guys in here annoying the hell out of us. Get them out of here!’”
It’s a fair enough reaction. By that point, Bob (we’re back to Gale, now) had only ever penned one musical before: turning Guys and Dolls into a satire for his senior play when graduating high school. In 1980, both Bobs had no idea that the idiosyncratic screenplay they were creating would stand the test of time, remaining relevant enough to audiences decades later even in the digital age of streaming – and with enough elasticity to evolve the tale into an all-singing, all-dancing stage musical.
From screen to stage
Audiences around the world have come to know the likes of Marty McFly, Dr. ‘Doc’ Emmett Brown, Mr Strickland, and Lorraine and George McFly very well over the years… but did creating the musical change the way Bob looked at the original story and the characters they created? “Absolutely,” he states. “What fascinated me was discovering just how much room there was in the story to tell things differently.
“When we started developing the musical, one thing we were absolutely adamant about was that it had to work as a stage show. It had to feel like a real musical, not a mediocre adaptation of a movie. We’ve all seen those.
“The film is the gold standard, but it couldn’t become a religious object where every single thing from the movie had to appear on stage.”
Transforming Back to the Future into a musical has also – perhaps rather unexpectedly – opened windows into moments we’ve watched time and again to be experienced in a completely different way on stage.
Much like the DeLorean itself, the musical format allowed Bob to play with time, in a sense. Bob explains it by comparing it to close-ups on camera that give us greater insight into a character’s inner world. On stage, he says, it’s the songs that provide this understanding.
We can, of course, expect some excellent numbers throughout the show, with the eras providing their own genres to keep things interesting: “The songs in the 1950s sound like 1950s songs, and the songs in the 1980s have a much more 80s feel,” Bob notes. “Of course, we still have The Power of Love, Back in Time, Johnny B. Goode and Earth Angel – we couldn’t do the show without them – but the new songs integrate beautifully, and then there are songs that don’t sound like anything you’ve heard before. And that’s exactly as it should be.”
Transposing on-screen magic onto a stage in front of a live audience is no easy feat. So, as Bob explains, the team had to ask themselves: what works in theatre? What doesn’t? One of the first things to be flagged was the famous – and dangerous – skateboard chase scene (“You can’t have your leading man riding a skateboard every night doing tricks. It’s not even practical, because you already need someone who can sing, dance, act, be funny, be the right age – and then you’re also asking him to perform skateboard stunts?”).
Doc’s beloved dog Einstein was another darling that didn’t make it to the musical. With dog costumes out of the question, and worries about a real dog among the intense live theatrics, Bob and the team had to leave him safe and sound in 1985.
But there are some elements that simply couldn’t be missed. “One idea I was particularly proud to be involved with was the DeLorean,” Bob smiles. “In the movie, you can clearly see the time displays inside the car. On stage, no one would be able to read them. So, I thought: let’s make the DeLorean talk, a bit like Knight Rider. Doc Brown has a microphone and says, ‘Start the car,’ and then this Siri-like voice replies, ‘Now starting the car. Time circuits on…’ When Doc enters a destination, say, 4 July 1776, the car repeats the date aloud so everyone in the audience knows exactly where it’s set to go. It worked perfectly.”
A human heart
There are people coming to see the musical who weren’t even born when the film was released, so what is it about Back to the Future that keeps connecting with each new generation who are introduced to the story? Well, despite the shiny lights and smoke, exhilarating action and time travel, it’s the humans that remain at the heart of the story.
“When you’re seven, eight or nine years old, you finally realise that your parents were once children too,” explains Bob. “That’s a huge, almost cosmic revelation to a child. Your whole life you’ve heard your mum or dad say, ‘Well, when I was your age…’ and you’re thinking, ‘How could these giant people ever have been my age?’ Then suddenly your clothes don’t fit anymore. You’re getting taller. Maybe you’ve got an older brother and you’re beginning to notice people growing up.”
From curiosity around first dates to high school shenanigans and questioning how we got here in the first place, when they were writing the movie, Bob remembers genuine surprise that nobody had really tackled that before… not in the way they were imagining it.
“Young audiences don’t understand every cultural reference, and that’s fine. When we were kids, we watched movies set in the 1940s or the Wild West or medieval times without understanding every reference either – we understood the human relationships.”
During the workshop process, the show’s director John Rando kept reminding everyone of this. “He said, ‘I don’t even want to think about the special effects until we’ve got the human relationships working’,” Bob recalls.
And the result is that amid the mesmerising tricks that help the DeLorean reach its now-famous speeds of 88mph, relationships between the characters on stage are evolving from what we know of the movie. Marty and Doc’s connection – Bob points out, as an example – is actually much warmer.
“Part of that is Roger Bart [The Stepford Wives, Desperate Housewives, 30 Rock], who Bristol will be lucky enough to see performing the role he created for the show,” says Bob. “He is Doc Brown on stage. He’s so good that it’s a joy to watch him perform. Roger’s also a father, whereas Christopher Lloyd wasn’t. I think there’s something about that, something unspoken, in the way a father naturally relates to a younger person. I couldn’t define it for you exactly, but you can feel it.
“There’s a genuine love there. In the story, Marty is the son Doc Brown never had, and I think that comes across even more strongly in the musical than it did in the film.”
Bob explains that the movie moves so quickly, audiences are almost trying to catch their breath all the time. “In the musical, the songs allow us to pause for a moment. They give the audience time to process what’s happening emotionally.”
Quality control
When adapting a film for the stage, there’s no escaping some fans wondering whether a musical could ever live up to the film. But Bob has a clear answer to calm any qualms.
“My name is on this show as the book writer, and that’s my guarantee. Bob Zemeckis and I controlled the theatrical rights throughout the entire process. If we had ever felt that the show was going off the rails, we could have pushed the red button and stopped the production completely.”
And he’s been proven right so far. When the team won an Olivier in 2022 for Back to the Future: The Musical, actor/singer Hannah Waddingham presented the award.
“I’m a huge fan of hers,” Bob confesses. “As we were walking off stage, I asked her if she’d seen the show. She said, ‘No. I love the movie so much that I’ve been afraid to see the musical because I thought it might ruin my memories of the film.’ I said, ‘Hannah, I promise you… please come and see it. If you don’t like it, I’ll personally refund your ticket.’”
Well, Hannah came to see it. Then she came back three more times. But that’s not the most amount of views for one single audience member. Bob tells another story of a woman he met towards the end of the show’s first year in London who approached him to say she watched the musical once a week. This was her 19th visit.
“I said, ‘Really? I’m incredibly flattered… but doesn’t that get expensive?’ She said, ‘Well, I worked it out. I used to see a therapist every week, and every time I left therapy I felt terrible. But every time I came to see your show, I felt wonderful. So I stopped seeing my therapist, and I spend that money on theatre tickets instead.’”
Back to the Future: The Musical is in the city across seven weeks, so there will be plenty of opportunities for us to seek some joy and leave the show feeling wonderful… “Exactly,” agrees Bob, who adds, laughing, “Stop seeing your therapist and come and buy theatre tickets!”
Back to the Future: The Musical is at Bristol Hippodrome from 8 October until 21 November. Tickets can be booked now online at atgtickets.com/bristol
