DailyView: Day 303, Movie 429

I found myself awake early in the morning for no apparent reason, so I was playing around on YouTube until I felt tired enough to get back to sleep. As I was scanning around the page, I came across a group of films listed there that were free. I had not heard of any of these, so I was interested in checking them out, to see if they would be good films for the DailyView. This was when I found a documentary by Jason Aron that looked in depth at one of the great movies of all time, Back to the Future. I knew that was the film that I wanted to use for today’s DailyView.

I may not be as much of a fan of Back to the Future as some of the people interviewed for this documentary, but I have always loved that trilogy. This doc was clearly a love letter to all of the aspects that made that series such an awesome time.

There were interviews with the stars, Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, as well as people behind the camera like Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, Huey Lewis, Alan Silvestri, and Bob Gale. It also spent significant time with fans, focusing in on the DeLorean, hover boards, and other memorabilia.

The documentary showed a few shots of Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly, the original actor hired to play the part prior to Michael J. Fox taking on the role. Some of the discussion about how the script and the comedy was not working with Stoltz in the part was fascinating. It goes to show that even miscasting one actor, albeit an important one, could devastate a project.

I enjoyed the stories about how it was difficult to shop the film around, even going to Disney looking for backing. Disney reportedly said that they couldn’t do this movie, because they wrote a movie about incest. Amazing how one of the most beloved movies ever made struggled to find its way into existence.

I also enjoyed the section where they talk about how the script/story broke a lot of rules in Hollywood such as having a lot of exposition, having a protagonist that does not learn anything or have a central path to follow, or how having the mother lust after her son was a taboo subject. Yet many people believe that the screenplay for Back to the Future should be studied in film classes.

This was a fun documentary that investigated many of the reasons why we love Back to the Future. It was something that I was glad to find while awake in the middle of the night.