Scott, Referring back to our conversation yesterday, I heard that it took Zemeckis and Gale 3 years to get this draft into shape... It would be interesting to see what changes were made from the original draft to the final movie and why these changes made the movie 1,000 times better. I never read the original draft, but according to lore, the changed scenes made the movie more urgent. Instead of Marty just hanging out in 1955, suddenly he was given something to do right away--make sure his father and mother meet. And instead of wasting time in the first act talking about Doc's machine and Marty hanging out the high school, everything's off to the races as soon as Marty meets Doc at the mall parking lot. Of course, you've actually read the original draft, so you'd probably know what was actually changed. What struck me about Back to the Future, is that yes the final product is a master class in screenwriting, but it crossed the territory into this great magical movie that made audiences feel something--you forgot you were watching a movie. There are a lot of movies that in my head, I realize is a technically proficient movie with setups and payoffs, but it doesn't move me the way this movie does. The characters are so lovable, the story gives you goosebumps--especially the parts with his parents. I wish there was some documentary or some book that detailed how this movie got from that initially shaky draft to what it became.

Eric, I haven't seen it, but there's a documentary about the making of BTTF called Back In Time. I've heard pretty good things about it and you can watch it online.

Thanks for the info... it's tempting to go to one of those tours.

Back to the Future is not only one of the best films of the 80s, but it's accompanying sequels were benchmarks for special effects. Do you think a film this successful could come from a crowdfunded background? Or will truly successful films only ever come from a production company? Great article! AB

Alexandra, although the cost of CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) has come down considerably over the last 20 years, it's hard to imagine an equivalent type of movie to BTTF 2 or BTTF3 being funded enough through Kickstarter or the like. We are talking something on the order of $100M. That is not to say some innovative filmmaker, let's say one who owns their own post-production shop, couldn't make it work. I've seen plenty of short films which look great on the special effects front, but they have almost all been done by people with access to / specialize at CGI. And they are SHORT films. The amount of man-hours necessary to do CGI on a feature length movie is ginormous. That would either require a big crew or a small crew putting in several years. So much more likely that these big spectacle type movies remain in the domain of the major Hollywood studios. It's what they're good at. They have the resources to make them. And it's where they make their biggest profits, so they are motivated to continue producing them.