HAILED by many as a ‘damn perfect movie’ or the ‘faultless blockbuster’, it’s a wonder that they didn’t make more than the three movies

But when you dig a bit deeper and discover the clusterfu*k it really was you’ll come to the conclusion that we are all lucky they even managed one.

From the years it took to persuade a studio to take on the film, to the replacement of an actor months into shooting and the millions that were on the line, it is fair to say Back the the Future was a spectacular chaos like no other.

For a start it took Bob Gale and Bob Zemeckis over four years from having a script to getting it green-lighted to film. The two Bobs took the script to multiple studios, all who thought the script was nice but not a winner. Disney even commented that the the mild incest (Marty kissing his Mum) was way beyond the pail. They may have a point.

It wasn’t until Zemeckis hit the big time with the Micheal Douglas starred action comedy Romancing the Stone that the film was given its much needed boost.

With his new found success Zemeckis took the script to old friend Steven Spielberg who absolutely loved it, he set the movie up at his own Amblin Entertainment and then roped in Sid Sheinberg at Universal to finance it. But this caused them a massive problem as the original script writing had been commissioned by Columbia Pictures and was sat gathering dust in their coffers.

Luckily the same person that commissioned the script was now the top boss at Universal and due to a favour being needed from him, he managed to get the script released and the movie was finally ready to be shot.

Before shooting began Sid Sheinberg unwittingly tried to derail the project by throwing a number of odd requests, the most bizarre of these was wanting to call the film The Spaceman from Pluto. Luckily this was laughed out of town.

Just before production kicked off Sheinberg threw in one last curve ball – the two Bob’s needed to shave a massive $5million off the budget, a near disaster so late in the game.

The most expensive scene in the script was an atomic bomb explosion, and they spent a weekend trying to figure out how they could replace that. The town square of Hill Valley had already been built and the two directors figured out if they could shoot the final scene there, they would save millions.

This is when they cooked up the idea of a lightening bolt striking the clock tower giving them enough energy to the return to the future. It is amazing to consider that one of the movies most iconic scenes only came around to last minute budget cuts.

Production began at the end of November 1984 and BTTF buffs will know that Micheal J Fox was not the first Marty Mcfly. That honour went to Eric Stoltz, an up-and-coming dramatic actor at the time. It was soon realised that the Mask and Pulp Fiction star’s acting skills, while impressive, just weren’t bringing the significant buzz the film needed.

It was all the way into January 1985 that Zemeckis personally told him that his services were no longer needed. Unsurprisingly Stoltz took it hard and it also meant an uphill struggle for the other cast and crew as much of the movie had to be reshot which was calculated at a cost of $4million.

Just as one issue with casting was resolved another one reared its ugly head in the shape of Marty’s dad, played by Crispin Glover. Both Zemeckis and Gale were thrilled with Glover’s eccentric take on George Mcfly, but directing him on the other hand was likened to ‘herding cats’.

After every take ‘Glover would bounce wildly in his seat, rustling his hair over and over’ leaving Zemeckis having to calmly explain his crazy energy was a nightmare for continuity.

It didn’t end until Zemeckis snapped at Glover who then became terrified he might go the way of Eric Stoltz and finally he fell in line.

Finally on April 26th 1985 the film wrapped, a full five years since the idea was originally thought up by Bob Gale.

After the change of actors the film release was pushed back from May 1985 to July, but it was still a mad scramble to piece together the miriad of shots between the two actors. A rough cut was shown to audiences to gauge reaction and amazingly it received the highest audience test score in Universal history.

So excited was Sheinberg that he pressured the team to get the film out before the 4 July celebrations. Seeing the audience reaction Sheinberg knew they had a hit and poured extra cash in to meet this deadline.

The rest as they say is history…

Check out the excellent documentary below for more on this great story: The Making of Back To The Future was a Sh*t Show