Back to the Future

Back to the Future is a 1985 American science-fiction adventure comedy film directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, produced by Gale and Neil Canton, and starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson. Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, and Frank Marshall served as executive producers. In the film, teenager Marty McFly (Fox) is sent back in time to 1955, where he meets his future parents in high school and accidentally becomes his mother's romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by causing his parents-to-be to fall in love, and with the help of friend, eccentric scientist Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (Lloyd), he must find a way to return to 1985.

Zemeckis and Gale wrote the script after Gale mused upon whether he would have befriended his father if they had attended school together. Various film studios rejected the script until the financial success of Zemeckis' Romancing the Stone. Zemeckis approached Spielberg, who agreed to produce the project at Amblin Entertainment, with Universal Pictures as distributor. The first choice for the role of Marty McFly was Michael J. Fox. However, he was busy filming his television series Family Ties and the show's producers would not allow him to star in the film. Consequently, Eric Stoltz was cast in the role. During filming, Stoltz and the filmmakers decided that the role was miscast, and Fox was again approached for the part. Now with more flexibility in his schedule and the blessing of his show's producers, Fox managed to work out a timetable in which he could give enough time and commitment to both.

Michael J. Fox

Michael Andrew Fox, OC (born June 9, 1961), known as Michael J. Fox, is a Canadian-American actor, author, producer, and advocate. With a film and television career spanning from the 1970s, Fox's roles have included Marty McFly from the Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990); Alex P. Keaton from NBC's Family Ties (1982–1989), for which he won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award; and Mike Flaherty in ABC's Spin City (1996–2001), for which he won an Emmy, three Golden Globes, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991 and disclosed his condition to the public in 1998. Fox semi-retired from acting in 2000 as the symptoms of his disease worsened. He has since become an advocate for research toward finding a cure; he created the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and on March 5, 2010, Sweden's Karolinska Institutet gave him a honoris causa doctorate for his work in advocating a cure for Parkinson's disease.

Since 2001, Fox has mainly worked as a voice-over actor in films such as Stuart Little and Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire. On the CBS TV show The Good Wife, he earned Emmy nominations for three consecutive years for his recurring role as crafty attorney Louis Canning. Fox has also taken recurring guest roles and cameo appearances in Boston Legal, Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Rescue Me. He has released three books: Lucky Man: A Memoir (2002), Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist (2009), and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned (2010). He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2010.

Robert Zemeckis

Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952) is an American filmmaker and screenwriter. Zemeckis is credited as one of the greatest "visual storytellers" in filmmaking and is a pioneer of visual effects. He has directed some of the biggest blockbuster hits of the past few decades. He first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of Romancing the Stone (1984) and the science-fiction comedy Back to the Future film trilogy, as well as the live-action/animated family comedy Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). In the 1990s he diversified into more dramatic fare, including 1994's Forrest Gump, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Directing. The films he has directed have ranged across a wide variety of genres, for both adults and families.

His films are characterized by an interest in state-of-the-art special effects, including the early use of the insertion of computer graphics into live-action footage in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and the pioneering performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007) and A Christmas Carol (2009). Though Zemeckis has often been pigeonholed as a director interested only in effects, his work has been defended by several critics, including David Thomson, who wrote that "No other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose."

Bob Gale

Michael Robert "Bob" Gale (born May 25, 1951) is an American screenwriter, producer and film director. He famously co-wrote the science fiction film Back to the Future with writing partner Robert Zemeckis, and the screenplays for the film's two sequels. Gale also co-produced all three films, and served as associate producer on the subsequent animated TV series.

Early life

Gale was born in University City, Missouri, the son of Maxine (née Kippel), an art dealer and violinist, and Mark R. Gale, an attorney. His brother is Charlie Gale, who screenwrote Ernest Scared Stupid. As a teen, he created his own comic book, The Green Vomit, using spirit duplication, and also co-founded a popular comic book club in St. Louis. Later, he and his brother Charlie made his own amateur three-film series parody of the Republic Pictures Commando Cody serials, using the character name "Commando Cus". The last two of these were made in collaboration with his friend the late Richard Rosenberg. (Rosenberg had taken over the series with the third, 1973's Commando Cus vs. Kung Fu Killers, in which Gale made a cameo appearance as the title character without his face-covering helmet, and was working on a fourth at the time of his death.)

Christopher Lloyd

Christopher Allen Lloyd (born October 22, 1938) is an American actor best known for his roles as Emmett "Doc" Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Lloyd has won three Primetime Emmy Awards and an Independent Spirit Award, along with being nominated for two Saturn Awards and two Daytime Emmy Awards. He has also done voiceover work in animation, usually cast as villains due to his distinctive voice.

Early life

Lloyd was born in Stamford, Connecticut, on October 22, 1938, the son of Samuel R. Lloyd, a lawyer, and his wife Ruth (née Lapham), a singer and sister of San Francisco mayor Roger Lapham. He is the youngest of four girls and three boys, one of whom, Samuel Lloyd, was an actor in the 1950s and 1960s. Lloyd's maternal grandfather, Lewis Henry Lapham, was one of the founders of the Texaco oil company, and Lloyd is also a descendant of Mayflower passengers, including John Howland. Lloyd was raised in New Canaan, Connecticut.