Bob Gale was at his childhood home in St. Louis in the summer of 1980 when his dad asked a favor.
There was a bunch of stuff in the basement rescued from a recent flood. Go through and see what's worth saving, his father asked.
In the boxes, Gale happened upon his father's 1940 high school yearbook. It was the same school that Gale went to 29 years later.
As he thumbed through the pages, "I discovered my dad had been the president of his graduating class," Gale said.
"So I'm looking at this picture, my dad looking very straight and establishment and so forth, and I'm thinking, 'Wow, I didn't much care for the president of my graduating class. If I had gone to high school with my dad, was he that guy?'," the Hollywood producer/screenwriter recalled. "Would I have even been friends with my dad if I went to high school?'
"And that was when the proverbial lightning bolt struck me to say, 'That is a hell of a good idea for a movie.' A kid goes back in time and ends up in high school with his dad."
Gale pitched his idea to his longtime Hollywood filmmaking partner Robert Zemeckis ("Romancing the Stone," "Forrest Gump," "The Polar Express"), with whom he had made 1978's "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," the Steven Spielberg film "1941" released in 1979 and 1984's "Used Cars."
Zemeckis loved it and suggested mom have a role in the story, as well: What if she went to the same high school and "all the things she'd been telling you that she never did, she did," Gale said.
Thus was born "Back to the Future," the mid-1980s film franchise that set Michael J. Fox's movie star trajectory and defined Gale's filmmaking career.
It also was an "accidental and serendipitous" springboard for Gale's foray into theater with "Back to the Future: The Musical," coming to Centennial Hall April 14-19.
Pictured, left to right: David Josefsberg (Doc Brown) and Lucas Hallauer (Marty McFly) in the First National Touring Company of “Back to the Future: The Musical."
Zemeckis' wife Leslie planted that seed after seeing Mel Brooks' "The Producers" on Broadway. "The Producers" was released in 1967 as a Mel Brooks' film starring Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel. Leslie Zemeckis suggested that "Back to the Future," with Alan Silvestri's iconic orchestral score and Huey Lewis & the News' 1980s hits "The Power of Love" and "Back in Time," would make a fine musical.
Gale couldn't agree more.
"The first calls that we made once we decided we were going to proceed with this was Alan Silvestri, who wrote the score, and songwriter Glenn Ballard, who had just worked with Bob and Alan doing the songs for 'Polar Express'," Gale said during a phone interview last weekend from his home in L.A.
Ballard and Silvestri composed a few songs as "proof of concept" that the idea was viable; those songs, Gale said, are still in the musical, which took a decade to go from idea to opening night.
"Back to the Future: The Musical" opened in Manchester, England, in early 2020; five weeks later, it closed courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic, "but we were able to secure a London theater for when we returned," Gale said.
In September of 2021, the show was back on the Adelphi Theater stage in London's West End theater district, where it was until this week. Gale was set to fly to London on Tuesday to be on hand for the final show.
Since its European debut, the show has been mounted in Germany and Tokyo and on the Royal Caribbean's "Star of the Seas" cruise.
The first North American tour, launched in the summer of 2024, wraps up this summer.
The First National Touring Company of "Back to the Future: The Musical." Broadway In Tucson brings the show to the Centennial Hall stage in April.
Gale said what we will see on the Centennial Hall stage is not a scene-by-scene reimagining of the movie. The stage version storyline focuses more on family dynamics that universally resonate.
" 'Back to the Future' is a time travel story, but it's really a story about this family. It's a human story, and that's why it continues to resonate 40 years after the movie came out," Gale said. "Those issues of your family — 'Who am I?' 'Where did I come from?' 'What did my parents do on their first date?' — all that stuff that is the great human stuff that makes the story appeal to all generations and in all cultures because it's a common theme."
The musical features a DeLorean made of fiberglass — "The real DeLorean was incredibly heavy and it was also not designed for people to stand on, much less dance on," Gale said. But the Libyan terrorists chase scene and Marty McFly zipping around on a skateboard are gone, although there is an homage to that scene.
Also out: Doc Brown's dog, Einstein, and Baby Joey, Marty's uncle, who ends up in prison.
Oh, and the DeLorean talks.
"One of the things that was really important to us was that this not be a carbon copy of the movie," Gale said. "You do not need to be familiar with the movie to enjoy the show. We purposely figured out how to write this with you at the starting point."
About a year into the show's London run, a woman told Gale she loved the show so much she had seen it 19 times.
"I did a double take, and I said, 'Oh my God, that's incredible, but doesn't that get expensive?'," Gale recounted. And she said, 'Well, I figured it out. I'd been in therapy and every time I had a session with my therapist, I felt depressed. When I saw your show, I felt great, so I quit seeing my therapist, and that's the money I use to buy my theater tickets'."
Broadway In Tucson's run of "Back to the Future: The Musical" is on stage at Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd. on the University of Arizona campus, at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, April 14-17; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 18, and 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday, April 19. Tickets start at $58.20 through ticketmaster.com.
The show runs 2 hours and 40 minutes with one intermission.
