Read Online We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy by Caseen Gaines - Free Book Online Page B

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Off the Rack,
a pilot she appeared in starring Ed Asner and Eileen Brennan, as a midseason replacement with a six-episode order. The network demanded she give her full attention to the series, which precluded her from appearing in the film. Much like with Michael J. Fox, Stoltz’s bad luck created her good fortune. By the time the casting debacle occurred,
Off the Rack
was not renewed, and Wells was available again. She gladly accepted the role, playing alongside a new lead actor who, for the record, is her same height.
    Just days after the big announcement, on the evening of Tuesday, January 15, Michael J. Fox made his way to the set toshoot his first scene. The actor had already spent the greater portion of the day at the television studio. When he was done, a driver picked him up and took him to City of Industry. He arrived at 6:30 P.M. , was put into hair, makeup, and wardrobe, and made his way to the parking lot at 7:15 P.M . He was expected to shoot for three hours, spend fifteen minutes changing back into his street clothes, get picked up to be taken back home, and catch a short nap on a pile of blankets in the back of a station wagon with a teamster behind the wheel. He would make it to bed a little after 1:00 A.M ., continue sleeping for five or six hours, and then be picked up to go back to Paramount Studios on Melrose Avenue to begin the process all over again the next day. Although Fox’s marathon workdays have since become the material of cinematic lore, at the time, burning the candle at both ends didn’t faze the actor in the slightest. As he told the Bobs when he first met them after accepting the role, he relied on his youth and enthusiasm to compensate for his lack of a good night’s sleep.
    With the bright movie lights illuminating the Puente Hills Mall parking lot on that January evening, Christopher Lloyd and his new costar engaged in some awkwardly pleasant small talk. Meanwhile, special effects supervisor Kevin Pike’s team began laying the foundation for the forthcoming bit of cinematic magic that the two would participate in. Dean Cundey prepared for the shot, while Bob Gale and Neil Canton conferred with Robert Zemeckis. From a bird’s-eye view, the producers appeared to be nonplussed, but both were excited over Fox’s arrival and relieved that their unconventional maneuver to save their film was going according to plan.
    With the lot properly lit and the camera and its operators in place, the producers took a step away from their director. The effects team ignited a mixture of gasoline and pyrotechnic fluid,which had been tested beforehand to ensure it wouldn’t destroy the parking lot asphalt. On the blacktop, two adjacent straight lines went ablaze near where the talent would be standing. The actors took to their marks, got set, and when they were ready to go, second assistant cameraman Steve Tate stepped in front of the camera lens and snapped the clapper board. Bob Z gave the word—“Action!”—through his megaphone. Gale and Canton watched closely. Less than a minute into Fox’s first shot, those on set could almost feel a weight ascending from everyone’s shoulders.
We might just pull this thing off after all . . .
    Zemeckis had gotten used to making compromises, both small and large, in the preceding thirty-four days of shooting. Firing Stoltz was simultaneously a humbling and courageous decision, requiring him to navigate through the channels to rally support behind him, from his editors up to the studio head himself. It was an amazing show of leadership for the thirty-three-year-old director, at a time in his career when he was still considering himself lucky just to have work. Even if it was an intimidating decision to make, when he saw Michael J. Fox turn to face the camera and ask Christopher Lloyd the now-famous rhetorical question—
You’re telling me you built a time machine . . . out of a DeLorean?
—the director knew that he had been vindicated. The hole in