1986 Nominated BAFTA Film Award Best Editing Arthur Schmidt & Harry Keramidas
1986 Nominated BAFTA Film Award Best Film Bob Gale, Neil Canton & Robert Zemeckis
1986 Nominated BAFTA Film Award Best Production Design Lawrence G. Paull
1986 Nominated BAFTA Film Award Best Screenplay – Original Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale
1986 Nominated BAFTA Film Award Best Special Visual Effects Kevin Pike & Ken Ralston
Casting Society of America, USA
1986 Nominated Artios Best Casting for Feature Film, Comedy Mike Fenton, Jane Feinberg & Judy Taylor
DVD Exclusive Awards
2003 Won AOL Movies DVD Premiere Award Best Special Edition of the Year - Classic Movie. Also for Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990) for: the Trilogy
2003 Nominated DVD Premiere Award Original Retrospective Documentary, Library Release Laurent Bouzereau. Also for Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990) for: Back to the Future: Making the Trilogy (2002) (V), parts 1, 2 and 3 for: the Trilogy
David di Donatello Awards
1986 Won David Best Producer - Foreign Film (Migliore Produttore Straniero) Steven Spielberg
1986 Won David Best Screenplay - Foreign Film (Autore della Migliore Sceneggiatura Straniero) Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale
1986 Nominated Golden Globe Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical
1986 Nominated Golden Globe Best Original Song - Motion Picture Johnny Colla & Chris Hayes (music); Huey Lewis (lyrics) for: the song "The Power of Love"
1986 Nominated Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical Michael J. Fox
1986 Nominated Golden Globe Best Screenplay - Motion Picture Bob Gale & Robert Zemeckis
1986 Nominated Grammy Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Special Johnny Colla, Chris Hayes, Huey Lewis, Lindsey Buckingham, Alan Silvestri, Eric Clapton & Sean Hopper
Teenager Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) inadvertently goes thirty years back in time and interrupts his mother and father's first meeting. To avoid fading out of existence he must convince his future parents that they're meant to be together.
A staple for anybody who grew up in the eighties, Back to the Future's mix of sci-fi, comedy and action proved a huge hit, and turned its star into a household name.
Directed and co-written by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) and produced by Steven Spielberg, the film is a high point of the hugely successful cycle of glossy, high concept kids' movies that were so prolific in the mid 1980s - Ghostbusters, Inner Space, Gremlins, The Goonies etc. Like most of these, Back to the Future's appeal lies partly in not talking down to its young audience, something which explains its longevity and popularity amongst adults. The immense charm Fox lends to lead character Marty is another success. His skateboarding, guitar-playing cool is tempered nicely by his confused manner and diminutive stature, making him the template non-threatening teen male for the rest of the decade. Avoiding his pushover father and alcoholic mother, Marty spends most of his time with girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells) and eccentric Doc Brown, (the excellent Christopher Lloyd), who offers precisely the kind of wild-eyed mad inventor kids love, even though it's his mistake that acts as the catalyst for Marty's disastrous retreat into the past.
INTERESTING FACTS
Musician Mark Campbell did all of Michael J. Fox's singing. He's credited as "Marty McFly".
Michael J. Fox was allowed by the producer of "Family Ties" (1982) to film this movie on the condition that he kept his full schedule on the TV show - meaning no write-outs or missing episodes - and filmed most of the movie at night. He was not allowed to go on Back to the Future (1985) promotional tours.
A persistent myth is that Michael J. Fox had to learn to skateboard for the film. In fact, he was a reasonably skilled skateboarder, having ridden throughout high school. However, Per Welinder acted as a skateboarding double for the complex scenes.
The DeLorean was deliberately selected for its general appearance and gull wing doors, in order to make it plausible that people in 1955 would presume it to be an alien spacecraft.
The DeLorean time machine is a licensed, registered vehicle in the state of California. While the vanity license plate used in the film says "OUTATIME", the DeLorean's actual license plate reads 3CZV657
When Robert Zemeckis was trying to sell the idea of this film, one of the companies he approached was Disney, who turned it down because they thought that the story of a mother falling in love with her son (albeit by a twist of time travel) was too risqué for a film under their banner.
Character name of Emmett comes from the word "time," spelled backwards and pronounced as syllables (em-it). His middle name is "Lathrop," which is "portal" backwards, with an extra "h" inserted in the middle.
Apparently Ronald Reagan was amused by Doc Brown's disbelief that an actor like him could become president, so much so that he had the projectionist stop and replay the scene. He also seemed to enjoy it so much that he even made a direct reference of the film in his 1986 State of the Union address: "As they said in the film Back to the Future (1985), 'Where we're going, we don't need roads.'"
It took three hours in make-up to turn the 23-year-old Lea Thompson into the 47-year-old Lorraine.
The main setting, 1955, is the year that Albert Einstein, the dog's namesake, died.
FAMOUS QUOTES
George McFly: Lorraine, my density has bought me to you.
Lorraine Baines: What?
George McFly: Oh, what I meant to say was...
Lorraine Baines: Wait a minute, don't I know you from somewhere?
George McFly: Yes. Yes. I'm George, George McFly. I'm your density. I mean... your destiny.
George McFly: Last night, Darth Vader came down from planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn't take Lorraine out that he'd melt my brain.
Marty McFly: Wait a minute, Doc, are you trying to tell me that my mother has got the hots for me?
Dr. Emmett Brown: Precisely.
Marty McFly: Whoa, this is heavy.
Dr. Emmett Brown: There's that word again; "heavy". Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull?
Marty McFly: Calvin? Wh... Why do you keep calling me Calvin?
Lorraine Baines: Well, that is your name, isn't it? Calvin Klein? It's written all over your underwear.
GOOFS AND BLUNDERS
Crew reflected in Marty's sunglasses after he is thrown across the room by the amplifier.
After the DeLorean takes it's first trip in the parking lot of the mall, you can see a lens hood in the left side of the screen as we see Marty and Doc immediately following the fire trails.
In the parking lot at the mall, Doc uses a remote control to drive the car after putting Einstein in the driver's seat. As Doc backs the car away from himself and Marty, the stunt-driver's hands wearing black gloves can be seen turning the wheel from underneath a dog suit.
During the first time travel experiment in the mall parking lot, when the DeLorean reaches 88 miles per hour, it is shown beginning to glow and throw blue sparks. As it does so, it drives past crewmembers with lighting equipment and a generator.
In some overhead shots of Doc hanging on the clock tower, a pair of stage lights can be seen resting on the ground.
When Marty is waving to the girls in the aerobics gym (which used to be Lou's Diner) the camera truck is reflected in the large window.
REVIEWS
Nostalgia plays a role in Back to the Future's success. For kids in the '80s, it suggested the '50s of Leave it to Beaver and other black-and-white sit-coms that were in UHF re-runs around the time Back to the Future opened. For 40-somethings, the movie provided a glimpse of their past through rose-colored glasses (always the best way to remember high school). When the film is watched today, some 25 years after its release, the nostalgia is double-barreled. Now, the '80s scenes are as evocative as the '50s material. Reviewed by: James Berardinelli of Reel Views.
One of the most appealing things about ''Back to the Future'' is its way of putting nostalgia gently in perspective. Like Marty, Mr. Zemeckis takes a bemused but unsentimental view of times gone by. And he seems no less fascinated by the future, which is understandable. His own looks very bright. Reviewed by: Janet Maslin of The New York Times.
Parents need to know that this family time-travel favorite includes sequences that place the hero and his friends in physical jeopardy: a gunfight in which a sympathetic character is thought to be killed, a van chasing a teen on a skateboard, several episodes of bullying, and more. The violence is exaggerated and closer in tone to cartoon jeopardy than real danger, but some kids will no doubt find it tense. Several scenes show the hero's discomfort when the girl who will eventually be his mother tries to entice him with kisses and embraces; there's also implied unwanted sex, but nothing serious happens. Strong language includes a couple memorable uses of "s--t," as well as "bastards," "damn," "a--hole," and a couple of racial slurs in the 1950s-set scenes. It's worth noting that this is the movie that alerted the public to the concept of product placement, with controversy arising from the near-constant visuals of Pepsi products and other brands. Reviewed by: Common Sense Media.
(9.12) 
