Bob Gale: The visionary behind “Back to the Future”

How does one turn an iconic, cult classic movie involving special effects like a time-traveling car into a Broadway musical? It helps to have a visionary on board who just so happened to come up with the idea for the story in the first place.  

Bob Gale was looking through an old box when he came across his father’s high school yearbook. That’s when “lightning struck” and Gale had the idea for a movie about a kid going back in time and ending up in high school with his father. He pitched the idea to Colombia Pictures, where Steven Spielberg got involved and the rest is history.   

Local Broadway aficionado Michael Bruno sat down with Gale to talk about the process of taking “Back to the Future” from the screen to the stage and what audiences can expect when the tour stops in Madison.  

“We really like musical theater, and we realized this story has these larger-than-life characters which lend themselves really well to musical theater,” said Gale. “And if we do it on stage as a musical, everybody knows they’re not going to see Michael J. Fox or Christopher Lloyd, so the expectations are completely different.” 

Gale graduated from University of Southern California Cinema in 1973, where he met his longtime collaborator, Robert Zemeckis. Gale co-created, co-wrote and co-produced all three “Back to the Future” films and has been the gatekeeper of the franchise ever since. Along with decades of other film and television work, he’s written Batman, Daredevil and Spider-Man comic books. “Back to the Future: The Musical” was his theatrical writing debut. 

Experience “Back to the Future: The Musical” at Overture Center Tuesday, March 10-Sunday, March 15! 

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