David Guy Levy is no stranger to CraveOnline. He was a special guest on The B-Movies Podcast earlier this year to talk about his horror movie Would You Rather, which starred Brittany Snow, Sasha Grey and Jeffrey “Re-Animator” Combs as the billionaire sociopath who forces the needy to compete for handouts in a deadly version of the title children’s game. Now, Levy is making headlines with his new comic book series Back to Back to the Future, in which Back to the Future screenwriter Bob Gale and early, fired cast member Melora Hardin travel back in time to prevent Michael J. Fox from replacing Eric Stoltz as the star of the iconic sci-fi movie, rewriting the future in the process.
It’s a film geek’s fantasy come to life (well, to the page anyway), and David Guy Levy called me up to talk about the origin of the series, the creative decisions involved in rewriting cinema history, the charity that sales of Back to Back to the Future are supporting and his ideas for Would You Rather 2.
You can download the first three issues of Back to Back to the Future at GivingBackToTheFuture.com.
CraveOnline: Let’s get right into it. So, you’ve got this comic book…
David Guy Levy: I’ve got this comic book now, huh?
Back to Back to the Future. Do you remember the day you came up with this idea?
Yeah, I do. I was in film school and I had to turn in, the next morning, an idea for my senior thesis in screenwriting. I had nothing up until the night and I was on the internet and as a fan of Back to the Future, decided to visit BTTF.com which is the leading fansite for Back to the Future. There was a new article posted that day by Stephen Clark, who runs the site. It was an interview he did with Bob Gale, and in the interview, Bob confirms that there was an actress who was also fired, besides Eric Stoltz, and that was news to me. I read on and it said it was Melora Hardin. It was one of the toughest choices he ever had to make because she didn’t merit being let go, she was just too tall for Michael J. Fox, and it was one of his major regrets in life, and I remember reading that sentence, that it was his major regret, [thinking] that it was just really ironic that the guy who created the best time travel movie of all time, wishes he could change something.
It sort of came to me in some way, “Alright, what if you could go back in time with her, and make sure Eric Stoltz doesn’t get replaced?” and then see sort of what that would mean, but have fun with it and use the same device that he invented to go back and forth and fix the mess he made. It was something I didn’t write for any sort of commission, I needed to right something and I liked that idea. I figured I might as well right this, since it’s an idea I have now, and let it rot away in a drawer later. [Laughs]
So, this was for a class. Were you putting together like, a pitch or a treatment or did you write the script back then?
I had to write the whole script, so I wrote it but I was also thinking, as I as I was writing it, I didn’t want my class, all my colleagues saying, “This is a great story, too bad you can never make this a movie.” We all assumed there would be legal hurdles and even if you hurdled through those, the perfect storm of getting everyone involved and shooting it would be just impossible. I put it in a drawer and I pulled it out in ’08, for a reading at a friend’s house. Sometimes, we get together and we read stuff. Everyone was sort of like, “What is it this? When did you make this? This is amazing!” I said, “Oh, I made this years ago.” “Well, you should do something with it.” I had just done a comic called Corn Boy, and I had gone through the process of producing for that medium and I realized, “Oh my Gosh! I could totally make this as a comic book. All you need to do is draw it.” Then I consulted a lawyer, who said I had the law on my side and I said, “Oh, I’m gonna do it!” It took three and a half years to draw, once we found the right artist. Now I’m finally getting to show it to people.
Is this “the” draft, or did it go through changes before it became a comic book?
Well, it had to get changed to adapt to the format, so I had to make a new script that was panel-by-panel descriptions, because you know, it’s not a screenplay so I had to sort of adapt that. The only limitation I had since there wasn’t really time [limitations], the artist gave me a really good deal and we’d just take as long as we needed to draw… We still decided to make it 6 issues, so I had to cram it into 130 graphic novel pages. If we had another three years, maybe I would have done 12 issues but the story is there and it’s fun. The arc in what happens is the same. The tale is the same as the screenplay was.
I’m curious, you had the initial idea and obviously, you spent the better part of a school year writing up this script. Were there any ideas you had for this script that were abandoned or you thought of a better idea? Did this ever go in a very different direction?
The time machine in this comic book, when it was a movie, was a Prius because the Tesla wasn’t around yet. I changed that. Little details. And actually, the ending never quite made sense in the screenplay, so I strengthened it. When I pulled it out, I sort of deleted the last 15 pages and rewrote them to sort of create this, I don’t want to spoil it but this, solution to how they get back to normal at the end of their adventure. There were some choices made where, looking back, this maybe would work better this way. Then I also took out a bunch of stuff that was just scene-for-scene rip-offs of Back to the Future. I felt like I had enough Easter eggs and nods to the film, and sometimes I was sort of going overboard so I would pull things back.
I read the first three issues and one of the jokes you have in there is Bob Gale telling, I think it’s Rob Zemeckis, “Don’t set the last one in the Wild West.” I’ve always liked that one. Do you think, in your sense, is that one less appreciated?
No, I’m a big fan of it and I’m quoting it constantly. Personally, I feel the first two are stronger. I enjoy the third one but I am aware that the majority of people who watch the films, who don’t love them as much as me… I’ve sort of come to the mindset that Back to the Future can do no wrong, so I enjoy anything they tell me, but I have a lot of friends who disagree about the third one, so it was a nod to what I feel is the majority because I know it’s a constantly debated thing about the third one being in the West and how people think it’s off the walls. I personally do enjoy the third one.
In the third issue, we start to see how the future has been changed, because I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say they actually succeed. I think it’s rather the point. I’m wondering did you think about, for example, whiter Zemeckis took that to heart? Is Back to the Future III different, in this universe?
No. At the end of the movie, there’s this bittersweet moment where it sort of comes full circle and they’re back at where they started […] Nothing really changes. Marty McFly is still Michael J. Fox, but they got to experience the alternative.
I feel like this alternate history of the film industry is a point of fascination for all real movie geeks. “Oh my God, Alejandro Jodorowsky was gonna do Dune! I wanna live in that world.” You know?
It’s funny because when I started writing it, George Lucas in Love was a really big thing. I remember thinking, “Oh, this would fit perfectly with the same people who love that idea, and they’d love this idea.”
Have you heard any reactions yet to the material?
Yeah. It was sort of easy to get conversations going because I found pretty quickly that once we started telling people about it, you just talk about Back to the Future, a lot of people want to just chime in. So, there are a lot of people who aren’t even talking about the comic book, on the message boards, they’re just talking about the movies. It’s great because we’ll just be having a conversation about the movie. Back to the Future is my favorite movie. Just knowing that I was able to contribute to the conversation of these movies is very fulfilling. I’ve just been reading hundreds of comments from people who either appreciate it or don’t even know what I’m writing about or are immediately defensive that I’m even coming near the movies. So, there’ve been these defensive people who don’t read the comic book and immediately go to the comment boards, but then there are the people who like, “Oh, this is quite good,” and hearing back from the readers, it’s been pretty nice.
