STEP BACK IN TIME

PART III WAS THE MOST FUN of the three movies to make because I got to wear a cowboy hat every day to work,” chuckles screenwriter Bob Gale, recalling the laborious yet liberating shoot for Back To The Future’s guns-blazing trilogy ending. Marty and the Doc may need a DeLorean to travel back in time – but not Gale. The memories he holds of the often-testing shoot for the franchise’s climactic third instalment remain as fresh as the film’s picture-postcard cinematography, despite three decades having lapsed since its 1990 debut.

“We wanted it to be iconic,” Gale tells SFX during a brief pocket of downtime amid rehearsals for West End hot ticket show Back To The Future: The Musical. “It was a beautiful environment. The air was fresh and we got to shoot in Monument Valley where John Ford and John Wayne made all those great Westerns,” he beams. “It was such a thrill.”

The fact that Gale – writer of all three instalments