In mid-June, 1985, the suits at Universal Studios were sweating. They had just realized that they had nothing scheduled for release over the very lucrative fourth of July holiday period. Their next release, slated for July 17th, was a time travel film called "Back to the Future." Not wanting to be shut out of those big holiday dollars, the studio discarded the fact that they had already prepared millions of dollars of advertising heralding the film opening on July 17th and rescheduled it to July 3rd. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Following the success of "Romancing the Stone," Universal gave the go ahead to a slight variation on the standard time travel story. A young man goes back in time only to have his mother-to-be fall for him. As originally filmed, the young man in question was Eric Stoltz. However, after filming began, the producers began to doubt their choice and sought out "Family Ties" star Michael J. Fox. Working on 2-3 hours of sleep a night, Fox shot his TV show during the day and the majority of the film at night. The casting of Fox proved to be a stroke of genius as the film literally came out of nowhere to gross an amazing $11 million in its opening weekend and a total of more then $350 million world wide. Fox's golden touch continued that summer when the Canadian film, "Teen Wolf," which featured Fox as a high school student who also happens to be a werewolf, took in a very impressive $33 million.

Though originally ending with the standard "THE END" credit (the "To Be Continued" tag was added when the film was released on video), "Back to the Future" spawned two very successful sequels following Marty and Doc Brown into the future and back into the wild west.

Next week I'll look at a film that still had a great impact on my life 20 years after I saw it - "Jesus Christ Superstar".

Well, that's all for now. Have a great week. See ya!