When Jon Cryer auditioned for 'Back To The Future' it had a very different ending
Michael J. Fox might have snagged the role of Marty McFly, but as movie legend has it, plenty of others had their hat in the ring.
Pulp Fiction star Eric Stoltz even began filming on Back To The Future for a few weeks before producers had second thoughts and replaced him with Fox.
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But before that the likes of Ben Stiller and Pretty In Pink's Jon Cryer auditioned for the role.
And on the occasion of the movie's 35th anniversary, Stiller has said that the least said about his audition the better.
But Cryer, on the other hand, has revealed some fabulous trivia about how different the movie he auditioned for was from the movie that we now know and love.
In a brilliant Twitter thread, he explains that there was originally no DeLorean - rather the vessel for transporting Marty back to the 1950s was just a regular time machine.
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And while some BTTF buffs will already know this, Cryer also drops in that in the early version of the script, it's a bottle of Coca Cola and a lead-lined fridge which saves the day for Marty.
Cryer's thread details the whole thing...
And he certainly was in no jeopardy from me either (you’ll see)
But the #BackToTheFuture script that I read before my audition was VERY DIFFERENT than what ended up on screen.
Thread👇👇 https://t.co/WrtC3PitE3— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
It opened with Marty McFly playing the Close Encounters theme on his electric guitar while he pirated a VHS cassette of the movie.
— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
And the time machine wasn’t a Delorean that had to travel at 88 miles per hour and have 1.21 gigawatts of power but just... well... a time machine that needed nuclear fission and a secret ingredient that turned out to be...
— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
Coca-Cola
(Swear to god)— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
The final sequence didn’t involve a clock tower or a lightning bolt, but instead finds Marty sneaking onto a atom bomb test site with his time machine to be near the nuclear fission that he needs for it to work.
In an eerie scene he finds...— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
The test site is complete with exquisitely detailed suburban houses and mannequins to simulate the effects of an atomic explosion on an American town.
— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
He gets the time machine in place, the atom bomb is about to go off, he’s reaching for the Coca-Cola, the countdown is at 10, 9, 8... when he slips and drops the bottle!!
It shatters on the ground
He’s all out of Coke!— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
He panics (understandably) but then remembers: he’s in the 1950’s and any self respecting American suburban home has a bottle of Coke in...
— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
The refrigerator! He checks and sure enough, there’s one in there. He pours it in the time machine but then realizes...
— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
Oh crap! He has to figure out how to survive an atomic explosion!
Again, he panics.
But then it dawns on him, there’s a lead-lined box nearby, otherwise known as...— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
A refrigerator.
He climbs in, closes the door behind him, the bomb goes off, the time machine activates, and he’s simultaneously shot #BackToTheFuture— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
Does this sequence sound familiar to anyone?
— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
I can hear you all collectively screaming “Yes, yes, Jon!! It does! Clearly Spielberg loved the scene and repurposed it decades later for a much-maligned scene in INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL!!”
— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) July 28, 2020
The fridge twist, of course, was used in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, with Harrison Ford’s Indy sheltered from an atomic blast in a handy nearby fridge.
And with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment being the makers of Back To The Future, perhaps it's not surprising that the plot point turned up in a later film.
Mr Cryer, we salute you.
