Secrets of Back To The Future revealed 40 years later

Back To The Future is celebrating its 40th anniversary in a big way.

It’s been 40 years since Marty McFly and Doc Brown travelled back in time in a DeLorean, leaving 1985 and plonking the teenager in the middle of the origin story for his own parents’ marriage.

In the second film, they travel into the future on October 21, 2015 (which makes us feel ancient) – and today is celebrated as Back To The Future Day around the world.

In the iconic sci-fi classic, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd took the lead as the time travelling duo, but there was a whole cast and crew behind them making the magic happen.

One of those in particular was stuntman Charlie Croughwell, who worked as double for Marty, and became Michael’s go-to for around 16 years in Hollywood.

Last year, he sold the legendary pink hoverboard from the second film, raising money for the Michael J Fox Foundation in the process, and he’s speaking exclusively Metro, he’s reflected on his favourite stunts, and which of the movie’s most memorable scenes you can actually see him in on film.

A happy accident and first day on set

Charlie moved from Connecticut to LA to chase his Hollywood dreams, and was advised to seek out stunt coordinator Matt Clevin.

At the time, there was someone who would help sneak people onto the Universal Studios lot, and on one day he came across the call sheet for Back To The Future with Matt’s name on it.

‘We made our way to the back lot, trying to avoid security all the way. And I got there, I asked someone who he was and where he was, and they pointed him out for me,’ he recalled.

Charlie went to approach him, only to find himself alongside Michael, who asked if he was in his stunt double.

‘[Matt] looked at me, and he looked at Mike and he said, “Yes, this is your stunt double,”‘ he chuckled. ‘Mike went on his way, and the guy said, “You do stunts, right?”‘

Charlie was told to stick around because they had something for him to get on with – and it became one of the franchise’s most memorable moments.

‘That was my first day. I did the getting pushed backwards by the car on the skateboard and running over the top of it and landing on the skateboard as he came out from behind,’ he recalled.

The stunt was ‘shot in pieces’, first with the skateboarding itself, then a separate movement stepping onto the car and running over it, before landing back on the skateboard at the end.

‘We had to have a separate platform for me to land on as I jumped off the back of the car, and then we did a separate piece of just the feet landing on the skateboard, and Biff crashing his car,’ he explained.

‘It didn’t take a lot of takes. We did it very quickly. If we did it three or four times, I’d be surprised.’

Back To The Future’s iconic opening

The beginning of Back To The Future is one of cinema’s most beloved and memorable openings – a room full of tickling clocks, and Marty McFly playing his guitar through an oversized speaker before being thrown across the room.

It turns out, Charlie is the one you see on screen, and they ‘only had to do it twice’ to nail the epic moment.

‘There’s massive explosives in that speaker, and there’s a guy that’s standing next to you, the special effects guy, that’s going to push a button that’s going to trigger not only the speaker exploding, but the “air ram” you’re standing on at a certain moment in that time,’ he recalled.

‘In order to be shot backwards and land the chair that was on the other side of the room, my body had to be in a in a very specific position. So as I strum that guitar, I had to be leaning backwards.

‘And if he didn’t push that button at exactly the right moment, I was either going through the ceiling or I would be shot right down to the floor.’

While it was ‘the ultimate thing for a kid to be doing’, the first time didn’t exactly go to plan.

‘I came in just a slight bit too low and hit the front edge of the chair, whacked my tailbone. So I went back to do it again,’ he said, while he was really ‘in the hands’ of the crew.

‘I have that photo of me getting blasted backward from behind,’ he smiled. ‘I just love it.’

Injuries happened on the set

It wasn’t all plain sailing, and Charlie recalled another painful moment when he suffered a broken bone during a memorable scene.

You’ll remember the scene – Marty spots dad George McFly up a tree peeping on Lorraine and startles him, saving him from being hit and colliding with the car himself.

‘I pushed him out of the way, and I’m getting hit by the car,’ Charlie recalled. ‘I was able to catch the front of the car and get my whole body off the ground, so I wasn’t just getting sucked underneath the car.’

When the car came to a stop, he kept ‘flying through the air’.

‘As I landed, I put my hand down to spot myself, which I shouldn’t have done, and I snapped my wrist,’ he said, adding that director Bob Zemeckis then wanted a redo without knowing the pain he was in.

‘In those days, you didn’t really say anything,’ he shrugged. ‘[So] I’ve just got to make sure I don’t land on that wrist again. We did it successfully, I did the same thing. It was a little painful when the car hit me, but it’s something you just deal with and move on.’

Michael J Fox did a lot of his own stunts

Charlie pointed out that despite being Michael’s double on the franchise – and for many others over a 16-year period – his friend still did a lot of his own stunt work.

‘He was always game for doing his own stuff. There were often times when I had to pull Mike back and go, you know, probably not a good idea,’ he laughed.

‘There were times he said, “No, I can do this”. That interaction with him and working things out with Bob Z and Bob Gale and the entire cast and crew was top notch!’

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