An Olympic debut at the Tokyo Games, skateboarding owes a debt to 'Back to the Future'

AN OLYMPIC DEBUT AT THE TOKYO GAMES, SKATEBOARDING OWES A DEBT TO 'BACK TO THE FUTURE'

Although the name Marty McFly won't be on the start list for the first-ever Olympic skateboarding competition, the "Back to the Future" character who inspired the immortal lines "What's that thing he's on? It's a board, with wheels!" was a landmark personality for the sport in its groundbreaking journey to the Tokyo Games.

So Tinseltown, take an Olympic bow. Skateboarding starts Sunday (25JULY2021) with the men's street competition. Back in the 1980s, McFly would have needed a time-traveling DeLorean to forsee that the counterculture activity would be accepted into the Olympic extravaganza unfolding in Tokyo Bay.

"Back to the Future" screenwriter Bob Gale spoke to The Associated Press in an exclusive interview ahead of the competition. He and director Robert Zemeckis wanted McFly to stand out and figured that skateboarding would help set him apart. One of the movie's signature scenes shows McFly – played by actor Michael J. Fox – using a makeshift skateboard to outrun and outfox the villainous Biff Tannen. McFly soars on his board over a hedge and races around a town square, sparks flying. Biff and his gang of bullies are humiliated, ending up neck-deep in dung after crashing into a manure truck.

"Marty McFly was always supposed to be kind of this rebellious kid," Gale said. "We thought it was appropriate that he might still be using the skateboard or may have decided to use a skateboard because everybody told him not to."

Skateboarding pioneer Tony Hawk was 17 and already a pro when the time-travel movie hit screens in July 1985. He and others credit "Back to the Future" for luring a whole generation of kids to skating.

Skateboarding featured again as an outcast activity two years later in "Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol." Hawk was part of the stunt crew that skated around downtown Toronto performing jumps and tricks for that movie.

"Back to the Future" was also pivotal for Josh Friedberg, the CEO of USA Skateboarding, who is leading the U.S. team of 12 skaters to Tokyo. The movie and a friend's return to their Kansas hometown from Florida with a skating video and a board, all combined to hook Friedberg for life.

"My head exploded," he said in an AP interview. "I fell in love with skateboarding that summer and there are billions of kids my age (for whom) the same exact thing happened."

"That movie was fascinating to me as a 13-year-old, with Michael J. Fox skating on his tail and making sparks and escaping the bad guys," Friedberg added. "There is an entire generation of skateboarders that are the 'Back to the Future' generation."

For the movie's makers, long before skateboarding was Tokyo-bound and plastered all over the internet and social media, one of the challenges was finding skaters good enough to carry the scenes. To escape

Biff, McFly at one point clings onto the back of a vehicle, riding his makeshift skateboard, a hair-raising stunt known in skateboard parlance as "skitching."

Gale said the scene had international repercussions.

"The movie shows what's called 'Skitching.' That's when a skateboarder grabs onto the back of a vehicle and is towed around," he said. "So, in Australia, kids started doing that and were getting hurt. So Michael J. Fox had to film a public service announcement, for the Australian government, Australian television, to tell kids, 'Hey, I did this but it was a movie and it was supervised. Don't do this, you could get hurt.' So that indicated that skateboarding was back on an international level."

And, now, even into the Olympics.  McFly would never have guessed it.