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This month marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the movie Back to the Future. And I wanted to share a story with you about how the filming of Back to the Future is this legendary example of a Mercury retrograde story, and how we can actually learn a lot about what Mercury retrograde means by learning about the filming of Back to the Future. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that history in this video. All right. So in astrology, Mercury retrogrades are associated with delays, with things not going quite according to plan, with having to revisit the past, and often having to do something over again after doing it a first time. So let me tell the story about Back to the Future to give the setup for why this is a good Mercury retrograde story. So Back to the Future was created by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis. And they had wanted to do a time travel story or movie for a while, for several years, but they had a hard time coming up with an angle on the story. Until during the summer of 1980, Bob Gale visited his family home and he was flipping through an old yearbook and he found out that his father used to be class president. And he was kind of surprised by this. And he came up with this question of if he went back in time, would he be friends with his father or what their relationship would be like? So that was the genesis of coming up with the idea for Back to the Future. And then the pair ended up putting together a script based on that. And they shopped the movie around Hollywood for several years, but weren't able to find anybody that would take it or any studio that would produce the movie. So there's this long sort of setup. And eventually Robert Zemeckis directed a successful film, Romancing the stone, in early 1985. And it was so successful that then the studios were more willing to work with him. So they ended up circling back to that idea of doing Back to the Future. So it's 1984, they're ready to do Back to the Future. They have this amazing script for the movie and they have one actor in mind for the part who is young, 23 year old Michael J. Fox, who is the show of this hit TV show, Family Ties. So they really want to get Michael J. Fox for the film. They think he'll be perfect for it. But they approach the producer of the show that he's on, of Family Ties, and ask them if they can pitch the script to Michael. And the producer says no. And the producer thinks that this would interrupt this TV show that's so important at the time. And so he doesn't even let them show the script to Michael. Because part of his concern is he felt like at the time that if Michael knew that he had stopped him from taking part in this big movie, that he would hate the producer for the rest of his life. So that they don't even end up showing the script to Michael J. Fox. And he doesn't realize that he was originally the primary person that they wanted for this film. So over the next few months, in 1984, in the fall of 1984, they start auditioning other actors for this film. And. And there's some famous actors that we know of today, even Ben Stiller, who ended up auditioning for this film. But in the end, it came down to two candidates. And the studio exec who was in charge at the time really ended up pushing for one candidate who was an actor named Eric Stoles. Because he had seen early footage of him appearing in this movie called Mask that was gonna come out eventually in 1985, and thought he was a really good actor. So the head of the studio pushes Stoles, but he makes an agreement with the two filmmakers, Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, the producer and writer and the director. He makes a deal with them that if they go with Stoles, that he'll agree that if it doesn't work out, that he'll let them reshoot the film if they end up having to recast it. Probably thinking that that wasn't realistically going to happen. And that they would shoot with him and everything would be fine. So we get to the filming of Back to the Future, and it begins filming in late November of 1984. And what's really important about this. So it begins filming. The shooting begins November 26, 1984. And what's important about this date from an astrological standpoint is that Mercury was at 22 degrees of Sagittarius and it was slowing down and getting ready to station retrograde only 12 days later at 0 degrees of Capricorn on December 4, conjunct Neptune. So basically, they started shooting the film as Mercury had already entered its pre retrograde shadow period. And it was getting ready to go retrograde. And from an astrological standpoint, most astrologers, and especially electional astrologers, will tell people not to start a major project at the beginning of a Mercury retrograde. Because sometimes there can be delays, there can be do overs, there can be technical snafus. And other things like that are pretty classic themes. That are associated with Mercury retrograde. So let me show you a diagram that was made for me today by my friend Madeline Decotes of Honeycomb Co. Who made this lovely Mercury retrograde graphic that shows you the entire Mercury retrograde that happened that year in late 1984 and early 1985. So we see here at the beginning that Mercury entered Sagittarius on November 6, 1984. And then it passed its pre retrograde shadow period, which is the degree it would later retrograde back to at 14 degrees of Sagittarius on November 16th. So that's just, what, like a week before filming, it passes its shadow pre retrograde shadow degree. Then it moves into Capricorn on December 1st, and then eventually on December 7th, Mercury stationed retrograde. And then it went retrograde for three weeks, which is the standard period that Mercury goes retrograde for. And shout out to Madeline for making this diagram from Honeycomb Co. Where they make a lot of brilliant graphics and personal almanacs that you can buy for looking at your own astrological transits like this. All right, so that's the setup. And the premise basically is they started shooting the film with Eric Stoltz in the lead as Marty McFly, right at the beginning of this Mercury retrograde in Capricorn, and then Mercury retrograding back into Sagittarius. And to make a long story short, basically they shot the film for several weeks, but it just wasn't working out with Eric Stoles. Stoles was reportedly a method actor who was taking it as a more serious and dramatic role because he apparently reportedly thought that the film was more like a tragic drama. Because Marty ends up going back in time and then fixing the past and then going back and everything's changed and better, but that he ends up experiencing a timeline, the later part of a timeline that he never got to experience growing up or something like that. So basically, Stoles was playing it as a much more serious role. He was requiring other actors on the set to call him Marty because he was staying in character all the time. And he was playing it much more straight as, almost like a drama. But the script and the filmmakers, in creating it, had originally conceived of it as more of like a comedy. So it really wasn't working out. But they kept shooting the film, basically. And in one interview that I saw, the director, Robert Zemeckis, said he felt like he was, in retrospect, he felt like he was in denial in continuing to shoot as long as he did and didn't want to sort of face the facts. That it wasn't really working out. But eventually, after several weeks of filming a lot of the movie, basically including a lot of scenes that Eric Stoles was in because he was the lead actor, they eventually started to realize when they put together some early cuts of the film, that it just wasn't working. So the writer and director got together with the producers, with Steven Spielberg, and they started trying to figure out what to do about this during the course of this Mercury retrograde that was happening in December of 1984. So towards the end of that retrograde, as Mercury slows down and eventually stations direct, it's stationed direct on December 24, which is basically around Christmas, they started to make the decision that they really needed to recast the lead and that they really needed to go back to their original option, who they've wanted all along, which is Michael J. Fox. So in interviews, Michael J. Fox. So what they did is they went back to the producer basically, of the television show that Michael J. Fox was on, Family Ties. And they basically begged him to allow them to at least give Michael J. Fox the script and see if he would be interested and see if he would be willing to make it work somehow. And ultimately the producer relented and allowed Michael J. Fox to read the script. And in interviews, Michael J. Fox says that this happened around Christmas time. And what's crazy about that is that means that it happened right around the time that Mercury slowed down and stationed direct at the end of its retrograde period. And when it stationed direct, one of the things that was interesting is that it was conjunct the planet Uranus with Mercury stationing direct at 15 degrees of Sagittarius and Uranus being at 14 degrees. They were both actually at 14 degrees of Sagittarius. And I'll show that in just a second. And Michael J. Fox, to make a long story short, read the script, loved it, and said he would do whatever it took to be in the film. So they worked out an agreement with the producer of Family Ties to basically have it so that Michael would shoot scenes for the television show for Family Ties during the day, and then at night and later in the day, he would go and shoot for Back to the Future. And he did this for several weeks, basically to do both at once and in order to shoot Back to the Future. And it was so laborious that he was basically only getting one or two hours of sleep a night. So that he was just out of it constantly during the shooting of this film. But it ended up working out, and it ended up being a major career defining turning point for him. So let me show you really quickly what that looks like in the actual charts in terms of the station. So here's the chart from Madeleine Decoats again, where we can see that Mercury stationed direct there on December 24, right at 17 degrees of Sagittarius. But take a look at the actual chart for that timeframe for Christmas. So here's, let's say, a noon chart for Los Angeles for December 24, 1984, around the time around the Christmas break when they make the decision to approach Michael J. Fox again and to give him the script. And he eventually accepts the role. So Mercury is stationing direct that day at 14 degrees and 30 minutes of Sagittarius. And it's conjunct Uranus at 14 degrees and 56 minutes of Sagittarius. So basically, it was a Mercury direct station conjunct the planet Uranus. And Uranus is the planet that has to do. Actually, there's one other thing that I need to show first before I jump into that, which is that that Mercury uranus conjunction at 14 degrees of Sagittarius was exactly conjunct the degree of the midheaven in Michael J. Fox's chart, which is just stunningly incredible as a piece of astrological lore. So here is a bi wheel that shows Michael J. Fox's chart in the middle. He was born with Aquarius rising, and he has about 14 degrees of Sagittarius on the degree of the midheaven, which is in the 11th whole sign house. And on the outer wheel, we can see the Mercury Uranus conjunction, which is right there at 14 degrees of Sagittarius, with Mercury slowing down and stationing direct right there at 14 degrees of Sagittarius. And this is basically when the choice to give Michael J. Fox the script and then eventually him accepting it was made. And it's even more dramatic if you look at the animated chart. So let me pull up the animated chart. All right, so here is the animated chart that will start at November 26, 1984, which is the day that shooting began. And we can see that Mercury is at 26 degrees of Sagittarius. But if I start advancing the chart, we see that Mercury moves into Capricorn, but then it slows down and it stations retrograde December 4th and 5th. And then Mercury begins moving backwards from zero degrees of Capricorn back into Sagittarius. Eventually it conjoins the sun at the Cazimi around December 13th and 14th, which was probably an important turning Point, I would guess. Then eventually Mercury starts slowing down again after three weeks of being retrograde and moving backwards in Sagittarius. And then it eventually, right around Christmas time slows down and stations direct at 14 degrees of Sagittarius, conjunct Uranus. And then it begins moving forward again through Sagittarius in the post retrograde shadow phase. So basically, Michael J. Fox agrees to take the role sometime in either late December or early January. The dates are a little bit sketchy, and I'm still trying to work out some of this. But the big thing was just that Michael J. Fox said it was sometime during the Christmas break that he heard about this project and was given the script. So what ends up happening though, is while they're still trying to work things out with Michael J. Fox and make sure he's in the movie, he's going to be in the movie and all of the other details, they have to keep shooting the movie. So they actually keep shooting the movie with Eric Stoltz in it. But the crew starts noticing that they're doing weird shots because what they would do is even in scenes with him, they would be focusing on the other actors or doing other shots which they can later incorporate into the film once he's been removed. Essentially what they end up doing eventually though, is on January 10, 1985, they eventually formally bring Stoltz into their office and they tell him that he's fired, essentially, and that they're going to let him go. And then five days later, they officially start shooting scenes with Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly. So that begins on January 15th. What's interesting about the dates that I noticed is they basically fire Stolz right as Mercury is moving out of the final degrees of Sagittarius. And just as it's finishing up its post retrograde shadow period. So again, here back to the graphic that Madeline made for me. We see January 11th of 1985 that Mercury moved into Capricorn. So basically the day before that is when Eric Stoltz was fired on January 10th. And then Mercury goes into Capricorn and it passes basically the degree that it slowed down and stationed retrograde at, which is zero degrees of Capricorn on January 11 and January 12. And then it begins moving. Mercury begins moving through the rest of the sign of Capricorn, but it's finally free of the post retrograde shadow period. And so everything has come full circle. And by January 15th, Michael J. Fox is shooting scenes officially for Back to the Future. And they've completely switched out their lead character, which that doesn't happen often at all, especially on such a huge big production and big budget movie to have the lead actor completely recast. And at first the makers of the movie were nervous about how it was going to go and how the other actors and the crew would react. But then what ended up happening is Michael J. Fox got there, he starts shooting the scenes and then almost like immediately, it just starts. Everything gels so much better. And they hit the perfect notes and the perfect tone in terms of what they were shooting for, in terms of this light hearted comedy that Back to the Future ended up being. And it really becomes the final thing that really ends up making the film perfect in a lot of people's eyes as one of the biggest movies of the 1980s, as this sort of lovable family comedy in some sort that a lot of people have grown to love. So they start shooting the film. Michael J. Fox, during the course of this, of course, he's having to really work incredibly hard and it sounded incredibly difficult. And one of the things that's interesting is Michael J. Fox was in a 12th house profection year that year because he was 23 years old and he has Saturn there in his chart and he was just hardly getting any sleep and some of the guys were having to carry him from one set to the other one. And he's sort of constantly out of it in the film. Although what's interesting is that his tiredness and disorientation in some sense kind of ends up working and helping the film. Because then in the film itself, Marty is kind of like disoriented and kind of like stumbling and stuff. And it's kind of like quirky and charming. But some of that is probably a lot of that's obviously from Michael J. Fox's just acting and his character. But some of it, in a sense, might even be from how tired and out of it he was in having to just give everything in order to pull off this intense and grueling filming schedule. So eventually Mercury completes moving through the sign it retrograded in and it moves into a new sign, which is Aquarius on February 21. Let me show you the animated chart though, just one more time to bring that full circle again. Backing up, we're talking about. They start filming late December or late November of 1984. Mercury is slowing down in Sagittarius and then it slows down, it stations in early Capricorn. It does a U turn and then it starts moving backwards for three weeks. They basically are shooting the film. But it's not going well. They're trying to figure out what to do. Eventually, Mercury slows down. And stations direct conjunct Uranus right on Michael J. Fox's midheaven. They decide they need to try to approach him again. And see if they can find a way to get him to do the film. It's a complete surprise and shock and sort of upset in different ways. Especially obviously, for Eric Stoles, who ends up getting fired. But even for Michael J. Fox to suddenly learn that these filmmakers had wanted him to be in the film in the first place. But that the producer of Family Ties had stopped them from even approaching him. Was itself a big surprise and big shock. Shock to Michael J. Fox. But then all of a sudden, he gets this role of a lifetime that sort of falls in his lap unexpectedly right on this Mercury station. Direct conjunct Uranus right on his midheaven. So Mercury starts moving forward again. Eventually he agrees to do it. And then on January 10th, that's the day that Eric Stoles is fired. And Mercury, we see, is at 28, going into 29 degrees of Sagittarius on that day. And by January 11, Mercury moves into 0 degrees of Capricorn. Where it passes the shadow degree, Basically the degree that it had originally stationed retrograde at. So things come full circle. And there's a connection between where Mercury was when it first stationed retrograde. And they were shooting the movie with Eric Stoles in the very early phases of that in late November and early December. And then it comes back around. And then they have to start reshooting large parts of the entire movie at this point. By January 15th, when Mercury's now cleared Neptune, it's cleared the shadow degree, but it's still in the retrograde sign. So there's still this sort of retrograde sense that's being shaken off. Or that they're still completing at this point. Until Mercury gets out of Capricorn and moves into Aquarius. So that's the sort of breakdown in terms of that. And how that Mercury retrograde provides such a legendary example. Because of the having to recast the lead of the entire film. And the dawning realization that they would have to do that during the course of that retrograde. And how difficult and tricky that was. But then ultimately how successful it was as well. So as we all know, this ended up being a huge success. And it did cause delays in terms of the production. Which is another aspect of the Mercury retrograde. Because originally the movie was supposed to finish filming around February 28th. 1985, but as a result of the reshoots that delayed the ending of production until April 20th of 1985. So that's an example of how Mercury retrogrades can be associated with delays. If you start one under retrograde, and what's interesting about that is Mercury and Venus went retrograde again. Venus went retrograde in early 1985 in Aries, and there was another retrograde that happened in the spring around the time of the Venus retrograde, and that one was also in Aries. And both Venus and Mercury ended up stationing direct around the time that production finally finished filming in around late April of 1985. So eventually, though, it was all worth it, because as we all know, Back to the Future was eventually released on July 3, 1985, and it was a huge success. So it became the biggest blockbuster of the year, making $388 million at the box office with only a $19 million budget. So it's a huge financial success. And it also sort of became one of the most beloved movies of all time, certainly of the 1980s, and it ended up spawning two sequels and made Michael J. Fox that sort of cemented his legacy as a really huge movie star. So despite all of the retrograde stuff that happened at the beginning and the sort of legendary issues that they ran into with the filming, it still ended up being this huge success. So I think this became a great example of Mercury retrogrades, both the good things as well as the bad things that are associated with Mercury retrogrades. So one of the things, of course, is delays and things not going according to plan. So the production, for example, gets delayed and ends up taking two months longer to produce the movie. But then as a result of that, it still ends up becoming successful. So the delays are annoying, and it creates a lot of problems and a lot of hardships, but nonetheless, it still ends up becoming a success. So delays and things not going according to plan is a major Mercury retrograde theme. Another theme in Mercury retrogrades is having to redo things or do oversight. So sometimes if you take an action, especially an important action, towards the beginning of a Mercury retrograde, you sometimes find yourself having to go back and revisiting that action, or go back and revise it and do it over again. But the key to this is that when that happens during a Mercury retrograde, usually the second time you go back and do it over again, the second time is better than it was the first time. And sometimes that's simply because once you've done it, the first time and there's been a mistake, or there's been some errors, or there's a snafu that caused you to have to redo it. Usually the second time you go back and do something, you have more experience. So the second time ends up being better just because you've already got the experience of doing it once and now you're redoing it. So usually the second time you end up doing it better based on that past experience that you've built up at that point. In this instance, though, it was better also because they had to switch out the lead actor in order to get the performance that they wanted, that they originally wanted. And so that was part of it in this instance as well, in terms of having to redo or in this instance, actually go back and reshoot a large part of this movie. And even the extent to which they've had to reshoot things is sometimes questioned in the sense that one of the actors who played Biff Tannen in the movie, his recollection is that he felt like they had actually shot a lot of the film and that some of the actors, by January were already starting to talk about what their next projects were going to be and acting like they were wrapping things up. So this is sometimes debated about how far through the movie they actually were after shooting it for six weeks before firing the lead actor. But certainly they had shot a lot of this movie by the time they switched out the lead actor. Another thing that this teaches as an example that's important with retrogrades, is this sort of backwards orientation in time. And this is something I've come to a much deeper understanding of over the past few years, how this relates to not just to Mercury retrogrades, but retrogrades in general, where retrogrades in general orient us backwards in time. And I think it's really interesting that. So there was this initial Mercury retrograde in November and December and early January of late 1984 and early 1985. But then there was another retrograde that wrapped up as they were finishing shooting in the spring of 1985. And this also coincided with a long 40 day and 40 night Venus retrograde period in Aries, which of course, repeats every eight years. And this is the same Venus retrograde in Aries that just recurred this year in 2025. So one of the things I find interesting about that is that that Venus retrograde that happened in the spring of 1985 was a repetition of one that happened eight years earlier in the spring of 1977. And what happened then is there was an interesting parallel because that's when George Lucas was in the process of finishing up the production of the movie Star Wars. And then right after that, Venus retrograde was over. They actually ended up releasing Star wars in theaters and it was this huge smash hit. In a very similar way as what happened with Back to the Future. There's even some interesting parallels in terms of those two Venus retrogrades in Aries and some of the themes of the films, which is Nick Digan Best and I noted in our previous episode on Venus retrograde in Aries, where one of the things about Aries is it likes to go fast. And driving fast is actually one of the interesting signatures of Venus retrograde in Aries that recurs at different points over the past century. And I thought it was kind of funny that in Star wars it's like the culmination of the film is Luke flying his X wing extremely fast down the trenches of the Death Star and then eventually dropping a bomb in there and blowing up the Death Star. And that theme of driving really fast was integral to that film. And then ironically in Back to the Future, which then also was finished and released eight years earlier in a year in which Venus went retrograde in Aries as well. The whole core concept of the movie was that they've turned a DeLorean car into a time machine and that you have to make it go really fast. You have to get it to go 88 miles an hour. And then as soon as you hit that speed, you'll travel backwards or forwards in time at the very end of the movie. Spoilers on a 40 year old movie. But at the very end of the movie, Doc Brown comes back from the future and they fly off in a flying version of the DeLorean time machine. So there's just some sort of resonance there between the Venus retrograde of 1977 and Star wars and some of the archetypal themes of Venus and especially Aries that were in that film. And then a similar sort of archetypal energy with the release of this movie eight years later, again around the time of a Venus retrograde in Aries. So I thought that was really, really interesting. Other things that were going on in terms of this. Huey Lewis in the news released the song the Power of Love as a single in June, which they recorded in the tail end of Venus being in Aries coming off of the retrograde. And then that ended up becoming like a number one single the month before the movie came out, which ended up then helping the movie when it came out on July 3rd of 1985. So there's just all sorts of interesting things where I focused on this as a Mercury retrograde example for the beginning of the retrograde in especially November and December of 84. But there's other interesting astrology surrounding this film and other repetitions that are interesting to get into. And the fact that it came out in the same year as a Venus retrograde in Aries created a stamp on the film where sometimes it keeps coming up again or keeps getting revisited in the future at different points in years when Venus again goes retrograde in Aries. So, for example, Eric Stoles ended up being really hurt by the incident. And in what little interviews or information I've seen, it seems like this is a really tough thing for him, although he did get through it, and he still went on to have a successful career as an actor, appearing in the movie mask in 1985 or in another really memorable role in the hit film pulp fiction in 1994. And what's interesting is on YouTube, it seems like he doesn't really like to do interviews about this topic and he doesn't like to talk about it, probably because it was such a hard and traumatic event to have filmed most of this film and then to be fired from it. But in one of the few interviews that I have seen him do where he talked about this briefly and his firing on YouTube, I looked up the date of this interview and it actually was in June of 1993, which is eight years later after the movie came out, during another Venus retrograde in Aries year and time frame. So the one time that I found that he does revisit it and did say some things was on a Venus retrograde in Aries eight years later, which again shows you that sort of backwards looking orientation of retrogrades, where sometimes you revisit something from the past. And then there have been different repetitions of Venus retrograde with Michael J. Fox during the course of his career where Aries has been important. But one of the most notable ones recently I wanted to draw people's attention to is actually this year. Because of course, as I've been talking about on the podcast over the past several months, since January 2025 was a Venus retrograde in Aries year, just as 1985 was when they were finishing up the filming of Back to the Future, and because this year was also the 40th anniversary, it was also a repetition of Mercury going retrograde in Aries, where all of the retrogrades this year are repeating the same retrogrades as they were in 1985. And Mercury will do that approximately every 20 years. What's interesting is that at the beginning of this year, just after Venus moved into Pisces and started building up to its retrograde period in January, Michael J. Fox was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest civilian honor that we have here in the United States, both for his long career as an actor, but also for his advocacy work in helping people with Parkinson's and doing Parkinson's research over the course of the past few decades, ever since he was diagnosed with Parkinson's, and then also set up a foundation and a charity to help people and to help Parkinson's research. So this year ended up being a really important turning point for him when some of the same major transits were happening and repeating over again as were happening in 1985 when back to the Future first came out. And one last piece about that that I think is really interesting is that this year he has been finishing up a memoir about that time period when he filmed Back to the Future. And it's going to be called, it's coming out later this year and it's going to be called Future Back to the and My Journey through the Space Time Continuum. So I think that's really beautiful that 40 years later, on the 40 year anniversary of Back to the Future and the 40 year anniversary of him filming it and experiencing those retrogrades, and when we have a repetition of some of the similar retrogrades, he's been looking back and thinking back to those times, writing this memoir. And then eventually the memoir will be released this year when some of the same retrogrades are happening all over again. So in terms of conclusions, the story of Back to the Future and especially the filming of it is just this perfect Mercury retrograde so story. And I think that it teaches us that sometimes our initial plans actually need to fail. Sometimes that failure is actually part of our fate. That in some instances there can be things that we start to do or we attempt to do, but then things go awry and it just doesn't end up being successful. And for some reason our first attempt to do something can sometimes fail. But sometimes that's meant to happen. And sometimes we have to go back, we have to revise our choices and we have to do it all over again in order to get things right. So sometimes you have to go back into the past in order to move forward again into the future. So that's my main takeaway from this. Let me know what you think. Let me know in the comments on YouTube if you you have had a similar notable Mercury retrograde story that fits some of these criteria that you want to share. If you do, please let me know in the YouTube comments below this video and otherwise. Don't forget to like and subscribe and let me know if you'd like to see more deep dives into the astrology of your favorite movies in the future, because this is really something. I love both astrology obviously, as well as movies, and if people would like to see more of that, then definitely let me know in the comments. All right, Thanks a lot for watching and I'll see you again next time. 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