@Stand*Chickie said:

I saw this some years before Back to the Future as an Afterschool Special and I wonder if the filmmakers didn't get 'inspired' by reading Francine Pascal's book "Hanging Out with CiCi" or seeing the special because in CiCi a teen girl goes back in time to the 1940's and meets up with her mom who turns out to be a bit of a troublemaker that she is nothing like as an adult.

You're right. Spielberg probably 'borrowed' the idea. Excerpt from Francine Pascal:

Francine Pascal: "...My first book, My Mother Was Never a Kid or Hanging Out With Cici, is about a 13 year old girl who couldn’t get along with her mother, and through some time warp, goes back in time to become her mother’s best friend. This was done in 1974, before Spielberg ever had any idea about it. In fact, he had my book. My daughter was friendly with his wife Kate. They were going on a trip to Indonesia. Kate had a daughter from a previous marriage – about 10 or 12 – and I sent her the book. I really regret it. I really do. Nobody had done anything like that – it was a unique idea. I have never watched Back to the Future, nor will I. That was the first YA book I wrote. "

Side note:

Also Francine Pascal wrote a series of book called 'Sweet Valley High' ...'

I love the TV adaptation of the books: "Sweet Valley High (1994-1998)".

He got the idea by looking at his father's.high school yearbook and thinking that if he had met his father in high school they probably wouldn't have been friends.

Honestly, the idea of meeting your parents before you were born and discovering that they were different from what you thought is one of the obvious ideas that doesn't really require am elaborate explanation as to its source, every teenager wonders what his parents were like as teens at some point.

@wonder2wonder said:

@Stand*Chickie said:

I saw this some years before Back to the Future as an Afterschool Special and I wonder if the filmmakers didn't get 'inspired' by reading Francine Pascal's book "Hanging Out with CiCi" or seeing the special because in CiCi a teen girl goes back in time to the 1940's and meets up with her mom who turns out to be a bit of a troublemaker that she is nothing like as an adult.

You're right. Spielberg probably 'borrowed' the idea. Excerpt from Francine Pascal:

Francine Pascal: "...My first book, My Mother Was Never a Kid or Hanging Out With Cici, is about a 13 year old girl who couldn’t get along with her mother, and through some time warp, goes back in time to become her mother’s best friend. This was done in 1974, before Spielberg ever had any idea about it. In fact, he had my book. My daughter was friendly with his wife Kate. They were going on a trip to Indonesia. Kate had a daughter from a previous marriage – about 10 or 12 – and I sent her the book. I really regret it. I really do. Nobody had done anything like that – it was a unique idea. I have never watched Back to the Future, nor will I. That was the first YA book I wrote. "

Side note:

Also Francine Pascal wrote a series of book called 'Sweet Valley High' ...'

I love the TV adaptation of the books: "Sweet Valley High (1994-1998)".

Thank you for posting that. I wasn't aware of that, but I did think 'Back to the Future' was very similar to 'My Mother Was Never a Kid.' All the way down to Victoria's mother being strict with her and then when she meets her in the '40s she's stealing, smoking and being a bad girl.

I just wanted to clarify one important point. Steven Spielberg didn't write the BTTF movies, he was just one of the producers. The films were written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis.