Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
And Bob Gale said on the commentary that they didn't have any interest shooting it in widescreen because they didn't consider Back to the Future to be a movie suited for any wide angles. It was just matted that way because it had to be so for theatres.

When he says "widescreen" I figured he meant 2.35:1 as opposed to widescreen in general as he goes on to say how one doesn't get good depth of focus with anamorphic widescreen (which is 2.35:1) and the film wasn't epic in scale (an attribute associated with 2.35:1). The home video comment just seems like a trade off situation. He says that at the time they were shooting, 1.77:1 had been chosen as the standard television ratio so he means that if they shot it in 2.35:1, then more of the picture would be cut off for television. So by shooting 1.85:1, the television image (1.77, not 1.33) was closer. I haven't seen Zemeckis's comments though.