You'd think that raising over $45,000 for a documentary about the cultural impact of Back to the Future would be a pretty good enough story all on its own, but Jason Aron's upcoming film Back in Time has an even better origin tale: It was originally inspired by a video skit at an ostentatious 1980s-themed bar mitzvah.

Last summer, Expressions Cinema–the small New York-based video production company Aron founded–was asked to make a video for a client's bar mitzvah party. The seven-minute short was supposed to have a time-travel theme, so Aron brought in a bunch of 1980s era props (including a Mr. T look-alike). The crown jewel of the "very expensive skit" was a DeLorean, just like the one used in Back to the Future, which Aron rented for the shoot.

"While we were shooting people would literally stop their cars in the middle of the street to get out to look at the car," Aron told WIRED. "We were all on set looking at each other and there was this 'What is going on with this car?' moment. That definitely planted the seed."

Within a couple of months, the seed had transformed into an idea for a retrospective documentary about the cultural impact of Back to the Future, told from the vantage point of the DeLorean time machine. Aron took the idea to a producer friend named Louis Krubich, who got on board, and along with cinematographer Greg Lassik helped launch the movie's now-funded Kickstarter.

Of all the nostalgia-inducing aspects of Back to the Future trilogy–hoverboards, time-travel paradoxes, a kid who almost accidentally kisses his mom–the DeLorean has remained the most iconic. The relevance and instant recognition of the car has never really waned (not bad for a device that was a refrigerator in the movie's first script) with references and allusions to the car still cropping up in pop culture today from figures like rapper Rockie Fresh, who used a DeLorean in his music video, and author/screenwriter Ernie Cline, who worked a new version of the classic car into his book Ready Player One (and owning one himself).

"The goal is to make a film that goes into the cultural impact of Back to the Future. The time machine itself is the most key element—you could take out a lot of other things in the film and it still works," Aron said. "It turns out there are a lot of people who have bought replicas or have screen-used DeLoreans, so those are the stories we're going to focus on to build this."

Back in Time will focus on DeLorean collectors like Bill Shea and his son Patrick—who owns one of the DeLoreans used in Back to the Future III—and Back to the Future writer Bob Gale. Aron plans to document Joe Walser and Ken Kapalowski, both of whom were behind the film's 25th anniversary fan celebration We're Going Back in 2010, and the 30th anniversary gathering fan scheduled for 2015.

Aron says the documentary won't be ready until the 30th anniversary event–a long ways, off perhaps, but a goal that he says is not only timely but more forgiving of the fact that nearly everyone involved in the documentary, including himself, has other work to do and jobs to hold down.

"This is a passion project," he said. "Everyone who's signed on already in terms of the crew is going to be losing money, but [money] is not the goal of it."