Stranded at the Drive-In by Mulholland Garry

Author:Mulholland, Garry [Mulholland, Garry]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781409122517
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2011-11-24T02:00:00+00:00

BACK TO THE FUTURE

1985

Starring: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson

Dir.: Robert Zemickis

Plot: Reagan’s America turns back the clock.

Key line: ‘Yeah, well . . . history is gonna change.’

Back To The Future, like a lot of the most successful ideas, came from a man holding on to a stray, random thought. Co-screenwriter Bob Gale stumbled upon his father’s high school yearbook and, as he noticed that Dad had been class president, wondered if he would have been friends with his own father if they had gone to school at the same time. From this weird rumination came the most unitshiftingest teen movie ever and highest-grossing film of 1985; a phenomenon that spawned two money-spinning sequels, fairground rides, best-selling video games and enough nerdy internet obsession to pull off the Star Wars trick and qualify as mainstream heavy-hitter and cult.

Of course, that nice little Dad-loving genesis story doesn’t flag up Gale’s darker thoughts about time travel. Because BTTF’s main source of memorable humour runs more along the lines of: what if you copped off with your own mother when she was still young and hot?

But all this – and the brilliant Industrial Light & Magic special effects, the parade of memorable set-pieces, the wish-fulfilment happy-ever-afters – distracts from BTTF’s true agenda. Which is providing a visual accompaniment to the Reagan administration’s populist desire to wipe the complex web of America’s triumphs and disasters of the 1960s and ’70s out of history, and turn back the clock to a semi-mythical 1950s, when America was strong, values were small-town, money was abundant, hair was short, men were men and women were grateful. If the future wants to know what America wanted to be in the mid 1980s it could do the hard work of reading old newspapers and writing history books. Or it could just save a lot of time and anti-spirit-of-Reagan intellect and watch Back To The Future.

Let’s begin with Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly, possibly the only iconic teen character to be so anti-rebellious that he rejects slouching, nicotine, alcohol and sugar . . . the guy’s like a skateboarding billboard for Diet Pepsi. We know peppy Marty’s a healthy, red-blooded American male because he plays self-indulgent electric guitar, turns the collar up on his denim jacket, dreams of owning flash cars and looks at other girl’s arses while his own girlfriend is talking to him. Jennifer, along with Marty’s Mom, is one of only two vaguely developed female characters and her and Mom’s jobs are to talk to their men about their wants, needs and ambitions, being dutifully supportive, while never acknowledging that they might have any of their own. But Marty is duty-bound to zone out of Jennifer’s selfless chatter when he gets a whiff of unconquered pussy, and Jennifer just smiles gently and competes harder for his favours. She is as natural a woman as Marty is a natural man. During the movie, we learn a great deal about what Marty McFly wants.

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