Why Michael J. Fox ‘ditched’ Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger scene in ‘Back to the Future’ revealed
Michael J. Fox imagined a perfect dance scene for Back to the Future and made sure it went his way.
The said scene comes when his character Marty is forced onto the stage of a school dance where he performs Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode.
In his new memoir about the making of the film, titled Future Boy, Fox revealed that the original script included dances in Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger styles but he had that scraped.
“I worked harder on the ‘Johnny B. Goode’ scene than any other portion of the movie,” he wrote of his “my favorite scene in the movie.”
The original script read: “Marty euphorically begins cavorting around like Little Richard. Marty whips off his sport coat and throws it in the crowd. Now, Marty tears open his shirt and does some Elvis pelvis moves! Girls scream. Marty’s movements become Mick Jagger–esque, then take on a Michael Jackson style.”
However, the actor changed pretty much the entire sequence.
“I ditched the idea of mimicking Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger (not guitarists!) and replaced them with tributes to my own rock guitar gods,” he shared.
He designed the movements with the help of choreographer Brad Jeffries.
Fox breaks down the movements in the memoir as follows: “As the song progresses, Marty holds the guitar low and falls to his knees without missing a chord (Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin); slings the guitar over the back of his head (Jimi Hendrix); and performs a Pete Townshend trifecta.”
Michael J. Fox added an “intense right-hand hammering, an homage to Eddie Van Halen,” and finally, “added in a bit of Slash (Guns N’ Roses), with a rumbling downward slide along the E string.
