Butt News Movie Club #31: Butt to the Future

Butts? Where We're Going, We Don't Need Butts

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Ding-a-ling-a-ling! We open on a BUNCHA clocks. Alarm clocks, carriage clocks, cuckoo clocks, digital clocks, grandfather clocks. That’s how you can tell we’re in a time scientist’s house—this place is chockablock with clocks! It’s 7:53 am and all the clocks are bing-bongin’ it like crazy. You know what they say in The New England Journal of Medicine: if the crib’s a-tick-tocking then don’t come a-knocking, because Christopher Lloyd will electrocute you!

But Marty McFly doesn’t care, because he has a weird no-boundaries relationship with this freaky hermit! He waltzes right in there and finds the place in utter chaos. All of Doc Brown’s breakfast machines are going haywire, and it looks like Einstein hasn’t eaten his auto-slop in weeks! Rather than assuming his friend is dead, like I would do, Marty takes the opportunity to fiddle with Doc’s knobs.

He plugs his tiny guitar into Doc Brown’s gigantic amplifier (why does he even have that?) and blasts it into smithereens and blows himself halfway across the room. Dude, that was probably so expensive!!!!! One time when I was a tiny kid, like seven years old max, I took an “embossing class” at a local community college (wtf!!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!!) and first of all the “design” I created to emboss was just a cartoon exclamation point, which, now that I think about, was actually prescient and on-brand for me, but I remember the teacher thought it was stupid and at the time even I was like “wow this bitch [me] is boring and untalented,” and then at one point the teacher left the room and one of the other kids BULLIED ME into using the embossing machine (a huge and dangerous industrial press) by myself, because her turn was after me and she was annoyed that she had to wait, and so I did, but I did something wrong and then the teacher came back in and YELLED AT ME for (almost) breaking the machine, and I have not recovered from it to this day. On the other hand, Marty, not an innocent child but a teenager of unknown age, literally EXPLODES Doc Brown’s floor-to-ceiling speaker so that it COLLAPSES INTO RUINS and all he has to say about it is “Whoa”???

Anyway, then Doc Brown calls his own house phone and Marty answers. I know people have a lot to say about the logistics of time travel, but what about the logistics of WHY ARE MARTY AND DOC BROWN FRIENDS?

Doc is like, “You better not hook up to the amplifier, there’s a slight possibility of overload,” and Marty says nothing (some friend!), and then all the clocks start chiming and Doc says, “Are those my clocks I hear?”

WHAT ELSE WOULD THEY BE.

Doc is like, “My experiment worked! They’re all exactly 25 minutes slow!” and Marty’s like WHAT!? because that means he’s late for school! Sorry, you went over to Doc Brown’s house to play electric guitar 25 minutes before school started? First of all, don’t play electric guitar that early in the morning. People are sleeping. Second of all, what’s the point? You’re gonna play three chords and then have to leave? Go earlier or not at all!

Marty zooms off to high school on his skateboard. We see that Doc Brown lives right behind a Burger King, and I hope he treats himself to a Spicy Ch’King after a long day of thinking about what time it is!

When Marty gets to school he runs into his girlfriend, Jennifer, who warns him that Principal Strickland is looking for him. They try to sneak to class, but their subterfuge is for naught, because Strickland immediately finds them and is like, “Am I to understand that you’re still hanging around with Dr. Emmett Brown, McFly?” which IS ACTUALLY a reasonable thing for a mandated reporter to be thinking about! But instead of being CONCERNED, Strickland says that Marty has an attitude problem and is a slacker just like his father and he shouldn’t hang out with Doc because he’s a real weirdo and also Marty shouldn’t even BOTHER trying out with his band to play the school dance because he’s too much of a creepy loser like his DAD.

Strickland: “No McFly ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley.”

Marty: “Yeah, well, history is gonna change.”

A normal way for a principal to act!

Okay, now it’s time for the big audition to be the band that plays at the school dance. It’s also billed as a Battle of the Bands, which seems like a different thing? Isn’t a Battle of the Bands an event that happens in front of an audience? And an audition is a thing that happens privately in front of Huey Lewis and two other guys?

Marty’s band is called The Pinheads and they play rock ‘n’ roll. Jennifer loves it but the judges hate it. The head judge, Huey Lewis, says, “I’m afraid you’re just too darn loud.” Dang, if only there was a way to turn down electronically amplified music!

A dejected Marty wanders through the Hill Valley town square with Jennifer. He says that he’s just not cut out for music, but Jennifer urges him to follow his dream. She says his demo tape is really good and he’s gotta send it to the record company! I bet you it’s not and he shouldn’t!

Marty and Jennifer are going on some secret sex trip that he’s lying to his parents about because his mom is a sex-negative alcoholic who hates Jennifer for being a skank. They’re about to make out but then the Hill Valley Preservation Society cock-blocks, or, rather, CLOCK-blocks by shoving a flyer in Marty’s face about saving the clocktower. Then Jennifer’s dad cock-blocks again, by coming to pick her up! Jennifer writes “I love you!” and her grandma’s number on the back of the clocktower flyer for Marty.

It’s weird—I feel like I’ve seen this movie one billion times and yet I don’t remember ANY of this. I mean, like, “clocktower,” yes. “Jennifer,” yes. But if you told me there was 20 minutes of Marty wandering around 1985 Hill Valley having random chit-chats at the beginning of this movie I would have called you a butthead and pooped in your car!

Marty gets home and finds his dad, George (Crispin Glover, making choices that AI COULD NEVER!!!), being cuckily bullied by his supervisor, Biff. Biff crashed George’s car and is now victim-blaming George for not disclosing a supposed blind spot, PLUS he wants George to pay his cleaning bill because he spilled his beer on his clothes when he crashed! And George isn’t even fighting back! He’s just sitting there being like “aw, Biff.” This is the future that liberals want!

Biff even knocks on George’s head like it’s a door and says his famous catch-phrase, “HELLO? MCFLY?” and George does nothing to stop it. Marty cannot believe that his family’s patriarch is so embarrassing and weenis-ish. He begins to wonder about vegetarianism and neo-pronouns! And Kamala Harris thinks that’s a GOOD THING!

Biff turns to Marty and goes, “What are you lookin’ at, butthead? Say hi to your mom for me.” And I’m sorry, but THAT’S HOT! Alpha male behavior!

Meanwhile, George is eating peanut brittle for dinner. And Tim Walz wants that to be THE LAW!!!

Tonight’s dinner is supposed to be a “welcome home” party for Marty’s Uncle Joey, but unfortunately he didn’t make parole again for an undisclosed crime. Marty has two siblings, David Sibling and Girl Sibling. When I watched this scene, David McFly stirred within me a deep recognition, as though a long-lost love had returned from over the sea, but, alas, too late, for I am an old woman now, no longer the bright-eyed girl he knew. At first I was like, “Do I just recognize this guy from being the brother in Back to the Future?” but then it came to me: HE’S MOTHERFUCKING BORIS!

There is no footage of Boris available for free on the internet. The above clip does not contain Boris. But the absolute #1 thing that has been playing on a loop in my head for the past 35 years is Barbara Harris saying, “I’ll ooooooonly be a moooooooooment, Boooooooooris!” in the Jodie Foster Freaky Friday, the only true Freaky Friday, and David McFly IS BORIS. Anyway, go watch the original Freaky Friday tonight, or just unfollow me, ok??????

Marty finds out that he missed two phone calls from Jennifer, and then his mom, Lorraine, says it’s disgusting when girls “chase boys” by calling them on the telephone. She says that instead, girls and boys should meet each other the way that she met George, by having her dad run him over with a car.

I watched Back to the Future with my girlfriend Roya, who had never seen it before, and I think that for the rest of us Back to the Future is so familiar it’s like furniture, but through fresh eyes Back to the Future is INSANE. Roya kept being like, “What is happening? Why are these people screaming at this teenager about the clocktower? Why is that Re-Elect Mayor Goldie Wilson truck doing donuts in the background of every shot? What the fuck is wrong with Marty’s parents? Do they have both a skin disease AND a brain disease????????” If you don’t know what happens in the rest of the movie, the first half-hour is gibbering chaos, because everything is basically a fan-service reference to something that hasn’t happened yet. You don’t realize how weird it is, in the first ten minutes of a family comedy, to have a drunk woman in a rubber mask tell a long, seemingly pointless story about holding Crispin Glover’s crushed and battered body prisoner until he agreed to be in love with her—until you’re watching it with somebody who has zero context! If you can locate someone like that, this experience is soooooooooooo funny!

Lorraine says that George “was a wounded puppy” and she nursed him back to health and then they went to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance and had their first kiss on the dance floor and that’s when she realized she was going to spend the rest of her life with this nerd.

Marty falls asleep, but Doc calls and wakes him up, which is good because earlier (I forgot to mention it) Marty promised Doc that he would meet him at the Twin Pines Mall in the middle of the night for a science experiment. Doc asks Marty to stop by his place on the way to the mall and pick up his video camera (and a couple of Spicy Ch’Kings, I hope!). Again, Principal Strickland is right to worry! It is a bad idea for a little boy to be “friends” with a weird old scientist!!!

Marty gets to the mall and Doc slides out of a box truck in a Delorean with the vanity plate “OUTATIME” and announces that it’s time for “Temporal experiment #1.” He says that the Delorean is a time machine, and then he attaches a stopwatch to Einstein and makes him go in the time machine! Can you please leave Einstein out of this? FREE EINSTEIN!

Doc uses his remote control to make the Delorean Tokyo drift around the mall parking lot. He says that when the Delorean hits 88 mph it’ll time travel. He has so much confidence that this will happen that he drives it straight at his and Marty’s bodies and luckily it disappears just before it smooshes them.

Marty (reasonable): “Jesus Christ, Doc, you disintegrated Einstein!”

Doc (bloodthirsty, deranged): “Einstein has just become the world’s first time traveler!”

Doc says he sent Einstein one minute forward in time. Now they just have to wait one minute to catch up with him.

And it works! The Delorean re-appears! It is very cold but Einstein is fine and his watch is one minute behind Doc’s.

Now Doc shows Marty how the time machine works. He explains that on November 5, 1955 he was hanging a clock above his toilet and he slipped and hit his head and invented the flux capacitor. He also mentions, for no reason at all, that the Twin Pines Mall used to be farmland owned by Old Man Peabody who had a crazy idea about breeding pine trees. And, oh, by the way, the time machine runs on plutonium.

Doc says that only a nuclear reaction can generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity needed to send the Delorean back in time, so that’s why he had no choice but to tell some Libyans that he would make them a nuclear bomb, then steal their plutonium and give them back an empty bomb casing filled with shoddy pinball machine parts.

Question: How did the Libyans find Doc Brown, and WHY did they think this yammering freak who can’t even build a functioning robot toaster was the right person to build them a nuclear bomb?????????????????????? There was no other available scientist anywhere between Libya and Hill Valley, California????

Doc juices up the Delorean with some more plutonium and tells Marty that he’s going 25 years into the future to see “the progress of mankind.” Dude, I’m not saying you’re obligated to go kill Hitler as a baby, but you could pick any time period in history and you’re going 25 years into the future in your same stupid town?? You literally sleep under a framed portrait of Sir Isaac Newton! But instead of 17th-century Cambridge you’re going to try and catch Tay Zonday at Biff’s casino???

EXT: TWIN PINES MALL - NIGHT

The Delorean appears in a jet of fire. The door opens and DOC BROWN (60s, white lab coat, skinny jeans, Macklemore undercut) tumbles on to the pavement.

DOC
(Gangnam style)
Hide your kids, Marty, and hide your wife! I’m BACK… from the YEAR 2010!

MARTY

Doc! You’re alive!

DOC
(on fleek)
Are you kidding? I’ve just watched a fantastic film called Dinner for Schmucks and I’ve never felt MORE alive!

But before Doc can make such a horrible mistake, Einstein is like, “Ruff ruff! Ruh roh! Ruh Ribyans!”

The Libyans pull up in a VW van #vanlife and start shooting at Doc and Marty with big guns. Doc returns fire with an unloaded antique pistol. Then the Libyans shoot Doc to death while “shouting in Arabic” and Marty says “DOOOOOC!” They try to shoot Marty but the gun jams so they begin “swearing in Arabic.” Good thing we fixed Islamophobia in the 40 years since this movie came out, right, guys?

…guys?

Marty hops in the Delorean to escape and now they are car-chasing ALLAround the JCPenney! Now one of the Libyans has a rocket launcher!

Marty: “Let’s see if you bastards can do 90.”

Sorry, you weren’t already going as fast as you could??????

Marty hits 88 mph and I guess he forgot he was driving a time machine because he is utterly CONFUZZLED by the fact that he is suddenly in Old Man Peabody’s experimental pine tree sex field. He crashes into Old Man Peabody’s barn and the whole Old Man Peabody clan—Old Wife Peabody, Old Little Boy Peabody, Old Daughter Peabody, etc.—come out to see what the noise was.

Marty gets out of the car wearing his full plutonium PPE suit (when and more importantly WHY did you put your helmet back on??) and the Old Peabodys assume he’s an evil space man who crashed his flying saucer into their cow for nefarious purposes. I mean, okay, but they did have cars in 1955. And hazmat suits, presumably! You sure “anal-probing Martian” would be your first guess, Fox Mulder???

Marty takes his helmet off to show them his human head, but the kid accuses him of mutating into human form to trick them (stolen valor), so Old Man Peabody yells, “Take that, you mutated son of a bitch!” and shoots Marty with a shotgun. Marty jumps back in the Delorean and drives away, running over Old Man Peabody’s pine tree in the process.

Old Man Peabody: “You space bastard, you killed my pine!”

Can anyone tell me if this whole Old Man Peabody pine tree breeding setup is paid off in any way at the end of the movie? I can’t remember. Like, when Marty goes back to Hill Valley at the end (spoiler, sorry), is Twin Pines Mall called something else, like No Pines Mall? Oh, I just looked it up, and yeah, it’s called Lone Pine Mall. Does that even make sense? Couldn’t Old Man Peabody just… breed them again??? What a quitter!

Marty assures himself that this is just a very intense dream. But then he sees something. It’s the iconic gate to his housing development, except none of the houses have been built yet! It’s just empty land with a billboard for “Lyon Estates!” The Delorean runs out of gas/plutonium so Marty pushes it behind the billboard and walks two miles into Hill Valley.

But whoa! Everything’s different! The movie theater only costs 50 cents and President Ronald Reagan is in the movie! The gas station has people who help you???? And the clocktower still works!?

Marty locates a newspaper and verifies that it is indeed 1955. He then finds a phone book to call 1955 Doc Brown, but Doc doesn’t pick up. In the diner, Marty tries to order a TaB, which hasn’t been invented yet, and, failing that, a Pepsi Free, which also hasn’t been invented yet. Now, TaB came out in 1963, so perhaps we can forgive young Marty for thinking that it is an evergreen beverage, having never known a life without it. But Pepsi Free came on the market in 1982!!!! As far as I can tell, Marty’s age is never specified beyond “teenager,” but he does drive a car, so he’s minimum 16 years old. That means he was AT LEAST 13 when Pepsi Free launched! There’s no way he doesn’t remember it! If I’m suddenly kerplunked into 1920s Atlantic City, you think I’m asking Steve Buscemi for a Mountain Dew Amp Game Fuel Zero Charged Watermelon Shock???!?! Use your noggin, McFly!

Marty’s on thin ice—the soda jerk has had about enough of this wise guy ordering imaginary sodas. Fortunately(?) he’s saved by teenage Biff coming in with his minions feat. Billy Zane (no lines).

Biff says, “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, McFly, you Irish bug,” and at first Marty thinks he’s being bullied, which is weird, since he doesn’t even go here, but then he realizes that Biff is actually talking to the guy next to him. He looks over and, ay de mi, it’s only TEENAGE JORGE MCVOLAR, MARTINO’S OWN PADRE, EL INSECTO DE IRLANDE NUMERO UNO.

Teenage Biff is doing all the same mean stuff to teenage George that he was (will be) doing to adult George. He’s knocking him on the head. He’s saying “Hello? McFly??” He’s making him do his homework for him. With a sinking heart Marty realizes that this silverback has been pwning his weenis patriarch for 30 years.

With George’s pants sufficiently peed, Biff calls Marty a butthead again and leaves. The guy mopping the floor tells George he needs to start standing up to Biff, and Marty realizes it’s Goldie Wilson, the famous truck from earlier in the movie. Marty gives Goldie the idea to become mayor, then chases after George, who has run from the diner in disgrace.

Marty eventually finds George up a motherfucking tree watching a woman undress through her upstairs window, a.k.a. LITERALLY A SEX CRIME. Marty says, “He’s a Peeping Tom!” the way you might say “he does Bitcoin” or “he’s from Boston” after a blind date. Like, you don’t love it, but it’s not necessarily a dealbreaker???? BUT IT SHOULD BE! You want a sex creep to marry your mom??

George plonks out of the tree and into the middle of the street where he is nearly run over by a car—THE car. Marty pushes him out of the way, taking the fender’s blow himself, not realizing that this was the pivotal pedestrian casualty that brought his parents together romantically resulting in 3x full sex! Oops!

Marty wakes up in a dimly lit room, his mother at his bedside tending to his wounds. At first he’s relieved to realize that it was all just a dream. Until the light shifts and…

IT’S HIS YOUNG MOM.

SHE’S THIN.

AND SHE’S HORNY.

At this point Roya was like, “Ew, it feels like she’s trying to seduce him,” and then Aham and I had to explain to her that this was, in fact, not a brief misstep in tone but literally the entire plot of the movie.

Lorraine tells Marty that she undressed him and put him in bed while he was unconscious and she saw his underwear and now she thinks his name is Calvin Klein, which is a classic bit. She brings Calvin downstairs to meet his grandparents and all of his aunts and uncles who are babies. Uncle Joey is in his crib in the corner and Marty says, “Better get used to these bars, kid,” due to Joey’s eventual life of crime. But right now he is just a baby.

Marty’s grandpa has just installed the family’s first TV and he drags it over to the table so they can watch Jackie Gleason while they eat. Marty BRAGS that he’s already seen this episode, and SPOILS IT, because despite having been in the past for at least 12 hours now, he still can NOT read the room!

Child Uncle: “What do you mean you’ve seen this? It’s brand new?”

Marty: “I saw it on a rerun.”

Child Uncle: “What’s a rerun?”

Marty: “You’ll find out.”

MARTY. STOP. They definitely already had time travel science fiction in 1985! Back to the Future did not invent it! You should know not to mess with the fabric of spacetime like this! A BABY WOULD KNOW IT.

Marty’s grandma is like, “you look so familiar to me—do I know your mother?” and THAT’S the kind of spicy sizzle that makes Back to the Future a delicious treat to me.

Lorraine hornily asks if Marty can spend the night and squeezes his thigh, so Marty runs out the door and into the night.

Grandma: “He’s a very strange young man.”

Grandpa: “He’s an idiot. Parents are probably idiots too. Lorraine, if you ever have a kid who acts that way I’ll disown you.”

SIZZLE SIZZLE! THAT’S MY FOOD!

Marty goes over to Doc’s mansion and Doc is there wearing a special hat that reads thoughts. He asks if Marty is there collecting donations for the Coast Guard Youth League, because everyone in 1955 thinks Marty’s down vest is a life preserver.

Marty: “Doc, I’m from the future. I came here in a time machine that you invented. Now I need your help to get back to the year 1985.”

This seems like the kind of greeting that Doc would roll with no problem, but instead Doc is suspicious. He doesn’t believe a word of it! He hasn’t even invented a time machine yet! Marty shows Doc a picture of the McFly siblings. See? Look at their weird clothes! But it’s not enough for Doc.

Then, more of the stuff the people want:

Doc: “Who’s president of the united states in 1985?”

Marty: “Ronald Reagan”

Doc: L M A O O O O O O O O O THE MOVIE STAR??????

Doc tries to get Marty to go away—”good night, future boy”—but Marty is like wait wait wait wait I know what happened to your head with the toilet and the flux capacitor, etc., and Doc is like HUH????????????????

Marty takes Doc to look at the Delorean and Doc is like oh, yeah, come to think of it, I DID draw a picture of a flux capacitor after I fell off my toilet, and Marty shows him the flux capacitor in the Delorean and Doc shows Marty the sketch and they look the same and I bet Doc and Marty got mad goosebumps!

NOW we’re cookin’ with plutonium!

Doc can’t believe it: “I finally invent something that works!”

Marty: “You bet your ass it works”

Back at Doc’s house, Marty hooks the camcorder up to the television set (WITH WHAT CABLES, TO WHAT PORT) and shows Doc the footage he shot earlier at the Twin Pines Mall parking lot. When it gets to the part where Future Doc says the Delorean runs on 1.21 gigawatts of electricity, Past Doc loses his shit.

Marty’s like, “All we need is a little plutonium,” and Doc says he’s sure that in 1985 they sell plutonium in the drug store, but in 1955 it’s hard to come by, so Marty will just have to marry his own mom and stay in 1955 forever. Marty gets stressed and says he CAN’T stay in 1955 because he’s got a girlfriend and she’s hot and she wrote her grandma’s phone number on a piece of paper for him!

Doc’s like, well, sorry, the only thing capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning, and then Marty’s brain generates a lightning bolt of its own!! HE STILL HAS THE HILL VALLEY PRESERVATION SOCIETY FLYER. It says that lightning is going to strike the clocktower next Saturday at 10:04 pm.

Doc says great, that’s sorted, now you just gotta stay locked in this house both night and day all week long because otherwise you might accidentally run into your parents and change history and eradicate your entire bloodline.

Marty is like YEESH, IS IT HOT IN HERE? I think I hear my ride!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Doc asks to see Marty’s photo again. He points at Boris: “His head’s gone—it’s like he’s been erased!” Marty has officially cucked his own dad so hard that his brother’s head was vaporized. And if Marty doesn’t set things right, he’s gonna become vapor too! That’s how time machine works!

Doc says NEW PLAN—now Marty has to go to high school and get his parents to hook up.

Marty, arriving at high school: “Whoa! They really cleaned this place up—it looks brand new.”

THAT’S THE GOOD STUFF THAT MAMA LIKES.

Inside high school, Principal Strickland watches George McFly, a child in his care, being horrifically tortured by bullies and says, “You’re a slacker! Do you want to be a slacker the rest of your life?” This guy really never got fired in the ensuing 30 years?? That teaching style certainly wouldn’t MCFLY anymore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Marty introduces George to Lorraine and George is immediately creepy.

But Lorraine has eyes only for Calvin/Marty. She escapes George’s weird arm and runs to class, screaming “Isn’t he a dreamboat?” to her friends about her time-traveling future runty son.

Doc is like wow, okay, this is more serious than I thought, and Marty’s like, “Are you trying to tell me that my mother has got the hots for me?” as though this woman hasn’t been BARELY restraining herself from LICKING HIM????????

Doc sees a poster for the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance and says, “Look! There’s a rhythmic ceremonial ritual coming up!” Sorry, is he an eccentric scientist or an Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer? He doesn’t know the word “dance”?

Marty tracks down George, who is writing in a notebook. He asks what he’s doing and George says he’s writing “science fiction stories about visitors coming down to Earth from other planets.” Marty is surprised, because the George he knows is a fucking dud with seemingly no creative inner life whatsoever. He asks if he can read the stories.

George says no! He never lets anybody read his stories because they might tell him that they’re no good! Marty understands that feeling because of the time Huey Lewis said his band was too loud. This is the kind of wholesome father-son bond that MAGA is fighting for!

Marty urges George to ask Lorraine to the dance, but George says he’s pretty sure Lorraine would rather go with Biff. But, in fact, Biff is sexually harassing Lorraine in the cafeteria at that very moment and she hates his gross guts!

Marty comes to Lorraine’s rescue and attempts to fight Biff, not realizing that Biff is tall and large. Fortunately, Marty’s life is saved by the appearance of Principal Strickland, who by the way is utterly unconcerned that a random child has just appeared at the school he manages. Doesn’t Marty need to register at the office??

Biff says one of his great lines—“Why don’t you make like a tree and get outta here”—and George flees the lunchroom without even finishing his chocolate milk.

Later that night, Marty sneaks into George’s bedroom (do we know where Marty is living at this point??) wearing his radiation suit, slips his WalkMan headphones over a sleeping George’s ears, and plays Van Halen very loud. He tells the terrified George that he’s Darth Vader, an extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan, and threatens that if he doesn’t take Lorraine to the dance then he’s gonna melt his brain. George is convinced.

The next day at the diner, George asks Marty what he should say to Lorraine and Marty tells him to “just be natural.” Dude, you’re really not setting him up for success. You need to be way more specific. This man needs PROFOUND ASSISTANCE.

Marty: “Tell her destiny brought you together, tell her she’s the most beautiful girl in the world.”

George to soda jerk: “Lou, give me a milk. Chocolate.”

George approaches Lorraine and with the power of chocolate milk reads off his notepad: “Lorraine. I’m George. George McFly. I’m your density.”

Lorraine is kind of into it, actually, but then Biff shows up and bullies George for coming into the café, from which he is banned for being a doink. Marty trips Biff and then sucker punches him and runs away. Unfortunately this is Lorraine’s kink.

Lorraine: “That’s Calvin Klein. Oh my god, he’s a dream!”

Marty steals a little kid’s milk crate scooter thing and rips it apart, turning it into a skateboard. Biff and the minions chase Marty in Biff’s car and attempt to run him over, but at the last minute Marty jumps over the car and they crash into the manure truck and Biff gets manure EVERYWHERE including all in his orifices. Goldie Wilson can’t believe what he’s smelling. When he’s mayor? Manure will be illegal.

Marty hands the skateboard back to the kid. He has now invented skateboarding. I forgot that Marty invents all modern inventions. This movie is exactly the same as Forrest Gump.

Lorraine is now nuclearly horny for Marty. Hey, maybe they should just use her horniness to power the flux capacitor!

Marty gets back to Doc’s house, where Doc is mere moments away from learning about his own death on the videotape. Marty stops him, due to the sanctity of spacetime, LIKE HE CARES ABOUT THAT.

Doc has also built a dollhouse model of Hill Valley to demonstrate his plan to capture the lightning bolt and send Marty home. All they have to do is run an extension cord from the clocktower down to the street and then drive the Delorean into the wire and nothing could go wrong. They try it on the model and the miniature car catches on mini-fire and mini-explodes.

Then Lorraine knocks on the door—she followed Marty to Doc’s house and I guess just lurked outside while they played with toys for 20 minutes?—and asks Marty if he’d please invite her to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance.

Marty is like, “But what about George?” as though this girl has expressed ANY interest in George McFly whatsoever at any point, which she hasn’t, and she says, “He’s cute and all, but I think a man should be strong, so he can stand up for himself and protect the woman he loves.” Meaning Marty, because of the time he briefly threatened Biff and then ran away.

When I recapped Back to the Future II in my book Shit, Actually (A GREAT THING TO BUY) I had a lot to say about how they treat Jennifer—i.e. they drug her and throw her in the garbage and leave her there for the duration of the movie—but can we talk about Lorraine’s brain in THIS movie? It’s just peanut butter in there!

Marty tells George, okay, NEW new plan—now HE’S going to take Lorraine to the dance, but then Lorraine is going to “get mad at him” so George can step in and rescue her. George asks why Lorraine is going to get mad at Marty and Marty says, “because, George, nice girls get mad when guys take advantage of them.”

WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU MEAN, MAN????? What are you going to DO to YOUR MOM? This is like when Russian sleeper agents get married to random Ohioans and have kids and work at boring office jobs for 55 years and die of old age so they don’t blow their cover! MARTY, YOU DON’T HAVE TO COMMIT THAT HARD.

Anyways, Marty says he’s going to “take advantage” of Lorraine and then George is supposed to interrupt and say, “Hey, you, get your damn hands off her!” George feels empowered by this idea.

Doc and Marty say a sad farewell, and Doc says he’s gonna miss Marty because Marty made a big difference in his life. Wait, is THIS why they’re friends?? Because of some weird time loop???? They’re friends in 1985 because 1985 Marty went back to 1955 and met 1955 Doc and so then when 1955 Doc eventually runs into Marty in 1985 they were already friends? Annoying if so!

Marty tries to tell Doc about his eventual death at the hands of the Libyans but now Doc is like no, don’t tell me about it, due to the sanctity of spacetime, LIKE YOU CARE, which leads me to believe that I wasn’t really paying attention to that part earlier when I said Marty stopped Doc from watching the tape. Oh well. Anyway, Marty writes Doc a letter letting him know that he’s gonna be “shot by terrorists” and should try to “prevent this terrible disaster” and puts it in an envelope that says “do not open until 1985.”

While Doc sets up the clocktower apparatus, Marty arrives at the dance with Lorraine. He asks if she wants to “park for a while,” meaning car sex, and she’s like “I’d LOVE to park” and he’s like “WHAT!?” and she’s like YEAH I’M A SLUT AND BY THE WAY I SMOKE CIGARETTES.

Inside the dance, George realizes that he’s late for rescuing Lorraine from Marty and runs for the parking lot.

Inside the car, Lorraine kisses Marty and it’s very unpleasant!!!! But then, hallelujah, she’s disgusted: “This is all wrong. I don’t know what it is, but when I kiss you, it’s like I’m kissing my brother.”

This messes up Marty’s plan to not be burned from the great weave of the pattern, but he says oh well, some things just aren’t worth it.

Then George shows up to fight Marty, except actually George is Biff! Seeking revenge! Marty’s little manure trick caused $300 damage to Biff’s car and “I’m gonna take it out of your ass.” I don’t think it’s in there!

Then Biff proceeds to sexually assault Lorraine while his minions run away carrying Marty. They find an open car trunk and dump him in there, not realizing that it’s the trunk of the Enchantment Under the Sea band, a.k.a. Marvin Berry and the Starlighters, who are all Black, which matters later. There is a brief racially charged encounter and then the minions run away leaving Marty locked in the trunk.

Now George shows up to fight Marty, except now MARTY is Biff.

Biff: “I think you’ve got the wrong car, McFly.”

Lorraine: “Please, George, help me!”

George: “No, Biff. You leave her alone.”

Biff immediately overpowers George and twists his arm behind his back like he’s gonna break it. Lorraine is powerless! But then George McFly has finally had enough. He’s in his Oxygen’s Snapped era! He one-punch KOs Biff and Biff falls to the ground with a big floppy wet porkchop flop. Now Lorraine is officially in love with George AND George is a legend because he seduced Lorraine via punching Biff (active) instead of via getting run over by a car (passive).

The Starlighters help Marty escape from the trunk, but Marvin Berry cuts his hand in the process. Now who is going to play the guitar at the dance??????????????????? Marty offers to fill in for Marvin so the dance can continue, because if George and Lorraine don’t kiss on the dance floor tonight then Marty is still in danger of vaporizing.

But George and Lorraine get separated in the crowd! Marty starts to disappear so bad that his fingers can’t strum the guitar! Except I bet you forgot that George has a spine now! He pushes some gross loser away from Lorraine and kisses her masculinely. All of the McFly children reappear in the photograph, but most importantly Marty. He is the most important sibling. Now Marty is ready to rock!

Marty turns to the band and says they should play something that “really cooks.” And now it’s the most fucked-up scene in the movie! Yes, worse than the Libyans! It’s when Marty McFly teaches rock and roll to Black people!!!!!!!

Marty: “It’s a blues riff in B, so watch me for the changes and try to keep up.”

All the students crowd around George, who is suddenly popular, and urge him to run for class president on a platform of “punching Biff.” Just off stage, Marvin Berry calls his cousin Chuck and says, “Hey, Chuck? It’s me, your cousin, Marvin Berry. You know that new sound you’ve been looking for? Well listen to this!” He holds the phone up so that Chuck can hear Marty’s incredible riffs.

Marvin: “Hey, Shifty? It’s me, your cousin, Marvin Shellshock. You know that new sound you’ve been looking for? Well listen to this!” [holds up phone]

Marty McFly: “Come my lady, come, come, my lady, you’re my butterfly, sugar, baby, such a sexy, sexy, pretty little thing, fierce nipple pierce you got me sprung with your tongue ring!”

Marvin: “Hey, Yoko? It’s me, your cousin, Marvin Ono. You know that new sound you’ve been looking for? Well listen to this!” [holds up phone]

Marty McFly: “AaaaaaAAAaAaaaaaAAaaaAAAaAaaaaWHYWHYWHYWHY HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo AH AH AH AH AH WHYYY WHYYYY WHYYYY WOOOOOOOOoooooOOOooOooOooOOoOOOOo!”

Marvin: “Hey, Scat? It’s me, your cousin, Marvin Man. You know that new sound you’ve been looking for? Well listen to this!” [holds up phone]

Marty McFly: “Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub, Yo da dub dub, Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub, Yo da dub dub, (I'm the Scatman), Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub
Yo da dub dub, Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub, Yo da dub dub Ba-da-ba-da-ba-be bop bop bodda bope, Bop ba bodda bope, Be bop ba bodda bope, Bop ba bodda, Ba-da-ba-da-ba-be bop ba bodda bope, Bop ba bodda bope Be bop ba bodda bope, Bop ba bodda bope, (Yo da dub dub) yeah, I'm the Scatman.”

Unfortunately, then Marty gets out of Chuck Berry territory and goes way too far into Van Halen land and wrecks all the Starlighters’ equipment and when they look at him like WTF he says, “Guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet.” Yeah, I don’t think they’re weirded out by your riffs—I think they’re wondering “WHY DID YOU KICK MY AMP?????”

Lorraine tells Marty that George is going to take her home (SEX), and Marty says “It’s been educational,” and tells them that he’ll definitely see them again. HAWINK!

It’s almost 10:04, and Doc is stressed. Marty’s going to be late for the lightning strike! Marty finally shows up and he’s like, “sorry, I had to stop to change—I’m not going back in that zoot suit.”

You STOPPED TO CHANGE? Almost making yourself late?????????? For the one and only TIME MACHINE back to your home????????? CHANGE CLOTHES IN THE TWIN PINES PARKING LOT, YOU LUNATIC!

Doc puts an alarm clock in the Delorean and tells Marty, “when this alarm goes off, you hit the gas.” Then he finds Marty’s letter and he’s like, yo, I am NOT reading this and he rips it up. For the last time, Marty, he doesn’t want to fuck with time!

Marty is about to yell the life spoiler about the Libyans but just then a tree branch falls and unplugs the clocktower lightning wire. Doc climbs up like a little monkey and throws a rope down and plugs it back in. Then the bell chimes and Doc almost falls off the clock tower!

Marty is still trying to scream at Doc about the Libyans but Doc cannot hear him at all.

Now they have less than four minutes so Marty is like FINE, I won’t tell you about the Libyans, and goes and gets the Delorean ready. He’s monologuing to himself—“Damn it, Doc! Why did you have to tear up that letter? If only I had more time!”—and it gives him a Big Idea. He just needs more time! He resets the time machine to go back 10 mins before the Libyans so that maybe he can save Doc that way.

Meanwhile Doc is still trying to climb across the clock face to finish plugging in the cord. There’s no way this is the best way to do it. He almost falls. Now he is hanging by the plug in one hand and the cable is stuck to his pants and it almost rips but then he gets it!

The alarm goes off! The Delorean didn’t start the first time but then Marty hits his head on the steering wheel and the Delorean starts!

Doc plugs the cable in but now it’s too short because of the tree that fell on it. You should really have given it some more clearance than that! He gets it but then, oh, shit, now it unplugs at the OTHER end. Wow this scene is long. Doc plugs it in anyway, then ziplines down just in time to untangle the cable from the tree. It works! The Delorean disappears.

Now Doc is alone in the street.

He totally fucked up the clocktower but it’s fine because he stopped a boy from having sex with his own mother and making Boris disappear.

Now we’re back in 1985 Hill Valley and there’s a homeless man sleeping on a bench. The movie theater is a church now, this town is a dump! But Marty thinks it’s home sweet home: “Everything looks great!” Then the Libyans drive by in their van.

Now Marty only has ten minutes to get to the mall before the Libyans shoot Doc. He couldn’t give himself 20 minutes?? The Delorean won’t start, of course, so Marty has no choice but to run there. We know from the beginning of the movie that the mall is two miles away from the town. You’re telling me Marty McFly runs a sub-five-minute mile??

Apparently he does, because he gets there just in time to see the Libyans shoot Doc, and then watch himself escape in the Delorean. Then the Libyans crash into the one-hour photo kiosk and presumably all die?? That’s horrible!

Marty cries next to Doc’s body. But then Doc sits up! He’s wearing a bulletproof vest! He shows Marty the letter—Doc taped it back together! He explains that he doesn’t actually care about the space-time continuum after all: “I figured, what the hell.” YEAH, OKAY. GOOD THING WE DID THIS WHOLE MOVIE, THEN.

Doc says that now he’s going to drive to 2015, just to check it out.

Don’t!

Bother!!!

Marty wakes up in his signature position in his normal room with normal music playing on the radio. He thinks it was all a nightmare. But when he goes downstairs, instead of being losers, his siblings are arguing about big business over a luxurious breakfast! Then Lorraine and George get home from morning tennis looking thin and sexy and not drunk! In fact, George is a STUD. And now Lorraine loves Jennifer and she knows all about their big date up at the lake!

Marty: “We can’t go, the car’s wrecked.”

George: “Wrecked!?”

They go look outside to look and Biff is out there waxing the car. Now Biff is the loser!!!!

George mentions that his first sci-fi novel, A Match Made in Space, is coming out soon.

Biff hands Marty “his” keys and says that his car is all waxed up and ready for tonight, like Marty’s penis. (SORRY.) Marty opens the garage and discovers that he has a COOL BLACK TRUCK! He kisses Jennifer. He can’t wait to get to the lake without any more interruptions!

But just then Doc Brown shows up in the Delorean in his best 2015 outfit and he’s like okay sorry you gotta come with me again because I just went to the future and your kids SUCK ASS. Bring Jennifer! Whatever! If she yaps too much we can knock her out and throw her in a dumpster!

In conclusion, WE DON’T TALK ABOUT THIS ENOUGH AS A SOCIETY: