Except Marty learned it from Berry. Who learned it from Marty. Who learned it from Berry. Who…
Where did it start?
It is a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.
In Timeline 1, Marty learned it from Chuck. In Timeline 2, Chuck learned it from Marty.. Which way around applies in all the other timelines, I dunno - probably Chuck learning from Marty. Which I find unfair to Chuck, tbh.
So Marty actually is the original writer. Though there’s nothing to suggest he has any songwriting talent. Also, in every timeline, Marty remembers the song as being written and performed by Chuck Berry.
Yeah, but when Marvin calls Chuck, he says (paraphrasing) “You know that new sound you were looking for? Listen to this!”, so it wasn’t merely the song, it was R&B which Marvin was referring.
You’re overthinking it.
All Chuck could hear over the phone is fast guitar playing. By then Marty wasn’t playing anything that coiuld be recognized as JBG. He’d gone on to the Who by then, or Hendrix. And that was all it took, I doubt Marvin could remember anything about the song, nor did he write down the lyrics. All he probably remembered was that it used “a blues riff in B” and cranked the guitar. Chuck still came up with the song.
Nothing racist, nor cringeworthy.
Now, transparent aluminum, that’s another story…
Metalist.
Back to the Future is one of the best movies of the 1980s. I can effortlessly name 20 movies that have won Best Picture that aren’t as good.
The sequels are good, but you can’t expect them to be as great as the original.
I really like the first movie. It helps that I first saw it in college, possibly at the campus movie night. The second and third are OK but they seem to be trying too hard to link to and reference the first one. And I agree with whoever said adding the whole “Nobody calls me chicken” subplot was a mistake.
Sorry, but JBG was still playing when Chuck got on the phone - Marty did his duck walk right after, for example.
Anyway, the point remains: this scene has a white teenager ‘inventing’ R&B music, & that Chuck Berry got his grooves from said white teenager
Something that started as JBG was playing, but how much could Chuck hear over a 50s phone from another room? I just rewatched it - by the point Marvin held the phone, Marty was just jamming something that only people familiar with the song could have recognized. Next it was hammer-ons and harmonics, and kicking over the amp. Plus, Chuck didn’t see duck walking on the phone.
Doesn’t look at all like what Marty did, plus, it’s a bit slower. (1958)
There’s no way the movie suggests that Marty invented that style. We (the audience) are assumed to know that Marty learned it (directly or indirectly) from Chuck Berry. The gag is that, thanks to the paradoxey magic of time travel, Chuck Berry learned it from his own alternate self.
It’s the same kind of gag that I’m sure has been used in other time travel stories, although I can’t think of any examples right now. Except: I don’t remember, but does Doc Brown get the idea for the flux capacitor from future-Doc via time-traveling Marty?
I have heard this question posed:
Why the heck is Marty friends with Doc in the first place? There is absolutely NO backstory to how they met or anything.
The first one is my favorite, but I love the trilogy as a whole.
Nope, he had come up with the idea for the flux capacitor the same day that Marty went back in time. That’s why Doc put that date in the first place. And then Marty is able to convince him that he’s from the future by telling him he knows about the flux capacitor.
[T]he history of the characters that Bob Zemeckis and I created is this…
For years, Marty was told that Doc Brown was dangerous, a crackpot, a lunatic. So, being a red-blooded American teenage boy, age 13 or 14, he decided to find out just why this guy was so dangerous. Marty snuck into Doc’s lab, and was fascinated by all the cool stuff that was there. when Doc found him there, he was delighted to find that Marty thought he was cool and accepted him for what he was. Both of them were the black sheep in their respective environments. Doc gave Marty a part-time job to help with experiments, tend to the lab, tend to the dog, etc.
C’mon guys. The intent was obvious, hell, it was the entire joke. Going into the acoustics of the available phone equipment is seriously avoiding the point.
But it definitely suggests that! “You know that new sound you’re looking for?” is not Marvin saying “Hey, this white guy kicked up the gain on my Marshall… maybe you oughtta try that”, no, it’s Marvin saying “Hey, this white guy is playing a form of music unknown to us.”
Marty McFly plays guitar in a band and has a hot girlfriend, so I an rather unconvinced he’s any sort of social pariah. Having the school principal hate you doesn’t mean much.