For most, time travel movies provide great, escapist fun. For others, they’re just minefields of aggravating anachronisms.
In his new memoir about the making of the 1985 sci-fi comedy classic Back to the Future — Future Boy, released on Tuesday — star Michael J. Fox breaks the narrative at multiple points to sing the praises of the film’s enduringly loyal fans. But he’s aware that the flip side of close and attentive watching is scrutiny of even the film’s most minor mistakes.
Case in point, the iconic scene in which Fox’s time-traveling teenager Marty McFly fills in for the injured guitarist in a 1955 prom band and launches into rocking renditions of “Earth Angel” and “Johnny B. Goode,” channeling pioneering rock legend Chuck Berry.
“To play ‘Johnny B. Goode,’ Marty borrowed Marvin Berry’s Gibson ES-Â345, a guitar first introduced in 1958 - three years after the 1955 scene in the movie,” Fox explains, calling the goof “a temporal inconsistency that guitar aficionados and Back to the Future fans have pointed out again and again.”
Fox writes, “Granted, this is noteworthy only for the thousands of Future heads who clock every detail in the movie and parse every quirk in the timeline continuum.”
But staying real, a film like Back to the Future, which continues to screen at theaters across the country on every anniversary and for no special reason at all, which has inspired fan conventions entirely dedicated to the film, and which continues to sell merchandise like a newly released blockbuster, the fanbase is comprised of more than a few obsessives.
Fox clarifies that where the “Johnny B. Goode” guitar is concerned, “there’s no cinematic Easter egg intended here -Â the film’s art department simply picked the ES-Â345 because it evoked the iconic wine-red axe that Chuck Berry famously duckwalked across stages all over the world.”
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Fox is right — guitar heads and Future devotees alike have taken note of the production flub, even pointing out that like the ES-345, Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” wouldn’t be released until 1958. It would track that Marty knows the tune, coming from 1985, but how would his 1955 backing band know to accompany him on a song that wasn’t yet written?
In any case, Fox notes that “both the ’55 and ’58 versions of the Gibson electric are rare and beautiful instruments; for me, it makes little difference which I played. I’ve always loved the Gibson E line: big, imposing guitars yet hollow-Âbodied and therefore lightweight. Even a little guy like yours truly could sling ’em and fling ’em and still make ’em sing.”
Michael J. Fox playing a Gibson ES-345 in ‘Back to the Future’.
Universal/GettyÂ
It’s an exciting time to be someone who hyperfixates on this particular Back to the Future flub.
In June, Gibson announced a global search for the guitar that Marty plays in the film, which Fox notes in Future Boy, “In the decades since the movie’s release, the guitar used in ‘Johnny B. Goode’ has grown more important for what it isn’t than what it is. What it isn’t is available— which is to say, it’s missing.”
In its announcement, the instrument-maker explained that “during the making of the sequel to the film, the filmmakers went to look for the guitar, and it was nowhere to be found. Now, music fans worldwide have the chance to help Gibson find the most important guitar in cinema history.” Fox and several of his costars, including Lea Thompson and Christopher Lloyd, added their voices to the company’s plea, encouraging fans to visit www.losttothefuture.com with any tips.