October is a special month, and I’m not talking about perusing the Christmas Holiday decorations in the local shop either. Celebrations will take place as Back To The Future celebrates its 30th anniversary and of course October 21st 2015 is the actual date that Doc and Marty turned up in the future. Take that internet memes!!! Some of you will recall seeing it in a cinema, others will have seen it on the movie channels or on DVD (or maybe you bought those limited edition Blu-Rays). No matter where you saw it, and I’m betting you have, it’s a magical and brilliant movie experience.
Having the engineering skills of a dead chimp never allowed me to build Doc Brown’s dog feeding gadgetry in the opening sequence, but much to the “delight” of my mother and a new carpet I tried anyway.
With my engineering aspirations in tatters, I fell in love with the time travelling DeLorean. Why didn’t our family car have those doors, and could we buy them and put them on? The idea of flux capacitors never entered my head, all I wanted to know was would our car go back in time if it went over 88 mph. Ok, there was no trip computer in the car we had and no where to punch in what year you wanted to go, but for all I knew it could have been in the cassette player (Google it). That said, the car we had at the time would have also left flaming tire marks at 88mph, but not for the time travelling reason you’d think.
Back To The Future, and this might sound sad to some of you, was a very influential movie on yours truly. I convinced myself I looked like Marty McFly as I had a similar hairdo at the time. I grew an affection that I still have today, to gilets or as my mother would call them, sleeveless jackets. Granted, my wife would send me back in time If I wore one now.
A few years ago, I got the opportunity to interview Tom Wilson, the actor who played Biff, and having Tom dress me down as Biff was possibly one of the greatest little personal moments I’ve had behind a microphone.
Back To The Future is an incredibly special film to me. It was a truly magical experience for a young kid, and even now, as a Husband and a Dad, it remains as magical as the first day I laid eyes on Marty McFly going back to 1955. Only in the last few weeks did I show the first movie to my son Cameron, and while my explanations of the space time continuum (complete with diagrams) and flux capacitors made zero impact, he was still amazed by the movie, just like his Dad.
While I knew in my own, young, heart and soul that time travel wasn’t possible, secretly I wished it was and lurking in the back of my mind, there was always a glimmer of hope that it might be possible. And you know what, there’s still a big part of me that secretly believes, with the right tools, a dodgy ebay bought flux-capacitor and a shopping center car park, that it is all possible!
Thanks for the memories!!! Here's to many more!
