Michael J. Fox imagined the perfect dance scene for Back to the future And he made sure he went his way.
The scene in question comes when his character Marty is forced onto the stage of a school dance where he is performing a Chuck Berry song. Johnny B. Goode.
And in his new memoir about the making of the film, titled Future boyFox revealed that the original script included dances in the style of Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger but he scrapped that.
“I worked harder on the ‘Johnny B. Goode’ scene than any other part of the movie,” he wrote of “my favorite scene in the movie.”
The original reads: “Marty starts walking around gleefully like Little Richard. Marty takes off his sports coat and throws it into the crowd. Now, Marty opens his shirt and does some Elvis moves in the tub! The girls scream. Marty’s moves become Mick Jagger, then take on Michael Jackson style.”
However, the actor changed pretty much the entire sequence.
“I gave up the idea of imitating Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger (not the guitarists!) and replaced them with an appreciation of my rock guitar gods,” he said.
He choreographed the movements with the help of choreographer Brad Jeffries.
Fox broke down the movements in the memoir as follows: “As the song progresses, Marty holds the guitar low and drops to his knees without missing a string (Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin); raises the guitar above the back of his head (Jimi Hendrix); and performs the Pete Townshend trifecta.”
“Heavy right-hand percussion, in homage to Eddie Van Halen,” Michael J. Fox added, and finally, “he added a little Slash (Guns N’ Roses), with a rumbling slide down the length of the E string.