This is a feature where we talk about the impact of the films in your life. This is Your Favorite Movie.
Specifically, this is Kev C*****'s favorite movie. I didn't even have to ask Kev what his favorite movie was when I asked him to discuss it. His love for this movie is well known. Of course, Kev is well known to me too; we've been friends ever since he brought his bass guitar to my parents' garage in 2005 for a jam session. I know Kev. His favorite movie was obvious.
And if you know Kev as well, then you know his favorite movie of all time is Back to the Future. You'll see me describe the movie as a "summer popcorn flick" multiple times in this interview, but I don't mean that to disparage the movie. In the immortal words of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, "it's a little more nuanced than that." We found the nuance in Back to the Future in our discussion, taking tangents to talk about sandpaper, cartoons, and tattoos in the process.
Beers were had, and the discussion in turn has about as many holes as the movie's time-travel plot does. But still, we had fun, and it's always a pleasure to experience a good friend speak so passionately about something that he or she is so obviously and intimately connected with. So, with Kev's permission, lightly edited for clarity, here is Back to the Future.
That we didn't connect Marty McFly's skateboarding to Kev's own brief stint as a Cheltenham skateboarder is a fucking travesty that you'll have to forgive me for as you read.
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Kev: I'll focus on the first movie. Back to the Future. No Back to the Future II, III, that's too long.
Joe: We can touch on those. There are a couple things that I want to talk about in the Back to the Future trilogy, and extended universe. But we'll definitely focus on your favorite movie of all time, the first one.
Kev: Sure.
Joe: So, kind of... give us a run-down? What is this movie about?
Kev: Basic plot line. 1985, Marty McFly is a high school student. He is in a band, has a girlfriend—Jennifer—and has a normal high school kid life. It is never explained in the entire Back to the Future universe how [Marty] and Doc ever became friends.
Joe: Which we'll touch on.
Kev: So, the movie starts off with Marty McFly in Doc's house. He turns on his subwoofer, starts playing guitar, the entire garage explodes—
Joe: You don't have to run through the entire movie, Kev. Just like...
Kev: [laughter]
Joe: Just very basic details. Not, like, "And then Einstein barked!"
Kev: Um, so, he is in the process of trying out for the school dance, gets rejected. Later on, goes home, gets a phone call from Doc saying "Meet me at the mall at 1:30 in the morning." Meets him at the mall, shows him a time-traveling device, which winds up being a car. It's a DeLorean, which was an awful, awful vehicle at the time. Terrible car.
Joe: It looks stylish.
Kev: It's a piece of shit vehicle.
Joe: You're saying that as a car—
Kev: As a car, it was awful. Car winds up being a time machine. Doc actually ends up being shot by terrorists, and in the scramble, Marty takes the car and winds up going back in time to 1955. In that same timeline, he winds up ruining the events which took place where his mom and dad [met] and fall in love, which in turn starts ruining the future timeline of him, his brother, and his sister, and any kind of future events. He looks up Doc, back in 1955. He explains who he is, and then they work on the process to reestablish the timeline, how the McFlys met in high school at the dance, and so on, and so on. Just to restore the timeline and the sequence of events. And once they go back to the future, back to 1985, he then sees his current timeline is restored, to a better, more efficient timeline.
Joe: So basically, two goals. One, he is trying to fix the shit that he messed up as soon as he got to the past. Secondly, once he fixes it, actually get back to the future.
Kev: Yes, that is the least amount of description I can give, without explaining it for an hour.
Joe: I did think it was funny how it was one of those movies where a character says the name of the movie to the camera, like, Doc makes a dramatic turn and says: "Marty, we need to get you... back to the future!" [laughter] I always appreciate when a movie does that. It's a little hacky, but at this point—
Kev: It pays homage to the title of the movie. Like, sometimes it'll open up with a scene showing the title of the movie, or close with a scene showing the title of the movie, or the tagline within the script—now this is the title of the movie.
Joe: So you appreciate when movies do that?
Kev: Sometimes. Not all the time. It depends on how it's played out. In this situation, I think it's played out perfectly.
Joe: What are some other things you like about Back to the Future?
Kev: I've been a huge '80s-nostalgic-type of person for as long as I can remember. The music, the styles, the cars, the way people talk, the music—
Joe: The memes.
Kev: The memes, obviously. It was a movie that was seconds away from being sent right to VHS. It was never supposed to be released to movie theaters. It was seconds away from being scrapped. Michael J. Fox wasn't even the original Marty McFly.
Joe: I guess I saw some of that footage, of the previous dude—
Kev: Eric Stoltz. He was actually one of the stoner kids from Spicoli's gang from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He's the redhead kid.
Joe: I hope nobody picks that movie for this project. I fucking hate that movie. It's fucking creepy. And that dude probably creeped me out too. Maybe that's why he creeped me out when I watched that footage.
Kev: Actually, the reason they cut him out was because there was no comedy feel. The scenes that were shot were the first 25% of the movie, the opening scenes, and the scenes where they went back in time, and met his dad at the diner. Then they scrapped it and brought in Michael J. Fox. Up to that point, all the scenes shot were shot as a suspense thriller, almost like a horror film. There was no comedy aspect, there was no lightheartedness, no joking, nothing.
Joe: The lightheartedness and charm of this movie is kind of what makes it a good summer popcorn flick. It doesn't seem to me that it's supposed to be a drama. There's dramatic elements, and definitely [in] the climatic scene with the lightning bolt, you're supposed to get excited, not necessarily laugh. But it definitely wouldn't have been as popular with Eric Stoltz, or—
Kev: I don't think there would have been a second or third movie.
Joe: So, is that why it kind of adds up to you favorite? The nostalgia aspect of it?
Kev: The nostalgia, the fact that it wasn't supposed to be what it was, and then it turned into this trilogy. It was also one of those movies that I—it was one of those movies that was always on growing up, at family functions. Where everybody's watching TV in the living room for Easter, or Christmas, or at somebody's house doing something, when we were kids. There was always a movie on. And for some reason, Back to the Future was always on. Back to the Future, Rocky, Tremors, or... some random movie. It'd wind up being Back to the Future most of the time. I just fell in love with the nostalgia, the '80s aspect. If you've seen interviews with actors who play high school students, they reference Marty McFly as their influence.
Joe: He became the archetype.
Kev: If you looks at the Spiderman movies—Toby McGuire modeled his character after Marty McFly. Tom Holland did the same thing with the new Spiderman, his mannerisms and his attitude are Marty McFly.
Joe: He's a good mix of "cool" and also, not dorky, but, like, "numskull-y" enough I guess? He's not the smartest kid.
Kev: But at moments he could be the smartest person in the room.
Joe: He's quick on his feet. I guess... we kind of mentioned the Doc and Marty relationship, and the mystery surrounding that. I feel like a lot of people, when they talk about the reasons why that is weird, they talk about the age difference, and they talk about, "how could this've come about?" What interests me is how they could've become good friends while Marty seems to be so ignorant of science.
Kev: True. You gotta think, how can a seventeen-year-old kid befriend a mid-70s, early-80s man who's considered, to the community, a quack, who works out of a garage behind a Burger King.
Joe: It's definitely weird on a lot of levels. But the science part is the one that interested me because, like, I think that would've—had Marty also been interested in time travel or whatever else Doc was getting into, it would've made more sense. But it just seems to me that Marty's using him for his big guitar amps.
Kev: It could've been that way. But even at the time, when Marty is in the garage, playing on the guitar amp, he had no knowledge whatsoever of any kind of time travel experiment. He knew nothing about it.
Joe: Which is the part that doesn't make sense to me. Because, if you're friends with Doc, wouldn't you be invested in what he's invested in? What he's been invested in for the past 30 years?
Kev: ...But he's been invested in other projects. You're never told that. [You're] never given any information as to how they met, what other projects they worked on. The movie just starts, the relationship is just solidified by the opening scene.
Joe: Just, Marty seems wholly uninterested in the scientific aspect of it! At no point, besides plugging into a big-ass guitar amp, does he give a shit about how the science works. Which I think—
Kev: Or he could've just been a kid that had no friends. And he... maybe he started dog-walking for him—
Joe: [laughter]
Kev: —and stumbled upon a few different experiments...
Joe: Yeah! [laughter] That might actually be the most legitimate explanation. Hypothetically dog-walking.
Kev: And he just kinda walked into his house one day to pick up the dog, and saw the big amp, and said, "Hey, I'm gonna hang around this guy for a while, until I can eventually play on this thing and blow his garage up."
Joe: And Doc trusts his dog-walker so much that he's willing to a time-traveling device to him?!
Kev: Yes.
Joe: Even though Marty doesn't seem to grasp that it was actually time travel until he goes back in time?!
Kev: And they also don't seem to grasp the idea of containing nuclear-grade plutonium in 1985.
Joe: Do you think that part held up? The very generic "Libyans"? With the machine guns and the turbans?
Kev: Now? No. If something was made now [like that], it wouldn't even be released straight to DVD. Something like that would never be allowed to be made. The whole time travel aspect, though, you see a ton of movies like that now. But the way that—different things you see in the movie, not even just the whole Libyan situation, where they have the guy shooting a bazooka out of the top of a VW bus—
Joe: A bazooka! [laughter]
Kev: They had the whole racial situation with the band in the high school. Marvin Berry and the Starlighters. Actually, that scene [has] one of my favorite lines. They're chasing Marty McFly through the whole school, and he winds up getting locked in the band's trunk of their car by Biff's crew. And the band is all black men, and the white men are all Biff's crew, and they say racist stuff—
Joe: Oh jeez, they do! They drop the S-bomb.
Kev: Yeah, but after that, once they break Marty out of the trunk, the lead singer and guitarist [had] sliced his hand open, he can't play guitar anymore. And after that is one of my favorite lines. Because they [can't] play music anymore, Marty goes up to them and says, "Hey guys, you gotta start playing more," and they say the show's cancelled because he can't use his hand anymore, because of the screwdriver. And the line he says is: "You have to start playing music. If there's no music, they can't dance; if they can't dance, they can't kiss; if they don't kiss, they can't fall in love, and I'm history!" So that whole sentence puts together the sequence, what happened, how they met, what happened after that. His whole being afterward. His brother's being. His sister's being. You can think about different times in history, American history or the history of life in general. Your parents and how they met, some story about when they were kids. If something didn't happen, would they have met? Would you even exist now?
Joe: Time is fragile.
Kev: Time is fragile.
Joe: Do you feel like the plot holes regarding the time travel in the movie ever get in the way—?
Kev: Oh, the plot holes are awful. But it's just a cool movie. When you get a situation like that, even when you think about movies now, you start thinking, "Oh, that's not correct, that's not appropriate, that'll never make sense." It kind of ruins the feel of the movie.
Joe: I definitely understand. It's definitely been a common theme with the interviews so far—you can't really think about it too much. Which is kind of antithetical to the purpose of this project, because I'm thinking about these movies too much.
Kev: But now you're interviewing people who appreciate the movies more than someone who watches them and thinks about them too much.
Joe: But I'm curious as to whether the holes in the twisting of the timelines has ever affected your appreciation of the movie. Because that's something that bothers me a little bit.
Kev: It didn't until the second movie. I thought the first movie was done perfectly. I don't think the plot holes in the first movie were very substantial. I didn't think there were really any plot holes until we got to the second movie, going back and forth through time. Then the third movie was... a complete wash.
Joe: A western.
Kev: But the first movie made sense, when he went back in time. The specific situation where his father met her for the first time was the main situation that they disrupted. It lead to a chain of events. That's the only plotline you really have to know.
Joe: Are you of the opinion that Marty created alternate timelines through whatever he did? Even just going back through time, [that] it created alternate timelines? Or do you think time is a little more inflexible?
Kev: You can think that, but if you saw the second movie, you can see why it wouldn't create an alternate timeline. Obviously, no one's ever done time travel before, so you can't really predict how time travel is supposed to work. But in the second movie...
Joe: They're not arguing for alternate timelines, they're changing time in very specific ways.
Kev: They are changing one universal timeline.
Joe: I agree that there has to be a certain amount of leeway in this type of movie. If there was actual time travel, and Marty made any sort of move that affected the timeline that much that his parents weren't going to hook up, at any point, then he should've ceased to exist at that point. If there was actual time travel.
Kev: Right, but there's no way to gauge how it would actually work.
Joe: The theories of time travel though. I used to think about time travel a lot because Harry Potter dealt with it as well. Prisoner of Azkaban has a very different type of time travel than Back to the Future, in that, Back to the Future, you go back in time, you affect certain things, and the future changes because of it. Whereas, in Harry Potter, when you go back in time, the very act of going back in time has always happened. So when they go back in time to save Buckbeak, before they even go back in time, Buckbeak was already being saved by the Harry that went back in time. So everything's happening at the same time, it's just a loop in the timeline, where there's two of the same person at the same time... Which is not how it is in Back to the Future. Back to the Future, they're changing time. Which, I guess I always wondered whether there was an alternate timeline, where Marty didn't exist, now that he's gone back and split the time—
Kev: [burps]
Joe: ...or, if the things he changes creates the one and only timeline.
Kev: Yes and no. In the second movie, the whole thing with the sports almanac comes into play, Biff gets a hold of that, and then the entire future changes. There are actions affecting a single timeline. But, in the movie, they also actively go back in time to change that same timeline. Back to what it was prior. So the whole name, Back to the Future, everything needs to change back to what it was before.
Joe: Which, like, plot holes aside, I just think Back to the Future II is so cool, just how they're dealing with three different timelines, and how they're twisting each one.
Kev: It was also cool to be alive in the time they thought—
Joe: 2015?
Kev: In 1985, they thought 2015 was going to be an absolutely insane world, where our fashion was wearing plastic Power Ranger outfits and face paint.
Joe: What did you do that day?
Kev: ...I went to the movie.
Joe: October 15th?
Kev: October 15th.
Joe: Did everybody cheer when they showed the date?
Kev: Yeah, we showed up in outfits and everything.
Joe: [laughter]
Kev: Being alive to see what people thought, that there were going to be cars flying around, people with computer chips in their brains—
Joe: Hoverboards.
Kev: And it's crazy to think that we're not very far from what 1985 was.
Joe: Talking about things that don't really hold up, do you feel like—how do you feel about Biff trying to rape Marty's mom?
Kev: I don't think it's addressed enough. I think that it should have been...
Joe: He's the villain, so...
Kev: He's a complete villain, but at the same time, I don't think that situation was given the severity that it should've been given.
Joe: In fact, I'd argue [more strongly in that way]. It was dealt with very lightly, [seeing as] Marty's plan was to... also act like he was going to rape his mother? That was the plan!
Kev: Where his father was supposed to punch him in the face, but instead, Biff showed up ahead of time and legitimately tried to rape his mother. Which... was a lot more of a severe situation. And now, you fast forward to the new 1985, where Biff is now washing their cars in the driveway... but still not a convicted rapist. Kind of just roaming the streets, doing what he wants.
Joe: Speaking of all that... how hard is it for you not to be attracted to your mom? I can't imagine it's as hard as Marty made it out to be. Like, I get it, when [he] wakes up, in her bedroom, like, "Oh shit, my mom's attractive."
Kev: He wasn't attracted—
Joe: He struggled with that the whole movie!
Kev: He wasn't attracted to his mom, because he knew his mom.
Joe: He would, like... every time she would obviously come on to him, he would, like, stutter like a teenage boy.
Kev: Because he couldn't just [come] right out and say, "Leave me alone, I'm your son."
Joe: Well, he could say, "Leave me alone, blank blank blank," with whatever reason. But he kind of—not strung her along, but refused to... I just felt like Michael J. Fox played it like he was suppressing a boner the entire movie.
Kev: ...Yeah. True.
Joe: [laughter] Is there any porn based on Back to the Future?
Kev: Yes.
Joe: You've looked it up.
Kev: Yes.
Joe: You've jerked off to it.
Kev: No. It was strictly for research purposes.
Joe: [laughter]
Kev: But there is a Funny or Die skit about Marty McFly going back in time and actually having sex with his mom, and keeps creating new timelines and reproducing himself. He is his own father. So there's a constantly revolving timeline of Marty McFly going back, having sex with his mom, and creating more Marty McFlys.
Joe: That's pretty funny.
Kev: I thought it was a funny skit.
Joe: Have you ever seen the cartoon that was kind of the basis for Rick and Morty? "Doc and Mharti"? Where it kind of comments on Doc and Marty's weird relationship.
Kev: You mean Rick and Morty comments on Doc and Marty's relationship?
Joe: Originally, that's what it was based on.
Kev: When Rick and Morty first came out, the first though I had when seeing the trailer was, "That's Doc and Marty."
Joe: But there was an original video years before Rick and Morty came out that was called "Doc and Mharti," that was the same creator. It involves... Mharti sucking Doc's dick. In a bunch of timelines. You should watch it.
Kev: I kind of don't want to watch it now.
Joe: I will embed it below these words!
Kev: Please don't.
[Editor's note: This version is the slightly NSFW version, safe enough for YouTube I guess. If you want the full NSFW version complete with close-ups of all kinds of genitalia, click HERE.]
Joe: Have you ever seen the [Back to the Future] animated series?
Kev: No, but I've played the video game, I've read the comic books...
Joe: I didn't know there was an animated series. Apparently it ran for two 13-episode seasons.
Kev: When?
Joe: Early '90s? It was a cartoon.
Kev: It's probably shit.
Joe: Apparently they just time-travel to a different time period every episode.
Kev: That's what the comic books are.
Joe: And also there was an interlude in each episode where Bill Nye the Science Guy—in his first TV appearance—would conduct a science experiment. In lieu of Doc.
Kev: See, in that situation, that was something that was made after the third movie, when it became a cult following. Something like that, once you watch the first one, and maybe the second one, I think at that point you should just leave it alone. It is what it is, just leave it as is. There's no need to make a TV show about it. People are saying they should make a Back to the Future IV.
Joe: What would that be about? If you were in charge?
Kev: It would probably follow Marty and Jennifer and their kids, [who] would be the same age as Marty in Back to the Future I. High school age. And, in an alternate universe, Doc Brown coming back. Pretty much a remake of Back to the Future I, but with Doc going into the future with Marty and Jennifer's kids. Something that you keep simple. Not too complicated.
Joe: See, I would do the opposite. I feel like I would try to make it as complicated as possible.
Kev: That's where you lose your audience.
Joe: Michael J. Fox, as he is now, with Parkinson's—that's what happens to Marty McFly, he has Parkinson's. And he... misses the old days? So he steals Doc's old car—Doc's been dead—steals Doc's old car, and goes back to relive the old days. And goes to back to Back to the Future II, and... steals the almanac from the other Martys and Biffs. And Doc's trying to stop him.
Kev: So you turn Marty into, basically, the villain.
Joe: No! He's just doing it for shits and giggles.
Kev: Then there's no meaning behind it. Then he's doing it just to do it.
Joe: If there's a fourth movie, then there's no meaning behind it [anyway].
Kev: Exactly, so why—
Joe: So you don't want a fourth movie?
Kev: I don't want a fourth movie. There was no reason to have a third movie.
Joe: You don't like the third movie?
Kev: The third movie was awful.
Joe: Ya know what the trilogy kind of reminds me of? Another trilogy. The Human Centipede trilogy.
Kev: ...Get the fuck out of here.
Joe: In that the second movie comments on the first movie, and the third movie's this whole fucking different thing, that wasn't as important.
Kev: ...Uh huh.
Joe: Because the second Human Centipede, the villain is a big fan of the first movie, and he wants to recreate the first movie, so he invites the actresses from the first movie to his twelve-person human centipede.
Kev: Isn't this the movie where he jerks off with sandpaper?
Joe: I forgot about that part.
Kev: You would always talk about that part.
Joe: ...I guess I blocked that out of my memory.
Kev: ALRIGHT. Back to Back to the Future.
Joe: I'm just saying, they are similarly structured—
Kev: I don't remember Marty McFly ever jerking off with sandpaper.
Joe: If you have unlimited time and unlimited penises, you can do whatever you want with it.
Kev: ...
Joe: How do you feel about the creators of Back to the Future making the statement that Biff was modeled somewhat after our orange loofah president?
Kev: I think it was and is still a perfect comparison. How [Biff] was in 1955 and 1985 was literally the exact model of donald trump.
Joe: Everything's there! The rape—
Kev: —power hungry, rape, complete misogynist, all about himself, builds a nonsense, gaudy hotel casino right in the middle of town—
Joe: —his riches are a scam, he didn't earn it. So I agree with you that the comparison's tight. Do you think they actually modeled Biff after 1985 trump? Or do you think—
Kev: No, they did.
Joe: They said that. So you believe them?
Kev: It was before whatever interview...
Joe: I'm a little skeptical, that that wasn't known until trump started running for president. He didn't say in 1985, "the villain is modeled after donald trump, real estate mogul." They said that in 2015, like, "Oh shit, the racist running for president..." I'm not saying the comparison's bad. The comparison's very good. I'm just saying that I'm skeptical. That, ya know, the creators of Back to the Future [were] using the news cycle to talk about the movie a little more. I get it, and I think that trump is Biff and Biff is trump, and fuck both of them, but... I was just curious. So obviously you believe them.
Kev: I 100% believe it was a thing back then.
Joe: Okay.
Kev: The whole—these were underlying thoughts back then, the whole racial thing and the whole his being a supposed rapist was a factor in deciding that. But the main reason that they decided to choose that image was because of the whole real estate mogul, money-hotel-casino, he dressed the same exact style. They made him look the exact same way. His attitude was the exact same way. They modeled him after donald trump.
Joe: Okay... I suppose you've convinced me. Okay, a couple other random things. Do you believe—though this isn't the first movie, this is a the third one—do you believe the scene that Marty was dragged around with the noose around his neck, that that contributed to his Parkinson's?
Kev: No. That had to be a stunt double.
Joe: I think that was him.
Kev: I haven't done research. I would assume that that was a double being dragged by a horse.
Joe: I dunno. I agree with you that you should probably be skeptical. We actually talked about this last week with The Wizard of Oz, how some people say that the fact that Judy Garland had to wear a tight corset "contributed to her pill addiction." But this is something that people say, that the mishap, like actually choking during the horse-dragging scene contributed to him getting Parkinson's.
Kev: Uh... I mean, I would say that the time travel probably contributed to his Parkinson's disease.
Joe: ...
Kev: Or the plutonium.
Joe: [laughter]. Or getting shot at by a Libyan man. What's up with the—I haven't watched the second movie in a while, so I'm not sure if they delve into this a little more—the principal of the school being so against the McFly family? Saying "no McFly ever amounted to anything." It's kind of like a Stand by Me situation. Like, the town... not seeing his worth because of his family?
Kev: There's no real explanation behind that, other than the principal could just be viewed as very stern or just... an asshole? But if you wanna go back as far as the third movie [does], with the McFlys coming to America, and they're Irish settlers in the West, explaining the situation with Martin J. Fly who got stabbed in a saloon in North Carolina [Editor's note: actually Nevada. Sorry Drew.]. How in 1955, Marty McFly's dad was labeled a "slacker" because he was an outcast, he was a nerd, he didn't have any friends, he was pretty much off the radar. There's no real explanation why people outcast the family as a whole.
Joe: It was just bizarre to me. I guess they just wanted a dickish character...
Kev: I'd connect that to—it can be one of two things. There's an actual underlying story behind why, or it's just the disciplinarian being a disciplinarian. When I went to school, some of the teachers were so old that they had [had] my dad. And they knew who I was, and they'd say the same things, "Oh, you're just like your father, you guys act the same," or "You're going to be a troublemaker too!"
Joe: Were they serious? They expected you to be a troublemaker based on that?
Kev: Oh yeah. Just because of what my dad—and my sister was in school before I was... But there was no real explanation.
Joe: Working in a profession [in which] you're not supposed to pre-judge children based on outlying factors like that. It caught me off guard. I know that it was played for humor...
Kev: You gotta think to that the humor from 30 years ago is not that the humor that is going to make sense to a lot of people now, or be appropriate for a lot of people now.
Joe: True. Yeah... the rape scenes...
Kev: I don't think a lot of people had rape humor then. Or now.
Joe: Okay so, in talking about this, do you feel like there is some sort of lesson or moral to be derived from Back to the Future?
Kev: It really makes you think... I connected with this movie on a personal level months ago after my uncle died. My uncle was best friends with my dad. If my uncle and my dad were never best friends, my dad would've never met my mom. If my dad never met my mom, they would've never gotten married, and me and my sister would've never existed. So if you think about situations in your life, or anyone reading this thinks about situations in their own parents' lives, when they were being brought up. Not even just before they were born or their parenting situation, but even you yourself growing up. If you think about different aspects of your life, and different moments of your life, that if you did something different, you would be living in a completely different timeline. So, the movie really shows you the value of certain moments in your life. Of course, and it's a great movie. There's so many cool things about it. It's a fictional movie, but it also shows you how different moments in the past will affect the rest of your life.
Joe: The impact of the small choices that we make.
Kev: No matter how small of a situation it is, or how major of an issue it might be. Something [as] simple as someone saying hello to you on the street, or you saying hello to somebody else, it could alter a timeline.
Joe: ...Were you thinking about all this when you got your tattoo?
Kev: No.
Joe: [laughter]
Kev: That was a complete spur of the moment situation.
Joe: Spur of the moment with other people.
Kev: Yeah. Me, Mike L*****, Mike P****, and Sean G****** were all sitting around one day, and just decided to "Hey, we should all get a tattoo together." And really, there was little thought behind it. We all liked Back to the Future, so our friend Mike P**** said, "Let's get '88 MPH' tattooed." We all agreed, and I think we made this decision within an hour.
Joe: [laughter]
Kev: And the next day we're sitting in the tattoo shop, all of getting the tattoo together.
Joe: Does it make you consider the movie more than you would've normally?
Kev: It makes me consider it a lot more. Knowing that that movie brought me an entire different group of friends. [I mean,] I met them long before we made that connection, but, knowing that, when I look at it, I think about the four of us. It had been one of my favorite movies before I met them. Plus, you can see all the stuff I have up there, the posters on the wall, T-shirts, I have a bunch of stuff in my closet, the whole newspaper from the second [movie], the almanac, a bunch of different things from the movies.
Joe: I definitely think there's something to be said about enjoying a movie that makes you think about the day-to-day moments of your life. That the movie itself is less than two hours, but for that to be in the back of your mind sometimes, when you think about this thing or that thing, "is this going to affect me positively or negatively?" I think for a summer popcorn flick, it's pretty a pretty cool idea. Just for a piece of art, no matter how juvenile sometimes, rapey sometimes, plot-hole-y sometimes—
Kev: —all the time.
Joe: Am I correct in saying that this movie affects your life in positive ways?
Kev: Absolutely. Like we said, it's not one of those serious movies, like a suspense thriller. It's a cool movie that has the underlying themes that make you think how different moments of your past and today's life will affect your life in the future. Or how situations can impact your life later on.
Joe: Almost like it's nostalgia on two different levels. One, there's the nostalgia for the time in your own personal youth when you watched this, and two, it's nostalgia for different times in your life and, ya know, the movie becomes the impetus for making you think about those times, even though they themselves had nothing to do with Back to the Future.
Kev: And it's got a great soundtrack!
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