Dear Messrs. Zemeckis and Spielberg:
I understand that you are, respectively, the director and producer of the 1985 comedy/sci-fi film Back to the Future. I write to praise this film's overlooked qualities.
As observed in by the Steve Miller Band in 1976's "Fly Like an Eagle," our universe's physics prevent time from doing anything but slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future. But not all observers agree with the Mr. Miller's figuratively-and-literally "funky" theory. Nobel laureate Albert Einstein was so seduced by relativity that he imagined an ever-changing fourth dimension unconstrained by the idiot second hands of stopwatches and egg timers. Still, Einstein was a droll German Jew who played the violin and refused to purchase an Afro pic - his scientific work, while notable, cannot compete with the grandiose mythological/metaphysical architecture of Back to the Future trilogy, animated series, and theme park rides which examine:
1. the Oedipus complex (in Marty McFly's fraught romantic relationship with his unsuspecting mother Lorraine)
2. the Middle East peace process (in Doc Brown's near-assassination by Libyan terrorists - terrorists whose plutonium he steals to fuel his DeLorean time machine's flux capacitor in a shocking foreshadowing of post-9/11 "dirty bombs")
3. Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy (in the film's uniquely American message - "if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything" - voiced by George McFly when, in a 1985 improved by his son Marty's misadventures in 1955, he publishes his first novel)
4. Nietzsche's Will to Power (in Goldie Wilson's meteoric rise from "colored" soda jerk to prominent African-American Mayor of Hill Valley, a character arc that prefigures Barack Obama's rise to the Presidency)
5. a post-Tony Hawk vision of skateboarding
Robert and Steven (may I call you Robert and Steven?): in your illustrious, post-Back to the Future careers, you produced films which synthesized the great upheavals of the 20th century in the trials and tribulations of ordinary individuals (I refer to 1993's Schindler's List, 1994's Forrest Gump, and 1998's Saving Private Ryan). While these films earned you Academy Awards, their aesthetics are telegraphed - they betray your presumptuous determination to make grand statements about capital-H History. As a charismatic hero, the unassuming Marty McFly is more evolved than the ingratiating Oskar Schindler, Forrest Gump, and Private James Ryan. McFly, a bumbling teen, has no grandiose plans to obviate the Holocaust, play ping-pong in China and pow-wow with Presidents, or lead "a good life" after narrowly escaping death on the beaches of Normandy. Instead, McFly merely wishes to purchase a 4 x 4 motor vehicle, make out with his girlfriend, play Van Halen-inspired rock and roll music, and elude the cruel paradoxes of time travel. When Marty unwittingly stumbles upon heady themes (Oedipus, the Will to Power, etc.), the intersection of high and low art is sublime. From a deceptively childish "turd narrative," Marty extracts innumerable diamonds - Big Ideas about Humans and Humankind.
That is cinema!
Yours in struggle,
Edie Sedgwick
Edie Sedgwick, who is on tour, plays Little Rock, Arkansas tonight.
Previously in Misc/Awesome:
- 12/28: Terrible Boyfriend/ Girlfriend Generator.
- 12/1: The John Waters Advent Calendar-it starts today
- 11/28: It Chooses You: All I Want for Christmas is Everything from Miranda July's Pop-Up Shop
- 11/3: Things I'd Move to Minnesota For
- 9/6: PHOTOS: Maloof $$ Money Cup
- 9/2: PHOTOS: Chantilly Model Train Show
- 9/1: Libby's List: 5 Things I Want Right Now...
- 8/22: PHOTOS: Best Friends Day
- 8/10: PHOTOS: Lawn Mover Racing, Eastern Seaboard Regionals @ Bowles Farm
- 7/26: Special List: Things the BYGays Want Now That We Can Marry In DC (and NY!)
God loves a cheerful giver.
Ed, I understand that you strive to appear clever and advanced. This is not working. No, don't tell me your letters are "deliberately" boring. I won't have that.