WASHINGTON – Hello, my name is Hillary Clinton and the Studio Exec, a very close friend of my husband, has asked my if I will choose my favorite film and write about.
I suppose the first thing I have to say is that it is not Black Hawk Down; and it isn’t You’ve Got Mail. So let’s nip that rumor in the bud right away. No, my favorite film has to be Back to the Future. I just think the film is charming. Marty McFly, played by the wonderful Michael J. Fox, is just an average school kid who loves skateboarding, playing his guitar and listening to top youth music band Huey Lewis and the News. However, when he is sent back in time by Doc Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd who I already loved from Taxi, he inadvertently prevents his mother and father from meeting. Somehow he must arrange their first kiss otherwise he will cease to exist.
Back to the Future is undoubtedly the finest time travel movie ever made. I think what I love about it is that it shows that you can escape the past and you don’t have to be beholden to mistakes you might have made a long time ago. There is something exhilarating in seeing George McFly, Marty’s father, becoming a different person under his son’s tutelage. What if the fifties could learn from the eighties? the film seems to ask. In my own situation, sure there are mistakes I wish I could rectify that would change who I am today, but at the same time I am who I am because of the road that brought me here.
It’s also interesting to see how prescient the film is. Middle Eastern terrorists are a risk, but so is the local bully Biff. Technology is amazing with flying cars predicted as well and here we are and we almost have them. So the lesson seems to be you can go back in time, tinker a little bit and in that way fix the present. And I am the candidate who best represents that idea.