For HeaveMedia.com, I recently had to answer the question: What is your favorite use of a song in a film?

My answer:

No one can forget the good times that were 1985.  Reagan reigned with a Hollywood-fist, we still believed those guys in Depeche Mode were straight, and Michael J. Fox not only taught us how to make-out with your mom, but he also tore a hole in the space-time continuum to make his own family more affluent while single-handedly stealing the rights to “rock-n-roll” from Chuck Berry and insulting African Americans everywhere.

That’s why “Johnny B. Goode” is my favorite use of a pop song in a movie.  First off, no one can deny the absolute hilarity of Fox’s absurdly terrible lip syncing to Mark Campbell’s vocals.  McFly is rocking what can only amount to the prime-time hipster attire, except he does it well (take note all you booty-shaking house-partiers and American Apparel addicts).  The icing on the cake, however, is not the way in which Marty McFly has set into motion his own good fortune, effectively going against the single rule for traveling in the past (“don’t interfere”) and it’s not when he goes into a convulsion and rips apart a solo that Slayer would be proud of.  No, it’s the brilliance of writer/director Robert Zemeckis and his idea to take “Marvin Berry” of the original band at the dance and have him call his cousin, “Chuck (Berry),” to exclaim, “You know that sound you’ve been looking for?  Well, listen to this!”  Nevermind the decades of rock and roll roots that African Americans had laid down.  Never mind Chuck Berry’s status as a legend.  Mr. Zemeckis, you and your Hollywood blockbuster can throw all that to the wind.  Indeed, it SHOULD be an affluent white teen from Southern California who invents one of the greatest cultural movements in history: Rock And Roll.

All sarcasm aside, it’s a great scene, one of the best pop songs of all time, and an amazingly fun and clever movie all-around.

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