HOW WELL DID MICHAEL J. FOX PLAY GUITAR IN “BACK TO THE FUTURE”?

I stumbled across this video today and thought that it was kind of cool and funny. We always see actors pretending to play instruments in movies and TV shows and their hands are usually out of sight so you can’t see how badly they are “playing”. You can’t always do that or do a stand-in shot of someone else’s hands playing during a close-up. I’ve always wondered how they did it in a scene without someone cracking up over how badly the actor would pantomime the song. One of the more famous music scenes in movie history is from the sci-fi classic “Back To The Future”. Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox has to help the band finish the dance so his mom and dad kiss thus making him exist. After strumming along to Earth Angel he tears it up by playing the Chuck Berry classic Johnny B. Good. To the layman it looked like a pretty good impression, but what about someone who is well versed in guitar playing who can see the notes he’s playing and notice if they’re right or wrong? With high definition video and the ability to stop the film and see almost exactly where his hands are it can be broken down. I thought this was a fun way of doing that by actually playing over the scene where you can see Fox strumming along. Bradley Hall says that Fox is pretty darn close to what it should be with what we hear during the film. Take a look and listen and see if you agree with him.