The BrokeBoy Manifesto, an introduction

What if George McFly never became a bestselling author?

BrokeBoys should be proud, not sad

Eccentric actor Crispin Glover once mentioned something in a radio interview that caught my attention, because it uncannily mirrored by own sentiments on the denouement of that seminal 80s sci-fi classic, Back to the Future.

The movie concludes with Marty McFly returning from the past to 1985 (which, at the time of the making of the movie, was the present), to find that his formerly financially struggling family are now successful, stylishly-dressed, attractive yuppies. In place of the cramped little bungalow which had once stood at their address, there now sits a luxurious McMansion. And the odious bully Biff Tannen, who had previously dominated and habitually humiliated Marty’s father George, now behaves in a servile manner towards Marty; because George learned to stand up to Biff in the newly-restructured past, the tables have turned between the two men.

Leaving aside all of the irksome logical impossibilities involved in a “going back in time and changing history” storyline, the viewer is nevertheless left with a sense that everything has improved. George was confident enough to follow his dream of being a science-fiction writer, and has become a world-famous author, with all of the attendant perks. And Marty, thanks to his family’s newfound wealth, has been given a brand new snazzy car.

Sounds perfect, right? But Glover, who gave George McFly all of his inimitable and endearingly nerdy quirks, actually had a problem with the ending, one that he wasn’t shy about expressing to director Robert Zemeckis.

“I thought it was not a good idea for our characters to have a monetary reward,” Glover revealed on the “Opie and Anthony” show on Sirius Radio, “because it basically makes the moral of the film that money equals happiness… I was arguing that the characters (George and his wife Lorraine) should be in love, and the love should be the reward.”

Perhaps Glover had been overly-insistent on this point, even to the point of calling it “propaganda” in favor of materialism, that it created a rift between himself and the director and producers of the movie, leading to him not being invited back for the sequels, in spite of the fact that his character was a fan favorite. “Zemeckis got really mad at me,” Glover admitted in the same interview.

Still, I remember thinking exactly the same thing as Glover the first time I saw Back to the Future. I recall the “feelgood” aspects of the film’s conclusion (indeed, the very term “feelgood movie” was coined in the 80s), and though I, like everyone else, left the theater smiling, that very point, articulated by Crispin Glover many years later, stuck in my craw. Why was newfound wealth being associated with happiness and righteousness?

Of course, no one would deny the appeal of prosperity, but the notion that “good guys wind up rich” was, and is, dubious. More often than not, the good guys are able to carve out a niche for themselves, where they succeed after a fashion, but perhaps not in what would be called a “worldly” way.

What if George McFly had wound up composing science fiction novels which were imaginative and innovative, but failed to break into “bestseller” range? Meaning that he wouldn’t be able to quit his day job, since he was only able to cultivate a “cult” or “niche” market of readers. Thus, instead of transforming into the sort of man who can buy his wife Lorraine jewelry and his son Marty a sportscar, he would likely remain at roughly the same socioeconomic level as he had in his previous 80s incarnation before Marty travelled to the past and altered the present.

If such had been the outcome of George’s story, would it have amounted to less of a triumph for him? He still would have stood up to Biff, and gotten over his fear of pursuing his dream. He would still be exercising his God-given creative prowess to create art. Perhaps Lorraine, the girl he wooed by calling her “his density,” would have even wound up divorcing him, since he wasn’t proving to be enough of a “provider,” but that would still not alter the fact that he set out to fulfill his artistic potential… And he would still be the better for it.

Such is the essence of the “BrokeBoy” philosophy, upon which I shall dilate in greater detail in these virtual pages.

Andy Nowicki is the author of several books, most recently The Insurrectionist and Muze. Visit his Youtube channel.