40 years later, Michael J. Fox looks back on ‘Back to the Future’
NEW YORK: Michael J. Fox has been living with “Back to the Future” for a long time.
“I’ll be on the street and some kid will go, ‘There’s Marty McFly!’” Fox says. “No, this is an old man.”
It’s been 40 years since “Back to the Future” debuted in theaters, but neither time, nor Parkinson’s disease has done much, regardless of what he says, to diminish Fox’s boyish good nature. For Fox, traveling through time with “Back to the Future” has been part of life. It’s the film that strapped a flux capacitor to his career and has, ever since, stayed in his rear view.
“Sometimes I look at it and think about my family,” recent interview by Zoom from his apartment in New York. “I think about how I have a 37-year-old son who wasn’t born yet. It’s a long time ago.”
On Friday, “Back to the Future” is, again, back in theaters. The anniversary celebration also includes a new 4K trilogy gift set that comes complete with an OUTATIME license plate. Fox, himself, has just released “Future Boy: ‘Back to the Future’ and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum,” a book he penned with Nelle FortenberryBut what was once so firmly lodged in the space-time continuum has, over the years, turned curiously timeless. Watch “Back to the Future” now and you might be astonished at how effects-free most of it is, despite its director’s predilection for pushing film technology. Instead, “Back to the Future” conjures its magic with a DeLorean, some Calvin Klein briefs and its most special effect: Christopher Lloyd’s eyebrows.
“The distance between now and 1985 is greater than the distance between 1985 and 1955,” Fox says. “In a way, that makes it more accessible. People aren’t locked into their time period. They’re not saying: This is real, this isn’t real. It’s all fantasy.”But what most definitely hasn’t aged is Fox’s live wire performance in the original. His Marty McFly is like the Everykid ur-text: a seminal, guitar-playing, big-screen teenager trying to keep his family together.Fox was 24 at the time of the film’s making. He was thrown into the role while in the midst of playing Keaton on “Family Ties.” “Back to the Future” famously began with Eric Stoltz in the part, but Stoltz was fired after several weeks of shooting. Fox, stepping right onto the set, brought a more screwball energy.
“No time for neurosis. No time for self-indulgent bulls—,” Fox says. “I didn’t have time to investigate what happened with Eric. I had no rehearsal. I had no pep talk. I just showed up and then I was in a parking lot in the City of Industry. It’s all lit for days, this parking lot. It’s wet, with pockets of streaky Fox had no choice but to take the ball and run — even if he sometimes found himself mistakenly searching for Marty’s camcorder on the set of “Family Ties.” Most remarkably, he and Lloyd found their chemistry on the fly.My kids are grown up and they’re doing well and getting married one by one,” says Fox, who has four children with his wife, Tracy Pollan. “Exhaustion is my biggest issue. But I feel good. And I love rolling around in this movie because I know how much it means to people.”
Often, “Back to the Future” recedes in Fox’s busy life. After five years of acting retirement, he’ll make a guest appearance on the upcoming third season of the Apple TV+ series “Shrinking.” But every now and then, like Doc emerging out of thin air in the DeLorean, “Back to the Future” suddenly reappears.
“He’s like a father figure and a little brother to me, in a weird way,” Fox says, chuckling. “I love him a lot. But at that time, I didn’t know him very well. I got to know him on part three. We jokingly call that ‘Brokeback to the Future.’”
“I found my voice changing. This kind of squeaky incredulity came out,” Fox says. “I get into the time machine, the DeLorean. I just felt comfortable in there. Very different than Alex (P. Keaton). Alex was harder because he knows everything. Marty knows nothing and knows he knows nothing. Everything is a new