\n<\/p>\n
M<\/span>ichael J Fox has already eked out four books of Hollywood memoir, so the justification for a fifth \u2013 written with longtime collaborator Nelle Fortenberry \u2013 ought to be good. It\u00a0is: the subject of these 176 pages is\u00a0a three-month period in 1985 when\u00a0Fox was simultaneously shooting his breakout sitcom role in\u00a0Family Ties <\/em>and the career-defining American classic, Back\u00a0to the Future.<\/em><\/p>\n That\u2019s two more-than-full-time jobs for one little guy, necessitating that the then 23-year-old actor work 20-hour days, six days a week. This schedule was only possible because the mid-1980s was a time before showbiz labour laws caught up with basic human decency. These days, we\u2019re told, a standard contract \u201cdemands two weeks of buffer time on either side of a job\u201d, while Fox didn\u2019t even get an hour.<\/p>\n How did he do it? This book tells us, drawing on the memories of colleagues and friends to fill in details where Fox\u2019s own sleep-deprived brain falls short. The material might have seemed stretched thin to fill even this relatively slim volume, were it not for the fact Fox was also a singularly unlikely \u2013 and therefore fascinating \u2013 movie star prospect. Working-class, 5ft 4in and Canadian; that this short king ever made it so big is a natural-law-defying miracle, on a par with time travel itself.<\/p>\n Or maybe not. Fox writes that, initially at least, his height was a significant career advantage. It meant the <\/em>Family Ties producers could secure him a US work visa on the grounds that \u201cI was special and unique in America: old enough to work the long hours of an adult, but with a look that allowed me to play a much younger character\u201d.<\/p>\n His wayward adolescence, spent kicking about in suburban Toronto parking lots, had also furnished Fox with a skillset ideally suited to playing Back to the Future\u2019s <\/em>hoverboarding, bully-outsmarting, rock-n-roll-inventing hero, Marty. He arrived for\u00a0his first day already a proficient skateboarder (pro-skateboarding legend Tony Hawk is apparently a fan of the movie) and garage-band guitarist.<\/p>\n He arrived for his first day already a proficient skateboarder and garage-band guitarist<\/p>\n But perhaps Fox\u2019s most valuable skill\u00a0was his tireless professionalism. Full-colour set photos seem to corroborate the actor\u2019s own claims that he \u201cnever complained about the hours\u201d and was \u201cfull of joy, even at 3.00 am\u201d. The most persuasive evidence of this, however, is\u00a0the thoughtful, affectionate way he reflects on his interactions with on-set colleagues, even when it\u2019s\u00a0clear these relationships were far\u00a0from frictionless.<\/p>\n The circumstances of Fox\u2019s arrival on Back to the Future were already awkward. He was replacing the previous \u201cMarty\u201d, actor Eric Stoltz, a\u00a0month into shooting, after director Robert Zemeckis and executive producer Steven Spielberg became convinced he wasn\u2019t the \u201cright fit\u201d. Add to that the showbiz hierarchy of the day, which placed a lowly TV star several rungs beneath trained theatre actors such as Christopher Lloyd, who played \u201cDoc\u201d, and Fox had his work cut out for him. Perhaps it was the knowledge that he\u2019d\u00a0already pulled off one impossible task \u2013 making it to Hollywood in the first place \u2013 which gave him the confidence to attempt another.<\/p>\n Back to the Future <\/em>super-fans are\u00a0predictably well served here, with\u00a0titbits like the fact that no one on\u00a0set thought the DeLorean was at all\u00a0cool (\u201cLet\u2019s face it \u2013 it\u2019s a shit car. Slow to accelerate, with cheap appointments\u201d), and the shift of Marty\u2019s \u201cJohnny B Goode\u201d to B rather\u00a0than B-flat, the 80s kid taking inspiration from Jimi Hendrix\u2019s transposed cover, despite it being 1955. Fox\u2019s evocative descriptions of a lost Hollywood \u2013 pre-word processor, never mind pre-internet \u2013 will also interest a more general readership.<\/p>\n We wouldn\u2019t care at all, were it not for the fact that Back to the Future really is the enduring classic this book assumes it to be. Much high-minded critical musing over the past 40 years has tackled the question of why, but\u00a0nothing quite nails it like the handwritten audience response card that Zemeckis received after the very first screening, and apparently still has\u00a0pinned to his office bulletin board:\u00a0\u201cThis is the most Godly movie I\u2019ve seen,\u201d wrote the awestruck, anonymous viewer. \u201cIt fucking rages\u00a0up and down.\u201d Amen to that.<\/p>\n <\/em>Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum by Michael J Fox and Nelle Fortenberry is published by Headline (\u00a322). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael J Fox has already eked out four books of Hollywood memoir, so the justification for a fifth \u2013 written with longtime collaborator Nelle Fortenberry \u2013 ought to be good. It\u00a0is: the subject of these 176 pages is\u00a0a three-month period in 1985 when\u00a0Fox was simultaneously shooting his breakout sitcom role in\u00a0Family Ties and the career-defining<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[5161,14770,2866,19407,2621,2284,3359,3401,283,1085,5686,620],"class_list":{"0":"post-34011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-80s","9":"tag-autobiography","10":"tag-boy","11":"tag-definitive","12":"tag-fox","13":"tag-future","14":"tag-memoir","15":"tag-michael","16":"tag-movie","17":"tag-review","18":"tag-secrets","19":"tag-set"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}