A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned by Michael J. Fox Read Free Book Online

gambit I had undertaken. I wouldn’t have presumed that this bushy-bearded, bear-like comedy writer/producer would ever become my mentor, but vaguely aware of the stand he was taking on my behalf, I understood that I at least had a champion. All I ever wanted was a chance. Now someone was giving me a shot and, in the process, putting one of his own bullets at stake.
    “All I know is I write him two jokes, he gets me three laughs” is how Gary put it to the network upon completion of the Family Ties pilot. The live taping had gone well, audience reaction had been enthusiastic, and they responded strongly to the Alex character. Like any protégé, I wanted to make my benefactor look like a genius. Well, he might already have been a genius, but at least I didn’t prove him a fool. A common showbiz term, Komedy Kollege (yes, with two “K”s) was perhaps the only post-secondary education I was qualified for. I majored in the double take. Gary had a distinct understanding of comedy, and through his skills as a producer and talents as a writer, he transformed a kid who had never done comedy before into a young actor who had the chops and poise to carry a network TV show.
    I committed my fair share of screw-ups over the next few years and admittedly came close to careening off the rails more than once during the eighties, but I’m convinced that without Gary looking out for me, my relatively sudden success would have been even more perilous. Show up to work on time, learn my lines, respect the writers, strive with every performance, every scene, every line, to improve on what I had done before: these were the standards that Gary expected me to meet. It was an ethic I understood. It was basically my father’s. I locked it in, and try to honor it still.
    Our backgrounds, though completely different on the surface, were, viewed more closely, made up of the same stuff. Sure, Gary was a product of forties and fifties Brooklyn, and I came of age on various military bases across Canada during the sixties and seventies. But both of us were raised by close families of modest means, and each of us proved to be the wild card in our respective familial decks.
    Following each Friday night taping at the height of Family Ties ’ success, the cast, crew, and writers would head to an elegant but welcoming French restaurant a block or two away from Paramount Studios on Melrose in Hollywood to eat, drink, and party. Usually the last to leave, Gary and I would linger at the table, polishing off the dregs of whatever indecently expensive Cabernet we had ordered, and kvell. Gary would launch into the story of how he came to be sitting at that victory table, tracing his journey from playing stickball on the streets of Brooklyn, to basketball at Brandeis, to dropping out of college, to Greece, where he lived in a cave with his future bride, Diana, and their well-traveled Labrador, Ubu, to the birth of their daughter, to surviving on food stamps, to a spec script, to a career. A story he never tired of telling and I never tired of hearing, it was every bit as improbable as my own. “Mike,” he would say, clapping a meaty, fur-coated hand on my bony, freckled forearm with unintended force, “you know what we did? We jumped worlds. This wasn’t supposed to happen to us. We are the luckiest guys on the planet.” To this day, the word that comes to mind when I think of Gary is “gratitude.” None of us is entitled to anything. We get what we get, not because we want it or we deserve it or because it’s unfair if we don’t get it, but because we earn it, we respect it, and only if we share it do we keep it.
    As I said earlier, Gary made a second huge bet on me, one that many of his advisors counseled him against. Just as Family Ties was hitting its stride, he allowed me, after an initial hesitation, to do Back to the Future. As I was contractually tied to the show, there was no obligation or expectation that Gary should take a risk that I might