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

find success on the big screen and finagle my way out of the TV series. I rewarded his faith with complete loyalty, and though I found worldwide success as Marty McFly, I redoubled my commitment to Alex P. Keaton.
    Tougher days lay ahead. Our mentor/mentee relationship would be tested, just as Bill Walton’s and Coach Wooden’s had (as I had inferred from watching Walton’s interview on ESPN). Seven years after Gary and I had mutually agreed to end Family Ties while it was still on top, we re-teamed for the ABC series Spin City. We were thrilled about working together again, but I felt some trepidation. Before renewing our professional relationship, I explained to Gary that we had to make some adjustments to our respective roles that reflected a number of wholesale shifts that had occurred in my life during the intervening years. I was now married with three children, had been diagnosed with PD, had quit drinking, and had moved to New York City, where I insisted the new show be filmed. Gary offered no objection to producing the show in New York rather than his home base in L.A. It was also very important to me that we be equal partners going forward.
    The show, when it hit the air, was a big success, both creatively and commercially. But by the second season, tensions were mounting. It’s not that this new dynamic was so wrong; it was that the old one was so right. Gary decided to bow out. We had a kind of half-assed standoff for a few months, maybe a year, but our affection and respect for each other absorbed the strain and negated it. When the advance of my illness necessitated my early retirement, Gary returned for my last few episodes of the show, and our friendship grew stronger than ever. I’m convinced it was our gratitude that saved us. The rocks—not the sand. Hold the beer, but pour Gary some wine.
    We will always be those two guys in the restaurant, leaning back in upholstered French armchairs before the vestiges of a banquet, sipping on our wine and exclaiming, “Can you friggin’ believe this?”
    A few days ago, Gary dropped by my office in New York. We walked down the block to Madison Avenue for coffee at this little neighborhood café, a place where local private school moms stop in for lattes after drop-off. No longer two Young Turks on the rise, commandeering a pricey bistro until the wee hours, we now sat at this modest table, two contented middle-aged men, each on either end of their fifties, still marveling at their ridiculously good fortune. I was pleased to see Gary looking so trim and healthy, and was particularly moved by the look of contentment that washed over his face as he described the life that he and his longtime love, Diana, were now leading at their home in rural Vermont. Explaining how the two of them, up there in the Green Mountains, had managed to dial down life’s urgencies and dial up its pleasures and richness, Gary put it beautifully and poetically: “We’ve discovered a way,” he confided with a sense of gleeful wonderment, “ to bend time .” I imagined Tracy and me engaged in a similar conspiracy a dozen years or so from now. It was a nice feeling. I realized, in that moment, that I still have a lot to learn from Gary—that he’d always be my mentor. He may not be ninety-nine yet, but that’s my soliloquy.
    If you’re lucky, at some point in the future when you’re in need of guidance, or maybe just moral support, you will cross paths with a suitable mentor. Even luckier, you’ll realize you’ve had one in your life all along, and you’ll gain a new appreciation for how you benefited from that relationship. The luckiest circumstance of all, of course, is a combination of the two. You’ve had help all along, and as the path widens or narrows, whatever the case may be, new and powerful influences will enter your life and aid your progress.
    In my experience, a mentor doesn’t necessarily tell you what to do, but more importantly, tells you what they did or