Christoper Lloyd and Michael J. Fox had very different initial reactions to the screenplay for Back to the Future. Read More
Christoper Lloyd and Michael J. Fox had very different initial reactions to the screenplay for Back to the Future. It’s hard to imagine the 1985 time-travelling, sci-fi comedy without its two stars. But neither Lloyd nor Fox were sure things in their roles, albeit for different reasons. Producers apparently wanted Lloyd for the role of
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Christoper Lloyd and Michael J. Fox had very different initial reactions to the screenplay for Back to the Future.
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It’s hard to imagine the 1985 time-travelling, sci-fi comedy without its two stars.
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But neither Lloyd nor Fox were sure things in their roles, albeit for different reasons.
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Producers apparently wanted Lloyd for the role of scientist and time-machine inventor Doc Brown after seeing him play an unhinged alien in the 1984 cult film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension.
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At first, he said no.
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“Things were going kind of good for me in the theatre,” Lloyd told the audience at Calgary Expo Friday evening. “I’m getting to think that not much is happening here in L.A. So I figured I should go back to New York and continue doing what I was doing. About that moment, I got a script from this new agent. I go through it and I read it and (I said) I don’t want to do this. I’m going back to New York, I had the opportunity to do a play. So I took the script to Back to the Future and I put it in the waste-paper basket. That’s a seriously ill-thought career choice. I retrieved it and looked at it a second time a little more seriously and I went back to L.A. and met (director) Bob Zemeckis and that was it.”
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The role of teenage hero Marty McFly, on the other hand, initially went to actor Eric Stol. Fox was always the first choice, but he was committed to working on the sitcom Family Ties. Gary Goldberg, who created the sitcom, was friends with Zemeckis. When he learned the director wanted Fox for the role, Goldberg initially didn’t even tell Fox. He believed he wouldn’t be able to do both the show and do the film at the same time and telling him would “break his heart.”
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“Gary said ‘he can’t do it. If I let him go, he’ll go and he won’t come back,”” said Fox.
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“So they went and cast another actor,” he said. “So this idea that I was this gunslinger waiting for my shot to get into this movie is not what happened. I didn’t know about it.”
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But Stolz was fired after five weeks — the two actors would later become close friends — so Goldberg told Fox that both Steven Spielberg, who was an executive producer on Back to the Future, and Zemeckis wanted him for the role. Goldberg gave him the script and told him to go home and read it and determine if he wanted to do it.
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“So I picked up the script, held it in my hand, put it back down and said ‘I want to do it,’” Fox said.
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The actor agreed to do the film and Family Ties simultaneously.
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On Friday, Fox and Lloyd reunited on stage at the new BMO Centre to reminisce and celebrate the 40th anniversary of Back to the Future, which would eventually turn into a three-movie franchise and turn Fox into one of the most popular film stars of the 1980s and 1990s.
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The actor, who was born in Edmonton, got two standing ovations on Friday evening.
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Back to the Future tells the story of a teenager who travels back to 1955 in a DeLorean Time Machine invented by Brown. McFly travels back to 1955 where he accidentally prevents his future parents George and Lorraine from falling in love. With the help of Brown, who he meets in 1955, he has to salvage his parents’ romance or will be wiped out of existence. Along the way, he faces down the town bully Biff (Thomas F. Wilson), who has continued to terrorize George and the McFly family 30 years later.
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In true fan-convention fashion, Fox and Lloyd were asked questions about whether they believed time travel would ever be possible and whether they could have befriended their own parents if they met them in high school. They were also asked if they ever had to face down a bully.
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Lloyd said he was in Grade 3 when he took on a kid who was alright built “like a quarter-back.”
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“Something happened in the hallway,” he said. “He did something, some kind of bullying bullsh-t. I can’t believe I did what I did because I’ve never done it since. I attacked him. He ended up on his back on the school floor and I’m over him (hitting him) and he’s lying there laughing. Totally laughing.”
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Fox said he was also bullied, but was a tough wiry kid who would often try to diffuse situations using his humour, or would hit with a surprise attack.
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“If they beat me up, their friends would say ‘hey, you beat up a little guy,’” Fox said. “If I beat them up, then they were ashamed for the rest of their lives. I would get one shot in and then revisit Plan B, which was running.”
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Fox eventually retired from acting. In the late 1990s, he disclosed that he had Parkinson’s disease and has since become a high-profile activist. While still on the subject of bullying, Fox recounted his conflict with the late Rush Limbaugh. In 2006, the far-right political pundit accused Fox of of exaggerating his symptoms in an election television ad. He later apologized.
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“When I got into political issues and health issues and became a spokesman for Parkinson’s and the things I do, I realized people get in your way just to get in your way, just to be bullies,” he said. “Rush Limbaugh came after me and people said ‘what are you doing?’ I said ‘Let him talk. He’s an asshole.’”
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Which Fox sees as an underlying message to Back to the Future: “Say the truth, say who you are and don’t let them tell you who are,” he said.
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Forty years after the release of the movie, Fox said “it’s the best thing that ever happened to me other than my wife and kids.”
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He got emotional at the end of the talk Friday when thanking the audience for their support.
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“I’d just feel remiss if I didn’t say it,” he said. “It’s all you guys who have done this for us.”
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Calgary Expo runs until Sunday at the BMO Centre.
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