Michael J. Fox admits he can’t recall his final day on the Back to the Future set in his new memoir, Future Boy (out October 14).
Fox, 64, opens up about the experience of filming the classic film and the NBC sitcom Family Ties simultaneously for over three months in 1985. He would film the TV show during the day and then travel down the Pacific Coast Highway in the evening for overnight shoots on the Steven Spielberg-produced film.
“Let me tell you what I remember about that last day: I don’t remember anything. Nada. Nothing. Zero. Bupkis,” Fox writes in the memoir.
“By the time we wrapped, I was too exhausted to search for indicators of greatness,” he writes of the film. “I had other things on my mind. I planned to take a quick vacation, and following that, I was due in England to begin production on a Family Ties TV movie.”
Fox relied on Bob Gale, who co-wrote the Back to the Future screenplay along with director Robert Zemeckis, to jog his memory of that final day, he writes.
His day began driving the DeLorean, the film’s iconic time machine, until it “suddenly sputtered and died.”
“At this point, both of us were out of fuel,” Fox writes.
The day continued with a few other setups filming Fox’s McFly ditching the DeLorean and then trying to flag down a ride from a 1950s Buick.
“At last, the final shot: Marty walked down the road and into his future (or was it his past?),” Fox writes. “The same went for me. My work there was done, and I wandered into a brighter, stranger future than I could have ever imagined.”
Back to the Future went on to become a massive success as the hit film of 1985, spending close to three months at the top of the box office, and spawning two more films in its franchise, which has since earned over $1 billion. The film also skyrocketed his career.
But even after months on set, Fox was unsure whether the film would land.
“I can honestly say I had no idea what all this added up to; that is, I had not seen one bit of dailies or any edited footage,” he writes of the end of filming.
“So when people ask me today if I knew that Back to the Future was destined to become an American classic, alongside films like It’s a Wonderful Life, my honest reply is ‘no.’”
Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum, written by Fox and Nelle Fortenberry, hits shelves October 14.
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