Lucky Man (15 page)

These were the moments when I first started to sense the implications of a life with no clear boundaries. Wall-lessness didn't just mean freedom, I slowly began to realize; it also meant vulnerability. It took me a while, but eventually I started to ask and then answer two terrifying questions: Do I deserve all this? And if I don't (and who did?), what happens when everybody finds out? So I developed a threefold strategy for protecting myself against whatever nasty, humiliating, ride-stopping no was lying in wait at the end of this long string of yeses.

First, in order to assuage any creeping guilt I felt about never hearing anyone say no to me, I all but banished the word from my own vocabulary. Whatever anybody asked of me or wanted from me, I figured the safest thing to do was to say yes. Be a nice guy, go along, get along. Of course, if you hear only yes and say only yes, you're apt to find yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere, with no fixed boundary between yourself and the outside world, unarmed.

The people I said yes to most often, and most happily, were fans. After all, their response to my work (a sort of huge collective yes) had made my success possible. Some had known me for years from
Family Ties
; others only recently through
Back to the Future
. It was always easy to tell one from the other.
Ties
fans would be animated but friendly and relaxed; in fact, my first instinct would often be to infer from their backslapping familiarity that I must know them from school (however brief my time there). By contrast, movie fans would react as if they had just spotted Sasquatch during a picnic in the woods. Given my visibility on both the big and small screen, there were those, of course, who had feet in both camps—the ones who weren't sure whether to tap me on the shoulder or tear my shirt off.

I didn't mind. Look, how often do plumbers have strangers approach them on the street to compliment them on their latest pipe refitting? With a “thank you,” a smile, a willingness to take a photograph or sign an autograph—a simple “yes”—I've been able to literally make someone's day, and I've always regarded that as a privilege. Sure, sometimes the encounter is inconvenient or awkward. The cameras, for example, never seem to work right the first time. Hastily pulled from pocketbooks and fumbled nervously from one giggling friend to another as each in the group takes their turn beside me, inevitably the camera's flash won't go off or the film runs out. Just a quick tip: those little cardboard throwaways need to be rewound after every exposure.

Signing autographs can sometimes be just as comic—long moments spent laughing with people as they scramble to find a pen, pencil, crayon, or eyeliner—whatever works. And then what exactly is it that they want to have signed? A business card, a matchbook, a child's wallet portrait from Sears, the bill of a baseball cap, an exposed body part, or, in the case of the well-prepared, an autograph book. Some actors, even the most gracious of them, like my friend Alan Alda, refuse to sign autographs at all—in the belief that the ritual creates a barrier that separates them from the experience of meeting people. I remember ending up in hysterics one night in a Chinese restaurant in New York as Alan tried to explain to an uncomprehending Cantonese kitchen crew, using pantomime and pidgin English, why it would be better to just shake hands. I was mercilessly teasing him as I scribbled away, obliging each and every one of them.

“I respect your principles, Alan, but your dumplings are getting cold. Just sign already!”

I can see his point, though; after all, what is an autograph, really? A signed contract wherein some guy from TV verifies the existence of Phil from Ohio? Just another example of magical thinking, I guess. But, for me anyway, signing autographs is a painless way simply to say yes, and thank you.

There were other requests, some more sobering. Foundations like Starlight and Make-A-Wish, established with the purpose of fulfilling the desires of catastrophically ill children, called regularly, to arrange for me to spend time with these kids and their families. When I was on the road, I'd routinely schedule visits to that particular city's pediatric hospital. I've met children with leukemia and other cancers, kids with cystic fibrosis who fight for every breath, juvenile diabetics on dialysis battling the odds that a donor kidney will be found and transplanted before time runs out. Without exception, they faced their circumstances with a grace and dignity that any adult in the same situation would be hard-pressed to match. Many times their biggest concern wasn't for themselves, but for their parents and siblings. These are kids who know all about no, and who understand the unfairness of limitation. At the time, their lessons in courage and acceptance were humbling. But only more recently, as I've struggled with the no of P.D., have their lessons really sunk in. I am grateful to each of my young teachers. If every time I said yes to one of these young people was a gift, then the true recipient was me.

Those are the times when I would have said yes, regardless. But there's a longer list of things I agreed to do, purely to keep the success machine well-oiled and running smoothly. Yes to interviews and personal appearances, yes to studio requests, yes to network requests, and when there were conflicts, “Yes, don't worry, I'll make it happen.” The royal premiere in London, for example, took place on a Sunday night before the start of a rehearsal week. That meant that I had to leave Heathrow on the Concorde the following morning at 8:00
A.M.
, GMT, arrive in New York at 10:00
A.M.
, EST, get on another plane and be on the
Family Ties
set immediately following the lunch break at 2:00
P.M.
, PST. Sometimes political, always exhausting, my policy of routinely responding in the affirmative was crucial to my three-part strategy of self-preservation.

Which brings me to the second part of my survival strategy: work. I felt a special obligation in the case of
Family Ties
to be amenable and diplomatic. Gary had drawn a lot of flack from his industry peers for letting me do
Back to the Future
; and once the film was a hit, they chided him for his foolishness. “That's it,” they'd say, “you're never getting the kid back. He's going to be so
gone
he won't even show up in reruns.” But whenever people would ask me if I was going to stay with the show, my answer was yes—absolutely. This was my home, these were my friends, Gary gave me my big break, and besides, I loved playing Alex Keaton.

Without compromising my commitment to
Family Ties
, I filled much of my time away with extra projects. Sometimes moonlighting, as in the case of
Back to the Future
, sometimes making two films during a single hiatus, hedging my bets by doing one drama and one comedy, such as
Light of Day
and
The Secret of My Success
. It's not just that I remembered the grief of unemployment, but keeping my nose to the grindstone, I figured, was one way to lessen the risk of having my head exposed.

Those times when I wasn't pressing the flesh, promoting one project or another, politicking or otherwise busy, I was applying the third component of my three-part strategy for survival in Hollywood: partying my ass off. This was, after all, a time to celebrate—so much was going right, why shouldn't I be happy? My cup had runneth over, and I was trying to drink up as much of the overflow as humanly possible. I remember this period of my life—to the extent I
can
remember this part of my life—as one blowout after another; the booze was free and I was usually the guest of honor. For some people, excessive alcohol consumption is a means of escape, but at this point in my life, anyway, that was the last thing I wanted. Already inhabiting what was essentially a fantasy world, there was nowhere else I wanted to escape to. Alcohol being a preservative, I figured, what better way to preserve the happy illusion? And so, a lot of the time I was pickled.

I didn't drink when I was working or had other commitments. But conscientiousness wasn't the only motive for my discipline. When I was on the set, or performing some other function related to my career, the environment itself sustained the fantasy and the work was stimulant enough.

The key was staying busy—constructively or not. My credo during this period—work hard, drink hard, say (and hear) only yes—was really a way of making sure that no matter what the situation, I was always occupied and had as little time for reflection as possible. Perhaps because my success was so sudden and outsized, I had the feeling that I was getting away with something. Sometimes I felt like I did as a teenager, when I wanted to get the car keys without waking my father from his nap on the living room couch. I'd try to grab the keys from the coffee table, inches away from his sleeping form, without disturbing him and incurring his wrath. My strategy was basic: keep moving,
get in and out as quickly as possible.

The expression that comes to mind is “as if,” as in “act
as if
this were all normal.” But, of course, it wasn't. At least not for me. I couldn't help feeling there was something
inauthentic
about the whole thing—if not the situation itself, then at least my position in it. Perhaps there was something you could do to be worthy of all of this—the money, the attention, the indulgence—but had I met the criteria? And so in time I began to feel like an imposter. It's almost as if I expected someone, at any moment, to kick in my door and tell me the charade had gone as far as it was going to go. The jig was up; it was time to go back to Canada, and don't even think about bringing any of this stuff with you. I don't know who, exactly, I thought was going to come storming in with this ultimatum, but I figured I might as well be drunk when they got here.

I can remember visiting that newsstand on Van Nuys Boulevard one day, and there among all the teen magazines, gossip tabloids, and other periodicals splashing my face on their covers, was one in particular that paralyzed me with fear. I was convinced the dreaded moment had arrived—that this was it, that they'd finally nailed me. For what other reason would I be on the cover of
Psychology Today
? I grabbed the magazine and frantically flipped through its pages until I found the cover story.

Turned out it had nothing to do with me specifically—it was just a general essay on the pervasiveness of celebrity in American culture. I don't even think my name was mentioned once. They were just using my face to sell a few copies (if you can't beat 'em, exploit 'em). For a second there, though, I had no doubt that I'd been totally and righteously busted.

I'M FAMOUS, YOU'RE FAMOUS

My wife Tracy, a lifelong New Yorker, cracks me up with her pithy observations about L.A.—especially regarding the lengths to which that city will go in catering to its more celebrated citizenry. “I'm surprised they don't have celebrity parking,” she once mused. “You know, like handicapped parking, only more convenient.” She went on to say that these choice spots could be marked with signage bearing not the customary star, but an even more appropriate image: a silhouette of a baseball cap floating over a pair of sunglasses.

What intrigued me, as I increasingly found myself in settings rife with famous people, was how many of them seemed to be friends with one another. I was struck, too (and, okay, flattered), by how many of them knew who I was. Some movie star, whose work I'd been watching for years, would just sidle up to me and start chatting as if we'd been in Little League together. It gradually dawned on me that while a certain percentage of these relationships were genuine, a lot of what I perceived as friendship among the famous was, like so much else in this industry, an illusion. By this, I'm not implying a society of duplicitous backstabbers; only that, in many cases, these people “knew” each other in the same way that you might know any one of them—for the simple reason that they are well-known. The twist is, they each know that they themselves are well-known, so in that way, two celebrities not only know each other, but have something in common: they know that the other knows what it is like to be known by everyone else. This results in a certain bond, and a strangely easy sort of camaraderie. This is the phenomenon that Tracy (who else?) refers to as the “I'm famous, you're famous” club.

While I've never been particularly star-struck, there were times when I couldn't help but be impressed by the company I was keeping. In March of 1986, I traveled to Las Vegas with Sugar Ray Leonard. Though we'd never met before, we were co-investors on a real estate deal along with a rich entrepreneur, on whose private jet we were traveling to see that weekend's Marvin Hagler/John Mugabi fight. Thrilled to have a ringside seat, I was even more thrilled to be in the company of one of my favorite boxers.

Following the fight, we were escorted into the casino. In an area sectioned off by velvet ropes, crowded around the high-roller tables, was a particularly glittering crowd—the “I'm famous, you're famous” club on a weekend road trip. Here were old friends, many meeting for the first time, and I was amazed at how easily I could slide into their ranks; how matter-of-factly they accepted me, a newcomer. The party continued until 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, and as it broke up, earnest promises were made to “get together” and “do lunch” back in L.A.

Of course, not everyone in this elite club is eager to see the membership rolls expanded—believing there should definitely be velvet ropes inside the velvet ropes—and these people are quick to send that signal. At that year's Oscars, I presented an award and backstage afterwards I passed Cher, in full diva regalia, waiting by an elevator. “Hi,” I said, extending my hand. “I'm Mike Fox.”

Maybe it had something to do with my being roughly the same height as Sonny, or the fact that she had starred in
Mask
with Eric Stoltz, the actor whom I'd replaced in
Back to the Future
, but Cher seemed less than thrilled to meet me.

“I know who you are,” she said flatly across an imaginary velvet rope, and without stopping to shake my hand, turned and stepped into the elevator.
I'm famous, you . . . not so much.