Future Boy is Michael J. Fox’s memoir of his time simultaneously filming both Back to the Future and his sitcom Family Ties. Famously, Fox was the original choice for the role of Marty McFly, but producer Steven Spielberg and Director Robert Zemeckis couldn’t convince Family Ties showrunner Gary David Goldberg to let Fox out of his filming schedule for the TV show in order to do the movie. Instead, Eric Stoltz got the part, only to be fired after shooting for several weeks, apparently because he wasn’t funny enough for the role. When Spielberg and Zemeckis went back to Goldberg, begging him to help them save their movie, he relented, leaving Fox to pull double duty for months.
It’s a well-known showbiz story, but I assumed Fox’s account would lend some perspective or be full of interesting details about how he pulled it off. I guess it was a little silly to expect “I flew back and forth a lot” to make for an interesting read, or, I should say, listen. I listened to this as a free included audiobook on Spotify. Fox provides the narration himself. Fox has made a career out of being a likable guy, and his narration does nothing to dint that image. But the book is really short, and combined with the lack of interesting anecdotes, that makes it a book I was definitely glad to not have spent money on.
The part of Future Boy I liked best, actually, was the epilogue, which features an account of Fox’s relationship with Stoltz, the McFly who almost was. It’s a charming, pleasant story, the likes of which the rest of the book could have used more of.