The Masked Man: A Memoir And Fantasy Of Hollywood

by Tom Wilson

  The producers, who are in charge of making the movie as quickly and inexpensively as possible, spoke in quieter tones to him then, avoiding a lengthy hospital stay for the fragile guy, calming him down, drying his tears and sending him to the hairstylist for repairs as we moved on to the next part of the scene without Crispin, when Lorraine slaps Biff and Marty saves the day.

  Lea Thompson took a page out of Eric/Marty's method acting that day, and slapped me in the head so hard for so many takes that soon my face was as red and swollen as Crispin's. Then Marty method-acted his way over to confront me, pushing me with all his might by driving the heels of his hands into my collarbones as hard as he could, which was method-acty hard. He didn't hit me "we're filming a movie" hard, he hit me "I'm trying to break your collarbones" hard.

  "Cut!" the director yelled, "Let's go again!"

  "Uh…is that how hard he's gonna--"

  "Action!"

  BLAM!

  "Ow! Do you think he could--"

  "Action!"

  BLAM!

  After a few takes, when I was sure his goal in the scene was to pop one of my lungs, I tried to talk to him. He hadn't responded to me any other time, but this was sort of important.

  "Um, excuse me…Marty, you're hitting me pretty hard."

  He looked into the distance, blissfully unaware of my existence.

  "Marty, you're hitting my collarbones. Do you think you could hit me lower in the chest? Here, maybe?" I begged, pointing to my chest.

  No response. Take four. He slammed into me even harder.

  "Cut! One more!"

  "Look, ERIC, this is acting. Movies are pretend. Why don't we pretend?"

  Nothing. No response. I am vapor.

  He left huge, purple bruises on my chest, and a special desire in my heart. That night I re-read the script like never before. At the first opportunity, I was going to method act in a big way and, in a dramatic and violent improvisation within the scene, put his little blow-dried acting class head through a wall. Live by the method acting, die by the method acting there, Marty.

  Unfortunately I never got the chance to badly injure him. Things were tense on the set by that point, and there was something wrong going on. With no experience to draw from, and plenty of insecurity since I was letting everybody call me Tom between shots, I was certain that I was the one stinking up the place and wrecking the movie. The scenes were slowing down, there were long discussions between takes where director Bob Zemeckis would take Marty/Eric aside to speak with him, and I thought he was probably asking him for patience with how I was acting, and chuckle with him about my thin resume and the prominence I gave to my tiny part in the Kung Fu movie "Ninja Turf." Then one day, production came to a troubled halt. Back To The Future was not shooting anything for a day. Nobody went to work, which didn't seem even remotely good to anybody. The entire production is stopping because of how bad I am? Is it possible that I've wrecked the entire movie? There was no explanation, no big meeting for the cast and crew, just a cancellation of the work for that day, and silence.

  Sitting at home and seriously considering getting my job as a bouncer back, the phone rang with a call from Bob Gale; co-writer, co-producer, infrequent caller.

  "Tom, this is Bob Gale," he said, sounding like a funeral director.

  "Hi Bob!" I chirped, trying to pass off the squeak in my voice as pep instead of fear.

  "Tom, can you come down to the offices? We need to speak to you."

  "We?"

  "Yes, me and Bob."

  "Director and producer? Heh, hey, Bob, what is this about?" I asked, fear over pep.

  "Listen, we really need to talk to you about something important," he said, "Can you come over here right now?"

  As the earth fell away from my feet and I floated over the misty chasm of my future unemployment and humiliation, I managed to gasp "Bob, just go ahead and tell me, would you? You can tell me."

  "We'd prefer it if you came to the office."

  I'm fired. I was sure of it. I'm the problem. I should have acted like a sullen jerk and had everybody call me Biff all the time! I should have not answered anybody's questions and whenever I talked it should have been a story about my acting method! In the longest car ride I have ever taken, I drove to the Universal Studios lot, every red light signaling the end of my budding career, and every intersection an omen for the turn my life was about to take. I filled my mind with two thoughts; How to be graceful and thank them, standing and shaking hands like a gentleman who went to Catholic school and wore a tie to kindergarten, and secondly; where I might hide and live and work for the remaining downward spiral that would be the rest of my life.

  I pulled into the ski chalet-like complex of Steven Spielberg's company, where a couple of months before I'd been welcomed to the family with back slaps and cookies, and a kind and grave receptionist gestured for me to sit down. I grabbed the water cooler for balance and staggered to her desk, choking out "IS…IT…ME?"

  She shifted in her chair and looked at me with eyes caught between pity and fear. "I can't tell you anything."

  "Please…just tell me…"

  She fiddled with a stapler and said "Would you like a cookie?"

  Bob Zemeckis barreled into the office, heading toward Bob Gale's office on the other side. "Hi, Tom," he said, "Come on in and sit down."

  I walked to the gallows, but to say that I sat opposite them wouldn't be entirely accurate, since I'd tightened into a statue of bones and meat, perched on the edge of some unidentifiable support behind me, perhaps a chair.

  "Tom," one of the Bobs said gravely, "We think you're doing a great job."

  "Yes, absolutely fantastic," the other said.

  "But…"

  Stand up slowly, Tom. Shake hands. Be a gentleman. Don't cry here, wait until you're in the car.

  "But the thing is, the movie is not working and we've had to fire Eric."

  Still and unblinking, I waited for them to fire me in the same breath, and they didn't. They stared at me, waiting for a reaction, which I gave them after ten or fifteen seconds.

  "HHooooo…" I said, exhaling lungs full of air and relaxing in such a rush that I almost fell asleep in front of them, sliding onto the expensive rug like hot candle wax.

  "You had to fire Eric?" I asked, babbling it out in psychotic giggles.

  "Yes, it just wasn't working, and the movie is just to good to let it go on like this," Bob Zemeckis said.

  "Uh, well…That's…uh" my mind raced as I considered which compassionate emotions to fake, "Is he okay?"

  "The fact is he was miscast," Bob said, "He's a talented actor, but not right for the role."

  "Hey," I said, "Do you think I still have to call him Marty?"

  They blinked at that one, and finally giggled. "You don't seem too broken up about this, Tom."

  "Well," I said, "If I'm being totally honest I am disappointed."

  "You are?"

  "Yes I am," I said, "If you guys waited one more week we'd be shooting the scene at the dance, and I was going to slam his head into a car door and crack his skull!"

  "Well we've hired an actor from T.V., Michael J. Fox."

  "Who?"

  "He's going to be filming his T.V. show at the same time, so don't crack his skull."

  "Do you know if he wants me to call him Marty?"

  Michael J. Fox was filming a T.V. show called "Family Ties" by day at the same time we were re-filming Back To The Future by night. He was working on a hit T.V. series as well as a movie for twenty hour days, so when people ask me about funny stories from the set, I can only tell them what magic it was to draw near Michael J. Fox's director's chair and watch him sleep between takes.

  I'd been in show business for a few years by that time, but the show business that I was part of were the barely solvent shows in small theaters and grimy comedy clubs, where desperate men gather around the ice machine to scribble jokes with stubby pencils and wonder if that new bit might work on Letterman. This was my first movie
where actors weren't expected to bring their own lunch and help hold the lights aloft if they weren't in the scene. Yes, I got killed in "Ninja Turf," and starred in the T.V. commercial that announced to America that Kentucky Fried Chicken was now carrying biscuits, but a big Hollywood movie set was new to me, and I spent most of the time trying to do a good job and not trip on wires. I was impressed with the fact that they had free snacks for everyone. Yes, a big jug of red licorice that you didn't have to pay for was impressive to me, the kid who felt he was "What's wrong with this picture," on a set where weekend plans were flights to London, and Lea Thomson joked to me "I am such a pack rat! I still have every house I ever bought!"

  Back To The Future wasn't supposed to be the big movie in the summer of 1985, that gold medal was being polished for another Steven Spielberg movie called "The Goonies," a pirate movie about kids that, uh, did some stuff with pirate ships or something. "The Goonies" cast and crew got cool jackets with leather sleeves, because they were in the big movie of 1985, the cast and crew of Back To The Future got cheap windbreakers and the knowledge that they survived a long and difficult shoot that didn't even involve pirate ships, just a car that rarely worked. But what the windbreaker lacked, the movie made up for, and Back To The Future was released in a storm of thrill and success. The critics lauded a classic for all time, and the President of the United States quoted it in his State Of The Union address. From the eye of the hurricane I watched the storm grow more and more powerful, as the movie totally snapped out and there was nothing that Marty, or the Goonies, or I could do about it.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Ranger stared at me from the passenger seat of my car. "I'm sorry about your agent. I thought that maybe I could help things." he said.

  "Do you think you helped things?"

  "I think that honesty is the best policy," he said, "but maybe timing beats it sometimes."

  "Timing is up there," I said, "Judgement, perhaps."

  "I was right about never quitting, though. That's true."

  "Hey, what the hell, right?" I said, turning left up the hill toward the valley.

  He pursed his lips, tightening the muscles in his neck, and didn't speak for fifteen seconds.

  "Is that necessary?" he asked, staring out the window.

  "Is what--"

  "The language."

  "What did I say?"

  "It's the last refuge of the unimaginative, and it works for some of your friends at the nightclub who don't know any better, maybe, but--"

  "What did I say, Ranger?"

  "No. Never mind, maybe it's none of my beeswax, like the agent."

  "Hell? Was it hell? Is that it?"

  He squinted into the dashboard, adjusting an air conditioning vent toward his face.

  "Is it hell? Is that cussing or something?"

  "Tom, if you ever looked at a picture postcard from there, believe me, you wouldn't want it anywhere near your lips."

  He stared out the window as I drove over the crest of a hill, across Mulholland Highway and toward the wide vista of the San Fernando Valley, leaning out to smell the vines of jasmine lining the road. "People thought the same thing about me, you know," he said, "They thought I'd never get out from under that thing."

  "Did you ever get out from under the thing?"

  "No."

  I spun on him, weaving into oncoming traffic.

  "What kind of pep talk is this?"

  "It's not a pep talk, it's two men with something in common."

  "You mean I'm not getting out from under this?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "Well, what do we have in common, then?"

  "We're icons," he said.

  "I'm an actor, not an icon."

  "Then why do people yell "butthead" at you everywhere you go?"

  "They don't like to read books?"

  "You're history."

  "Oh, that's great, thanks a lot."

  "No," he said, "I mean that in the best sense. You are part of history. Good history."

  We were in the hills above the Universal Studios back lot, and tram cars filled with tourists crawled across the sets like tiny blue caterpillars.

  "There it is down there," I said.

  "That's where you made it?" he asked.

  "Yeah, that's Courthouse Square, but some of it burned up a while ago. Same place, though."

  "Famous the world over!" he said, smelling more jasmine until his hat almost blew off.

  "Do you know what role I'm famous for?" he asked, gently tossing his hat onto the dashboard.

  "What, "Serpico?" I thought Al Pacino did that."

  "No, you'll never believe this, but it was Jesse James," he said.

  "Jesse James?"

  "Tom, do you think Caroline has any of that iced tea back at the house?"

  "Coming right up, Jesse James."

  "It's true! I told you I played the heavy just like you in the Gene Autry and Roy Rogers serials," he said, "It was the adventures of Frank and Jesse James, and we even did a sequel called Jesse James rides again. See? I've done sequels myself, just like you in the Back…uh, the movies I'm not supposed to talk about."

  "You can talk about them," I said.

  "I thought I wasn't supposed to talk about Back To The Future," he said.

  "Go ahead, talk away."

  "You don't mind?"

  "Does it matter? At least you got the title right, so let's get it out of your system," I said, "it's going to happen, it happens with about every friend I've ever made. One day there's this moment where there's a lull in the conversation and they finally turn to me and say "So really…what's Michael J. Fox really like? And you realize that they've wanted to ask this stuff since the moment they met me, they've just been biding their time."

  The Ranger was a good listener. He didn't even blink. "Go on," he said.

  "You realize that every conversation you've had with them, about kids, or football, or anything, have all been working up to this one moment where they feel they've become close enough to ask what they really wanted to ask to whole time, which is was that real manure in the truck, and hey, what's the deal with that Crispin Glover, and whether or not a fourth one is in the works, and how much money did you end up making on those things anyway, and hey, those residuals must be sweet, you must be totally set up with a mailbox full of checks for work you did twenty years ago, huh?"

  "That's not what I'm interested in asking you," he said, wiping a small leaf from his hat.

  "You're not?"

  "No sir."

  "Well, what do you want to talk about, then?"

  "I want to talk about what it feels like to be stereotyped and pigeonholed in a character. That sort of thing."

  I stared at him for ten seconds before chuckling in as relaxed a way as I could. "What would you know about it?" I said.

  He didn't leave after that with a mysterious sentence and a horse that appeared out of thin air, so I dropped him off at the house while I went to the gym and an audition.

  "So, if you don't disappear or anything, I'll be back in a few hours."

  "Mind if I come along?" he asked.

  I put my shoulder bag in the floor, so I could gesture with both arms. "You are not coming along. If you appear out of thin air, or are already there when I get there, our relationship, or whatever this thing is, is over."

  "I'm good company" he said.

  "I'm not kidding. Did you hear what I said?"

  "Right. I gotcha. I won't bother you. Ellie still has some art to show me!" "Because you won't be anywhere near me, right?" "Right, kemosabe!" he said.

  "What?"

  "Right, kemo--"

  "Oh, kemosabe, yeah," I said.

  "Faithful friend," he said, "in Powatomie Indian."

  "Native American."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Not Indian. Native American."

  "Right."

  I came back after the audition, and heard my own voice through the front door. "Marty! I didn't mean to scare you!" I h
eard through the mail slot, "I didn't recognize you in those clothes!"

  The Ranger was stretched on the sofa, one foot on the coffee table and one under him, massaging his foot with excitement. It was the old, nerd Biff on T.V., wearing a green velour warm up suit and waxing Marty's truck at the end of the third movie. "Just putting on the second coat now!"

  "Oh, come on, Ranger! Turn it off, would you?"

  Caroline walked into the room to put his glass onto a coaster. "He wanted to watch it, so the kids went to pick up Katie at work." She kissed me and pulled me into the hallway.

  "Is he staying again?" she said.

  "No way," I said.

  "I mean, I can order another pizza or something, but…" she peered back into the living room as he sat, hypnotized by the DeLorean, "Who is he, honey? Ellie is convinced he's an angel because she keeps going to websites that say Clayton Moo—"

  "Honey," I said, not nearly ready to make up the story that it looked like I was going to have to make up, "He's a friend of mine who's a little down. I met him at a club and he seems harmless. He's just working on a character, you know? If you want him to leave, I'll ask him and I'm sure he will."

  The replacement actor they made up to look like Crispin Glover, because Crispin wasn't in the sequels, entered the scene. "Where are my glasses," he asked, doing a Crispin impression, "Lorraine, have you seen my glasses?"

  "Okay, it's about time we stop the tape, huh, Ranger?"

  "It's not a tape! This was on cable, I swear!" he said, without turning from the screen, "That makeup was a challenge to work in, I'll bet!" "Alright, it's over. Can we turn it off now?"

  Biff closed the truck door for Marty. "I really like that hat, Marty!" he/I said. I snatched the remote from the coffee table and popped the screen to black.

  "By golly if those aren't good pictures!" the Ranger said.

  "Thank you…again," I said.

  "I must say the second one dragged a bit," he said, "lots of time travel mumbo-jumbo."

  "I'm in that one the most," I said.

  "Don't get me wrong, you were very good in it, it's just not my favorite."