I'd read with Tracy before she'd got the part of Ellen. Almost as soon we began to go through the lines, we found a rhythm, a give-and-take that worked—not because we were approaching the material from the same perspective, but because our styles were in many ways so different. Having trained in the New York theater, Tracy brought a grounded, disciplined quality to the work that was in stark contrast to my instinctive, unschooled, just-go-for-the-laugh approach. She was not, to put it mildly, the typical sitcom actress. Her beauty—shoulder-length blond hair, cut into bangs and framing a delicate face with high cheekbones and riveting wide-set eyes—was unusual for network television. This was not the sort of Chiclet-toothed cutie you'd see chirping “Welcome to McDonald's” in a burger commercial.
Plus, she was nice and funny and smart.
Tracy was involved in a relationship during her time on Family Ties, and I was seeing someone myself on a fairly regular basis, but I can easily pinpoint the exact moment I fell for her, the onset of my crush. While it would go unrequited for a long time, it never faded (and still hasn't).
For lack of a better name, let's call this lightning bolt The Scampi Incident. First, some context: At the beginning of the 1985–1986 Ties season, Back to the Future was still the undisputed number one movie at the box office. On the set of the show that summer/fall, I was welcomed back like the proverbial prodigal son. I'd always had a great relationship with the cast and crew—we shared a raucous and good-naturedly sarcastic camaraderie. Everyone cut me plenty of slack, now more than ever. I was “the star,” after all; this set was my domain, and while I would have never dreamed of lording it over anyone, the fact is, I could get away with the most outrageous behavior. Despite the best efforts of our stage manager, I pretty much determined the pace of rehearsal—when we buckled down and pushed forward, and when we would stop for extended telephone breaks or dissolve completely into near-apocalyptic food fights. On one occasion, I had Woody Harrelson wander over from the Cheers set and, for an entire scene, replace Tina Yothers, acting out the Jennifer part up to and including sitting on Michael Gross's lap.
One day about four weeks into the season, Tracy and I were rehearsing a scene when we broke for lunch. By now, we'd struck up a friendship and spent a lot of time on set talking, getting to know each other, but we tended to go our own ways during the lunch break. That day, Tracy had spent hers in an Italian restaurant. After lunch, we picked up where we had left off, Alex answering a knock at the Keatons’ living room door, opening it to reveal Tracy. The moment she said her first line, I detected a hint of garlic, and sensed an opportunity to have a little fun at her expense.
“Whoah. A little scampi for lunch, babe?”
At first she said nothing. Her expression didn't even change. But before long it became clear that my remark had surprised and hurt her. Here I was, a fellow actor whom she was just learning to trust, and maybe beginning to like, and I had ambushed her with my insensitivity. Looking me dead in the eye, she said slowly and evenly in a voice too quiet for anyone else to hear, “That was mean and rude, and you are a complete and total fucking asshole.”
I was floored. Nobody talked to me that way; not lately anyway. This woman was completely unintimidated, unimpressed by whomever I thought I was, and even less by whom everyone else thought I was. A pig is a pig, no matter how many hit movies he's just had. I felt a rush of blood redden my face. I was overwhelmed by an emotion I was surprised to discover was something other than anger. I wasn't pissed off, I realized—I was smitten.
I apologized. She accepted. We got back to work, and The Scampi Incident was never mentioned again.
At the beginning of the Alex/Ellen relationship, Alex falls for Ellen hard, only to learn that she is engaged and leaving school to get married. Devastated, he pursues her to the railway station, where she is preparing to board her train and leave his life forever. While funny, the scene, as written by Michael Weithorn, was also tender and emotional. In the hands of an actress less capable than Tracy, it might have been overplayed to the point of sappiness. During the taping, I can remember momentarily losing the sense that I was actually in the scene myself and instead just watching her, as captivated as the rest of the audience. My reverie couldn't last, though, because working with Tracy demanded an attention and a degree of honesty from Alex that I hadn't felt pressed to reach for in the first three seasons. That scene, like every scene I've ever played with Tracy, pushed me to be better than I'd ever been before.
Tracy was offered a contract to come back for a second season, but she missed New York, her family, and the theater, and was wary of being pinned down to a long-term television commitment. It's hard to believe, looking back on it now, that she appeared in only seven Family Ties episodes. Her impact was tremendous—not only on the show and my character, but on the way I would think about my craft from that point on. Which is why I give Tracy so much credit for the Emmy I received that season.
But she left me with much more to think about than my acting. When we weren't rehearsing, taping, collaborating to get the most out of every script and bring as much color and nuance as possible to the Alex/Ellen romance, we'd hang out on set together a lot. Talking backstage, or lounging in the audience bleachers during breaks in the action, a friendship developed. I valued her sense of humor and intelligence as well as her sophistication, which was free of any taint of cynicism.
Tracy's seven episodes were spread out over the course of that entire season, giving her a front-row seat from which to view the whirlwind my life had become since the release of Back to the Future. While most of the people around me saw only the upside of this spectacular success and presumed that I could only be ecstatically happy—as I was, much of the time—Tracy alone appreciated the toll it was taking. Having grown up on Manhattan's Upper East Side (Park Avenue, to be precise), and attended private school with the sons and daughters of more than a few household names, Tracy was not particularly dazzled by the trappings of success. She was astute at seeing the person behind the personality, and although she was not the least bit pushy or intrusive about it, she did drop the occasional hint that I might want to pay a little more attention to some of my life choices.
She was particularly disturbed by the amount of drinking I was doing, and was one of the first people I can remember ever suggesting to me, however tentatively, that alcohol was something to be careful with, and that I might want to ask myself if drinking was becoming a problem. We also talked about the pressure I felt not to let anyone down, to prove myself deserving of the opportunities that were coming my way, and to choose projects that would guarantee success after success, even if that meant cheating myself of opportunities to grow as an actor.
Before she headed back east, as an expression of friendship and hope that I'd make my way safely through the Hollywood minefield, Tracy left me with a gift. She was returning to her life in New York, and had already told me that while she had had a good time, she didn't think she'd stay with the show. We promised to keep in touch, but, assuming as we both did that this was the end of our time together, she told me there was a song she wanted me to listen to.
As it happened, I was about to pull out of the Paramount parking lot in my ridiculously accessorized 300ZX when Tracy walked by on the way to her rented Volkswagen convertible. It was at the end of one our last days of working together, and she leaned into my car, handing me the cassette she had been talking about. I invited her to get in and we'd listen to it right there in the parking lot. She slipped in the tape, music immediately booming out of the speakers, including the gigantic bass woofers factory-installed in the car seats. Embarrassed, I hurriedly dialed down the volume on the speakers, switching off altogether the ones that were vibrating the seats so violently that our spines were quaking. The voice of James Taylor, now at a decibel level more appropriate to his particular stylings, filled the car.
My own musical tastes ran more to The Clash—maybe Elvis Costello in my more moody, reflective periods—so I couldn't imagin
e what exactly Sweet Baby James could say to me that would have any significant personal relevance. But when I heard the following lines, which I understood to be about John Belushi, I immediately grasped the message she'd wanted me to hear. Like other comedic actors of my generation I had a fascination with the late comedian; a framed Ron Wood lithograph of Belushi hung in my dressing room. Tracy had mentioned that as a teenage waitress on Martha's Vineyard in the early eighties, she had met Belushi several times, by way of urging that I not let alcohol do to me what drugs had done to him. The fatal mistake, she was suggesting by playing the song, would be to lose myself in the middle of the party that was now my life. By being all things to all people all of the time, I could end up being nothing to myself.
John's gone, found dead
Died high, he's brown bread
Later said to have drowned in his bed
After the laughter, the wave of dread
It hits us like a ton of lead.
It seems, learn not to burn
Means to turn on a dime.
Walk on, if you're walking
Even if it's an uphill climb.
Try to remember that working's no crime.
Just don't let them take and waste your time.
That's why I'm here . . .
I thought about this song, and Tracy, a lot during the crazy year that followed. In the spring of 1987, Tracy, by now unattached, came in to read for a role in Bright Lights, Big City, a film I was about to shoot in Manhattan. She got the part, and by the end of filming, we were falling in love and into the relationship that we'd been pretending to have in the seven episodes that played out on America's TV screens. House hunting in Vermont in October, engaged at Christmas, we were married the following summer.
And that's a story in itself. . . .
A MATTER OF CHOICE
Arlington, Vermont—July 1988
Tracy and I were married on July 16, 1988, and the reviews were terrible. The Globe announced on its front page that the wedding had been “a fiasco.” The National Enquirer quoted an “insider” who reported that “people were nearly fainting as they staggered out after the ceremony. They were fanning themselves and gasping.” People objected to our wedding attire, surprising considering that no one from the magazine had seen it. “Hush-hush nuptials turned into a circus,” said the front page of the Star, whose article began, “Teensy-weensy actor Michael J. Fox . . .” Whenever a newspaper or magazine is annoyed with me, I immediately begin to shrink. In the coverage of our wedding, I was microscopic.
That our nuptials were “reviewed” at all is pretty strange; Tracy and I had never conceived of our wedding as part of our oeuvre. Moreover, none of the supposed “reviewers” had witnessed any of the events they presumed to describe and deride. By anyone's standards, it was a small, intimate gathering, peopled only by immediate family and our closest friends—we hadn't even invited any aunts, uncles, or first cousins. This was a measure of Tracy's positive influence on my life; it was important from the outset of our life together that we carve out an intimate space for ourselves, apart from the tumult of our careers.
But by attempting to have a small, private wedding in Vermont, about as far from Hollywood as we could get, it seems we had unwittingly thrown down the gauntlet to the press. The tabloids launched a massive, multiple-front offensive to find out when and where the wedding would take place, and then to obtain a photograph of the event, no matter what the cost. Tracy and I were determined to keep to our original plans for a modest, untelevised family affair, and the result of this mutual resolve was an absurdly elaborate cat-and-mouse game that drove home to us just how difficult it was going to be to draw a line between our public and private lives.
At the time, the tabloids’ intrusive—sometimes comic, sometimes dangerous—attempts to interfere with what we considered a private occasion, as well as their derisive comments in the aftermath of having failed to do so, pissed me off no end. A lot has changed since then. For one thing, I'm much less angry, if at all. For another, many of the practices the press engaged in on our wedding day are a thing of the past—at least in the entertainment press. The public furor that followed the tragic death of Princess Diana while being chased by paparazzi caused the press to tone down, if not totally renounce, many of the guerilla tactics they employed during the 1980s and early 1990s.
Last, and most important, I am grateful, because the wedding provided the occasion to make emphatic my decision to get the hell out of the fun house. This wasn't about my future, but Tracy's, as well. It wasn't just a simple matter of choice—I was going to have to fight to establish and protect our boundaries, the border separating public and private life. That meant being sober and determined enough to say no to some people who were accustomed to hearing from me only yes. We would make it clear to ourselves, to our families, and to anyone else who gave a damn, that regardless of what we did for a living, our new life together would have its address in the real world.
A month before the wedding, the Enquirer reported that Tracy and I would be getting married in Vermont on July 16 or July 17. We don't know where they got that information, but it was correct. To make sure we understood that they planned to be there, invited or not, they published an aerial photo of our new home in Vermont. Soon after, my publicist got a call from the Enquirer; they knew all the details and had an offer. If we would grant them exclusive rights to photograph the wedding, they would pay us $50,000, and provide security so that no competing reporters or photographers would disturb the event. The aerial shot was, of course, intended as a veiled threat: either invite us to your party, or we'll crash it.
Then the other tabloids and magazines started to call. One of the glossy weeklies took what they must have considered to be the high road. Instead of money, they offered us “what we gave Burt and Loni.” That meant security (as with the Enquirer, their first priority was protecting their exclusive), a favorable article, and our wedding picture on their cover.
In making their offers, the National Enquirer and the others cited my “obligation to the fans.” They argued that the people most responsible for my success and happiness should be able to share in this happiest of days. This sounds nobleminded until you realize that these publications could care less about my relationship with my fans, except as they stood to profit by it. Suggesting I “share” my wedding with the public is really just a polite way of inviting me to collaborate in the packaging and selling of the event, and in turn, as much newsprint as possible.
Maybe we're odd, but we had trouble thinking of our wedding as some sort of NCAA event to which we could sell the rights. If we were going to do that, why not also make a deal for corporate sponsorship (call it the Nike Nuptials), and hold the ceremony at Madison Square Garden, with Regis Philbin performing the ceremony and Bob Costas conducting the postcoital interview? Needless to say, we turned them down.
The battle lines had been drawn; if we would not sell them what they wanted, they were simply going to steal it. True, we could have changed our plans; we briefly considered an elopement to Vegas. But taking such a reactive stance in planning the wedding seemed wrongheaded. We decided to go forward as scheduled—there's always a chance, we thought, that the press knew less than they were letting on. In the event that they did show up, though, we'd be prepared. We hired Gavin De Becker's firm to provide security (and were happy to pay for it out of our own pockets).
The ceremony itself was to take place on Saturday, July 16, under a tent adjacent to the West Mountain Inn in Arlington, Vermont. The inn itself was a cozy bed-and-breakfast-type place, nestled in twenty acres or so of bucolic Vermont countryside. The only access to the Inn was a driveway that bridged the Battenkill River and wound through pastures where llamas grazed.
During the week leading up to the big day, things got progressively weirder. A reporter virtually set up camp outside of Tracy's apartment in New York, asking everybody who went by if they knew her and, if so, had she spoken to them recently about any of
the upcoming events in her life. In Vermont, the Enquirer established a command center at the Equinox, in Manchester (the same hotel, as it happens, where Tracy and I were staying). They staked out all of the other hotels, motels, and inns in the area too, promising cash to employees in exchange for details about the comings and goings of our friends and family members. A man claiming to be Bill Fox, my father, regaled strangers with wedding plans (when tabloid reporters aren't asking questions, they are laying out imaginative scenarios for you to confirm). Dozens of reporters were roaming around both towns offering bribes to anyone else who could provide further information. At one point, an enterprising tabloid reporter went so far as to attempt an abduction of Tracy's eighty-two-year-old grandmother, trying to lure her into his car, ostensibly to give her a tour of the local environs, but in reality, to pump her for information. They deployed photographers in camouflage gear into the hillside surrounding the West Mountain Inn. We heard later that they'd even tried to rent a llama costume to gain even closer access to the proceedings.
I woke on the day of my wedding to the sound of choppers overhead. In all, the various tabloids, magazines, and TV entertainment news programs had chartered a total of six helicopters from local airfields. Some had obviously pooled their resources so that photographers and cameramen from competing entities were sharing a ride, but still, the cost must have been enormous. The Enquirer booked two for themselves alone, one of which was to remain overhead at all times on Saturday. These helicopters had absolutely nothing to do with getting pictures of our wedding—the reporters knew we were going to be under a tent, and who gets married at 9:00 A.M. anyway? No, the helicopters were strictly a form of psychological warfare. The idea was to keep up the pressure until I backed down and allowed them a photo opportunity. They would be just as pleased, I assumed, if I stomped out of the tent à la Sean Penn and shook my fist at the sky. But the helicopters were never that bothersome to me, although there were disconcerting moments when the realization sunk in that these giant steel-bladed contraptions were competing for a tight quadrant of airspace directly above the people we loved and cherished most.
Lucky Man Page 14
