He’s taking the ‘Future’ and his past for a spin

Michael J. Fox went back to his past earlier this week, thanks to the high-profile release of the three “Back to the Future” films on DVD.

It’s been 12 years since the actor was last seen in his signature big-screen role, the tireless time-traveling Marty McFly in the hugely successful trilogy. In the years since “Back to the Future, Part III” was released, Fox made a number of films -- none with quite the impact of that series -- starred in his second hit TV sitcom, “Spin City,” and, four years ago, disclosed he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He soon left “Spin City” and has withdrawn somewhat from the public eye, while staying busy with new projects.

But there he was on Monday, revisiting McFly once again.

The day began with the 41-year-old actor getting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That evening, he reunited with the cast and crew of the three “Back to the Futures” at Universal Studios’ clock tower square, which was pivotal in the films. The DVD version of the movies is one of Universal’s big holiday releases.

Fox, who has been suffering from Parkinson’s since 1991, sounded tired during a phone interview Monday afternoon but seemed in good spirits. Like many entertainers who aren’t as visible as they once were, he emphasized how busy he is.

“I’m writing a pilot for ABC,” Fox says. “It’s for a comedy. Then I promised my book publisher I would write a novel sometime this year and next. And I am looking at a lot of scripts to direct. Not doing a series and not producing on a weekly level, I feel a lot more rested and a lot better in the last couple of years than I have in a while.”

He’s also been busy running the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and being a dad to his four children.

Fox’s 13-year-old son, Sam, who is only a few years younger than the McFly character his father played, accompanied him to Los Angeles for the two Monday events. So did the actor’s mother, Phyllis Fox, who lives in Canada. His wife, actress Tracy Pollan, stayed home in New York with their 7-year-old twin girls and 13-month-old daughter. “She’s still nursing our youngest,” Fox says.

He was joined at the morning’s Walk of Fame ceremony by such business associates as “Family Ties” and “Spin City” executive producer and creator Gary David Goldberg, and “Back to the Future” director Robert Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale.

“When I came to L.A. in 1979, my father drove me down [from Canada] for this kind of fact-finding mission to see if it was a viable thing to let his 18-year-old son move to L.A. When we came down, we went to this really, really great ice cream parlor called C.C. Brown’s. It was, I think, in the same block where the Galaxy Theaters are now, where the star is. It is kind of a nice connection because when I think of it, it makes me think of my dad. He has been gone since 1990.”

Zemeckis and Gale, as well as his film co-stars Lea Thompson and Christopher Lloyd then joined him as Universal saluted the “Back to the Future” trilogy with a lavish party. The event was originally to be al fresco in front of the film’s famous clock, but party planners scrambled over the weekend to erect a massive tent when weather forecasters predicted -- correctly -- that Monday would be rainy.

For the three-disc DVD release of the “Back to the Future” movies, which between them grossed more than $500 million in the U.S. alone, Fox appears in several documentaries and does select on-screen commentary for the original 1985 “Back to the Future.” “I didn’t actually sit down and watch all three films again, but I wish I had,” he says. “I have seen bits and pieces of them over the years, and my son has watched at least the first couple.

“It’s one of those things that for a lot of people it is part of their popular culture, and for me, it’s basically home movies. Sometimes you feel like sitting down and watching home movies and sometimes you don’t. I am actually looking forward to sitting down and exploring them throughout one day.”

Fox was doing the low-budget film “Teen Wolf” in the fall of 1984. “Family Ties” was on a filming hiatus because star Meredith Baxter was about to give birth to twins. “I did ‘Teen Wolf’ as a lark. We shot in Pasadena in a place where a lot of people shoot film and this advance scout company came to scout for ‘Back to the Future.’ I didn’t know what it was about, I just remember sitting there thinking, ‘I wish I was on that movie and not this one.’ ”

He did know that Eric Stoltz was set to star in “Back to the Future” playing the teenage McFly. But Stoltz hadn’t filmed too many scenes when he was released from the film because he wasn’t working out.

“I think we had just come back from the Christmas holidays in early ’85 and Gary Goldberg called me into the office and gave me the script [to ‘Back to the Future’] and said they had approached him originally back in the beginning of the season. He couldn’t let me out and he didn’t want to disappoint me by even bringing it up. But all of a sudden, they had come back to him.”

This time, Goldberg worked out the “Family Ties” schedule so Fox could do the NBC sitcom by day and the film at night. “He was responsible for me having a film career,” Fox says.

Doing the movie and TV series simultaneously was exhausting but tremendously exciting for Fox. “You’re only 24 once,” he says. “It was just a tremendous blur. So when the film came out there were actual scenes that I watched I couldn’t specifically remember doing.”