This is Heavy

So, I met Michael J. Fox this weekend.

To put that into perspective, I’ll have to take you back to 1988, when I saw Back to the Future for the first time. From the start of the film, the soaring orchestral arrangement, the feel of the 1980’s, the cluttered cacophony of objects in Doc Brown’s workshop/living space, and then the Nikes. Ah yes, the Nikes.

“Hey, Doc?” 17-year-old Marty McFly asks.

And. It. Was. On.

See, Marty was cool without really being cool. He was clearly a rebel with the skateboard and shades, but he was friends with an eccentric old scientist who apparently had bad housekeeping skills and had taken an inordinate liking to clocks. Apparently, Marty was cool enough with the Doc to have a key to his place, and to stop by before school.

Ooh, and the amp, Oh, the amp. Too bad there was the “slight possibility” of overload.

I wanted Marty to be my friend. When he rolled down the street on that skateboard, hitching onto cars, jeeps, and whatnot, he made me want to do it too, even though I’m deathly afraid of riding a skateboard. It was Marty McFly, and I wanted to be just that cool. That’s where it all began.

Michael J. Fox is my favorite actor, and he has been since I first glimpsed the opening scenes of that epic film. Yes, that means I own everything he was ever in, both on the small screen and the large–from the cult classic horror film, The Frighteners, to his four-season stint as the assistant mayor on Spin City, to his turn as the voice of Stuart Little in multiple films.

So, when I found out, at long last, that there was an opportunity for me to meet him, you can imagine how quickly I pounced on the chance, even if it would eventually take a bit of finagling to make it a reality. Michael J. Fox was coming to the Fan Expo in Philadelphia, and I just had to find a way to be there.

This is the point where I’ll tell you that about six years ago I introduced my oldest child to the Back to the Future film franchise. You know how it is when you really love something and you’re a bit apprehensive about sharing it with others because you’re worried they won’t like it? Well, that was me. I was on the edge of my seat for the entirety of showing her the first film.

She loved it.

We watched the second and third films quickly after that, and I could see her face light up at the scenes I had always treasured. It was just as amazing as I could have hoped, and she has been a fan ever since. She gets every single one of my references whenever I bring up a line or scene, and she can complete the line of scene when I start it. That’s what I always hoped when I decided to have children. That’s the dream.

It made complete sense, then, to bring her with me on the journey to Philadelphia this past weekend so we could both meet Michael J. Fox. Now, I’ve spent all this time talking about the man, the myth, and the legend (because he’s my favorite actor–duh), but there were two other stars of the films there at the Film Expo as well–Christopher Lloyd (Doc himself) and Tom Wilson (the gruff bad guy Biff). While I was excited to see and meet all three of them, the pièce de résistance was and always had been Michael J. Fox.

Apparently, hordes of others had the same idea, I realized pretty quickly, as we walked into the Pennsylvania Convention Center Sunday morning, as I saw in short order people dressed up in various costumes across all fan bases. The costumes that drew my eye more than any others, though, were the Back to the Future ones–the many people in “life preservers,” in rainbow caps, carrying hoverboards of all sizes and various other paraphernalia central to the film franchise. I was blown away and pointed out each and every one of them to my child. She was nonplussed.

Maybe I’m just a complete fanatic. Okay, okay, scratch the maybe.

We weren’t dressed up, but we did have two brand-new t-shirts apiece, Lex with an 8-bit graphic Back to the Future shirt as well as one that said “YOU ARE MY DENSITY.” My shirts were an epic Cafe 80’s one, and one with the flying DeLorean from the second movie. We were ready to show our fandom, even if we weren’t costumed up like this one guy who was dressed as 1955 Doc Brown, complete with mind-reading contraption and bandage on his head (from when he slipped while hanging the clock and came up with the idea for the flux capacitor, of course).

As we passed through the seller stalls, I saw all manner of merchandise for sale, from the highly commercialized Funko Pops, to artists with original designs–the convention floor was packed full of everything you could possibly want from all manners of fandom, but I did notice more of it was dedicated to anime and manga. That’s the world we are in now. But the stars–that’s who I was there to see. They were past the curtains.

We moved past the stalls and into what I could only call the “Autograph Zone,” where every star there had a booth with their name and image emblazoned across the back, so we paeans would know where to go and spend our money getting autographs, booth selfies, or some combination of the two. I had purchased our haul ahead of time, so we had no need to stop by the extremely long line to purchase both items. The codes were conveniently situated on my phone, where they just needed to scan them as our day played out. The first booth I gravitated toward was the one where Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown himself!) was already seated when we arrived, signing autographs.

“That’s Christopher Lloyd. He’s right there!” I mock-whispered to Lex.

“He seems kinda old,” she told me. I had forgotten to tell her since it had been 38 years since the first movie came out, he would seem kinda old.

So we jumped into the line already formed of people wanting autographs. I double-checked my phone to make sure I had the right code pulled up. “Codes. Where we’re going we’ll need… codes,” I told Lex, who shook her head. She knows me well enough not to say anything when I get on a roll like that. In the booth next to Christopher Lloyd, while we were standing in line, Tom Wilson showed up. I took a surreptitious picture of both of them. Another fan came up and took some pretty obvious pictures of both of them. Tacky.

In my bookbag, there were the images we had printed out ahead of time for Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox to sign. For Lex this was the iconic image of Marty and Doc in the Twin Pines parking lot from the first movie, Marty with the video camera up to his eye, and Doc with that wild-eyed look on his face, watching the DeLorean (with Einstein inside) ramping up to 88 miles per hour. It was the perfect image to get both of the stars to sign, and Lloyd would be first. We stood in the line for about fifteen minutes (a much shorter time than I thought it would be–but not at all a sign of things to come for us) before it was our turn and Christopher Lloyd was signing the image.

“Mr. Lloyd, I appreciate everything you’ve done in this film franchise,” I told him.

He grunted in my direction, then said hi to Lex, who said nothing.

“I just wanted you to know it is my absolute honor to meet you,” I said. Then it was over, we had his John Hancock, and it was somehow a bit anticlimactic. The man I had waited nearly 38 years to meet had been a bit underwhelming, though we did have his autograph and that in and of itself was exciting. Maybe it had been a bit less than exciting because I knew the best was yet to come. You know, because I told you earlier, but Michael J. Fox is my favorite actor. Everyone else might as well be chopped liver, even supreme chopped liver like Christopher Lloyd. Which was good, since our next stop was to meet the man himself, for a photo op directly across the way from the Lloyd and Wilson booths.

“This is heavy,” I told Lex as we joined the queue that had already begun forming, even though it was still a solid half an hour until our group was scheduled to go behind the curtain and take our pictures with Michael J. Fox. WITH MICHAEL J. FOX. It was so surreal to even let that phrase slip past my lips. After so much time, after not even letting myself think it was a possibility, I was about to meet the man behind some of my favorite characters of all time–Alex P. Keaton, Mike Flaherty, Bradley Foster, Louis Canning, Dr. Ben Stone… the list goes on–and of course Marty McFly himself.

But, for me, when it comes to Michael J. Fox, it’s so much more than just his acting. When he admitted to being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, I was enjoying his turn as Mike Flaherty in one of my favorite shows of all time, Spin City. I didn’t know what it meant, the diagnosis, so I did some digging, and I was shocked at what I found out. He was so young, it couldn’t be possible, yet it was, and that was it. I felt like I had already lost him, especially when he said he was leaving Spin City and retiring from acting due to the disease. That’s when he became more than just my favorite actor. That’s when he became a human being to me, which has been so much more.

When I stood there and took the picture with him, I had already organized my thoughts a million times. I would only have one chance to tell him what he meant to me, on so many levels, and I knew it. So, when I stood there, next to Michael J. Fox, I told him as quickly as I could, “Mr. Fox, I can’t tell you how much of a difference you’ve made in my life. I truly appreciate you, and this is more than an honor getting to meet you and tell you that.”

The cameraperson said, “Next!” and I knew our time was pretty much over, but I looked at him, he turned his head to look at me, as the next group took their place next to him, and he said, in that signature voice that I’ve heard a million times on screens both big and small, “Thanks.”

Michael J. Fox looked at me. Michael J. Fox talked to me. While it might have seemed like such a small interaction, it meant the absolute world to me. Then it was over, we passed back through the curtain, but I was changed. I look at the image of the three of us, and I don’t just see three human beings posing for the camera. That image will now always bring back up the memory of Michael J. Fox telling me “thanks,” which is more than enough.

It is more than enough.