Sam Amico
It appears Doc and Marty now know what the future looks like, and part of it takes place at the New York Comic Con. Yes, it was actually Michael J. Fox (Marty McFly) and Christopher Lloyd (“Doc” Emmett Brown) who delighted the Comic-Con crowd, telling tales of their Back to the Future days, which began with the first version way back in 1985.
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Lloyd, 83, celebrated the moment with a picture in his Instagram story that showed him hugging Fox. “Thank you @newyorkcomiccon you were wonderful,” he wrote as the caption.
What a lot of people don’t know is that Fox wasn’t the first pick for the part of Marty. It was actually Eric Stoltz, who played the part for the first several weeks of filming.
“I didn’t know Michael other than hearing about him,” Lloyd told the crowd. “And I felt that I had barely made it through the six weeks, and now I was going to have to do it again?”
Lloyd survived — and the movie thrived.
“There was immediate chemistry, as they say,” he said.
Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd Reunite at Comic Con
Now, the movie franchise has taken on new life as a play, as Back to the Future: The Musical, and Fox said he indeed intends to see it.
“They could have fallen into a trap imitating us,” Fox said. “But they made the characters fully realized on their own. I’m gonna go when I come to New York.”
Fox, 61, also discussed his work with the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which has become the largest Parkinson’s foundation on the planet. Tragically, Fox was diagnosed with the disease at 29.
“Parkinson’s is the gift that keeps on taking — but it’s a gift, and I wouldn’t change it for anything,” he said. “People like Chris have been there a lot for me, and so many of you have. It’s not about what I have, it’s about what I’ve been given — the voice to get this done, and help people out.”
The idea for Back to the Future was first conceived in 1980 but didn’t come to fruition until several years later. Stoltz was deemed not right for the part, leading to the change to Fox, the star of then-sitcom Family Ties.
It became one of the highest-grossing movies of the 1980s and has become a classic today.
“It was said once in a movie — the future is what you make it,” Christopher Lloyd said in closing, the crowd reacting wildly.
