I’ve been thinking a lot about Michael J. Fox. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been gradually paging through his first book Lucky Man, which I found while rummaging an estate sale for cool books and vintage finds. Or maybe it’s because I got sucked into Josh Gates’s Expedition: Back to the Future series on the Discovery Network. Whatever it was, it got me thinking of those iconic Mike Fox movies of the 1980s and ’90s like The Secret of My Success (1987), Doc Hollywood and The Hard Way (1991), and one of my all-time favorites, The Frighteners(1996). And of course, how can we forget his role as Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties? The sitcom nearly inhibited him from taking on his most famous role as Marty McFly in the original Back to the Future (1985) and its two sequels.
While pressing the rewind button on the life and times of this most fantastic Mr. Fox, I remembered a movie of his that made me want to howl at the moon with sheer excitement every time it came on HBO when I was a kid. That movie is none other than the original Teen Wolf. Released in the same year as Back to the Future, Teen Wolf tells the story of Scott Howard and his struggle to cope with being both a teenager and a werewolf. A completely offbeat comedy, the film features house parties and underage drinking (“Get me a keg of beer,” Scott tells the grizzled old codger behind the liquor store counter, eyes blazing red with lycanthropic power), the best (girl) friend who wants to be more than friends; the crazy best bud trying to market his pal’s furry new identity; basketball; and a slew of jokes that could only pass in the ’80s, because today they might be construed by many as offensive and grounds for canceling.
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JOHN T. TRIGONIS 