Michael J. Fox, the interpreter of Marty, narrowly escaped death on the set of “Back to the Future 3”. We tell you everything about this anecdote which could have turned into a tragedy.
Back to the future 3 : the conclusion of a cult trilogy
Only one year after the release of the second opus, the trilogy Back to the future ends with the release of the third part in 1990. Still canned by Robert Zemeckis, Back to the future 3 this time sends Marty and “Doc” to the 19th century.
After the events of the second film, Marty receives a letter from his friend who tells him that he was sent back to the days of the Wild West, asking her not to try to come find him. The high schooler then returns to see the 1955 “Doc” to travel back to the future, only to learn that Biff Tannen’s descendant, Buford, killed the Emmett Brown of the past shortly after arriving in the Wild West era. Marty then decides to go tell his friend, and finds himself propelled in 1885, five days before the assassination of “Doc”…
Back to the future 3 is still co-scripted by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and carried by the main actors of the previous part. Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd find their characters of Marty and Emmett Brown. Thomas F Wilson still plays Biff Tannen, as well as his ancestor Buford, Elizabeth Shue lends her features to Jennifer again after appearing in the second film and Lea Thompson embodies both Lorraine and Maggie McFly. As for Mary Steenburgen, she makes her appearance in the saga in the role of teacher Clara Clayton.
A very real hanging scene
When Marty arrived in 1885 in Back to the future 3, he finds the small town in which “Doc” has settled. But before he could find his friend, he comes across the ancestor of his old enemy, Buford Tannen, nicknamed “Molossian”. The latter, a famous outlaw in the region, continues the tradition of opposing the young high school student, but this time goes further than his descendants. He first catches Marty with a lasso before dragging him several tens of meters with his horse, and ends up hanging him. It is then that Emmett Brown appears and saves his friend from certain death, before sending Tannen and his minions away.
And if Marty narrowly escapes the chokehold in this scene, this was also the case of his interpreter. The scene was mostly shot with a stuntman. But close-ups of the actor were needed for the film. Fox climbed onto a crate with the rope around his neck, and began to fake strangulation. But Robert Zemeckis did not find the scene realistic enough, and so the actor offered to re-enact it without the help of the crate under his feet. The plan was to hold the rope by putting his hands in specific places to get enough air to breathe.
The technique in question worked for the first two takes. But on the third, Fox put his hands in the wrong place, and began to be actually strangled by the rope. The actor even went so far as to pass out before anyone noticed something was wrong. As he himself recounted in his autobiography, luckyman :
I swayed, unconscious, for several seconds before Bob Zemeckis, fan of me as he was, realized that even I wasn’t such a good actor.
So if you think Michael J. Fox plays the scene particularly well, it’s because the actor was really suffocating at the time, since it was used for the final cut of Back to the future 3. This misadventure, similar to the one that happened to Brendan Fraser on the set of The Mummyrecalls that certain actors sometimes have extreme experiences on set, which end up appearing in the film.
