Michael J. Fox is spilling all of the details about his private meeting with Eric Stoltz, the man who was initially tapped to play Marty McFly in Back to the Future 40 years ago.
In his new book, Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum, Fox, 64, explained why Stoltz decided to meet with him for the first time four decades after the casting drama transpired.
“In the initial weeks of writing this book, I sent an email to Eric Stoltz, asking if he would be interested in talking to me about his Back to the Future experience,” Fox wrote. “Eric has maintained his silence on the subject for forty years, so I was prepared for the likelihood that he’d prefer to keep it that way. ‘If your answer is ‘piss off and leave me alone,’ I wrote, ‘that works, too.’”
“His beautifully written reply began, ‘Piss off and leave me alone!’ Thankfully, this was followed by ‘I jest . . .’ Eric was thoughtful about my outreach, and although he respectfully declined to participate in the book, he seemed open to the idea of getting together in New York City,” Fox continued. “Despite toiling in the same business and traveling in similar circles, Eric and I had never met. Or so I thought.”
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Fox mentioned that Stoltz later came to his home, and they “immediately fell into an easy dialogue about our careers, families and yes, our own trips through the space-time continuum.” Stoltz requested for part of their conversation to remain between them.
“He entered with a smile, and we quickly acknowledged that neither of us had an issue with the other,” Fox said of their first encounter. “What transpired on Back to the Future had not made us enemies or fated rivals; we were just two dedicated actors who had poured equal amounts of energy into the same role. The rest had nothing to do with us.”
Since their first meeting, Fox and Stoltz have “maintained a friendly correspondence,” bonding over being actors and dads, talking about politics and movies they’ve seen. (Fox shares son Sam, 36, twins Aquinnah and Schuyler, 30, and daughter Esmé, 23, with wife Tracy Pollan.)
“His emails are reliably witty and always fun to read. It’s a reminder that some of the best parts of our future can come from the past,” Fox reflected. “One more gift from the year 1985.”
Stoltz was initially cast as Marty after then-Universal Pictures head Sid Sheinberg told director Robert Zemeckis and cowriter Bob Gale that he was the right fit due to his memorable performances in ‘90s classics. However, Zemeckis and Gale weren’t so convinced that Stoltz was the man for the job after a month of filming the sci-fi favorite because of his more serious acting approach.
“Eric had such an intensity. He saw drama in things. He wasn’t really a comedian, and they needed a comedian,” Lea Thompson, who played Lorraine Baines McFly, said in the 2015 book We Don’t Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy by Caseen Gaines. “He’s super funny in real life, but he didn’t approach his work like that and they really needed somebody who had those chops.”
At the time that Back to the Future began filming, Fox was starring in Family Ties and was deemed unavailable by NBC. But eventually, Zemeckis was able to convince the network to let Fox shoot Back to the Future around his TV filming schedule. Gaines detailed the announcement that was made to staff after Stoltz was ousted from the film.
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“‘We have an announcement,’ Zemeckis said into his bullhorn,” Gaines wrote. “‘It’s probably going to be shocking — kind of good news, bad news.’ The crowd was starting to grow uneasy, he could tell. ‘I’ll give you the bad news. We’re going to have to reshoot most of the movie because we’ve changed the cast and there’s going to be a new Marty: Michael J. Fox.’”
Gaines continued, “The director saw the reactions. They weren’t gleeful, per se, but they didn’t seem to be as angry or worried as he had feared. Someone from the crowd shouted, ‘That’s certainly not the bad news!’ ‘OK, well, then, that’s the good news. I guess the other good news is that we’re going to continue on.’ He paused. ‘So it’s only good news and good news.’”
Stoltz very subtly addressed his life after the casting switchup in a 2007 interview with Moviehole.
“I rarely look back, if at all, but in retrospect, I think just getting through that difficult period helped me realize how freeing it really was,” he said. “I went back to acting school, I moved to Europe, I did some plays in New York and I actually invested in myself in a way that was much healthier for me. I would’ve been unable to walk down the street! It’s a whole different life. I was lucky in that way.”
Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum is out now.
