Michael J. Fox and Eric Stoltz Hung Out for the First Time Since Their ‘Back to the Future’ Drama
Along with Christopher Lloyd, the DeLorean and a whole lot of creepy oedipal overtones, the big star of Back to the Future was Michael J. Fox.
But famously, the role of Marty McFly was first given to Eric Stoltz. In one of the most notorious movie recastings of all-time, Stoltz was fired weeks into filming and replaced with Fox, the filmmakers’ original first choice for the part.
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As the story goes, Stoltz wasn’t the right comedic fit for the movie, having taken a more serious, method approach to the role. Thomas F. Wilson, who played Biff the school bully/sex criminal, recalled Stoltz telling everyone, “Call me Marty,” on set, “except for Lea, who’s playing my mom who I’m trying to make out with, off-camera,” Wilson added. And Stoltz’s method acting inspired him to shove “Biff” so hard that he bruised Wilson’s collarbone during the cafeteria fight scene.
After taking his part in what has become one of the most beloved movies of all-time, Fox understandably didn’t hang out with Stoltz much after that. But apparently the two just connected for the first time since the BTTF drama went down.
Fox is releasing a book about the making of Back to the Future called Future Boy, featuring new interviews with the cast and the crew. Fox also reached out to Stoltz, who turned down the interview request. The actor rarely talks about the incident, although he did reveal that it was “devestating” during a 1993 interview with Bob Costas.
But Stoltz did agree to meet with Fox. “I’m a big fan of his. He’s really great. And particularly I’m a big Tarantino fan — Pulp Fiction was amazing,” Fox told People. Fox said that their meeting at his New York City office “was great. It was a great conversation. It was just two guys talking, which is what I thought it would be.”
“There’s all this mythology built up about this thing that happened. Was it backstabbing? Was there people conniving and being evil? No, it just was the thing that happened,” Fox reasoned. “We had different experiences with the same situation, and you absorb it and you move on.”
During a recent convention appearance, Fox called Stoltz a “wonderful actor who since has become a friend of mine,” adding, “I’ve learned a lot about acceptance and perseverance from him. He’s a great guy, Eric Stoltz.”
The two actors also realized that they had actually met each other before Back to the Future. “During our early struggles to find a foothold in the movie business, we had both auditioned for Franc Roddam’s intensely dramatic, intensely dark, intensely intense movie The Lords of Discipline, about a military academy in the South,” Fox explains in his book. “The casting director asked us to read a scene together, and Eric took the ‘intense’ note to heart, forcefully grabbing my shirt and nearly tearing it in half. Neither of us got the part.”
In retrospect, maybe Fox should be thankful that Stolz left his collarbone untouched.
