It took 40 years, countless films, and the authoring of five books to finally bring Michael J. Fox together with Eric Stoltz, the actor he replaced in the 1985 mega-blockbuster Back to the Future. But Fox was still nervous to even reach out.
“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,” Fox reflected in the epilogue of his new memoir, Future Boy, released on Tuesday, which delves into the making of the ’80s staple.
Fox said he wrote a letter to Stoltz, asking for a meeting to finally address the consequential swap that transformed his career, revealing it said, “If your answer is ‘piss off and leave me alone’…that works, too.”
But the timing proved right.
Fox recalled that Stoltz’s “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.”
Ralph Nelson/Universal
In Future Boy, Fox explained how it came to be that, while in the midst of fulfilling a 26-episode order as one of the primary stars of the sitcom Family Ties, he replaced Stoltz in the lead role of Marty McFly a staggering six weeks into production.
Fox recalled learning that he was the original choice for the film directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg. But Family Ties creator Gary David Goldberg had “removed me from consideration” out of concern that the grueling double shooting schedule would negatively impact his ability to meet his already demanding Family Ties duties.
“They had already shot for over a month. Unfortunately, the dailies were disappointing. Eric was an immensely talented actor, but the creative team felt that he just wasn’t the right fit for Marty McFly,” Fox wrote, adding that Stoltz brought a somberness and pathos to the role, which was better suited by Fox’s jovial irreverence.
As Fox stated, Stoltz has been largely mum on the replacement over the years, though Zemeckis, Spielberg, Fox, and more Back to the Future stars like Lea Thompson have spoken about the chaos of a mid-production star swap but the magic that followed Fox’s arrival on set. Back to the Future ultimately catapulted Fox to superstardom, won an Oscar (Best Sound Effects Editing), and spent nearly three months at the top of the U.S. box office charts, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1985.
Finally face to face with Stoltz after wondering for four decades how the Pulp Fiction and Some Kind of Wonderful star took the hit, Fox recalled that the two actors “immediately fell into an easy dialogue about our careers, families, and yes, our own trips through the space-time continuum.”
Fox remembered that Stoltz entered his New York home “with a smile, and we quickly acknowledged that neither of us had an issue with the other. 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. As it turned out, we had much more in common than our spin as Marty.”
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Universal
Stoltz and Fox ultimately pieced together that they had previously met, when they both auditioned for roles in Franc Roddam’s drama The Lords of Discipline. about a military academy in the South. “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.”
The actors were able to joke about the experience, and about their infamous Back to the Future game of musical chairs. Fox ended Future Boy by noting that “in the months since meeting, Eric and I have maintained a friendly correspondence – volleys back and forth between like-minded actors and dads, offering up recent movies we’ve loved, the latest adventures with our kids, and an occasional detour into politics. His emails are reliably witty and always fun to read,” which he takes as “a reminder that some of the best parts of our future can come from the past.”
The Fox-Stoltz swap endures in pop cultural memory four decades on, recently showing up as the butt of a joke in Andy Muschietti’s 2023 The Flash, in which one of the consequences of the titular speedster (Ezra Miller) traveling back in time — and altering it — is Stoltz re-assuming the lead in the sci-fi classic.
Future Boy is out now.
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