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Michael J. Fox reveals in his new memoir, “Future Boy,” that he wrote a letter to Eric Stoltz asking to finally meet 40 years after Fox replaced Stoltz as Marty McFly in the blockbuster “Back to the Future.” As the infamous story goes, Stoltz was already in production for six weeks on the Robert Zemeckis-directed blockbuster when the decision was made to boot him and recast the lead role with the director’s first choice, Fox, who had been blocked from the film due to his commitment to the NBC sitcom “Family Ties.”
“Eric has maintained his silence on the subject for 40 years, so I was prepared for the likelihood that he’d prefer to keep it that way,” Fox writes in the memoir (via Entertainment Weekly), noting the two had never come face to face to discuss the casting swap. Fox wrote to him: “If your answer is ‘piss off and leave me alone’… That works, too.”
Stoltz responded with a “beautifully written reply” that “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.”
When Fox and Stoltz finally found themselves together in the same room, the actors “immediately fell into an easy dialogue about our careers, families, and yes, our own trips through the space-time continuum,” Fox writes. “[Stoltz entered] 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.”
“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,” Fox adds. “His emails are reliably witty and always fun to read [and] a reminder that some of the best parts of our future can come from the past.”
Replacing Stoltz as Marty McFly in “Back to the Future” changed the course of Fox’s career, as he made the jump from sitcom star to blockbuster actor. The movie grossed $381.1 million worldwide in 1985 to become the year’s highest-grossing movie and spawned a franchise that led to 1989’s “Back to the Future Part II” and 1990’s “Back to the Future Part III,” both of which Fox headlined.
In his memoir, Fox writes that “Family Ties” creator Gary David Goldberg “removed me from consideration” to play Marty McFly when Zemeckis and producer Steven Spielberg wanted to originally cast him. The film “had already shot for over a month” and the dailies with Stoltz front and center “were disappointing” to the creative team.
“Eric was an immensely talented actor, but the creative team felt that he just wasn’t the right fit for Marty McFly,” Fox notes.
Fox’s memoir, “Future Boy,” is now available for purchase.
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Zack Sharf
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