BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH BOB GALE, PART 2

Production of the original Back to the Future was marred by a bit of controversy, which arose when actor Eric Stoltz, who had been hired to portray Marty McFly, was let go from production several weeks in. Replaced by Michael J. Fox, it was a situation that the acclaimed Stoltz deals with to this day. In the second part of Edward Gross’ exclusive interview with writer/producer Bob Gale, the details around the situation are revealed.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: The one disappointment for me about the DVD box set was that we didn’t get to see any of the Eric Stoltz footage.

BOB GALE: Well, I’ll explain that to you, because Bob and I had a long talk about that. And I was actually lobbying to get just one scene in there, without any dialogue, just of him walking around the back lot. We reviewed the footage, and Bob said “Look, this is not going to do Eric any good, it’s going to make him look really bad, and he went through enough pain over this movie that I don’t want to hurt him again.” Then he said, “Quite frankly, it makes me look bad for casting him in the first place.” We saved the footage, we actually had the opportunity to destroy the negative, and destroy it all, and we talked about it, but we decided we shouldn’t destroy it, because it is a rare historical opportunity to have this, but I think we all need to be in our 60s before we release this to the world.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: It’s interesting, because at one point Eric Stoltz was interviewed by the Saturday Today Show, and Jody Applegate asked him about Back to the Future, something along the lines of, “How did it feel?” and he just looked at her with anger in his eyes, and said, “What an insensitive question to ask somebody.”

          

BOB GALE: Well, it is an insensitive question. It’s like you see those newspaper reporters going up to someone after a tragedy and asking, “How did you feel when you heard your family was killed?” “Well, screw you!”

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I guess knowing these movies so well, it’s a natural curiosity to wonder how someone else would have tackled the role…

BOB GALE: And we understand that, we’re aware of it, but there’s a human cost. There’s no reason to cause pain, and that’s why we didn’t do it.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: How many sequences were shot with him?

BOB GALE: A lot. About five weeks. There was about 40 minutes worth of cut footage.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Some reports said he was a little too intense for the role.

BOB GALE: Well, the best way I can explain it, is there were two things going on. We think that Eric, first of all, was miscast. We wanted Michael J. Fox all along, but he couldn’t do it because of Family Ties. Meredith Baxter Birney was pregnant, and he was really carrying the show. So that was just off the table immediately. It came down to Eric Stoltz and C. Thomas Howell, and we screen tested both of them, and Tommy was way better. Would the movie have been as good with him as with Michael J. Fox? Probably not, but it would still have been real, real good, because Bob’s a good director and he knows how to talk to actors and Tommy was really good. He understood it, and he had this kid thing that Michael J. Fox has, and I would say Eric Stoltz doesn’t have it. Eric Stoltz was older beyond his years. And the quintessential image in Back to the Future that describes Marty McFly is seeing him on a skateboard, just skateboarding to school. When you saw Eric Stoltz on a skateboard, you said, “That guy doesn’t belong on a skateboard.” And that, in a picture, is what was wrong with Eric Stoltz. He was trying to act the part, but he didn’t have it inside of him. And I’m sure if you talk to actors and directors, they’ll tell you that the best performances are the ones where they can find the character within themselves, and you can draw on that, which makes the part your own, and it also is what’s true to what the creation of the character is supposed to be. And Eric just didn’t have enough Marty McFly in him to make it believable. And he is intense, and he’s more of the method school of acting, and he’s a very internal actor, as opposed to a guy who has a lot of physicality to him. He does stuff with his eyes, and with his face, and he’s a real good actor – he made it into the finals because he is a good actor, but it just wasn’t coming across.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Is there a reason you chose Eric over Tommy?

BOB GALE: Sid Sheinberg took this movie under his wing, so to speak, because he became supervising executive on all of Spielberg’s projects. So Sheinberg had been pushing us to get Eric Stolz in there, he loved Mask and thought the world of Eric Stolz. And he kept on going on and on about how Eric was going to be the biggest star and the greatest actor, and Sheinberg saw these two screen tests, and when I tell you how night and day they were, you can believe it. We had people on the crew talking to Tommy after the test, like he’d gotten the part. And Sheinberg saw the screen tests, and he said, “Well this is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit,” meaning that Eric Stoltz was chicken salad and Tommy Howell was chicken shit, and we were all stunned because everybody, including Spielberg, thought it was Tommy, hands down. And Sheinberg was so adamant about it, he said in a moment of bravura, “I’m so sure that Eric Stoltz is going to be great in this part, that if he isn’t, you can re-cast and shoot it with somebody else.”

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Wow, that’s some statement.

BOB GALE: How do you argue with that? And of course he never expected us to take him up on it. But when it came time, when we realized that we had a problem, everybody – Spielberg, Kathy Kennedy, Neal Kant and myself, and Bob – all put our heads together, and we knew that there was no way, after what had happened, that Sheinberg would accept Tommy Howell. That would have represented too much of a loss of face for the guy. So Steven said, “You have to make sure that we’ve got the next actor to replace him, before we make this telephone call.” That’s when we went back to Gary David Goldberg, the producer of Family Ties, and said, “Gary, we are so far up shit’s creek without a paddle, and Michael J. Fox is the paddle.” And Gary said “Look, Meredith is back on the show, and it’s not as crazy as it was three or four months ago when you guys asked me this question the first time. What I will do is, I will let Michael read the script.” Because the first time

Gary

said, “This script is so good, I will not let Michael read it, because he’ll hate me for the rest of his life for not letting him do it.” He said, “I’ll let Michael read it, and if he wants to do it, that’s fine, as long as you understand that Family Ties always is in first position. You have to work your schedule, and Michael has to work his schedule around Family Ties.” Michael read the script and said, “Sleep? What the hell do I need sleep for? I’m 22-years-old, I don’t need sleep!” So he said yes, and this all took place in a matter of 48 hours. And then we went to Sheinberg and said, “This is what we want to do,” and we ran the footage for Sheinberg. I don’t know if he totally agreed with this or not, but he’d gone so far out on a limb to get us to put Eric Stoltz in the movie, with this statement about re-shooting with another actor, and having everybody on the production side telling him that we had to do it with someone else, that he said OK.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Well, you guys were right.

BOB GALE: We definitely were. We knew it the first night Michael came on the set. It was apparent that quickly. One of the most depressing things for a crew is to go back and re-do stuff they’ve already done. You just don’t want to do it again. So we thought, “Let’s hope this works, because the crew morale might be really terrible.” And as soon as Michael got out there and started acting, everyone could see how great this was going to be. Chris Lloyd was better with Michael than he was with Eric. There was much more of a giving thing; I can’t actually explain it, except that it felt like Michael was connecting more, because he’s more extroverted, with the other actors, and the other actors were responding to that, so everyone’s performance was elevated because Michael was there.

Comments

[Rex]

Back when this movie came out on Laser Disc, the Stereo/TV store I worked in played this movie all day long, over and over on the 100 TV's throughout the store. I have seen this movie close to 100 times. I still do not get tired of it. The childlike quality of the series, the actors, the story.... will forever live in my mind as one of the greatest of all time.