Drama from the past.
In his new memoir, Michael J. Fox claimed that his “Back to the Future” co-star Crispin Glover’s on-set behavior caused “tension” with director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Bob Gale.
“Nobody puts Crispin in a box. But that didn’t prevent the camera crew from literally building a box around him,” Fox, 64, wrote in “Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum.”
“As George McFly, Crispin had his own ideas as to how and where his character should move,” the “Family Ties” actor added.
Fox, who played Glover’s on-screen son, Marty McFly, in the iconic 1985 movie, recalled an incident during filming where Glover’s unpredictable nature was on full display.
“As Crispin approached the camera, he was meant to stay in a lane between the clothesline and me. But Crispin had a different plan,” Fox shared. “My guess is that he saw George as a wanderer, a free spirit who traveled in random patterns — in this case, perpendicular to the camera.”
After Glover, 61, repeatedly wander out of the frame, the crew “fabricated a miniature corral made of sandbags and C-stands, trapping Crispin into adhering to the parameters of the shot,” Fox claimed.
But Fox still insisted that he “loved working” with Glover.
“His talent was unquestionable, although his methods sometimes created friction,” Fox said. “Still, I respected how he remained true to George (as he understood and embodied him).”
“I knew Crispin Glover prior to ‘Back to the Future,’” Fox continued. “I wouldn’t, however, say I was prepared to act with him — there’s no way to prepare for Crispin. With Chris Lloyd, I had an inkling of what he was up to. Neither he nor Crispin ever did the same thing the same way twice.”
The Post has reached out to Glover’s rep for comment.
Elsewhere in his book, Fox — who has been battling Parkinson’s disease since 1991 — revealed what went down when he finally met Eric Stoltz after replacing him as the lead star in “Back to the Future.”
“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 wrote, revealing that he wrote a letter to Stoltz, 64, and asked for a meeting.
“If your answer is ‘piss off and leave me alone’…that works, too,” Fox’s letter said.
But Stoltz ended up having a “beautifully written reply” in which he “was thoughtful about my outreach, and although he respectfully declined to participate in the book, he seemed open to the idea of getting together,” Fox recalled.
The two actors met at Fox’s New York home and “immediately fell into an easy dialogue about our careers, families, and yes, our own trips through the space-time continuum.”
Fox said they also “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.”
Stoltz was initially cast as the time traveler Marty McFly but was fired by the director shortly after filming began.
“It was devastating to me,” Stoltz said in a 1993 interview with Bob Costas. “It was probably the worst thing that can happen to you in your career.”
Fox joined the cast which added an estimated $3 to $4 million to the movie’s budget. He also had to film “Family Ties” at the same time which invololved a grueling schedule.
