Whoa. This is heavy.
Michael J. Fox has revealed what Eric Stoltz said to him four decades after replacing him as Marty McFly in the 1985 hit “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, 64, reflected in the epilogue of his newly released memoir, “Future Boy,” per Entertainment Weekly.
But after penning Stoltz, 64, a letter asking for a meeting to discuss the “Back to the Future” swap, and noting in the letter that “If your answer is ‘piss off and leave me alone’…that works, too,” Fox revealed that he received a surprising answer from the “Pulp Fiction” actor.
“[Stoltz’s] beautifully written reply began, ‘Piss off and leave me alone!’” Fox recalled. “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,” the “Teen Wolf” star added.
Elsewhere in “Future Boy,” which released Tuesday, Oct. 14, Fox explained how he ended up replacing Stoltz and starring alongside Christopher Lloyd (Dr. Emmett Brown), Lea Thompson (Lorraine McFly) and Crispin Glover (George McFly) in the Steven Spielberg-produced time-travel classic.
At the time, Fox was in the middle of shooting a 26-episode order for “Family Ties,” the sitcom he starred in as Alex P. Keaton.
Fox wrote that although he was director Robert Zemeckis and Spielberg’s original choice for Marty McFly, “Family Ties” creator Gary David Goldberg had “removed me from consideration” over concerns that the double shooting schedule would affect his performance on the NBC sitcom.
However, Fox was ultimately called back six weeks after “Back to the Future” started shooting because Zemeckis and Spielberg weren’t happy with the way Stoltz was portraying the movie’s main character.
“They had already shot for over a month,” he explained. “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.”
“Back to the Future” ultimately brought Fox worldwide fame, and the movie garnered two sequels. In 1991, one year after “Back to the Future Part III” was released, Fox was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease.
“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,” Fox continued in “Future Boy.”
“The rest had nothing to do with us,” he added. “As it turned out, we had much more in common than our spin as Marty.”
After finally meeting in person, and after realizing that they had previously crossed paths auditioning for Franc Roddam’s 1983 drama “The Lords of Discipline,” Fox and Stoltz began a “friendly correspondence” that they still maintain.
“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 wrote.
“His emails are reliably witty and always fun to read,” the “Back to the Future” star concluded. “A reminder that some of the best parts of our future can come from the past.”
