Uncorrected Proof
I purchased a galley of Christopher Lloyd’s memoir, In My Own Time, because it was the only cheap copy. I also felt compelled to purchase it because I couldn’t help but think that his final draft might have more to say about Eric Stoltz in Back to the Future. Once actors turn in their final drafts, there’s no telling what changes could be demanded by editors, lawyers, agents, managers and publishers who may have close relations with film professionals. On my WordPress blog, I wrote many articles where I made a solid case about Stoltz being unfairly fired from BTTF. Akin to the most fascinating of lawsuits, his situation is rife with conflicting testimonies (there are people who even conflict with themselves).
Often is the case with memoirs that the subjects feel the need to consult with people who they are writing about in order to either seek permission or to clarify something that they are not sure about. Several years after the release of Back to the Future Part III (1990), Steven Spielberg had greenlit a sitcom starring Michael J. Fox. Spielberg’s company DreamWorks had a TV subsidiary. The first season of Spin City (1996) contained an in-joke about the firing of Eric Stoltz from Back to the Future in 1984. In episode 9, Meet Tommy Dugan, the titular character questions the motion of firing people right before Christmas. The response that he gets is: “No, Tommy. We’re letting them go before the end of the fiscal year.”
In a 2012 interview that can no longer be found on The A.V. Club, Crispin Glover was quoted as saying that Eric Stoltz was fired right before the Christmas break. It sounds ridiculously harsh but there are anecdotes about how shoddy that Eric was treated during the final week of filming. At first, they didn’t bother with arranging his close-up shots for his scene with Christopher Lloyd…but then this story is contradicted with the claim that they were willing to have Eric go in front of the camera but with no film in it. The idea being that, unbeknownst to Eric, he was simply being used as a trial run for what they would later do with Michael Fox. Spielberg was also slimy about Crispin regarding Back to the Future Part II (1989).
This is not to say that Robert Zemeckis is off the hook. Despite the box office success of Romancing the Stone, his directorial career was primarily defined by failure - two directorial flops (I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars), a screenwriting flop (1941) along with having been replaced as the director of two films in pre-production i.e. Cocoon before First and Goal (this was first known as Jocks before being retitled Wildcats). With enough disappointments to be completely counted on one hand, it was only a matter of time before journalists would have begun to speculate as to whether he could hit it big with Back to the Future since Eric Stoltz was not a star. Eric’s firing took away the heat of the interrogating light.
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In a 2007 interview for the Voices from Kypton blog, producer Bob Gale claimed that MCA/Universal head Sidney Sheinberg had high hopes for Eric Stoltz to the extent of predicting that he would be known as the world’s greatest actor and biggest movie star. If that was true, Sidney would have made sure that the budget wasn’t cut for Back to the Future (Marty McFly’s return mission wasn’t the only thing that was changed). Considering that Steven Spielberg compared BTTF to Leave it to Beaver (a Universal TV series), it should be known that Sidney was behind a legacy series called The New Leave it to Beaver. This began airing in November 1984 - the same month that BTTF began filming. The series ended in 1989.
There was an actress named Susan Ursitti. She was in a Michael J. Fox movie called Teen Wolf (1985). This was not produced or distributed by Universal, but it was in Sidney Sheinberg’s best interest to support the film because Susan much later married one of Sidney’s two sons: Jonathan. Officially, they met in 1988. If they were to have divorced, Susan could have made even more money from residuals even if BTTF didn’t increase the commercial value of Teen Wolf. Marty McFly’s girlfriend was originally called Suzy. Let’s not forget that Marty’s mother, Lorraine, was named after Sidney’s wife (like how Biff’s surname was based on a former Universal employee named Ned Tanen).
Given that Francis Ford Coppola was one of the producers for Lionheart (1987) i.e. Eric Stoltz’s next film after BTTF, this makes it all the more unlikely that it was a coincidence for Francis to direct his own version of BTTF i.e. Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). Francis had long been a friend of Steven Spielberg, so it wasn’t a coincidence for Eric to have been cast in a film that was produced by FFC’s sister (Talia Shire). Had his fate not been sealed with the firing, it could have been Eric starring in Top Gun (1986), leaving Tom Cruise to star in Lionheart. This logically lines up because Tom signed on to be in Top Gun in March 1985 whereas FFC decided in 1985 that he was no longer going to direct Lionheart.
There is a 2001 episode of Frasier called The Show Must Go Off where the Crane brothers realize that they were too young to realize how bad that an actor was. This rings true when watching Back to the Future Part II (e.g. the deleted scene with Dave McFly). Michael Caine claimed that the difference between a movie star and an actor is that the latter changes himself to suit the script instead of vice-versa. It’s been suggested that the cast of BTTF had to modify their acting to suit the realistic style of Eric Stoltz. Had his version of BTTF been profitable in 1985, we could have got a sequel on par with Blade Runner (1982). We certainly would have got a sequel where Crispin Glover (his drama school classmate) would have more to do.
The more that I think about the making of BTTF, the more that I begin to think that the Stoltz version was nothing more than a bizarre attempt at a meta joke; not just with how the cast and crew figuratively went back in time with their reshoots. The punchline is that the fans are going to feel like Marty McFly when he “returned” to 1985 i.e. the whole conceit of nostalgia besting what is a superior alternative. There are too many fans with personal memories of growing up with the Fox version, especially those who like to think of the first film as “Part I” instead of being a standalone film. For the record, the first film was more lucrative at the box office than the sequels.
