In his latest book, 64-year-old Michael J. Fox recalls the miraculous—and exhausting—circumstances that led to him starring in Back to the Future.
Originally, Eric Stoltz was cast as the hapless Marty McFly, who is accidentally sent back to the 1950s and encounters his future parents. Fox had actually been the producers’ first choice, including Steven Spielberg. At the time, however, he was starring in the hit sitcom Family Ties, and the show’s creator, Gary David Goldberg, initially refused to let him take on the movie role.
Michael J. Fox (front and center) was in the middle of filming Family Ties when he was cast in Back to the Future.
“[He] said it was impossible to consider me for the part, citing my commitment to Family Ties,” Fox writes in his new memoir, Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum (Flatiron Books, out Tuesday).
A few weeks later, however, Spielberg—a personal friend of Goldberg’s—called for help.
“They had been filming for over a month,” Fox writes. “Eric was an immensely talented actor, but the creative team felt he just wasn’t the right fit for Marty McFly. Spielberg came back to Gary and begged him to let me take the role.”
Fox (pictured with his Family Ties TV mom, Meredith Baxter) had to assure his show’s creator that juggling both projects wouldn’t impact his work on the sitcom.
The actor (pictured) shot Back to the Future at night while continuing to work on Family Ties during the day.
Goldberg agreed to the arrangement on one condition: Fox’s commitment to playing Alex P. Keaton—the ambitious young Republican with former-hippie parents—could not suffer.
The young star ended up working double shifts, filming Family Ties at Paramount during the day and heading to Universal at night for Back to the Future, often getting only a few hours of sleep.
“It would never work today, since our business is layered with lawyers, business affairs, and insurance companies,” his agent, Bob Gersh, later said. “Now a movie project demands two weeks of buffer time on either side of a job.”
Eric Stoltz was originally cast as Marty McFly but was let go after six weeks.
When Fox began filming, he also encountered a cast and crew that weren’t exactly welcoming.
Lea Thompson, who played his mother, was “cranky” when they first met. Having worked with Stoltz, she was still “bitter about how he had been let go … and I was the recipient of those feelings,” Fox recalls.
Fox says Lea Thompson was initially “cranky” about him replacing Stoltz.
She later admitted, somewhat sheepishly, to feeling “a certain superiority” because she was a film actor while he came from television.
But after filming their first scene together—when Marty wakes up in his mother’s bedroom—those feelings quickly disappeared as they realized they were “developing a rapport.”
Fox’s sense of wonder over how lucky he was never left him.
Thompson quickly realized she and Fox shared a natural onscreen rapport.
During a midnight shoot on Back to the Future, the catering team laid out a table overflowing with food.
“In my daze, I uttered, ‘Wow. All of this stuff is free,’” Fox writes. “Did I just say that out loud? Already sleep-deprived, my inner broke actor had emerged—the guy who not long before this moment was picking day-old cookies out of dumpsters behind the bakery.”
Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991, also reflects thoughtfully on Stoltz. “From what I gather, Eric’s Marty was more somber than mine, approached through the lens of Marty’s altered reality at the film’s end,” he notes.
Fox loved working with Christopher Lloyd, who played Doc.
While writing Future Boy, he reached out to Eric Stoltz, now 64, to see if he wanted to discuss his Back to the Future experience. The Mask actor declined an interview but did meet Fox for coffee at his apartment.
“Our two-hour conversation revealed a mutual love for our craft, rooted in classic films,” Fox writes. “In the months since, Eric and I have maintained a friendly correspondence … his emails are reliably witty and always fun to read.”
Fox credits Spielberg (top right) with making it possible for him to film Back to the Future.
Fox missed the movie’s premiere because he was filming Family Ties (pictured) in London.
He also reflects on his time on Family Ties, the show that made him a household name. After moving from Canada, he had struggled to find work before landing the NBC sitcom, which was originally intended to focus on his parents, played by Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter.
During the show’s first year, Baxter drove Fox to set every day—he didn’t have a car and had been taking the bus to work.
From the start, it was clear Back to the Future would be a massive hit. Test audiences loved it, and the film opened on the July 4 weekend, less than ten weeks after filming wrapped.
The movie became the highest-grossing film of 1985.
Remarkably, Fox missed the premiere while filming Family Ties in London. Upon returning to Los Angeles, he quietly slipped into a theater to watch the film.
Back to the Future went on to inspire two sequels and even a Broadway musical.
