This is Eric Stoltz.
He plays Marty McFly in the hit film trilogy
Back to the Future.
He'd go on to become one of Hollywood's biggest stars,
dominating the decade, and the next,
with huge blockbuster movies and massive TV roles.
He is now, today, an American treasure.
Now if you had a DeLorean today, you
could trace your way back to a time where that reality was
slowly coalescing.
It existed.
A time are Back to the Future was a very different movie.
And this guy, Michael J. Fox, was just
another kid on a TV show.
A time when Crispin Glover didn't just
star in one Back to the Future movie, he starred in all three.
A time where he didn't end up suing, and winning,
against the very studio that gave him the role.
This is the story of just how close
we got to those realities.
The story of what went wrong with Marty McFly.
And what really went wrong with George McFly,
and the actor that played him.
You were wrong.
Without just cause or provocation,
you denied me permission to do something I have
every right in the world to do!
Back to the Future was the brainchild
of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, with some
of the help from Steven Spielberg.
But it was not an idea the world loved right away.
In fact, almost every studio the two
took the idea to absolutely hated it.
The script was passed on over 40 times
before finally getting made.
Some thought the movie was too immature for mass audiences.
Others, like Disney, thought the movie was too inappropriate,
because this is his mom.
But when it was finally picked up by Universal,
two people were cast as the leads.
Crispin Glover as Marty's dad, George McFly.
And Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly.
And filming would finally get underway.
You've probably heard of method acting.
It's a form of acting where you essentially
eat, sleep, and breathe the character on and off set.
You become that person.
You're always acting.
It's intense, but the people who practice it swear by it.
It's what led to performances like this--
Well, Eric Stoltz, prior to Back to the Future,
was known as a dramatic method actor.
He took on serious dramatic roles
and treated the jobs and characters equally as
seriously, which sounds great.
What could possibly make for a better Marty McFly
than a guy who envelops everything about him
every second of every day?
Well apparently, a lot of things could have been better.
Back to the Future shot for six weeks
with Eric Stoltz as Marty.
The movie itself would only take about 13 weeks
to shoot in its final form.
So this was a long stretch.
Half the length of a lot of movie shooting times.
And at about that six week mark, almost everyone on the set of
Back to the Future looked around and said the same thing.
This isn't working.
And he showed me the first five weeks of footage cut together.
And he just said I don't think we're getting the laughs that I
was hoping we would get.
See, for Stoltz, he wasn't the first choice.
Michael J. Fox was.
But he was busy shooting Family Ties at the time
and couldn't take the role.
But things got so bad that the studio panicked.
Stoltz wasn't bad, necessarily.
But he was treating a hoverboard riding, guitar playing,
class skipper with the same seriousness
as De Niro in a gangster movie.
Shockingly, everyone quickly realized
Eric Stoltz wasn't funny.
So unfunny that the studio spent $4 million to replace him.
So they went to the execs on Family Ties and begged
for Michael J. Fox.
And eventually, worked out one of the craziest shooting
deals you'll ever see.
Michael would shoot Family Ties, his show, on weekdays.
And Back to the Future on weekends.
Oh, and every single night of the week.
He'd be picked up from set on Family Ties, driven
to Universal's lot.
He'd film till 4:00 AM, be driven home.
Sometimes literally carried into his bed,
and then picked back up again.
Literally carried out of his bed by a production assistant,
into another truck at 6:00 AM to shoot Family Ties the next day.
Fox says he got two hours of sleep
a night on average for three months.
But things went a bit different for George McFly.
Hey, see you later, Pop.
Time to change that oil.
[CHUCKLING]
Crispin Glover wasn't just good as Marty's dad, George,
in the original Back to the Future, he was exceptional.
He was funny, energetic, and most importantly
the perfect person to portray a weak, mild mannered father.
His performance in the original film
is one of the best in the trilogy.
But his character and his role in the franchise
is one of the strangest stories in film to this day.
First it starts with what happened in the first film.
Glover did not like the original ending.
At the end of that film, the characters
return to the present wealthier in a nicer
house with nicer cars, nicer clothes, greater success.
And Glover thought this reduce the message of Back
to the Future to money buys happiness.
So he voiced his concern.
Apparently quite loudly to both producers
and the directors of the film.
And come contract time for part two,
well things went just as poorly.
Bob Gale would say that Glover asked for as much money
as Michael J. Fox.
The studio said no, and Glover threw a fit.
Crispin Glover says he asked for as much money as Biff's actor
and got half.
Glover said no, the studio threw a fit.
Regardless, Glover wouldn't return for part two.
But that's actually where the story really gets weird.
Like, kind of creepy weird.
Bob Gale--
Yeah, Bob Gale was on.
Yeah I think I listened to it, and on your show he lied.
He lied about some--
and you guys automatically believed what he said.
You may have seen this scene from Back
to the Future Part II.
Here, Marty's dad hangs upside down in the doorway
because he's hurt his back.
And this is apparently how the doctor recommends he fix it.
Well that's actually, kind of, sort of Crispin Glover.
Who, remember, refused to appear in the movie.
Instead of announcing a recasting,
Universal decided they'd try to hide Crispin Glover's
departure.
They casted Jeffrey Weissman as the new George McFly.
A move that even the actors on set weren't happy with.
Lea Thompson stayed away from him on set out of loyalty
to Glover.
And the first words out of Michael J. Fox's mouth
upon meeting Weissman was apparently quote,
"Crispin ain't gonna like this" unquote.
And there's a reason for that.
The lengths they went to trick moviegoers was strange.
The beginning of the first film starts with Crispin Glover
as older George McFly.
So the studio had to get moldings of George's face
to do the makeup, and get him in it every single day.
George being Glover.
But for part two, they actually took
the moldings of Glover's face from part one,
and put the new actor inside a prosthetic
made of Glover's face molds.
And then spliced in footage of Glover from part one
to make it look more real.
They literally put Crispin Glover's face
onto another human being.
And then, when that didn't look convincing enough,
they decided to write in a back injury
and literally hang him upside down in hopes
that the audience would have a tougher time telling
the difference.
Yep, that is why this scene exists.
And this is a big deal because the split
between Crispin Glover and Bob Gale, Robert Zemeckis,
and Universal was not amicable.
Crispin Glover held a lot of hate for the studio
immediately thereafter and still to this day.
He did not sign off, or approve of his likeness being
used for part two as a result.
So when he saw part two and realized wait, that's me.
He was angry.
So angry he decided to risk his place in the industry,
and sue the studio.
A lawsuit by the way, he won.
A landmark decision that would prevent movie studios
from ever doing something like that again in the future.
Literally changed how the industry operated.
While Eric Stoltz just didn't have the comedic chops to cut
it as Marty, Crispin Glover was almost
rebuilt from the ground up.
Back to the Future and Back to the Future--
What these movies are, are great examples
of how important it is to identify when things aren't
right before it's too late.
And ironically, that just might be the message
of these very movies.
Maybe Universal had a DeLorean of their own.
Or hey, maybe Crispin Glover was just sick of this.
Hello!
Anybody home?
Think, McFly, think.
That is it for this episode of Nerdstalgic.
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