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In the publicist's visual history book, Sheinberg denied telling Gale that he would let them start over again if they weren't happy. Sheinberg claimed that it wouldn't have made sense for himself to consider that the actor who he was rooting for could be wrong for the role. He also said that Spielberg had enough power at the time that if he thought that Eric was miscast then he could have easily put his foot down before filming began.
In 2003, Crispin Glover did an interview for Zap2it where he explained why Eric won the role: <i>"I did all of the screen tests with all the people that went up for the role, for Marty McFly. I could tell that there was a way that they were going for the character, kind of light comedy. I don't know exactly how to describe it. There was a certain type of people they were bringing in and Eric Stoltz came in and the scenes were playing better when he was playing it, but it wasn't quite as light or comic. But he was a better actor than the other people that were coming in. What happened was there were probably personal aesthetic contradictions going on at the time with the director. But, I think because they were initially going for this comedic thing, they were becoming concerned, and so they weren't happy about that."</i>
It's funny how there was a disparity between the reflections from the cast and crew members. Lloyd and Crispin talked about how they were surprised that Stoltz was fired. In an interview for Slice of SciFi, Crispin had this to say about whether it was common knowledge during shooting that Stoltz was miscast: <i>"It was not known, and it was surprising."</i>
In Tom Wilson's memoir, The Masked Man, he said it was only during the final week that the mood on the set started to feel off. He thought that it was himself who was the problem. Joel Silver, a business partner of Zemeckis, told Empire magazine (December `93) that it was only during the final week of filming that they realized that the film was terrible.
One particular thorny issue is when the film-makers first wanted to cast Fox. There is a casting sheet dated August 1985 where the only candidates listed for the role of Marty McFly were Eric Stoltz, C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio and John Cusack. While it may seem that Fox had already been approached before then, Bob Gale claimed that Gary Goldberg (the sitcom producer) was first approached either in September or October*.
It just so happens that late September was when Season 3 of Family Ties began - this was the season where Fox became the lead because the star didn't appear that much to her pregnancy.
* https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/secret-cinema-interview-with-back-to-the-future-s-bob-gale-and-sc-s-fabien-riggall/
If you look online for "BTTF 1984 script" then you will find that Stoltz was the right choice for what they were doing at the time - a dark PG-13 movie (edgier jokes and more drama).
As for how he was treated, you can tell by looking at some of the production photos that they were less invested in him. In a
photo with Stoltz outside his trailer, Bob Gale looks like a sourpuss whereas Zemeckis wasn't even paying attention when "directing" the scene between Principal Strickland and Marty.
They would never have been truly satisfied with working with Stoltz even if he was funny, because he wasn't popular enough to guarantee a big box office taking that a sitcom star would.
As much as he gets accused of being a buzzkill, two of the on-set photos of him with Crispin Glover show that he wasn't above laughing at Crispin's jokes. If you look at those photos, you will see that Bob Gale was the one who was too moody on set because he didn't get the star he wanted.
According to some of the 1985 newspaper articles that I found on the Newspapers site: <i>"A rumor has been floating around that several key shots had been bungled early in the shooting, and Stoltz was fired as a scapegoat."</i>
That would definitely have convinced the execs to start from scratch. Gale and Spielberg are getting so much heat for being backstabbers, but Zemeckis is also guilty of this. In different `85 newspapers, he was quoted as saying: <i>"Eric is a fine actor, and I wouldn’t hesitate to work with him again. There was nothing wrong or bad about his performance. His portrayal simply wasn’t in synch with what I wanted the movie to be."</i>
You never hear any stories about Zemeckis offering Stoltz roles to compensate him.
Here is a Stoltz quote from a May 26, 1994 issue of The Index-Journal (Greenwood, South Carolina): <i>"Zemeckis told me he made a mistake hiring me. He said I was doing good work but wasn't giving him what he wanted."</i>
Later that year, he was interviewed for the L.A. Times where he said: <i>"Zemeckis told me I was giving a good performance in a film he didn’t want to make – contemplative and thoughtful instead of comedic. I felt I could have done the part had he pointed me in that direction."</i>
Stoltz's agent, Helen Sugland, was quoted as saying that his firing was totally out of left field because they had heard only positive things for six weeks.
This Zemeckis quote from Robert J. Emery's The Directors: Take Two (a rare book) can be found in Tom Shone's Blockbuster (the opposite of rare): <i>"It was the hardest meeting I’ve ever had in my life and it was all my fault. I broke his heart."</i>
Ironically, Gale and Spielberg disagreed on one thing - the casting of C. Thomas Howell as Marty McFly. In the 2015 visual history book, Gale claimed that he wanted to cast C.T.H. but Spielberg "wasn't ready to commit to Tommy yet."
This would suggest that Spielberg thought that C.T.H. was too immature.
Gale claimed that they didn't throw out the footage because it had historical significance and that it would be released some day ("Stoltz is still a working actor").
The August `85 issue contained an article whose info came from interviews with Neil Canton (co-producer), Zemeckis and Bob Gale. In that instance, it's legit.
Spielberg is suspicious. In the October 24, `85 issue of Rolling Stone, he said: <i>"I should have waited, and yet I wanted the film out for the summer."</i>
He elaborated for a 1987 book titled Oscar Dearest: <i>"I should have gone with my hunch and delayed the film until we got Michael J. Fox."</i>
You would think that he would have been smart enough to shoot around Fox's absence. In the December 1988 issue of Box Office, one of the three casting directors for BTTF (Mike Fenton) said: <i>"Everyone had just seen Mask, which Eric starred in and which Universal owned; and I think that the studio decided that Eric was going to become a very important actor. They thought it was a great idea to cast him in a role that was the exact opposite of the one in Mask, and <b>Steven Spielberg allowed Universal to make that final decision.</b>"</i>
It's too bad that she didn't get to work with Sylvester Stallone on The Executioner.
Lloyd felt that their chemistry was fine, which is why he was completely surprised and saddened when Eric was fired. If their chemistry was awful, Eric wouldn't have been fired after filming so many scenes. The movie was almost completed according to the August `85 issue of Starlog, Tom Wilson and Crispin Glover.
Part of the problem is that Zemeckis wasn't giving Eric enough direction, something which was confirmed by Eric in 1994 when he was interviewed for the L.A. Times. In 2010, a woman who worked for Amblin had responded to a Hollywood Reporter article by saying that Spielberg told Zemeckis not to give Eric any direction at all so that the studio execs could look at the rushes and reach the conclusion that Eric needed to be replaced by Fox.
It essentially cost 4 million dollars to make. I say essentially because Spielberg claimed that the Stoltz version cost 4 million to make (two of the cast members said it was nearly in the can) whereas the Fox version only cost 3 million because they were reusing shots from the Stoltz version.
I'm reminded of the following sentence in the below article: "The symmetry being that both actors were born in 1951 like how Eric and Fox were born in 1961."
https://popcultmaster.com/2016/08/07/symmetry/
Bob Gale said back in 2007: "We saved the footage. We actually had the opportunity to destroy the negative, and destroy it all, and we talked about it, but we decided we shouldn’t destroy it, because it is a rare historical opportunity to have this. But I think we all need to be in our 60s before we release this to the world."
I agree. Too many writers and fanboys like to put emphasis on Eric's method acting being the problem, but the movie was nearly finished before he was fired. If he was such a nightmare to deal with, he would have been let go much earlier on.
Funny thing is...Eric and Tom got their method gimmick from Sean Penn. Bronson Pinchot had this to say about Tom going all method during the making of Risky Business: "He had spent some formative time with Sean Penn. Tom had picked up this knack of calling everyone by their character names, because that would probably make your performance better, and I don’t agree with that. I think that acting is acting, and the rest of the time, you should be you, but he called us all by our character names."
He was funny as the mime in Cameron Crowe's Singles, and he was touching in The Waterdance.
I wouldn't say his firing was an entirely unanimous decision on his part. In 1994, he told the L.A. Times: “Zemeckis told me I was giving a good performance in a film he didn’t want to make – contemplative and thoughtful instead of comedic. I felt I could have done the part had he pointed me in that direction.”
A Robert Zemeckis quote that can be found in Robert J. Emery's The Directors: Take Two and Tom Shone's Blockbuster: “It was the hardest meeting I’ve ever had in my life and it was all my fault. I broke his heart.”
Karen I. Stern recalled conversing with the deceased continuity supervisor, Nancy Hansen, during the editing of Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon in 1989: “After his fateful meeting with Zemeckis towards the end of the seventh week, Eric slammed his dressing room door then quickly drove away.”
James Tolkan (who played Strickland) even quoted him as saying: “Well, they can't fire me now!”
According to Bob Gale in a 1994 book called The Cutting Room Floor, Kathleen Kennedy was the person who approached the Family Ties producer about the possibility of MJF starring in BTTF. Gary Goldberg was one of Kathleen's college friends.
Speaking of Mask, it always gets cited as the reason why he was cast in BTTF, but it's hard to imagine the producers not taking The Wild Life into consideration. In that movie, he played the role of the straight man. Also, Lea Thompson was cast in BTTF because of The Wild Life.
He was surprisingly zany in Cameron Crowe's Say Anything. It's too bad that most casting directors couldn't overlook the stigma of Eric being fired from BTTF for being too serious.
Joel Silver, a friend of Robert Zemeckis, had confirmed this in an interview for the December '93 issue of Empire. When Joel justified firing Lori Petty from Demolition Man, he said: "It’s a lot cheaper than shooting the whole movie like they did in Back to the Future. Eric Stoltz was the lead but, the last week, they realized it was terrible and reshot the whole movie with Michael J. Fox."
Crispin Glover said last year for Anthem magazine: "We had gotten close to being done when they replaced the lead actor. I was almost done and just had a little bit more to shoot."
I'm surprised that it took Thomas F. Wilson's interview with Chris Hardwick to be the floodgate for a whole new level of gossip, because there is an issue of Starlog (August '85) where the writer said: "The movie starring Eric Stoltz was nearly complete."
Mark Hamill didn't have clout before Star Wars.
Tom Cruise didn't have marquee value before Risky Business.
Ralph Macchio wasn't a household name before The Karate Kid.
My point is...Back to the Future is better than all those movies, so Stoltz had that in his favor.