Any cinephile worth his salt knows this piece of trivia.
In 1985 before Michael J. Fox charmed the pants off audiences as Marty McFly in the now iconic Robert Zemeckis film, “Back to the Future” — by far the filmmaker’s greatest triumph — Eric Stoltz originally had the part. And not even was cast, but then dropped out. Zemeckis shot for five whole weeks before he realized that Stoltz, while a great actor, wasn’t really capturing the chemistry of the comedy on the page.
The Amblin Entertainment producers, including Steven Spielberg, made the difficult decision of going back to the studio asking if they could replace their actor and start over again, scrapping five weeks of production. Today, that’s unheard of. It’s more like, “tough” and films get buried, but back then, evidently Amblin and Universal (the destrib) were OK with it.
“I had to make this horrific decision that was very heartbreaking for everybody,” Zemeckis said in a clip that was premiered by several outlets today including THR. “But luckily, I was able to convince the studio to reshoot five weeks of work.” Poor Eric Stoltz.
We’ve all seen glimpses of photos and video of this footage before (just do a simple Google search if you haven’t), but why is it coming out now you ask? Simple, “Back To The Future 25th Anniversary Trilogy” to be released on Blu-Ray on Oct. 26. Anyone out there think the other two “Back To The Future” films are far inferior to the original, which is as close to art as entertaining mainstream cinema gets? This writer sure thinks they’re akin to the two woeful “Matrix” sequels. Discuss.