Before Michael J. Fox was hired to star as Marty McFly in Back To The Future, another person had the role before him. Such a turn of events preceded Fox becoming an indispensable part of the Back To The Future trilogy. This saga saw Fox headlining a trio of motion pictures that followed the exploits of Marty McFly through various periods of time. Such periods ranged from the past, the then-future future of 2015, and the Old West.
A key ingredient for the enduring success of these movies was due to Fox's performance as the franchise's protagonist. As Marty McFly, Fox emanated a compelling devil-may-care coolness while also excelling in depicting Marty's comedic reactions to the larger-than-life developments (such as running into a young version of his father) happening around him. Fox's work in Back To The Future turned out to be essential to that 1985 film's success, but he wasn't the person that was first signed on to play Marty McFly.
That honor instead goes to Eric Stoltz, an actor now best known for his Golden Globe-nominated work in Mask as well as his prolific career as a TV director. Though Stoltz was the first person cast in the Marty McFly role, he wasn't the very first pick for the character. Actually, Michael J. Fox himself was the original top choice by the Back To The Future creative team to play the film's protagonist. However, Fox’s commitments to the sitcom Family Ties ensured he wouldn’t be able to take on the task of playing Marty McFly. Thus, a replacement was required and after an extensive search, Eric Stoltz signed on for the part.
That seemed to be the end of the tale as Stoltz proceeded to play Marty McFly for the first two weeks of filming. However, as progress on the production proceeded, Back To The Future director Robert Zemeckis began to feel Stoltz wasn’t the perfect fit for the part. Retrospective interviews have seen Zemeckis claim that the primary issue with Stoltz was that he didn’t come off as organic in portraying the personality of Marty McFly, not to mention the difficulty Stoltz had with the comedic aspects of the character. There were serious issues with Stoltz's portrayal as McFly and drastic measures were required to resolve these problems.
Despite having already filmed portions of the film with Stoltz, Zemeckis and company made the call to have somebody else tackle this part. Stoltz was promptly let go, and the film's producers made another attempt to work with Family Ties to get around the scheduling conflicts that had previously prevented Michael J. Fox from starring in Back To The Future. This time around, the individual parties were able to reach a compromise and Fox was allowed to star in the film. Fox subsequently ended up being forever associated with the character of Marty McFly. However, Eric Stoltz will always remain an integral figure in the history of the character given how close Stoltz came to the role.
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