Swift Disreputation
Eric Stoltz had a sense of humour during the making of Back to the Future. People like to harp on about how he was too method or too serious, but there is clearly an agenda that has been shoved down people’s throats in order to justify having Michael J. Fox be the replacement when he became available. If anyone could be accused of being a killjoy, it is Bob Gale: the co-writer and co-producer who was too attached for his own good. After slaving away for years (and rejected for the same amount of time), he wasn’t much of a team player. Gale can be seen as a Grumpy Gus in another photo with Eric Stoltz and Crispin Glover. Alas, fans believe what they want to believe regardless of how much research that I have compiled for the many WordPress articles that I have written about the original shoot.
In theory, starring in a flop would have hurt his career; but getting fired was worse. The July 1987 issue of U.S. Vogue contains a literal column on Eric Stoltz that was far too brief, although it did convey an awareness about how fame was limited for him than for other people (“I’ve been the flavour of the week”). In the June 1985 issue, Eric had an anecdote about giving advice to Cher during the making of Mask. She was having problems with the director, so Eric said something that doesn’t make him look good in light on what happened on Back to the Future. Eric advised her that you shouldn’t say no; you should say ‘Yes’ then do what you want. After browsing the Newspapers site, I can say that he was put through the ringer by being mentioned in nearly every review and article pertaining to Back to the Future.
Universal ruined the success of their own movie, Mask, when they approved the firing of Eric Stoltz. They had another movie on the horizon, Ridley Scott’s Legend starring Tom Cruise. Although it had premiered in Italy and France circa August 1985, Legend didn’t get a U.S. release until April 1986. Even then, it bombed. This was a month before the premiere of Paramount’s Top Gun. One could theorize that Universal didn’t want Legend to interfere with Mask and Back to the Future, but that didn’t alleviate the scrutiny placed on Eric Stoltz when he went on to star in a medieval film whose title was changed from The Children’s Crusade to Lionheart (thus allowing for his film to be compared to the bigger medieval film). On the subject of comparisons, Tom Cruise never starred in a film directed by Robert Zemeckis in spite of his preoccupation with starring in films made by legendary directors.
If you can understand shaving points or fixing fights then you can understand the idea of Steven Spielberg firing Stoltz from Back to the Future so that Spielberg’s friend, Cruise, wouldn’t have to worry about the potential heart-throb eclipsing him in popularity. In theory, Spielberg could have cast Cruise as Marty McFly after he had finished filming Legend in July 1984. But there was always the possibility that Stoltz could be cast in a rival film. In 1985, there was no guarantee that Michael J. Fox’s Back to the Future would gross way more money than Cruise’s Risky Business (1983) and Ralph Macchio’s The Karate Kid (1984) combined. As the years went by, Stoltz had to have wised up about what was going on. In Out of Order (2003), he played a character who expressed an interest in seeing a woman’s son defeat Spielberg’s son in a game of soccer.
In the October 8, 1984 issue of Us, it was reported by Marilyn Bernstein that Ally Sheedy’s press rep acknowledged that herself and Eric had broken up earlier that year. This makes it weird that he attended the premiere of The Breakfast Club in the following year. In Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins (2004), Rupert Everett wrote about being a friend of the couple. All three lived in the same apartment, and attended AA meetings for socializing purposes. Back to that issue of Us, Eric had an anecdote about Mask which corroborated a similar anecdote from Ilan Mitchell-Smith about the simultaneous shootings of Weird Science and Back to the Future. Referring to himself and Cher, Eric said: “We used to roam around the Universal back lot in our makeup, steal those little carts and drive like maniacs through the Universal tours. People would be dodging out of the way and screaming.”
In the June/July 1987 issue of Scene, it was mentioned by Louise Farr that Eric Stoltz hated wearing ties. He still did it in the future, but this makes me think of how awkward that it must have been for him during the making of Back to the Future. His potential as a comedy actor was established in high school where he was alternately shy and obnoxious. It was mentioned that he would be next seen in Haunted Summer with Laura Dern, but what wasn’t mentioned was that her co-star in Blue Velvet was previously replaced in Eric’s Some Kind of Wonderful (1987). Speaking of whom, Kyle MacLachlan’s memoir (Fictional Selves) will be published on September 29 of this year. In the September 4, 1994 issue of Los Angeles Times, director Peter Bogdanovich was interviewed for an article about Eric. Referring to the March 1985 release of Mask, Peter said: “The picture would have been unthinkable without him but instead of riding its success, Eric went off to Paris, where he lived for a couple of years.”
In the January 1987 issue of Splice, it was mentioned that Eric previously rented an apartment in Paris but he gave it up because it wasn’t practical (although Eric expressed a desire to return). Aside from taking French lessons, Eric spent his last few months in Europe as a backpacker. He toured Italy, Spain and Portugal. Later on in the article, Monika Guttman mentioned that Eric keeps a daily journal. Whether he wrote as himself or in character (like ex-girlfriend Jennifer Jason Leigh) remains to be read. Eric was planning on moving to New York in February 1987, which makes sense because it would have allowed him to get away from the humiliation of living in California after the firing. It should be noted that Rupert Everett moved to Paris in 1986. Despite the implied distance, 1987 was when Eric and Rupert almost starred together in Haunted Summer.
After Haunted Summer came Manifesto (also filmed in 1987). One of the actors in the film, Simon Callow, wrote a book about his experiences. Titled Shooting the Actor (2015), it’s worth reading for those who would like to know more about Eric. Getting fired from Back to the Future didn’t stop him from being a method actor. This was confirmed in the March 1989 issue of YM where he was interviewed for his work on The Fly II. This magazine also corroborated what was mentioned in the book about Eric spending a considerable amount of time in a Rome apartment prior to the making of Manifesto. For a guy who should have been struggling to make ends meet following the firing of a major hit movie, Eric mentioned in the aforementioned L.A. Times article: “I have homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and L.A., but I don’t live high on the hog. I haven’t owned a TV since 1979. I rented a tux for the Tony Awards.”
Ever since 2015, I have been purchasing magazines featuring interviews with Eric Stoltz in the hope of trying to find out more about Back to the Future and his career in general. He is an anti-war activist, which might not necessarily have put him in good stead with certain people in California. In a March 2023 interview for The A.V. Club, Michael Douglas stated that Southern California was the defense industry center for many years. This would explain what Mel Gibson said in his 1998 interview for Mike Figgis. Those “paranoid suspicions” clearly didn’t stop Mel from eventually returning to Hollywood in 1986. On Medium, I wrote an article about Mel and Eric called Dual Paths. There is a side to Eric’s career that we will never know about. In the October 1990 issue of Detour, he said: “I’ve done comedy, drama, classic, p*rn, exercise… What’s left? I’ll do anything! I’m easy!”
That’s not to say that he was totally ambitious. In the November 9-16, 1994 issue of a British publication called Time Out, the final Eric Stoltz quote was: “I don’t have an entourage - but also I don’t have the physicality that Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis has, and I won’t get offered those roles; which is fine. If my goal was to be hugely successful and rich and famous like Tom Cruise or someone… I look at it like those guys are on a super highway that cuts right through the country, and it’s very fast, and very efficient, gets you there in a few hours. I’m more on a country road that meanders around, and I get lost, and I stay somewhere for a few days. It’s smaller and more appealing to me. That’s not to say I wouldn’t get on that highway someday.”
Ironically, Eric was not interviewed in that 1985 issue of Interview. As for the other magazine, this British publication stood out for being one of the very few publications in 1985 that didn’t reference his firing from Back to the Future. One thing that didn’t stand out was the article’s title being “Unmasked” - something that would be done not only in the U.S. that year but many times as the years went by. With Eric being born in September 1961, it was disingenuous for his publicist to refer to him as being 21-years-old. He was 22 when Mask was filmed in the middle of 1984, but the Photoplay interview wasn’t that old because there was a reference to him having “recently finished” Code Name: Emerald (this was filmed before Back to the Future). The disingenuity was still present with the article ending with Eric nonchalantly saying: “I’m lucky; I haven’t worked with many jerks.”
The December 1994 issue of Premiere (a British magazine) had an interview that contained comments which could be seen as extensions of that sentence. Despite owning several homes in different counties, Eric claimed that he didn’t have a lot of payments or obligations, but then someone could joke that his A-list girlfriend at the time (Bridget Fonda) could pick up the tab and slack. It does seem curious, though, that he seemingly wasn’t allowed to be an A-lister when you look at celebrity couples such as Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. As for working with jerks, Eric said: “You reach a point where you’re no longer willing to spend three months, 15 hours a day with assh*les. I’m much less willing to sacrifice my sanity.”
In the September 1995 issue of Bikini (a U.S. magazine), Eric Stoltz mentioned that a director has to be part psychiatrist and part traffic cop. Going from what he told Elaine Dutka in the previous September’s issue of Los Angeles Times, it would appear that Robert Zemeckis was only interested in giving him the bare minimum when it came to directing. One of the things that’s interesting about Back to the Future is that two of the actors went on to work with Hong Kong fight choreographers after the success of The Matrix (1999) i.e. Crispin Glover worked with Yuen Cheung-Yan on Charlie’s Angels whereas Billy Zane worked with Ching Siu-Tung on Invincible (2001). In Bikini, Eric said something that reminded me of the Keanu Reeves movie: “I’m producing a film called The Bullets Dream and a few other things which I’m interested in developing, but Bullets Dream is the one I want to do next.”
Given the setting of Back to the Future, maybe the film-makers had toyed with the idea of a teenage Dick Tracy given how popular that the comic book became in the fifties. Give a fedora to Marty McFly, and the resemblance is complete. Eric wore one in the other photo with Crispin Glover and Bob Gale. Michael J. Fox wore one in the first sequel. Christopher Lloyd’s memoir, In My Own Time, might shed more light on the situation beyond the stuff that is usually trotted out by those involved. His book will be published in October - the same month that will mark the publication of how the screenplay came together. This is an unlikely coincidence, something that will result in similarities akin to people doing mergings of the trenchcoat photos. For anyone who has doubts about Eric Stoltz being able to cut it as a comedy actor, the March 1996 issue of Playboy has this quote from John Travolta about Pulp Fiction (1994): “All the people who Quentin cast are inherently funny. Sam Jackson, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel, Rosanna Arquette. Eric Stoltz is hilarious. We’re all actors who look for humor, even in dramatic characters.”