thetomhagen
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Michael J. Fox with fans behind the scenes of Back to the Future (1985)
Oct 22, 2025 9:47 AM
thetomhagen
21499
369
8
Stinkybuttpants
Fox was always a nice awesome dude! Love him for what he was and what he is.
Misteree8
Always an irony that his character in Growing Pains was a young Republican
Misteree8
Whoops i mean Family Ties.
Stinkybuttpants
What would we do baby…. Sha na na na
marthafarquar
Fun Fact: Teen Wolf was made before Back To The Future even though it was released almost two months later. Family Ties wouldn't release Fox for BTTF so they got Eric Stoltz instead. They gave him a month for Teen Wolf as Family Ties was shutting down for Meredith Baxter Birney's pregnancy. Stoltz was let go and Fox was allowed to take over as just re-shooting all the scenes with Fox was far quicker than making an entire movie. By September 1985 Fox had the top two US movies and No2 TV show.
circlebreaker
TIL that Michael J. Fox was a sitcom actor before Back to the Future.
IakobZ
Apparently, they shot most of the film's scenes with Eric Stoltz before deciding he wasn't right for the role and going back to Fox.
VeganFeministFlatEarther
The darker clothing certainly doesn't help with Stoltz's vibe in those shots
IakobZ
That was one of the problems with Stoltz. The producers wanted a fun, lighthearted film, and Eric's performance was... "too intense."
marthafarquar
Yeah, the re-shoot time was so short as they had a rough copy of the entire movie and knew which takes worked best so they didn't waste time shooting multiple versions of the same scene. Teen Wolf shooting time was so short because, being Canadian, Michael J. Fox was a fair hockey player but sucked so bad at basketball he couldn't make a free throw. They had to put out an urgent call to nearby colleges to find a good basketball player who was around 5'4" (MJF's height) to do all those scenes.
bitemark
Stoltz was apparently super difficult to work with, going full method, answering only to Marty, and saw the character as dark and tragic
SerialChickenLover
What kind of movie did he think he was in?
bitemark
I mean on one hand I kinda get where he's coming from, in that Marty's very existence is about to be wiped from history, but absolutely everyone around him (including his gf Lea Thompson/Lorraine) was telling him it's not that kind of movie. I mean MJF played it like a comedy which is why it works, but drama actors can't always do comedy