NEED TO KNOW
Michael J. Fox finally met Eric Stoltz 40 years after replacing him in Back to the Future — and the two had a “great conversation,” Fox tells PEOPLE.
When Fox, 64, set out to write Future Boy, his new book about the intense time period when he filmed Family Ties and Back to the Future simultaneously, he and co-writer Nelle Fortenberry interviewed key players. Among them: Back to the Future director and co-writer Robert Zemeckis, costar Lea Thompson and Family Ties costar Justin Bateman.
One of the few who declined: Stoltz, the actor originally cast to play time-traveling teen Marty McFly in the 1985 sci-fi classic. Fox was hired to replace him several weeks into filming when the filmmakers realized Stoltz wasn’t the right fit for the role.
Though Stoltz, 64, said no via email to Fox’s request to participate in the book, the Pulp Fiction actor — who has stayed silent on Back to the Future for four decades — agreed to meet Fox.
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“I’m a big fan of his. He’s really great. And particularly I’m a big Tarantino fan — Pulp Fiction was amazing,” Fox says of Stoltz.
As for their meeting, “It was great. It was a great conversation. It was just two guys talking, which is what I thought it would be,” says Fox, who hosted Stoltz at his New York City office.
“There’s all this mythology built up about this thing that happened. Was it backstabbing? Was there people conniving and being evil? No, it just was the thing that happened,” continues Fox.
“We had different experiences with the same situation and you absorb it and you move on,” adds Fox.
Though he is keeping the details of their conversation private, Fox writes in Future Boy that they both realized they had met prior to Back to the Future.
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“During our early struggles to find a foothold in the movie business, we had both auditioned for Franc Roddam’s intensely dramatic, intensely dark, intensely intense movie The Lords of Discipline, about a military academy in the South,” Fox writes in Future Boy.
“The casting director asked us to read a scene together, and Eric took the “intense” note to heart, forcefully grabbing my shirt and nearly tearing it in half. Neither of us got the part,” he continues.
The movie, released in 1983, ultimately starred David Keith, Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton.
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Since Fox and Stoltz’s meeting, the two have become pals. During a Back to the Future panel at fan convention Calgary Expo in April, Fox praised Stoltz as a “wonderful actor… who since has become a friend of mine and someone I’ve had a good time with, talking about this turn in our lives and how we both ended up in different places.”
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“I’ve learned a lot about acceptance and perseverance from him. He’s a great guy, Eric Stoltz,” he continued.
Future Boy comes out on Oct. 14 and is available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.
For more on Michael J. Fox, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE.
