AVC: Do you feel personal qualms about being in a Charlie’s Angels or an Alice In Wonderland, where you’re clearly forwarding that kind of good-vs.-evil dichotomy you worry about?
CG: Well, yeah. It started with Back To The Future. That was the film that I still have questions about. Essentially what led to me not being in the sequels—I haven’t talked about it a lot until recently. The reason I’m starting to talk about it, specifically, there’s a person named Bob Gale who was a co-producer and co-writer on it who’s been lying about me, as to why I wasn’t in the second film. He’s been saying that I asked for the same salary that Michael J. Fox was getting. Total fabrication. ...
We had shot about six weeks. I’d shot most of my character with Eric Stoltz playing it. And the last thing that we shot with Eric Stoltz was the alternate return to the future. In the original screenplay, I won’t say what it was, but there was a slightly different element in the ending. And I’m sure I wasn’t the only person that said something about it, because it did get changed. ... But I went on beyond it ... I had a conversation with Robert Zemeckis about it and I said, “I think if the characters have money [in the updated timeline at the end of the film], if our characters are rich, it’s a bad message. That reward should not be in there.” ... Robert Zemeckis got really angry. Essentially, he did not like that idea. He was ****ed.
... Eric Stoltz was fired, and the next thing we shot with Michael J. Fox was that alternate future. Robert Zemeckis had been nice to me ... But he made it very clear to me that he was not happy with how the character had been played. I was 20 years old, and of course they had just fired another actor. The lead. So I didn’t want to get fired! I wanted to work! I was scared when we shot that alternate future....
It’s not that I dislike the entire film. There are things about the structure that are very solid, and there’s good writing behind it. But I still would argue all the things that people love about the film would still be there, and I think there would be a better message if, instead of the son character pumping his fist in the air or whatever, jumping up in the air because he has a new truck [in the new timeline], if instead the reward was that the mother and father characters are in love with each other. And that there’s the potential that money comes in. I think [equating their new riches with moral success] is a bad message. And this is aligned to those things in film that I’m saying serve the interests of a corporate element.
Now, I don’t know that Bob Gale or Robert Zemeckis necessarily intellectualized that ... that money is going to make you happy, you should borrow money to do things, this serves corporate interests. Whereas being in love with somebody, on a pure level, doesn’t necessarily serve corporate interest. Somehow that was an understanding, a knowledge, that if that interest didn’t serve the people that were hiring the movie, that maybe it wouldn’t be as well-released by those interests. I still believe that that film, if it was just people in love, if it were released as well as it was, my hunch is that it would still have made as much money as it did. But it’s more about whether the interests were served by the people that were releasing it would be served.
AVC: So did you not come back for the next film because you were uncomfortable with the message, or did they not invite you back because Zemeckis was angry with you?
CG: It gets so complex. It would take a long time to go through all the details of what happened. But suffice it to say, the reality was that they did not want me back in the film. And it stems from that. ...
So what they did was, they offered me—I hate talking about this. It sounds so crass, but because they made it into this issue, I’ve got to say what really happened. They offered me $150,000 to be in ... But Lea Thompson was making something like $650,000, and Tom Wilson was making something like $325,000 or $350,000, so it was less than half of what my fellow actors were making, coming back for similar-sized roles. ... Also, if you look at the character, George McFly, in the sequel, the character’s hung upside down. ... the character’s supposed to have a bad back, and he’s hung upside down. Why would you hang somebody upside down if they have a bad back? What was apparent to me was, if I was going to return to be in the film, they wanted to make me physically uncomfortable, and monetarily, there was a punishment too. Because I had asked questions.
I would have been okay with doing the hanging-upside-down part, if I was fairly compensated for it. ... Gerry Harrington was my agent. He called up—Bob Gale was the person doing the negotiations—Bob Gale made it exceedingly clear that they felt they had paid Lea Thompson and Tom Wilson too much money, and he even said they were paying Michael J. Fox too much money. And that they were not going to make the same mistake by paying me what they thought was too much money for Tom Wilson and Lea Thompson. ...
They came back and said, “The offer is now $125,000.” They went down $25,000! It was very clear they didn’t want me in the film. It was clear they already had this concept that they were going to put another actor in prosthetics. ... And it’s not something—I’ve been very careful to not talk about it. But at this point in time, especially since this person is continuing to do it—it would be one thing if he’d stopped doing it after the first thing. But he did interviews as recently as last year, and it’s total falsification. And I’ve gotta respond.
