Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Andrew Sanford | News | October 16, 2025
Back to the Future is one of those movies that has retained its magic for me. I saw it at the perfect age (like, five or six), and 30 years later, it still makes my heart swell. The music cues give me goosebumps. The DeLorean feels like something I could reach out and touch. Every feeling I had the first time I watched it remains, despite having learned quite a bit about how it was made.
It’s not like finding out how a film was made immediately takes the sheen off of it for me. Sometimes, it does the opposite. But there have been plenty of instances, mostly with horror movies, where some of a movie’s power is taken away when I see how the sausage got made. Tim Curry’s Pennywise isn’t so scary after you’ve seen him smoking a cigarette (but, if that made him more frightening to you, I get it).
Back to the Future has a pretty rich history, and a lot of behind-the-scenes information is out there, and not just in that song by Thomas F. Wilson, who played Biff Tannen. Countless interviews have been given and documentaries have been made. You can look at pictures of Eric Stoltz playing Marty McFly right now if you want to! Or, sit back and enjoy one of copious stories about how much of a pain in the ass Crispin Glover can be.
I wasn’t born until 1989, so the open secret of how difficult Glover is to work with was lost on me for many years. It didn’t even occur to me that a different actor was playing him in the second and third films. When I did learn that was the case, and that Glover hadn’t wanted to come back, it seemed like a jerk move. Then I grew up more, heard his perspective (that he didn’t think the movie needed a sequel, nor liked how the original ended in a way that fetishizes capitalism), and softened on the guy.
Also, I didn’t know a different actor was playing him both because I was a child, and because the guy they hired was basically doing an impression of him, complete with prosthetics. That was combined with some actual footage of Glover, so he was able to sue successfully, and changed how actors’ contracts are written, which is pretty rad.
Regardless, that didn’t stop him from “creat[ing] friction” behind the scenes of the movie, as revealed by Michael J. Fox in his new memoir, according to the New York Post, but I’m going to link to Deadline, because screw the Post. Fox explains in his new book that Glover would move around too much while shooting, to the point that the crew had to box him in with various sandbags and pieces of equipment.
“Nobody puts Crispin in a box. But that didn’t prevent the camera crew from literally building a box around him,” Fox apparently wrote in his book. “As George McFly, Crispin had his own ideas as to how and where his character should move.” It’s annoying if someone won’t stay in the frame. That said, it’s worth it if the result is a performance like Glover’s, something Fox notes as well.
“His talent was unquestionable, although his methods sometimes created friction,” Fox explained. “Still, I respected how he remained true to George (as he understood and embodied him). Something about these snippets makes me even more excited to watch the movies again. But I’m likely going to wait until I watch them with my kids in a couple of years. Regardless, Glover and his performance will be at the front of my mind the whole time.
