Most film buffs know that Eric Stoltz was the original Marty McFly in Back to the Future before director Robert Zemeckis made the difficult decision to replace him with Michael J Fox.

Stoltz had already shot for five weeks as Marty when he was let go from the production, and now a new behind-the-scenes book - We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy by Caseen Gaines - has shed fresh light on the dismissal.

According to accounts from cast and crew on the movie, Stoltz approached Marty in a "method" acting style and lacked the comedic lightness of touch Zemeckis and his co-writer/co-producer Bob Gale wanted for the part.

In We Don't Need Roads (via Vulture), Gale recalled how Stoltz insisted on being referred to as "Marty" even when cameras stopped rolling.

"We almost always called him Marty," he said. "We thought it was silly,...