Why Crispin Glover never did Back To The Future Part II

You don’t need us to tell you that Crispin Glover was one of those who appeared in Back To The Future, but never returned for the sequels. Why? Well, depending on who you’re talking to do, it had to do with money, Glover not wanting to do it, Robert Zemeckis not wanting him, difficult behavior, or perhaps a dodgy horoscope. And a lawsuit. Who knows?

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Glad you asked that actually, as Crispin Glover is clearly one of those who does know the answer, and he’s been chatting to the Opie and Anthony Show to explain just why he never returned.

Before he got to that, he touched on the fact that he appeared in Back To The Future Part II without his consent, and how unhappy he was with that. “They had taken the moulds of my face”, he said, “from the old age make-up from the original movie and put another actor into prosthetics that were made from my face, and interspliced with a very small amount of footage of me from the original movie in order to fool audiences into thinking I was in the movie”, he recalled. This led to a Crispin Glover winning a lawsuit that prevents such a thing happening again.

“If I’d have played that part, I would have played it different. I didn’t like the way that guy played it, and people think it’s me. It’s still gets to me that there’s that confusion”.

So: why no Crispin Glover in Back To The Future Part II?

“I was asking questions that the producers, director didn’t like. There was a different end … I had questions about it, and it did get changed”, he recalled.

He noted that he wasn’t the only person asking questions about the original ending “It had to do with money, and what the characters were doing with money … I said to Robert Zemeckis I thought it was not a good idea for our characters to have a monetary reward, because it basically makes the moral of the movie that money equals happiness”. Glover argued “the love should be the reward”, and “Zemeckis got really mad” over Glover’s questioning.

That disagreement was one reason Crispin Glover didn’t return. The other had a financial background.

He did refute something that producer and co-writer Bob Gale is said to have said. Gale apparently said that “I had asked for the same amount of money as Michael J Fox … it’s a total fabrication”. Money was still a problem, though. “I wanted to be in the movie, but the offer was less than half of what Lea Thompson and Tom Wilson – who had similar sized roles – it just wasn’t fair”.

It’s a really interesting interview this, and we’re grateful to Movies.com for alerting us to it. You can see it right here…

Movies.com.