Michael J. Fox has become a huge star thanks to the series Family ties and the film saga Back to the Future, but at just 29 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. All of this matters Stilla documentary that premieres Friday, May 12 on Apple TV and that “is mostly funny,” says the actor.
Michael J. Fox’s diagnosis got him in a spiral of pill and alcohol consumption from which he managed to get out with the support of his wife, Tracy Pollan, who played his girlfriend in the television series and with whom he will celebrate 35 years of marriage this summer.
From that 1991 in which he discovered he had Parkinson’s, the actor continued to work – memorable is his character in the role of lawyer Louis Canning in The Good Fight (The Exemplary Wife) – and she used humor to address it all because she believes in it “laughter is the best tool”.
Optimistic to see things
“Sure, everything in life has its share of stress or dejection or sadness, but I’m interested in looking for the fun side of thingshumor is universally human, and that’s very powerful,” Fox explains in a virtual talk about his documentary, which arrives on the Apple TV platform this Friday.
An icon for moviegoers of the 80s and 90s, the 61-year-old actor assures that everything he’s been through, including the illness he’s been suffering from since he was 29, has “fueled his feelings and the creativity needed to tell stories” , even if they concern himself.
The film, presented at the South by Southwest film and music festival in Austin (Texas), spans more than four decades, since he landed at the age of eighteen in Los Angeles to seek a life as an actor with little money and training.
The actor had “a lot of time to reflect on the stories he lived and think about how to tell them”. In the film, Michael J. Fox, who was diagnosed in the early nineties during the filming of the third part of the trilogy Back to the Future and with a media profile in full swing, escape from victimization when it comes to dealing with an illness he has lived with for 35 years.
A movie from the 80s
“I was tremendously excited to make a documentary that was like an 80s movie; funny, with great music and a strong aesthetic, something different from what you usually see on screen now,” he says David Guggenheim, who directs the documentary Still and considers Fox “a true genius”.
For the director, Fox is a person with a funny characterand also someone that the viewer can easily empathize with, as he has already shown in books like a lucky man OR There is no better time than the future.
“Before reading you, I felt listless, until I found your story; it is full of optimism and obviously there is pain in his story, but his attitude is to look for the bright parts of life“.
Guggenheim avoids pigeonholing the film into a single message, leaving it up to the viewer’s interpretation, while emphasizing its optimistic tone. “The first conversation I had with Michael marked me, because he made one thing clear, and that is that he runs away from violence; there are problems, but there is never violence in his stories about him.”
Although he has become an icon for his interpretations and although it is clear that “obviously Back to the Future it was an essential point» in his life, is another aspect that marked Fox in his career. «All the people I’ve worked with have marked me the most, in the end I only make films, I couldn’t say otherwise. “
Source: Clarin
