Apparently, the credit goes to Michael Harte.
It was the idea of the editor of “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” says the documentary’s director, Davis Guggenheim, to use scenes from the beloved actor’s TV shows and movies to tell the story of Fox’s increasingly complicated life.
The choice helps make “Still” — debuting this week on Apple TV+ following its premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival — a distinct viewing experience.
Of course, were it not for the 61-year-old Fox — the one-time “Family Ties” and “Back to the Future” star who, at 29, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease — being so open about the battle with the affliction, so vulnerable as he reflects on his journey, “Still” wouldn’t be nearly as impactful as it is.
“Still” begins with Parkinson’s, with the hungover morning in a Florida hotel room when Fox, in the middle of filming 1991’s “Doc Hollywood,” notices his pinky finger twitching.
“The trembling was a message,” he says. “From the future.”
Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth,” “Waiting for Superman”) soon takes us back, to Fox as a short kid who found excitement after joining his school’s drama club and then getting cast on this and that. Then there’s the move to California to try his luck in Hollywood, where the hope is he’ll have an advantage: being able to pass for characters a few years younger than he actually was.
He scored some roles but missed out on big ones. (Fox says he was “close” to landing 1980’s “Ordinary People” but allows that director Robert Redford flossing his teeth during Fox’s audition wasn’t a great sign.)
As “Still” tells it, Fox was barely getting by, having sold the furniture from his studio apartment and getting what nutrients he could from packets of jam, when he won the part of ambitious, adult-like teen Alex P. Keaton on the sitcom “Family Ties.” It was a huge break and one that defied the odds considering one of its executive producers, Gary David Goldberg, wanted nothing to do with him at first despite others pushing him for the role.
Fox got a bunch of laughs in the audition — one of the many moments cleverly recreated in “Still” — and he was on his way to stardom.
The film covers the crazy life he managed as he juggled filming “Family Ties” and Steven Spielberg’s “Future” simultaneously.
The film’s easiest task: reminding us, in case we’d forgotten, of just how charming Fox can be regardless of whether he was working from a script. For example, we are treated to the moment in which, while accepting an Emmy Award in 1986, he exclaimed, “I feel 4 feet tall!”
“Still” is at its sweetest capturing the romance that blossomed between Fox and “Family Ties” guest star Tracy Pollan, Guggenheim and Harte using a healthy amount of their scenes together to illustrate what was happening in their real lives at the time.
(Another example of their approach: using a scene from 1987’s “The Secret of My Success” to dramatize the moment Goldberg told Fox that he could do “Back to the Future” as long as he maintained his commitment to his show.)
When “Still” finally dives fully into Fox’s experience with Parkinson’s — the diagnosis, hiding from almost everyone as he continued to take film roles and then the starring turn on another sitcom, “Spin City,” revealing to the public he has it in 1998, seven years after the diagnosis — it is at its most affecting.
That’s largely due the time the candid Fox spends talking directly into the camera, recounting those times but also — and perhaps more importantly — talking about the everyday battle with Parkinson’s and its progression.
The uncontrollable movement. The falls. The period of substance abuse. The pain.
If anything’s missing from “Still,” it’s others talking into the camera, giving their perspectives on Fox at various points. That’s clearly not the movie Guggenheim wanted to make, however.
Instead, we get time with Fox interacting with Tracy and their children — at more than one endearing moment, he’s chided about his texting habits — and we see him work with a physical therapist to walk short distances. The latter scenes are highly illustrative of his everyday struggle.
“Still” is an ironic name for this film given that Fox, by his own admission, rarely could stop moving long before Parkinson’s entered the picture. It is a theme successfully mined by Guggenheim, whose credits also include “It Might Get Loud” and “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates.”
With Fox as his all-important collaborator, he has given us something pretty special in “Still.” In his director’s statement, Guggenheim says Fox asked only one thing of him: “No violins.”
You can’t help but empathize with Fox as you watch “Still,” but this is no pity party — it’s a celebration of a life well lived, even if that living hasn’t always been something out of the movies or TV.
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