A Star’s Film Clips Illustrate His Story
When the director Davis Guggenheim approached Michael J. Fox three years ago in hopes of making a film about his life, the actor initially balked at the idea — particularly a movie centered on tales he had already written about in four best-selling memoirs.
“I told him, my story’s pretty self-explanatory,” Mr. Fox recalled. “I don’t know how many times you can tell it.”
But Mr. Guggenheim persevered. He did not want to do a film version of Mr. Fox’s memoirs, nor a standard documentary. He wanted to make a movie with as much life and humor as its subject, a fun, fastpaced effort not unlike a movie starring Michael J. Fox.
Mr. Fox relented, with one request: “No maudlin treatment of a guy with a terrible diagnosis,” Mr. Guggenheim said.
“Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” (streaming on Apple TV+) interweaves scripted reenactments, archival behindthe-scenes footage, interviews with Mr. Fox, and clips from his four-decade-long career, including his breakthrough roles in “Back to the Future” and on the TV series “Family Ties.”
The film is a genre-defying hybrid that uses Mr. Fox’s film and TV work to illustrate key moments of his life, and even reveal long-held secrets — like how he managed to hide his Parkinson’s disease for years, even while starring on the TV comedy series “Spin City.”
Initially, Mr. Guggenheim wanted to tell Mr. Fox’s story largely through re-enactments, with actors playing Mr. Fox at various stages of his life. But the film’s editor, Michael Harte, thought that using a double of someone as recognizable as Mr. Fox “would push the audience out of the movie.”
Instead, Mr. Harte thought they could use movie and TV clips of Mr. Fox to tell his story.
One day, Mr. Harte combined a scene from the film “Bright Lights, Big City,” in which Mr. Fox flips through an article he has been assigned to factcheck, with an audio clip of him describing the first time he read the script for “Back to the Future.” Mr. Guggenheim loved the mash-up, and encouraged Mr. Harte to find more.
In the movie, the filmmakers mixed scripted shots of Mr. Fox’s double, shot from behind, and shots of the real Mr. Fox, either from his films and shows, or in behind-the-scenes clips culled from 92 videocassettes of “Family Ties” footage.
They also searched “Spin City” episodes to find footage of how Mr. Fox had kept his Parkinson’s hidden. In one montage, we see Mr. Fox twiddling pens, holding phones, checking his watch, rolling up his sleeves, anything to mask the shaking in his left hand.
Mr. Fox was pleased with the finished project. “I think they did a beautiful job,” he said.
Some moments were emotional to watch, particularly those about Tracy Pollan, Mr. Fox’s wife of 35 years, whom he met on the set of “Family Ties.”
“I married this girl who had a nascent career, doing well, and then she married me and was like this single mother,” he said. “I was off doing movies and she was home with a baby, and I made jokes about it on talk shows.”
“And she came through for me when she could have slipped out,” he continued. “She could have said, ‘Parkinson’s, that’s not for me.’ But she didn’t, she stuck around. Getting to see that in the film was such a privilege.”
Back to the past to put life in a documentary.