He will never forget that morning in 1991. After a wild party, he woke up with a monstrous monkey. “I raised my left hand in front of my nose to block the sunlight. A moth’s wing fluttered across my right cheek. I put my right hand in front of my face to send the little beast flying across the room. That was the moment I noticed my little finger. It was a message from the future,” Michael J. Fox describes the moment that turned his whole life upside down.
Time travel is one of the main motifs of the documentary Still: A Story by Michael J. Fox, which is now available on Apple TV+.
And then the harsh humor. “If I’m still here in 20 years, I’ll either be cured or in a pickle,” Fox comments on how he sees his future with the terminal illness.
He always wanted to entertain people, that’s why he became an actor. And he didn’t stop with humor even when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. On the leaflet that the doctors gave him at the time, two seniors were smiling at him before he was even thirty. The average age of onset of this incurable disease is 60 years, but in 5 to 10 percent of people’s cases, it manifests itself before the age of forty. Michael J. Fox is among them.
The documentary shows how an incurable optimist comes to terms with his own mortality.
While he is still himself
When Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim (Neprsweet truth Dal mi minus Malala) set out to make a biopic about Michael J. Fox, initially envisioning it as a mix of interviews and footage from the hit movies that made the actor a star. Only during filming did he understand that he was shooting a story about how not to lose the zest for life when you have been fighting an incurable disease for more than 30 years, which gradually robs you of your identity.
Document Name – Still – has two main meanings in English: “Still” and “peace”. Both the director and the actor wanted to film it while Michael J. Fox is still Michael J. Fox and can actively participate in the creation of the film.
In a few months it probably wouldn’t be possible anymore. How quickly the disease progresses
