Friday 12 May 2023

Still (2023 Davis Guggenheim)

Clever and honest story of Michael J. Fox's rise to stardom and his subsequent battle with Parkinson's, in his own words, with an artful mix of recreations and judicious choices of clips and location footage to support his words. There are no film clips as such, but moments from The Secret of My Success for example get used when he's talking about reading documents, looking uncomfortable, being interviewed etc. It's very well done. And though Fox is still funny and doesn't feel sorry for himself it's obviously a difficult battle through great pain on a daily basis. His own organisation has raised getting on for two billion dollars and is making real progress with the disease.

What's amazing is how well he hid the illness from his diagnosis in 1991 while filming Doc Hollywood. He came out with it in 1998 whist filming the third series of Spin City. So Life with Mikey, The Concierge, Greedy, and The American President all followed without anyone realising - he was good at keeping it under cover, managing with cunningly timed use of dopamine pills.

He doesn't want us to feel sorry for him... but we still do.

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