Every decade seems to have the handful of actors who pretty much owned the time. Jack Nicholson, along with Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and Faye Dunaway were the actors of the 1970s. The 1990s had Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington. In the 1980s, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were competing for the action star of the era. But in the other realm of 1980s movies, there was Michael J. Fox.
The Canadian-born actor had a good advantage because he also had a hit TV show along with one of the biggest movies of the decade – Back to the Future. It’s not bad for a young hellraiser who dropped out of high school to follow acting in Hollywood. Sadly, during the 1970s Canada was viewed more as a tax shelter for horror movies rather than major production hubs for film and TV actors in Toronto and Vancouver. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie which just won four Emmys including Best Documentary and Directing by Davis Guggenheim provides a more intimate retrospective of Fox’s life and career.
Do you really need a bunch of talking heads talking about how good a guy Fox is? We know he’s a good guy, even when he can come off as kind of a bad guy. He still has that smile and twinkle in his eyes that TV audiences fell in love with as Alex P. Keating on Family Ties. Do we need to hear his wife, Tracy Pollan, to say how much she loves him? It’s mostly Fox talking to the camera. Guggenheim edits in archival footage including one of Brandon Tartikoff, the late former NBC President who like Fox but didn’t see him on lunch boxes, holding up a lunchbox signed by Fox.
Alex could’ve easily been a one-joke premise as a political conservative go-getter who aimed high in the business world. Considering he was the son of former liberal hippies, that joke could’ve ended halfway through the pilot. But there was a lot of charm and a little bit of gullibility Fox brought to the role where Alex wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. Yet, there was mostly an Alex in every family, which made him relatable.
Fox, himself, recounts how he wasn’t like Alex as he didn’t do well in his grades and was often doing a lot of hell-raising as a teen. This was brought on early as Fox realized he wasn’t going to be as tall as the other boys. And when you’re a young boy, height is everything. You check your height every month or week as you grow. His younger sister was the same height as him and people would assume they were fraternal twins. He was only 5-foot-4 as he got older and was being cast as teenagers when he was much older.
He was cast in many TV shows but his first movie role was the Disney-produced comedy Midnight Madness filmed when he was 18 even though he was supposed to be playing someone 14-15. However, since most of the movie is set at night, California child actor labor laws prevented anyone under 18 from working past a certain time. Fox talks about starving eating the jam packets that they set on tables at restaurants and living in a dump apartment where he washed his dishes in the shower.
Fox recounts the outrageous schedule he had having to film Family Ties and Back to the Future at the same time after the previous actor Eric Stoltz was fired weeks into filming. It’s a crazy thing that has been discussed repeatedly over the years as Fox was literally carried to and from sets because he was half-asleep. He says Teamsters would help him in and out of bed, driving him to and from sets as he either looked over his lines or caught some sleep in the back seat.
In the end, it all paid off as BTTF made almost $400 million worldwide and then Teen Wolf released the same summer was a modest success with $30 million against a $4 million budget. He only was able to make Wolf because his Ties co-star Meredith Baxter-Birney was pregnant. But at 24, he had two hit movies, a hit TV show and was on the face of every teen and celebrity magazine. Fox says he would drive by the newsstands and just look around.
This got to his head and Fox admits he got to cocky and stuck-up for a while to the point that when Pollan appeared on the show in a small role, he made a snide comment which she returned with the same bite. He says he realized that Pollan wasn’t like the others and that attracted him. Later he would be reunited with Pollan on the set of Bright Lights, Big City in which he played an aspiring writer going down a path of self-destruction of alcohol and cocaine abuse following his wife leaving him while grieving the death of his mother.
Still doesn’t focus on some of the more serious movies Fox made in the later 1980s including Light of Day or Casualties of War which show him smoking, something he tried to hide from the public for years. In the documentary DePalma, Brian DePalma says Casualties was only possible with the help of Fox’s interest and involvement. It’s a brutal war movie about a real-life incident of American soldiers who kidnapped, raped and murdered a Vietnamese girl.
In the 1990s his career faded as the movies weren’t as popular. I like Greedy but Doc Hollywood is problematic in so many ways and For the Love of Money is hardly memorable. There’s no mention of The American President, his underrated role as a presidential aide whose “Drink the Sand” monologue shows his talents.
He returned to TV with Spin City, but at this time, he was struggling with Parkinson’s Disease badly, taking medication hoping it would last until he could get through a scene. Otherwise, he was holding items to control the tremors in his hands or to fidget them so no one would notice. Unfortunately, he couldn’t hide it anymore and publicly revealed during the show’s third season he had it. He remained on the show through the fourth season before leaving to be replaced by Charlie Sheen.
He would continue to do occasional TV work or voice-over work in the Stuart Little movies, but has said the Parkinson’s has made it harder for him to remember his lines. Yet, despite all this, Fox doesn’t want sympathy, even though conservative pundits accused it of him as he spoke to lawmakers as he’s become an advocate. He was only 30 when he was first diagnosed. A friend of mine’s brother was diagnosed with it in his 40s.
The center of the documentary is Fox and his life as a family man more than a celebrity, even though his appearance anywhere only solidifies he’s still a star. And despite what he’s going through, he still has that charm from his youth. At one part, he’s out walking on a sidewalk with an assistant but falls much to the horror of a friendly woman who comes to help. He jokes and kids with her briefly letting her know it’s alright.
The title is appropriate. For anyone who has Parkinson’s, remaining still can be hard if not impossible. But it’s also to show that Fox is still here and he’s still got a lot left to do.
Zane Says 