Michael J. Fox opens up about Parkinson’s in new documentary: “I’m a tough son of a bitch”

Michael J. Fox has opened up about suffering from Parkinson’s disease in a new trailer for an upcoming documentary about his life.

The film is directed by An Inconvenient Truth filmmaker Davis Guggenheim and is called Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.

The film explores Fox’s career including his breakthrough role in Back To The Future, and includes rare interviews and clips looking back at his huge rise to fame in the 1980s.

The trailer also sees Fox recall the moment he first discovered his Parkinson’s symptoms, when his finger started to move without control.

“I woke up and I noticed my pinky auto-animated. Parkinson’s disease,” Fox recalls in the trailer. “I told [my wife] Tracy the news. ‘In sickness and in health,’ I remember her whispering. No one outside of my family knew.” The documentary also explores how Fox initially turned to alcohol to cope with news of the diagnosis.

The film also goes on to show how Fox has persevered in the face of his illness, raising over $2billion (£1.7billion) towards research for the condition. In one clip, Guggenheim can be heard telling him that the “sad-sack story is: Michael J. Fox gets this debilitating disease, and it crushes him,” before Fox replies, “Yeah that’s boring.”

“I’m a tough son of a bitch,” Fox goes on to say.

You can watch the trailer here:

Guggenheim previously opened up to EW about the film following a screening at SXSW in March.

He explained: “I’m not shying away from Parkinson’s, but reading his books, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s got something that I want.’ He says, ‘Life threw me this curve ball, and it’s bringing me down.’ I watch how Michael’s dealt with that, and that’s given me a path forward. It could be Parkinson’s, it could be cancer, it could be work, it could be anything. But that’s the appeal to me; it’s a universal story. The pitch was: What happens when an incurable optimist confronts an incurable disease?”

Speaking about the structure of the story, Fox added: “What’s interesting about the film, and I love the way [Guggenheim] told the story, is that there’s this kid going on this great adventure, and the odds being — I mean, look at my situation. Those are fucking ridiculous odds. I mean, crazy odds.

“I love my parents, and I love that they allowed me to [move to Hollywood], but they really shouldn’t have. They were naive. So then, to have moved through that and had it turn out to be this unqualified success, only to be 29 with a Parkinson’s diagnosis — where’s the ground floor for investigating that? Where’s the ground floor of being 16 years old and getting in my car, and going to California? There is none. You make it up as you go along.”

Earlier this year at another screening of the film, Fox went on to say that it “pisses” him “off” that there still isn’t a cure for Parkinson’s Disease.

“That number, as impressive as it is, kind of in a way pisses me off, because I thought that we’d be done with it by now,” Fox said in response (via Fox News). “But science is hard.”

The actor maintained, however, that the progress has been measurable and that there is hope for Parkinson’s prevention in the future

“People say, ‘But that will be after your time, are you OK with that?’” Fox asked himself before answering his own question. “Yeah. “That would be great. Just get it done. I don’t care if I’m on the bus.”

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie premieres May 12 on Apple TV+.

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