STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie

Florida, 1990.

I woke up with a ferocious hangover.

I placed my left hand across the bridge of my nose to block the sunlight.

A moth's wing fluttered against my right cheek.

I put my hand in front of my face

so I could finger-flick the little beastie across the room.

That's when I noticed my pinkie.

Auto animated.

"For Christ's sake, it's just your freaking finger."

But it wasn't mine.

Shit. It was somebody else's.

Had I hit my head?

The tape of the previous night's events was grainy at best.

Woody Harrelson was in the bar the night before.

Maybe we'd had one of our legendary drunken fights.

But I couldn't recall any such melee.

I did recall how my bodyguard had to prop me up against the door frame

while he fumbled the key into the door of my suite.

But I didn't feel any bumps. Fuck.

Action!

Action, Michael!

Michael, Michael!

Here is as hot as you get in the history of this business.

And the winner is Michael J. Fox.

We're rolling.

In the face of all evidence to the contrary...

- Very, very still. Mark. - I was in an acid bath of fear...

and professional insecurity.

The trembling was a message...

from the future.

Everyone talks now about owning their narrative.

So, the sad sack story is,

"Michael J. Fox gets this debilitating disease, and it crushes him."

Hmm.

Yeah, that's boring.

My hair went curly, like, at like, like, at 49.

It never was curly, and all of a sudden it went...

I woke up one morning in Santa Barbara and my hair was curly.

- I think it's a good look. - I can put some jam in it.

- No, no, no, no. - I can put a hat on.

It's just caring too much about what I look like for a documentary.

Yeah. It's you. Okay, now look at me.

There you go.

- Coming in. - Uh-oh.

Wha... Guys, at a certain point it's just...

- it just is what it is. - Just right here.

- Hey. - Hey.

- How you doing? - Yeah, I'm doing good.

Watch me.

- How's your day going so far? - So far?

So far it's, uh... it's successful.

Everyone knows you have Parkinson's,

but when they see you walking, they're like, "Oh, fuck."

Yeah.

Good. Stop and reset.

Good. There we go.

The walking thing really freaks people out.

Oh, look.

But I won't hide it from you.

- Hey. - Hey.

And you can do with it what you will.

If you pity me, it's never gonna get to me.

I'm not pathetic. I'm... I got shit going on.

- Hi, how you doing? -

Take your time, take your time.

I'm a tough, uh, son of a bitch.

I'm a cockroach, and I've been through a lot of stuff.

- You can't kill a cockroach. - Can't kill a cockroach.

- Nice and slowly, nice and slowly. -

There you go. Beautiful.

- Hey, how are you? - Good. How are you?

Good. Stop and reset.

Mr. Fox.

That happened.

- You got it? - All right... I'm okay. Thank you.

Okay. Nice to meet you, sir.

Nice to meet you. You knocked me off my feet.

Before Parkinson's, what did it mean to be still?

I wouldn't know.

I wouldn't know. I was never still.

I can't pretend to remember my two-year-old state of mind.

Knee-high, weighing little more than a wet beach towel, and slippery quick.

But it's likely that my motive in wandering out the back door

was not to escape.

More likely, I failed to recognize boundaries.

When the phone rang a few minutes later,

the proprietor of the candy store tried to contain his amusement.

"Got your son here."

I can easily picture my mother in utter disbelief that I'd bolted.

"Let him have a candy or something.

My husband will be right there to pick him up and pay for it."

"Oh, he's got money."

"He's got quite a bit of money, as a matter of fact."

As a kid, I lacked the faith required to be still.

It is one of the great ironies in my life.

I couldn't be still until I could literally...

no longer keep still.

When my baby sister arrived, I wasn't jealous.

What the hell, the more the merrier.

But by the time I was six and she was three, we were the same size.

I have a specific memory of being asked if we were twins,

but once told that my twin was actually three years younger,

people's reactions changed.

I realized that I was expected to be bigger.

This was a new one on me.

I couldn't do "bigger."

I was the shortest in my class.

Shorter than any of the people I played hockey with.

I was the guy who... who'd climb down into the grate and get the ball.

But I used to get my ass kicked. I was a little guy.

I'd get stuffed in lockers.

If big guys are purposely coming after you, and then fucking hammering you...

But I'd always relied on my ability to run from any potential bully.

Just when the earth seemed to be sliding out from beneath me,

I stumbled onto a foothold.

Drama class.

That's where the girls were.

And I was Rumpelstiltskin in a play.

- You were Rumpelstiltskin? - I was Rumpelstiltskin, yeah.

You also looked five years younger.

Yeah, I was just a little elf.

I was cute and elfin. I was a cute elf.

- A cute elf. -

In drama class, you could be big.

In drama class, you could be anything.

But my head was up my ass if you asked my father.

Dad was a pragmatist, determined to protect his family from romantic fantasy.

He'd had dreams as a young boy, but they'd been effectively knocked out of him.

He had a certain amount of rage.

You'd see his lip curl, and you knew you were in trouble.

Then you'd go, "Oh, shit. I'm fucked now."

A call from the principal's office meant a harsh reprimand from Dad.

And he'd say, "Goddamn it! Goddamn it."

I began to spend more of my time smoking and drinking.

And I became a serial fender bender...

inflicting damage to my dad's cars.

So, in his mind, you're a fuck up.

Yeah, a poten-potential fuck up.

Hey. Looking good.

These shoes are terrific. Now I got a fighting chance.

When I was 16,

my acting teacher thrust a newspaper into my hands.

"They're looking for a bright 12-year-old kid,

and hell, you'd be the brightest 12-year-old kid they're ever gonna meet."

But I'm gonna blow it, Leo. All those people looking at me.

We're ready for you in Makeup.

- - You're gonna make history, kid.

Gotta grow an inch by Friday.

I got the part. It was that easy.

Basketball tryouts?

No. Penny Montgomery.

If I stand real close, I can't see her face.

The casting director believed I held an advantage.

American producers would be eager to hire an actor

who looked young enough to play a kid.

But that meant moving to Hollywood and dropping out of high school.

And that seemed inconceivable.

Dad, "Are you sure this is what you wanna do?"

Me, "Absolutely."

"You're that confident?"

"Absolutely."

And then Dad shocked me.

"Well, if you're gonna be a lumberjack,

you might as well go to the goddamn forest."

So, secretly, he believed in you.

Yeah.

Dad agreed to underwrite the adventure,

putting the whole trip on his Visa card.

I remember thinking just how far Dad and I had come over the past few weeks.

He advised me that he'd just drive to the appointments

and debrief me after each one.

His way of signaling to me that this was my show, not his.

Hello.

No, that's perfect.

Every audition earned a callback,

and three of the callbacks produced solid offers.

"You've got the world by the tail," Dad said. "Just hold on."

My studio apartment was in the slums of Beverly Hills.

It's the prettiest house I ever seen in my life.

Well, I was just thinking I'm glad you came home with me.

The apartment was 17-by-12 feet. One mattress, one hot plate,

with a microscopic bathroom and the domicile's one and only sink.

I washed my hair with Palmolive and my dishes with Head & Shoulders.

I-I really had a great time tonight.

I enlisted Ronald McDonald as my exclusive nutritionist.

- We alone? - Alone?

I mean, is your husband lurking about?

But by the spring of 1982...

Schweitzer.

The scenario was grim.

What's going on here? What is this?

Please relax, Mr. Wyatt. I'm going to examine your chest.

- Hey, is this a joke or something? - Uh, hi.

I continued to pick up acting jobs,

but they barely earned me enough to live on.

My agent took 10% of my paycheck.