(NewsNation) — Actor Michael J. Fox’s decades-long career and the story behind his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis are being told in a new way in the documentary “STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie.”
“We wanted to make a very different kind of documentary,” said Davis Guggenheim, the film’s editor. “I was like, let’s tell a wild ride — a funny, uplifting story that is very different than the kind of documentaries you normally see.”
In the documentary, the “Back to the Future” star tells the story of his career and experiences learning to live with his diagnosis in his own words.
Michael Harte, the film’s director, said being a “huge” Michael J. Fox fan helped him navigate and organize such a vast expanse of content and memories spanning over several years.
“I knew the material inside out,” Harte said. “It’s not easy, but it’s easier to make a sad film like that’s the easy thing to do. But the harder thing to do is make it funny, in a fun way, and that was Davis’s challenge. So it’s, it’s nice that it’s paid off.”
Guggenheim said Fox’s only request was “no violins” in the documentary.
“The way I took it, as you know, he didn’t want it to be a pity film, a pity party. He wants to be seen as this guy who’s still out there challenging the world, being funny, being himself. He’s still that short kid from Canada who dropped out, who’s trying to move to Hollywood and change the world and you still see that in this movie,” Guggenheim explained.
“STILL” can be streamed on Apple TV+.