Consider This from NPR - Parkinson's Threatened To Tear Michael J. Fox Down, But He Keeps On Getting Up

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Few stars shined brighter in the 80's than Michael J Fox, and when the '90s rolled around, he was still one of the top names in show biz. But in 1991, after a night of heavy drinking, Fox noticed a tremor developing in his right pinky, an early symptom symptom of Parkinson's Disease, a diagnosis that would change the course of his life.Fox speaks to NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer, about his new documentary "Still", and how he found meaning in sharing his disease with the world. A note for our listeners, The Michael J. Fox Foundation is a supporter of NPR.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. Few stars shined brighter in the 1980s than Michael J. Fox. From his breakthrough role as Alex P. Keaton, the Reagan-loving child of ex-hippies on Family Ties. This is a sin against capitalism. To his part as an angsty adolescent in Teen Wolf.

I was hoping it would pass you by. Well, Daddy, it didn't pass me by. It landed on my face. What the hell? To the time-hopping, skateboarding, DeLorean-driving Marty McFly in the classic sci-fi movie Back to the Future. Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me that you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?

The way I see it, if you're going to build a time machine... When the 90s rolled around, Michael J. Fox was still one of the top names in showbiz. But in 1991, after a night of heavy drinking, Fox noticed that something was off. 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 pinky. A tremor was developing in his left pinky finger. It was an early symptom of what Fox would later learn was Parkinson's disease, a diagnosis that would change the course of his life. The trembling was a message from the future. Consider this.

For years, Parkinson's disease has threatened to tear Fox down. But he keeps on getting up. After the break, Fox tells me about the meaning he found in sharing his disease with the world. From NPR, I'm Sasha Pfeiffer. It's and C's apply. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization

through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. It's Consider This from NPR. When Michael J. Fox describes his Parkinson's disease in his new documentary, he's extremely blunt. He has said, and I'm censoring this slightly for our younger listeners, Parkinson's didn't just kick me out of the house, it burned the house down. I talked with him recently about his life these days, and he told me every day with the disease is different.

He woke up, he had two noses. He had two noses, and the next day he woke up, he had nine noses. A tongue sticking out of your ear. You can see he hasn't lost the sense of humor that made him famous. He says his joking started as a defense mechanism. When I was a kid, I was so small, and I was always getting chased around and beat up, which is why I was fast, and why I was funny as much as I could be. If you make a big guy laugh, he's inclined to beat you up.

A warning here that Fox uses some swear words during this interview. His documentary includes many funny clips from his many funny movies. And as you watch some of them now, you realize that when he was on screen in the 90s, he was hiding a tremor developing in his left hand. He did that by fidgeting a lot and keeping that hand busy. But eventually, he couldn't conceal it anymore. I was getting to a place, I was doing Spin City, and I couldn't hide it anymore. And I had press and certain media people at my heels. And besides, I just wanted to relax and just as much as that doesn't make sense with Parkinson's,

I wanted to just give myself a break and see what happened. So I did, and I told Barbara Walters and People Magazine and everybody in the world knew. And then I went online, and I discovered that there was a great appetite in the patient community for Parkinson's for someone to come in and take that lead. And they almost celebrated it when I announced. And people said, did that bug you?

And I said, no, it endeared me to them. It endeared them to me, I should say. I thought, of course they want a champion. So I just tried to do some research and found out more about it. One of the things that being open gave me was the opportunity to meet with doctors, meet with the scientific community, meet with researchers, and not have to worry about blowing my temper. So that was good. And as I got more involved, I thought, this is something I really want to dedicate the better part of my life to,

because I really felt it was a neglected community. And from what I heard, the science was ahead of the money. That there was opportunities that we just couldn't pay for. So I thought, well, let's see what we can do about that. And so I dedicated most of my time henceforth to research and to finding it here. In terms of the kind of details of your life that you share, in a lot of the documentary, you have an obvious injury on your cheek, and you eventually explain that you fell and your face hit a piece of furniture, and you explain that some people say, Michael, be careful,

and you say it's not about being careful, it's about Parkinson's. It seems like you've advanced to a more grim stage of this disease to have to deal with that so often. Well, and now the broken cheekbone seems so quaint compared to some of the stuff I've dealt with in the last couple months, the last couple years. I had spinal surgery, which was not related to Parkinson's, but I had to do that tumor, a benign tumor in my spine. And from that, the way it connected was I had to learn to walk again. And I was already dealing with Parkinson's that was making my walking difficult. So that was compound. And so I fell, I broke my arm. Then I broke my other arm. I broke my elbow. I broke my shoulder, dislocated both shoulders, had one replaced. I'm trying to forget something. It

was just a litany of damage. So it's kind of frustrating because people say, be careful. And you say, I am being careful. And then they walk down the hallway and see a line on the floor. And I screwed up. But I don't really believe I screwed up. It's very difficult to place feet when you have no sense of what they feel like or where they're going. It's hard to, when I have an opportunity to do interviews like this, it's always difficult to express. Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's challenging.

Yes, it makes you sad sometimes, and sometimes it makes you angry. But it's my life, and I'm uniquely equipped to live this life. I'm uniquely equipped to mine it for the gold that's in it. And I don't mean money. I mean gold, real meaning and purpose. And so for that, I'm so grateful. And when I say I don't want to mess it up for people, I want to say having recognized that, I see what this can mean. I see what this could do.

This is a progress we've made in the last 20 years. It's astounding. When you said you're uniquely qualified to do this, you mean because you have the platform and the resources to do it? And the disease. I think that's the thing that I always tell patients, as wonderful as their doctors are, and I really think some of these people are saints,

such great people, mine included, and they work so hard to get to the bottom of everybody's unique individual story. But I always remind patients that when all is said and done, you're the expert. You know what you're going through. And to the extent that you want answers about that, express them. And you'll find that your doctor is usually pretty willing to go there with you and sort these things out. So it's a full-time job, but it's satisfying.

It's rewarding. My tone, the other thing about Parkinson's is the cement face. Right. It immobilizes your face in a way. Same thing vocally. You're like, boy, this is the best news I've ever heard in my life. This is really exciting. Very flat.

Very flat. So I'm having a good time, if you can tell or not. The filmmaker, Davis Guggenheim, has said that the only thing you asked of him when he was making this documentary was no violence. What did you want him to avoid doing? It's funny because he said, at first he thought I said no violence. You thought you said no violence? Yeah, how violence would fit into this story, I don't know. Other than physical, you know, floor upon head violence.

But, yeah, and then we talked about it. What I meant was violins. What I meant was there's a thing that I found with, I had a chance to do this in the aughts and in the teens. I did some guest shots on various shows, playing characters that in some way were challenged. And one of them was on Rescue Me, Dennis Leary's show, where I played a former extreme athlete

who was in a banal car crash, but he began paralyzing. And he was angry, and I did a character on a good wife who was a lawyer who used his symptoms, his Parkinson's symptoms, to manipulate juries. And I love those characters because, quite frankly, and I know you're going to say, well, you can't say this on your show, but I'm going to say it anyway, people with disabilities can be assholes too.

And it's important to know that. It's important to know that we're all humans and we're all going through the same thing. And that person you see struggling with the wheelchair on the curb still has to make their rent. They have real world issues besides the ones that are unique to them. You see sometimes in movies and television someone with a disability struggling to perform some normal task like tie their shoelaces or something. And as they struggle and as they hit the bunny ears through the hole,

the music starts to swell and it's violin, the concerto, and it builds up until the moment of success and they've got a tied-up shoelace and the music is soaring. I don't like that. At the end of the film, as the credits are rolling, there's a beautiful song. Vampire Weekend? Yeah, exactly. That was it.

In fact, someone wrote it down for me. Harmony Hall. I'm sorry, but I hadn't heard it before. It's gorgeous. I don't live like this. I don't want to die. Yeah, that line. I don't want to live like this, but I don't want to die.

And I thought, how much is that channeling your own thinking? Well, it's great. I wrote about that in my last book about that concert. I can always sum it up. That memory of Tracy next to me. Your wife. Madison Square Garden. dancing to that song thinking

yeah, you're damn right I don't want to live like this but I sure as hell don't want to die I mean with all these riches and this family and this love

I mean that's really what it comes down to I mean there's still a lot of people I love and a lot of people who love me so where am I going I don't know where to go

I'm going'll be with them. That's Michael J. Fox. His new documentary is still a Michael J. Fox movie, now streaming on Apple TV+. Thank you. This was a wonderful documentary. Oh, thank you. Appreciate it. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Sasha Pfeiffer. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability,

upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org.