The day after a crazy night out, actor Michael J Fox he woke up and saw it his little finger moved by itself. “I woke up with a terrible hangover, realizing that my little finger had come alive.”

In the documentary, the actor, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s when he was only 29 years old, recalls those more than 30 years with this disease, for which, however, he believes that there will soon be a cure.

Michael J. Fox became a big star thanks to the series “Family Ties” and the movie saga “Back to the Future”. The documentary, which premiered yesterday on Friday, is about this and the beginning of the disease, and which is “above all fun”, says the actor.

Because of the diagnosis, he entered a spiral of pill and alcohol consumption, from which he managed to get out with the support of his wife Tracy Pollan, who played his girlfriend in the series and with whom he will celebrate 35 years of marriage this summer. .

“The earthquake was the message. Not even the most paranoid fantasy that came to mind could have prepared me for the words the neurologist told me that day: Parkinson’s disease. I replied, ‘You know who you’re talking to, don’t you? I’m not someone this should happen to‘. He said some other words like ‘progressive, degenerative, incurable’. He added: ‘You lost this. You lost this game. This is not a victory. I remember being left on the street looking for an answer.

The protagonists of Back to the Future relived their experiences in a recent meeting

Since learning he had Parkinson’s disease in 1991, the Canadian-born actor and naturalized American has continued to work – his portrayal of lawyer Louis Canning in “The Good Fight” is memorable – and used humor to face it all because he believes yes yes “Laughter is the greatest tool”.

“Of course, everything in life has its share of stress, breakdown or sadness, but I’m interested in finding the fun part of things, humor is universally human, and that’s very powerful”, explains the actor in a virtual conference about his documentary, which is on the Apple TV platform.

An icon for audiences in the 1980s and 1990s, the 61-year-old actor insists that everything he’s been through, including the illness he’s suffered from since he was 29, “stirred up his feelings and the creativity needed to tell stories,” even if are about himself.

The film, presented at the South by Southwest film and music festival in Austin, Texas, covers more than four decades since he arrived in Los Angeles at the age of eighteen to seek life as an actor with barely any money or training.

The actor had “a lot of time to think about the stories he lived and think about how to tell them.” In the recording of Fox, who was diagnosed in the early nineties while filming the third part of the “Back to the Future” trilogy and with the media momentum, he is running away from the victim when it comes to treating the disease he has been living with for 35 years.

80s type of movie

“I was very excited by the idea of ​​making a documentary that is like a movie from the 80s; fun, with great music and emphasized aesthetics, something different from what is usually seen on the screen now”, he confirms from his side. David Guggenheim, who is directing the film and considers Fox “a true genius.”

For a director, Fox is a person with a fun nature, but also someone with whom the viewer can easily sympathize, which he has already shown in books like “A lucky man” or “There’s no better time than the future”. “Before reading, I felt apathetic, until I found your story; He is full of optimism and of course there is pain in his story, but his attitude is to look for the bright parts of life”.

Guggenheim avoids condensing the film into a single message, leaving it up to the viewer to interpret, although he emphasizes an optimistic tone. “The first conversation I had with Michael marked me, because he clearly said one thing, and that is that he is running away from violence; there are problems, but there is never any violence in their stories.”

Despite becoming an icon for his performances, and while he’s clear that “obviously ‘Back to the Future’ was a pivotal point” in his life, it’s another aspect that has marked Fox’s career. “All the people I’ve worked with have shaped me more, at the end of the day I’m just making movies, I couldn’t say otherwise.”