Still (Apple+)

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.

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I'm a producer, writer of film
and television and now a podcast producer.

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And despite having every streaming service,
I never know what to watch. So

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anytime I watch something good, I
talk about it on the show. This

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way, you'll never have the same
problem I do. I watched this tonight.

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There's always something good to watch.
Let's get started. Today. In

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the show, we were talking about
the Apple Plus documentary. Still so I

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don't do a ton of documentaries on
this show. You know, when you

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have a movie or television show,
you can talk about the acting, the

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writing, and documentary. A lot
of times there's not that much to talk

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about, but I definitely wanted to
talk about this one. You know,

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it's funny. I mentioned to my
wife. I told her, I like,

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you should watch this. He said, I don't want to cry,

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And honestly, it's the reason I
was hesitant to watch it as well,

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because I was afraid it would be
extremely depressing and I would just be on

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the floor weeping the entire time.
And I actually did not cry. I

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didn't cry, and I don't think
that it's even particularly sad, and I

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think that that's actually what it's about. That it's not sad in a weird

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way. So yeah, it's it's
I would say that if your concern is

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that this will be so depressing and
oh it'll just be this devastatingly sad thing,

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that's not what it's about at all. And I think that the fact

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that it's not like that is actually
what makes it a great documentary. Really.

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Now, I will say there was
there was one part I won't spoil

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it where I did actually almost cry, and that's when Michael J. Fox's

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Canadian accent came out at a very
sweet moment. I went to film school

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in Canada, and there's a thing
with Canadians when they get emotional or they've

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been drinking or whatever, there's like
an element to the accent that kind of

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can become more pronounced, and that
happens with him at this really particular moment

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and it was very moving and anyway, so I'm not going to spoil it

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for you, but that was the
part where I almost cried. But what's

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most engaging about the documentary and it
sort of is all tied into him,

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right, It's all about him,
his personality, his career, and how

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he's dealing with Parkinson's. Michael J. Fox is the guy who always had

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like little guy syndrome in the sense
that he got into acting because he always

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looked younger than he was. And
then it was very difficult for him to

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achieve major success and he was totally
broke until he got family ties, and

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then from there, pretty much every
stage of his life is just running,

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running, running, running, like
literally running, figurative and running. Just

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a workaholic, constantly working, ends
up getting married, starts having children,

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and it sounds like his life didn't
really change. At one point, he

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describes his wife as a single mom, which speaks to him being just gone

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all the time. The reason that
this is called stay is because it took

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Parkinson's to get him to slow down, and and and even Parkinson's, it's

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hard for him to slow down.
You see him, you see the people

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with him, you know, caring
for him, telling him repeatedly to slow

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down. And there's a part early
in the documentary when he's kind of walking

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down the street and he just eats
it into the concrete and a lady is

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walking by and sees him, and
she sees him before he falls, and

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then after he falls, she goes
back to see if he needs help getting

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up, and he says, you
knocked me off my feet, and so

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he still has his incredible charm.
Um. But yeah, it's like you

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get the sense that Michael was always
just running and moving and doing stuff and

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it took you know, it's it's
it's pretty clearly a point they make in

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the documentary that it kind of took
this for him to slow down and be

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president with his family, and there's
really there is like a beauty in that.

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And you know, again he really
says explicitly in the documentary like this,

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you know, if this was about
oh poor me and all that kind

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of stuff, you know, how
how boring would that be. He actually

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says that, you know, it's
almost word for word at one point in

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the documentary. I don't know if
he's um, you know what, I'm

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gonna look it up really quick.
He still speaks. You know, it's

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not his his charm and his personality
have not been diminished by the Parkinson's Like

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he's he's still in there, um, you know, and he's you can

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see him like he's still funny and
you know, he's he's sharp. It's

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not it hasn't affected his mind,
it's just it's you've seen how it's affected

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his body. So yeah, the
last time he acted was in The Good

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Fight in twenty twenty, and then
he did the audio narration of his of

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his book. Um, you see
him according it in the thing in the

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documentary. UM. I hope,
I honestly hope that he does some voice

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work. I really think he could. I know it would be challenging for

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him, UM, but you know, I feel like he do it.

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What I found really remarkable is that
at the end of the documentary I kind

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of realized, Wow, this has
just been him the whole time, Like

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it's not one of those documents we're
flying around a million different talking heads.

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It's really pretty much just him,
and it's totally compelling. It was it

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went by really fast. I found
like it was one of those things where

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it was hard to pull myself away. You ever watch something where you're you

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know, you have other stuff you
gotta do, and you're like, ah,

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I can I can push it another
ten minutes. I want to keep

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watching this. That's what it was
like watching this. I actually think it's

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a great show biz documentary as well, because it's really like how this is

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all tied up into his career is
a significant part of the story. You

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know, when Michael eventually gets diagnosed
with Parkinson's, he hit it for like

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seven years and just kept working,
and it required him to not only be

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acting, but also on top of
the acting, he has to do things

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with his acting to hide his Parkinson's
symptoms, and he has to carefully modulate,

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Like wend He's taking the drugs that
helped tamp down those symptoms so that

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you know they're active when he's working, and it's hard enough to be an

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actor, you know, to then
do all of that. It shows you

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what an incredible actor he really was, and it actually made him in a

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weird way, like see McQueen.
Like see McQueen. My favorite story for

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Magnificent seven. L brennan was pissed
off because Steve McQueen kept drawing attention away

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from him because he was always polishing
a glass doing some of his hands and

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Michael did that too, but he
just did it to hide his parkinson symptoms.

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I also did not know about his
alcoholism, which he talks about very

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candidly in the documentary. You know, and just generally this kind of frantic

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quality of his life. I think
that most people when they think about Michael

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Jay Fox, they think that he's
just a really nice guy. And he's

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a nice guy, but but you
know, you don't necessarily think that he

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had all these challenges, and he
really did. It's a very intimate look

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at all that, and he handles
the Parkinson's very gracefully, and I think

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the documentary does an excellent job of
avoiding the temptation of the hanging fruit right.

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It could easily there's a million different
moments in the documentary that could have

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easily been very smaltsey, and it's
not at all. It's one of those

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things that you watch and you really
stop and take a sagad and have some

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perspective about your own life, because
you know the stuff you take for granted.

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It's very life affirming. I think
it actually makes to me what I

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took away from him is like,
even with something like this that is so

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challenging happening to him, you know, he hasn't been diminished by it.

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And there's you know, while obviously
it's a terrible thing that he's going through,

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there are elements of it that were
positive for him as as sort of

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a side effect of it, you
know, in terms of really now being

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present for his family, and again
he'd be you know, explicitly kind of

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calls that out in there. It
reminded me a lot of the Brian De

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Palma documentary, if anybody's seen that. And also the kids stays in the

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picture. So those are two other
really good like show based docs. One

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basically one speaker. And there's an
ante that Brian De Palma tells in that

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documentary about Michael J. Fox.
So Brian de Palma does a Vietnam movie.

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I think it's I want to say, Casuals of War and there's a

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scene when Michael J. Fox has
to get really mad at Schohn Penn and

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Michael J. Fox is just not
getting there right, They're doing taking He's

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not getting there, and Shohn Penn
finally like pushes him and he says under

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his breath to him television actor,
and then Depalmas like, all right,

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role it. And then Michael J. Fox got there right, He got

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where he needed to go to get
really mad at Schohn Penn, and they

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got the porns they needed. And
that really makes sense even more after watching

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this documentary because that's Michael J.
Fox this whole thing. He's like,

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you know, he is almost the
epitome of that, that kind of truism.

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It's not the size of the dog
in the fight, it's the size

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of the fight and the dog Like
that's his whole thing. He's always been

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like, you know, I'm the
little guy, but I'll you know,

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even again, he even says in
the documentary it's like, hey, you

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know, if you you might be
bigger than me, but I will hit

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you and I will hurt you.
Right, He's he's like a force of

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nature. I knew the name Davis
Guggenheim on the director and you hear him

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kind of off camera interviewing Michael throughout
the documentary. I was like, I

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know the name, you know,
so I wouldn't looked up what he's done.

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First of all, Davis Guggenheim extremely
cool guy. Went to Sidwell friends,

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I went to Baltimore Friends. Worked
on The Shield and Deadwood, along

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with a ton of other stuff NYPD
Blue, I mean really a ton of

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great credits. Married Elizabeth Shoe and
then directed three or four of the best

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documentaries in the last like twenty years. So he did an Inconvenient Truth he

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named me Malala waiting for Superman.
So definitely a documentary director who's at the

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top of his game. I would
add as a last point, you know

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we've all if you're listening to those, chances are you've seen Back to the

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Future, right. I had no
idea that the way that Michael J.

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Fox made Back to the Future was
like one of the most insane, workaholic

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things that I can possibly imagine,
And for him to pull that off and

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give the poormans that he does in
Back to the Future is amazing. So

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that whole segment we find how he
made Back to the Future where he was

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like literally like he breaks it down
the entire day schedule because he was doing

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his sitcom and doing Back to the
Future simultaneously, leaning like on the same

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days. He for him to do
it required him to sleep two hours a

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night it was, and they break
it down like almost an hour by hour

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how he did it, And anyway, I thought that was really interesting as

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well. So there's a lot of
great like showbiz stuff in this as well

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as a very moving but not super
depressing portrait of someone going through obviously this

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terrible disease. So still Michael J. Fox excellent documentary, totally worth watching.

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Not only will it not bum you
out, but I think you'll come

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out of it feeling really sort of
energized in a positive way. I think

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his positivity totally comes out of this
documentary. So I totally if you have

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a plus, really encourage you to
watch still and honestly, even if you

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don't, I would rent it,
like I think it was that good.

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So that is the show for today. As always, thank you so much

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for listening. You can always reach
out to me at dan advoidmia dot com

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and we're down on Twitter, watch
This Tonight on Instagram, and watch This

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Night podcast on TikTok. I did
get a little note from a listener because

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I'd asked for people's favorite, you
know, their dad's favorite movie, and

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he mentioned Enemy Mine, which is
a nineteen eighty five sci fi action movie

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starring Dennis Quaid and Lue Gossip Junior
directed by Wolfgang Peterson. And it's basically

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like a like a bromance between a
spaceship pilot played by Dennis Quaid and and

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I think I guess lue Gossa Junior
plays like an alien and it's like anyway,

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So I just thought what a great
I felt like a great pick for

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a dad movie. So yeah,
I appreciate that's my buddy Nate listener of

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the show for sending that over great
dad pick. Anyway, that is the

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show for today. Thank you for
listening until next time. Bye bye mm

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hm m m m m m m
m m