A Positive Take on Parkinson's By Katherine Seligman, The San Francisco Chronicle If there is an optimistic take on Parkinson's disease, it is this: "It opened up other possibilities to me," said actor Michael J. Fox last week. "I went in directions I could not have gone. It's a great journey."
Fox, who has channeled his fame into fighting the degenerative neurological disorder that struck him when he was just 30 years old, has been on the road to promote his latest book "Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist," also the name of this week's TV special on ABC. The book is an extension of his earlier best-selling memoir "Lucky Man," but the TV show explores more journalistically - in what he calls a "Charles Kuralt-y way" - the theme that has shaped his post-diagnosis life. It took him to Bhutan to learn about Gross National Happiness, to the golf range to discuss positive thinking with Bill Murray and to England, where a scientist confirmed what Fox knew intuitively. He's a pretty cheerful guy, even though he is also, as he calls himself, a "human whirligig."
"She has this test she developed where she identified genetic markers of people who have increased serotonin output and are born optimistic, and she did it on me," Fox, 47, said in a recent phone interview. "There is a second part where you are given a series of images, one horrific and one benign or sentimental, and depending on how you respond, it is further proof. I was attracted to positive images."
Fox came to San Francisco on Friday to talk about his career as an actor, activist and optimist at a sold-out event sponsored by City Arts & Lectures at Herbst Theatre and a later fundraiser to benefit his foundation that's dedicated to seeking a cure for Parkinson's. The appearance at Herbst was a different venue for Fox, who has talked lately with Katie Couric, Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel. This time he took the stage for the first time with the other Michael in his life, his wife Tracy Pollan's brother, the writer Michael Pollan.
The two Michaels, one tall and thin, the other short and thin, are used to talking around the kitchen table. Fox lives in New York with his wife and three kids (oldest son Sam is now at Stanford University) and Pollan is an award-winning writer known for his investigations into agriculture and the American diet and is a professor at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. The two are also a mutual admiration club. Pollan, Fox said, was his writing coach, teaching him the beauty of a good metaphor. "To have someone offer to teach you to write..." said Fox. "One time I was really down. It was all about me and I said, 'Who gives a crap?' and Michael said, "Hey, I write about angiosperm.'"
Fox, Pollan said, has an irrepressible spirit and sense of humor, never seeking the limelight at home, instead taking his place as one more character in the extended family of "extroverts and eccentrics."
"He's just Mike, or Uncle Mike, or as his daughter calls him 'Shaky Dad,' " Pollan said in his introduction, which included a short video with classic clips from "Back to the Future," "Spin City," "Family Ties," "Stuart Little" (in which Fox provided the voice for the animated star rodent) and his most recent acting foray, "Rescue Me," where he plays a character who does not, to put it mildly, share Fox's optimism in the face of challenge.
From the moment Fox walked onstage with the slow characteristic gait of someone with Parkinson's, he drew bursts of applause from the audience. Some were donors to his foundation or also suffer from the disease, but all were clearly fans.
Fox looked boyish in a black blazer and jeans. His symptoms, the bobbing and weaving that are only partially controlled by medication, were easy to forget as he began talking. Born in Canada, Fox started acting at 15, then dropped out of high school and moved to the United States at 18. He had early huge hits - "Family Ties," where he met his co-starring wife, and Steven Spielberg's "Back to the Future" movies.
First symptom
In 1990, he had his first symptom, a twitchy pinky finger. Diagnosed a year later, he kept the illness secret for seven years, and continued his run on the series "Spin City." Initially, he said, he worked more and drank more. He tried in vain to hide symptoms until, he said, logistics instead of creativity consumed most of his effort. Eventually, he quit drinking and realized he would have to go public and alter his career.
Leaving acting work - at least as his mainstay - was surprisingly easy, he said. He recalled an epiphany during a trip to Hawaii's Turtle Bay, where he jumped in the water to see a rare sea turtle swimming near the reef and stayed out long after the rest of his family went back to shore. He noticed an injury on the turtle's flipper as it made its way around the reef and was struck, he said, by its "survivorhood."
"I don't know what kind of symbol the turtle was," he said, "but I knew there were places to go."
He got out of the water and told his wife he was quitting. "She said, 'OK, let's towel off and go have dinner,' " he recalled.
"I quit my day job and found my life's work."
Soon after that, without knowing what his next professional step would be, he and his family took a vacation in France. The trip coincided with the Tour de France, which Fox watched, and later he was introduced to Lance Armstrong. It was the beginning of an influential friendship between the two.
Fox said he returned home inspired by what Armstrong had accomplished as an athlete, cancer survivor and advocate for cancer research. He threw himself into starting the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which he chairs but does not run.
Although he likes to refer to himself as a high school dropout who surrounded himself with brilliant business and scientific minds, Fox created a foundation credited with setting the tone for new Parkinson's research. The New York Times has called it "the most credible voice of Parkinson's research in the world."
A longer view
The foundation so far has distributed $140 million, Fox said Friday. Although in 2000 he believed that a cure or significant treatment options would be available in five years, he has learned to take a longer view of the process. Fox has advocated for funding of stem cell research - an effort restricted by the Bush administration and recently expanded by President Obama - but realizes, he said, that the approach to Parkinson's should be multi-pronged. The foundation has hired its own scientists and collaborates with pharmaceutical companies to work on drugs that might otherwise be overlooked.
Fox's support of stem cell research and candidates who support it has created the most controversy of his career. People - including legislators - had heard him speak openly about Parkinson's and describe the tremors, facial immobility or "mask" of the disease. They had watched him act in roles where he couldn't disguise his symptoms, most recently in "Rescue Me," where he still manages comedic timing as a paraplegic driving a car, arms trembling, and ordering his buddy to open another beer, which he swigs in one gulp.
"It was interesting as an actor to mess around with that and explore it creatively," he said in the interview. "I'm certainly glad I didn't go that way."
Then came conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh's comments that Fox either exaggerated his symptoms or deliberately went off his meds when he appeared in political ads. Fox ignored Limbaugh's accusations at first, trying to play them down and turn the discussion back to his foundation's work. Now, after repeatedly being asked to address them - and Limbaugh's apparent imitation of his symptoms - Fox is more direct.
"Screw you," he said Friday. "I saw the footage of him doing that and I was mad, not for me, but it stigmatized this whole community of people."
The flap brings up the core of Fox's loss. Perhaps it is an occupational hazard, but he feared losing public approval. In movies, in TV, even in real life, he was always the nice guy. "I like to be liked," he said Friday, a sentiment he writes about in his most recent book as well. "I don't think I ever before would have put myself in a situation" not to be.
In the end, perhaps, he lost universal endorsement, but he received a loud standing ovation Friday, before heading to the Hayes Street Grill for a fundraiser. "It's kind of like going to see the pope if you had Parkinson's," said Lori Stasukelis of San Francisco, who doesn't have the disease, but is an avid Fox fan. "It gave me goose bumps."
Absolute certainty is not something I strive for anymore. I've learned the hard way that destiny usually looks upon our most strident convictions with amusement, or perhaps even pity. (Oh, those silly humans! So desperate for their absolutes!) Sometimes it seems like the only job of the world is to gently (or not so gently) separate us from our deepest assurances, exposing us once again to that ultimate moral teaching tool: humility.
