Name: Michael J. Fox Pissed Off Taylor Swift's Fans | Letterman
Uploaded: 2024-04-19T22:00:10.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Michael J. Fox Pissed Off Taylor Swift's Fans | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-19. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Michael J. Fox Pissed Off Taylor Swift's Fans | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-19. Transcript available.

ladies and gentlemen our first guest is a five-time emmy award winner and now
the star of his third
prime time comedy series is entitled the michael j fox show you can see it thursdays
at 9 30 on
another network always on another network with another network that's right
ladies and gentlemen
here he is michael j fox michael j fox always a pleasure now here's something
here's something
that i know uh the michael j fox foundation uh looking for a cure a treatment
improvement
health care parkinson's disease has raised and correct me if i'm wrong 350
million dollars yeah
about that 350 million and is is is it uh is the foundation the number one uh
effort on behalf of
parkinson's disease technically speaking we're the number two uh uh uh funder
of parkinson's research
after the federal government but we're i'd argue we're more focused and uh i
mean it's not a joke
but um unfortunately but um but you know it was kind of the nih which funds
research for the government
i mean uh like secret station hit it really hard and and and it's they're just
at the mercy of so much
bureaucracy that that that um that we were able to be more focused and you know
target research yeah i
think your diagnosis uh about 22 years ago was that close uh and and via the
and do you ever sometimes
think that uh that this is the way life works that had you not been diagnosed
that parkinson's would
not be this much farther along in raising money for research and treatment i
don't i don't think about
that too much i i look at this as a real opportunity and a privilege and really
i'm happy i was putting
i mean i'm truly i'm happy i was put in this situation because because i have
so many uh uh
opportunities and resources to to to uh push push research along so it's just
one of those things it's
it's uh it's like i always say i mean it's been a gift it's been the gift that
keeps on taking but it's
it's been a gift um and and for for you
how has the the money that you've uh raised uh and as i understand it the the
thing that's unusual
about your foundation is you take this money and you give it to drug companies
and they then spend
it on research to find ways to cure it this is one of the one of the strategies
we use we we do all kinds of things we we we we we we do a real scattershot
approach in a wide portfolio of things we we we we we we do a real scattershot
approach in a wide portfolio of things we we we we do a real scattershot
approach in a wide portfolio of things we we we do a real
but one of the things we fund is is we de-risk for for major drug companies
because you might think
well multi-billion dollar drug company what do they need help for but they only
need help if they're
they only don't need help if they're working on your stuff so you want to get
out to work on your stuff
to explore compounds that may be beneficial to to your to your situation so we'll
we'll de-risk we'll say
if you work on this compound we'll we'll give you three million dollars we'll
give you five million dollars
and then the only thing is when you when you find something you have to push it
along and share it
right so give us an idea some examples of people uh who's from 22 years ago
when you were diagnosed
after that have been diagnosed people diagnosed with it after that period of
time how are things better
or different for them because of your efforts well i think it is there's uh we're
still working a lot of
things where products that are coming into into into uh the pipeline now are
are are things that that can
help uh use drugs that exist now more more more efficaciously and and and to
and to get the most
benefit out of them and then also we're we're we're uh finding ways to to to to
deal with the side effects of
parkinson's like the disk dyskinesia which happens from the medication so we're
we're hitting a lot of
quality of life things we've done a lot of research on on exercise and finding
that that's beneficial
um the the big things like gene therapy we've had drugs that we funded that
have gone to clinical trials
and uh and and unfortunately haven't panned out but but one of the things you
learn in science is if you
fail you succeed because you've learned something new we're we're um we just we
got a lot of pans on fire
when you say dyskinesia is is that the symptom of parkinson's the symptom of
parkinson's is is tremor
going to freezing uh everything from tremor to freezing but but uh dyskinesia
is is that kind of
that axel rose thing you get going when when which which is a which is a side
effect side effect of the
medication yeah so one wonders if there is a cure for that axel rose thing we're
trying to find ways to
to to for example if we can find a way to to get the medication the existing
medication to to not cause
dyskinesia to to to to enter your bloodstream slowly and gradually in a time
release way we can do that
with where they're talking about uh working on a on a spray that you can spray
the the the medication and
and and and reduce on time off times when when it's not working and um and then
we're we're working on
the big questions like whether it's stem cell whether it's uh nerve uh i mean
neuro protection and and and
and getting kind of finding a way to get like vitagro in the brain to to regrow
cells so there's a million
questions but but we're kind of the ones asking them uh you had a uh the big gala
it's an annual
event uh tell us some of the highlights you raised it was a five million
dollars you throw one dinner
you raise five million dollars that's amazing congratulations
you know it depends on who you get to come to the dinner yeah we had chris martin
from cold play
played and oh you guys uh you were singing uh uh johnny be good yeah it's a medley
of my hit
i play it every i play it at every benefit whoever's there elvis costello the
who
whoever whoever comes to the benefit but this year was chris martin he was
fantastic he's really good
and i played yellow with him which is really cool the uh the story about the uh
who's the guy who ran the
i think he ran it last year this is second marathon fourth marathon they got
him mike kelly who has
parkinson's and is a great guy and i live on the i live on the route uh the
marathon route in fact i
have a a real connection to it because i remember after 9 11 my daughter was
born who just turned 12
on marathon day and she was born uh right after 9 11 and and i remember holding
her the window and
watching the marathon go by and thinking the city is back the city is going to
be okay so i've had a
real connection with the marathon so when it goes by my my building we have a
lot of team fox it's a
group that organizes the runners that run for us the team fox people meet on
our block and we cheer
everybody as they go by and we high five them and mike kelly came by um he's he's
in his in his early
60s i think and and has parkinson's had for years but he ran the marathon and
he ran by my house and i
was so moved by him coming by that i said next year when you run i'll find i'll
get a pass to come on to the
route and run the last couple miles with you and um and i mean that scared me
because i had to get
into shape to run these two miles and he and he was running the whole thing so
i got it i got i
it happened i mean he came by this year and it was kind of late and and the
package thinned out but he
was chugging along he was walking but he'd done 24 miles at that point 23 miles
and so i got in and
started running with him and and um and it was my moment i wanted to run him
and and and he he
wanted to walk and i said mike no i said
i see he's not going to go down like that no it's not going to happen that way
you know i'm going to
run and then you run with me and and and and so we had we ran and and um and it
almost killed him yeah
i think we have uh some photographs of that here
a little later in the day huh yeah it was
it was getting getting around closing time yeah but he did great he's fantastic
and his family is
really involved in team fox and and they're just great we ran also with my my
trainer i got a
trainer uh a strength coach to get in shape for this and and um and when i
started to work with him
his his name is don and i started to work with him and and he said well you're
parkinson's what
what do i have to be careful about and i said it's it's truly neurological it's
not physiological i can
i can do anything you can't hurt me you can't hurt me and then he proceeded to
hurt me i see
he hurt me you hurt me big time i don't want to say that to your trainer give
us an idea of the kind
of physical things you can do you said you ran i know you took up golf you
still skate you still play
hockey and that sort of thing now when you're in a context where people say oh
there's michael j fox and
you do something athletic it must surprise them right they must be thinking faking
yeah isn't it
faking um no i just i mean i don't do any of those things well i mean it's just
it's just a for effort
but i i'm a terrible golfer i was on the cover of golf digest and i'm
comfortable the fact that i'm
the worst golfer that's ever been on the cover of golf divers um and and uh and
and you know it's
great the great note when i'm golfing is people say stay still over the ball
which
just ridiculous but but uh but i i i like golf and like i said i'm terrible at
it but have you ever
ever done anything that the people might have been alarmed uh on behalf of your
welfare or their own
welfare yeah i mean it's funny you say that there was a there was a uh i went
to a a retreat that was
was uh sponsored by amazon and they a lot of people a lot of authors and stuff
come to this retreat
in new mexico and they have activities that you can do and one of them was skeet
shooting
so this is clay pigeons shotguns i went with my son and we lined up for ski
shooting and
and and it's the the look on the faces was just precious
when i when i cocked and loaded it when i cocked and loaded i told him i'm
getting shotguns oh my oh my
how did how did you do it i did okay i mean i slammed it shut and my my finger
danced around
the trigger and i was swinging it wildly and then actually and then the first
time i did it again
this year and i wasn't as good but but but but the first time that first year i
i i i slammed the first
pigeon they sent up there yeah so it was just it was just kind of like if i'm
concentrating on something
hopefully yeah yeah i'll it'll go where i point it yeah but the crowd was dazzled
yeah
what was this uh from behind from behind protective the uh the the you you had
a fight with taylor
swift and do i have this right no i would i would have lost that it it sounds
preposterous what are
the it started it started with uh my son was mr golden globe i remember you
talking about that the
last time you were here the prouder day i never had mr golden globe it was
great and he did a really
great job he he was he was he was ushering people on and off to get their to
get their uh awards and
and and presenters it was sidebar one of his the moment i said i said do you
enjoy it and he said
were you scared he said the only time i was nervous was when i had to get sylvester
stallone
and arnold schwarzenegger off the stage oh yeah but but um but uh amy poehler
and tina fey
were hosting and they made a joke they said uh taylor swift stay away from michael
j fox's son
which is funny and yeah funny joke and then i was at a cocktail party a couple
weeks later and
about a week later and someone asked me about it and said uh and said would
would your your son go
out with taylor swift and i didn't know taylor swift that well i mean my my 12
year old daughter is a
big fan but but i didn't i didn't know i i didn't know and i said all i knew is
that she wrote a song
about a boyfriend she broke up with so i said well i'll know if she dated sam
because i'll hear a song
sam fox is a jerk and i'll know it didn't work out didn't work out sure and and
and and hell
fire rained down upon me hell fire i had i had every wow every tween girl in
america was was twittering
me and and tweeting me and and were really angry and i think my actually my 12
year old daughter turned
me in oh she blew the whistle i think she was in the closet with the phone he's
here i got him here
wow he did it um so and then i apologized profusely i i i i said to taylor
swift i did i really
really i didn't know whatever whatever i can say stuck up to you because i didn't
know
that it would cause such a big deal and she forgave me and and she called off
the the pack
and so there's no he's had enough boys i don't want i don't want let him up i
don't want to prolong
it i mean it's all ended peaceably and it was great but but but don't piss off
taylor swift no don't
do that i forgive you thank you now you met you mentioned something that sort
of caught my ear you
said you attended a cocktail party now do you drink alcohol no i don't i haven't
drank but but that's
not to do with parkinson's that's just to do that i wasn't good at it oh is
that right they took away
my my mug hung up my stein yeah i know that feeling um tell me about the uh the
show the michael j fox
show thursdays at 9 30. a lot of this show is uh autobiographical isn't it well
it's based on a
guy especially a guy who has parkinson's i mean i can play anybody as long as
they have parkinson's
i wanted we wanted the character to be someone who had a public profile uh
because that would relate
to a lot of my stories and so we made him a news anchor who had retired five
years earlier and then
he's driving his family crazy at home and and they and his old his old boss
employers him to go back to
work and his family's she's ushering him out and can't wait to see the back
side of him and so he he
he goes back to work and and so in that represents what i did it it's kind of
meta yeah to use a word
that people use these days yeah and and um and uh and i used a lot of stories
from my family did they
did they know they're being exploited for purposes of the show yeah i like i in
fact i say to them my
my daughter will do something and i'll say can you cute it up a little bit can
you can give up with
i see something else i need i need to go and come back to me when you get a cuter
anecdote yeah go go
rewrite the story of your day for me i need i need more yeah but uh this is
great like there's moments
right out of my family like in the pilot uh there's a scene at the end where we're
we're all getting
together for breakfast i'm serving eggs to my family and i'm laboring to get
the and my my wife
goes we don't have time for personal victories we're hungry oh man what a what
a tough room we don't
have time for personal victories uh michael it's always a delight to have you
with us on uh the program
and congratulations on a life well lived the michael j fox show thursdays at 9
30 on nbc good to see you
again my friend thank you very much

Michael J. Fox Pissed Off Taylor Swift's Fans | Letterman

ladies and gentlemen our first guest is a five-time emmy award winner and now
the star of his third
prime time comedy series is entitled the michael j fox show you can see it thursdays
at 9 30 on
another network always on another network with another network that's right
ladies and gentlemen
here he is michael j fox michael j fox always a pleasure now here's something
here's something
that i know uh the michael j fox foundation uh looking for a cure a treatment
improvement
health care parkinson's disease has raised and correct me if i'm wrong 350
million dollars yeah
about that 350 million and is is is it uh is the foundation the number one uh
effort on behalf of
parkinson's disease technically speaking we're the number two uh uh uh funder
of parkinson's research
after the federal government but we're i'd argue we're more focused and uh i
mean it's not a joke
but um unfortunately but um but you know it was kind of the nih which funds
research for the government
i mean uh like secret station hit it really hard and and and it's they're just
at the mercy of so much
bureaucracy that that that um that we were able to be more focused and you know
target research yeah i
think your diagnosis uh about 22 years ago was that close uh and and via the
and do you ever sometimes
think that uh that this is the way life works that had you not been diagnosed
that parkinson's would
not be this much farther along in raising money for research and treatment i
don't i don't think about
that too much i i look at this as a real opportunity and a privilege and really
i'm happy i was putting
i mean i'm truly i'm happy i was put in this situation because because i have
so many uh uh
opportunities and resources to to to uh push push research along so it's just
one of those things it's
it's uh it's like i always say i mean it's been a gift it's been the gift that
keeps on taking but it's
it's been a gift um and and for for you
how has the the money that you've uh raised uh and as i understand it the the
thing that's unusual
about your foundation is you take this money and you give it to drug companies
and they then spend
it on research to find ways to cure it this is one of the one of the strategies
we use we we do all kinds of things we we we we we we do a real scattershot
approach in a wide portfolio of things we we we we we we do a real scattershot
approach in a wide portfolio of things we we we we do a real scattershot
approach in a wide portfolio of things we we we do a real
but one of the things we fund is is we de-risk for for major drug companies
because you might think
well multi-billion dollar drug company what do they need help for but they only
need help if they're
they only don't need help if they're working on your stuff so you want to get
out to work on your stuff
to explore compounds that may be beneficial to to your to your situation so we'll
we'll de-risk we'll say
if you work on this compound we'll we'll give you three million dollars we'll
give you five million dollars
and then the only thing is when you when you find something you have to push it
along and share it
right so give us an idea some examples of people uh who's from 22 years ago
when you were diagnosed
after that have been diagnosed people diagnosed with it after that period of
time how are things better
or different for them because of your efforts well i think it is there's uh we're
still working a lot of
things where products that are coming into into into uh the pipeline now are
are are things that that can
help uh use drugs that exist now more more more efficaciously and and and to
and to get the most
benefit out of them and then also we're we're we're uh finding ways to to to to
deal with the side effects of
parkinson's like the disk dyskinesia which happens from the medication so we're
we're hitting a lot of
quality of life things we've done a lot of research on on exercise and finding
that that's beneficial
um the the big things like gene therapy we've had drugs that we funded that
have gone to clinical trials
and uh and and unfortunately haven't panned out but but one of the things you
learn in science is if you
fail you succeed because you've learned something new we're we're um we just we
got a lot of pans on fire
when you say dyskinesia is is that the symptom of parkinson's the symptom of
parkinson's is is tremor
going to freezing uh everything from tremor to freezing but but uh dyskinesia
is is that kind of
that axel rose thing you get going when when which which is a which is a side
effect side effect of the
medication yeah so one wonders if there is a cure for that axel rose thing we're
trying to find ways to
to to for example if we can find a way to to get the medication the existing
medication to to not cause
dyskinesia to to to to enter your bloodstream slowly and gradually in a time
release way we can do that
with where they're talking about uh working on a on a spray that you can spray
the the the medication and
and and and reduce on time off times when when it's not working and um and then
we're we're working on
the big questions like whether it's stem cell whether it's uh nerve uh i mean
neuro protection and and and
and getting kind of finding a way to get like vitagro in the brain to to regrow
cells so there's a million
questions but but we're kind of the ones asking them uh you had a uh the big gala
it's an annual
event uh tell us some of the highlights you raised it was a five million
dollars you throw one dinner
you raise five million dollars that's amazing congratulations
you know it depends on who you get to come to the dinner yeah we had chris martin
from cold play
played and oh you guys uh you were singing uh uh johnny be good yeah it's a medley
of my hit
i play it every i play it at every benefit whoever's there elvis costello the
who
whoever whoever comes to the benefit but this year was chris martin he was
fantastic he's really good
and i played yellow with him which is really cool the uh the story about the uh
who's the guy who ran the
i think he ran it last year this is second marathon fourth marathon they got
him mike kelly who has
parkinson's and is a great guy and i live on the i live on the route uh the
marathon route in fact i
have a a real connection to it because i remember after 9 11 my daughter was
born who just turned 12
on marathon day and she was born uh right after 9 11 and and i remember holding
her the window and
watching the marathon go by and thinking the city is back the city is going to
be okay so i've had a
real connection with the marathon so when it goes by my my building we have a
lot of team fox it's a
group that organizes the runners that run for us the team fox people meet on
our block and we cheer
everybody as they go by and we high five them and mike kelly came by um he's he's
in his in his early
60s i think and and has parkinson's had for years but he ran the marathon and
he ran by my house and i
was so moved by him coming by that i said next year when you run i'll find i'll
get a pass to come on to the
route and run the last couple miles with you and um and i mean that scared me
because i had to get
into shape to run these two miles and he and he was running the whole thing so
i got it i got i
it happened i mean he came by this year and it was kind of late and and the
package thinned out but he
was chugging along he was walking but he'd done 24 miles at that point 23 miles
and so i got in and
started running with him and and um and it was my moment i wanted to run him
and and and he he
wanted to walk and i said mike no i said
i see he's not going to go down like that no it's not going to happen that way
you know i'm going to
run and then you run with me and and and and so we had we ran and and um and it
almost killed him yeah
i think we have uh some photographs of that here
a little later in the day huh yeah it was
it was getting getting around closing time yeah but he did great he's fantastic
and his family is
really involved in team fox and and they're just great we ran also with my my
trainer i got a
trainer uh a strength coach to get in shape for this and and um and when i
started to work with him
his his name is don and i started to work with him and and he said well you're
parkinson's what
what do i have to be careful about and i said it's it's truly neurological it's
not physiological i can
i can do anything you can't hurt me you can't hurt me and then he proceeded to
hurt me i see
he hurt me you hurt me big time i don't want to say that to your trainer give
us an idea of the kind
of physical things you can do you said you ran i know you took up golf you
still skate you still play
hockey and that sort of thing now when you're in a context where people say oh
there's michael j fox and
you do something athletic it must surprise them right they must be thinking faking
yeah isn't it
faking um no i just i mean i don't do any of those things well i mean it's just
it's just a for effort
but i i'm a terrible golfer i was on the cover of golf digest and i'm
comfortable the fact that i'm
the worst golfer that's ever been on the cover of golf divers um and and uh and
and you know it's
great the great note when i'm golfing is people say stay still over the ball
which
just ridiculous but but uh but i i i like golf and like i said i'm terrible at
it but have you ever
ever done anything that the people might have been alarmed uh on behalf of your
welfare or their own
welfare yeah i mean it's funny you say that there was a there was a uh i went
to a a retreat that was
was uh sponsored by amazon and they a lot of people a lot of authors and stuff
come to this retreat
in new mexico and they have activities that you can do and one of them was skeet
shooting
so this is clay pigeons shotguns i went with my son and we lined up for ski
shooting and
and and it's the the look on the faces was just precious
when i when i cocked and loaded it when i cocked and loaded i told him i'm
getting shotguns oh my oh my
how did how did you do it i did okay i mean i slammed it shut and my my finger
danced around
the trigger and i was swinging it wildly and then actually and then the first
time i did it again
this year and i wasn't as good but but but but the first time that first year i
i i i slammed the first
pigeon they sent up there yeah so it was just it was just kind of like if i'm
concentrating on something
hopefully yeah yeah i'll it'll go where i point it yeah but the crowd was dazzled
yeah
what was this uh from behind from behind protective the uh the the you you had
a fight with taylor
swift and do i have this right no i would i would have lost that it it sounds
preposterous what are
the it started it started with uh my son was mr golden globe i remember you
talking about that the
last time you were here the prouder day i never had mr golden globe it was
great and he did a really
great job he he was he was he was ushering people on and off to get their to
get their uh awards and
and and presenters it was sidebar one of his the moment i said i said do you
enjoy it and he said
were you scared he said the only time i was nervous was when i had to get sylvester
stallone
and arnold schwarzenegger off the stage oh yeah but but um but uh amy poehler
and tina fey
were hosting and they made a joke they said uh taylor swift stay away from michael
j fox's son
which is funny and yeah funny joke and then i was at a cocktail party a couple
weeks later and
about a week later and someone asked me about it and said uh and said would
would your your son go
out with taylor swift and i didn't know taylor swift that well i mean my my 12
year old daughter is a
big fan but but i didn't i didn't know i i didn't know and i said all i knew is
that she wrote a song
about a boyfriend she broke up with so i said well i'll know if she dated sam
because i'll hear a song
sam fox is a jerk and i'll know it didn't work out didn't work out sure and and
and and hell
fire rained down upon me hell fire i had i 