Michael Douglas‘ new film Don’t Say a Word demonstrates just how far one man will go when his family is in danger, and the star himself has family at the forefront of his agenda in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the United States–so much so that he’s committed to plans to at long last make a movie with his legendary father, Kirk Douglas.
Michael told me that he was in New York at the time of the destruction of the World Trade Center, and the devastation hammered home the importance of focusing on his family ties. To that end, he’s decided to fast-track a long-awaited opportunity to co-star alongside his father for the very first time.
Well, technically Michael had an un-credited bit part as a jeep driver in Kirk’s 1966 film Cast a Giant Shadow, but the two have never matched their acting chops against one another since the younger Douglas became a big-name star.
Now, not only are Michael and Kirk teaming up for the as-yet-undisclosed project, they also plan to bring in a third generation of the Douglas dynasty as well. Michael says he also intends to recruit his 23-year-old son Cameron Douglas, an actor who also was a production assistant on his 2000 film Wonder Boys.
“It’s a three-generational picture,” Michael told me. “It’s something we’ve been sort of noodling around, and after all of these events…families tend to get closer together and this is a time when I’d like to a picture with my father and my son.”
As yet there is no plan to include another very prominent member of the acting family–namely Michael’s gorgeous wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, whom he said is currently prepping to film her singing and dancing role in the upcoming film version of the enduring stage musical Chicago next month.
Although the couple were both part of the powerhouse ensemble in last year’s Oscar-nominated film Traffic, they never shared a scene together. However, they are attached to appear opposite one another in director Mimi Leder’s (Pay It Forward) planned movie Smoke & Mirrors, a long-in-development script involving a famous magician’s romance. That film is expected in 2002.
Family ties almost landed the two big-screen Douglas generations in another movie together. Kirk originally purchased the rights to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with plans to star as mental patient Randle P. McMurphy, but it was Michael who, as producer, ultimately got the Oscar-winning drama made with Jack Nicholson in the lead role.
Some of that Cuckoo’s Nest background–along with some study of New York’s Bellview Hospital–helped Michael prep for his Don’t Say a Word role as a talented psychotherapist with a knack for helping troubled juveniles, a part he’d been planning to tackle for some time after being greatly impressed by the book the film is based on. Still, it wasn’t the role so much as the screenplay that nabbed him.
“I actually read the script of Don’t Say a Word over six years ago,” he revealed. “It was a good screenplay, a good psychological thriller.” However, Douglas was about to go to work on The Game, a similarly dark suspense plot, and his need to vary and mix up his projects prompted him to put his current film on the back burner until it was properly cooked.
“I go on scripts pretty much. I don’t worry about character, and I thought it was a pretty well-structured script.”
As a father of two, the actor was also able to call upon some of the universal worries, fears and close calls that the vast majority of moms and dads experience while bringing the story to life, as his character spends most of the story trying to keep his young daughter from harm.
“I think most parents have had a moment in their life in raising children when there was a concern of one type or another,” Douglas said. “I think that’s one of the reasons Don’t Say a Word is reaching out to so many different kinds of people.”
Given the current national climate, Douglas said the nail-biting tone of the film might be just what moviegoers can use right now.
“I think that audiences need an emotional release. I think audiences are ripe for a psychological thriller that ends in a positive manner.”
