Hollywood.com had a ringside seat at the Bermuda International Film Festival when film giant Michael Douglas took a long, introspective look back on his life and career in Hollywood. One of the most critically and commercially successful stars of generation both in front of and behind the camera, Douglas–who received the festival’s Prospero Award–provided a detailed tour through his enduring stint in the public eye: about growing up in Tinseltown and emerging from the shadow of his famous father Kirk; about his Academy Award-winning turns as both an actor and a producer; about working with some of the most revered directors in the industry; and about building a new young family with his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones.
On going from TV actor to Oscar winner for producing One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest at age 31:
I never thought about being a producer. I was just fortunate enough to be involved with that book. My father had it originally. He bought the book in galley form. In 1960 at the height of his Hollywood movie stardom he went to Broadway and did a Broadway production of Cuckoo’s Nest that didn’t quite work out the way that he hoped for. The idea then was to slide it into making a feature film. That didn’t work out. Meanwhile, I’m starting college in ’63 or ’64. In 20th Century American Lit this was required reading, and the Off-Broadway production had started, and he just missed it. He missed the curve and then I had started as an actor and he was selling the property, and I said, “Look, I love this.” My acting career was going okay, but I said “Let me have a roll with this.” And he said “Absolutely.” So I’m very grateful to him. It was still a six or seven year process, and what happened was at that time I did a television series called The Streets of San Francisco with Karl Malden, and it was on location in San Francisco. We did 26 hours a year, and so that was eight-and-a-half months of straight, six-days-a week, 14-hours-a-day[shooting], and so I learned a lot…After four years on The Streets of San Francisco and that being a big hit, I asked Karl Malden if I could leave the show to go and produce Cuckoo’s Nest. Everyone thought that I was nuts to leave a good show, but they let me out–which is unheard of today. That would never happen today. You would never have that opportunity…It was certainly different in terms of making the transition from television to feature films. Back then I think that it was only like Steve McQueen who had done it before me. Clint Eastwood, too. But there was not an easy transition that sort of exists now, which is the way that it should be and the way it is…That didn’t exist back then. People would say, “Why would I go pay to see him in a movie when I can see him for free at home?”
On Romancing The Stone:
Bob Zemeckis was a USC film graduate and a protégée of Steven Spielberg and had made two little pictures called I Want to Hold Your Hand and another great little picture called Used Cars, which I really liked. They didn’t work, and so at 23 his career was over. Then at 27 or 28 I offered him Romancing The Stone and he got a new career, and I think that you’ve heard about him since then…At that time the idea of doing comedy, romance and action was unheard of. You couldn’t do it. I mean, Raiders of the Lost Ark sort of had that and came around the same time. We were doing it separately, but you couldn’t really juggle those balls together, and given the fact also that I was producing that movie it was a horrendously difficult shoot. Those were the days when you had a budget approved by a studio and the studio signed off on that budget and then you could go to a bank and borrow the money to make the movie and that was it. You had your completion bond. You had to do all of that, and that turned out to be a nightmare shoot in Mexico. I’ll be eternally grateful to Kathleen Turner because it was a very, very hard shoot, and on top of that her leading man was the producer of the picture and his eyes were rolling into the back of his head.
On changing the original ending of Fatal Attraction:
You’re not sure who you were rooting for. The adulterer? And we knew that we were in dangerous waters, but again it was a theme that I felt very strongly about, which is how uncomfortable the sexes really are with each other. There was a struggle for positioning and the reversal of roles…There were a lot of fights with [Glenn Close] because we had to change the ending…In theater, if you do a play–a Broadway show or a play–you take the show out of town. Why do you take it out of town? You take it out of town before you go to the critics to see how it plays, and based upon the audience’s response to that you make your changes, and now all of a sudden to have test screenings with a movie where you do the same thing you’re under such personal attack. And for what reason I really don’t know, because for the cost of a movie it’s important, I think, that you have a sense of how it’s playing…In the original version, for those of you who remember, Fatal Attraction has the Madame Butterfly theme playing. In the first version it had Glenn Close playing Madame Butterfly and had her slit her throat in mid-suicide, and the audiences were like, “Kill her! Kill her!” So viscerally there was no reward…It was very clear that it wasn’t satisfying, and so of course it was very hard to talk to Glenn because we had to persuade her to go back and re-shoot an [alternate] ending to one she, of course, loved, and I understand it because it was a beautiful finale–and she was wonderful in it, but it’s important that you don’t lose touch with how a picture is going to play.
On working with Oliver Stone on Wall Street:
I was just fortunate with Oliver Stone. I didn’t know him. He just hired me and it was a great part. I think that Oliver should get a lot of credit. You look at every film he’s done, and every actor has probably given his best performance from James Woods in El Salvador, Val Kilmer in The Doors, Tom Cruise with Born on the Fourth of July, Kevin Costner with JFK. It goes right on down the list and he as a director is not afraid to push you. He’s not afraid to be adversarial…What he wanted was that he wanted a little more edge, and he was willing for me to hate him for the rest of that picture. I could’ve killed him. He wanted that performance. So I think that sometimes directors patronize actors too much. They’re always worried about them being temperamental and sensitive if they’re good. And most of the time, I must say, actors generally save a project with their dialogue ideas and a lot of things, but that actors can’t take a hit.
On his career high point:
For me the year of Fatal Attraction and Wall Street, back to back–getting the commercial success of Fatal Attraction and winning the Oscar for Wall Street sort of changed my life and really, as I said when I accepted the award, it got me out of the shadow of my father, who is a extraordinary guy. But it’s been difficult for generations to get out. It’s easier for a daughter with a famous father or a son with a famous mother.
On acting vs. producing:
I think that for me the advantage of being a producer is that I usually if I’m emotionally moved by something, if it makes me laugh, cry, scared–whatever it is–then I usually close my eyes and try to picture the picture, the three-act structure, and just make sure that the movie makes sense. I don’t want to do a movie just because it’s a good part, just to be in the picture. So I try to figure out what the elements are, whether I’m producing it or not. I think about who the director is, who the cast is and whether I think the picture works…I’m always an actor, but let’s just say that there is always a producer part of me that knows what my responsibility is and that’s to make it the best movie that I can. So it’s in my interest, my best interest to encourage the best performances. Also, I do a lot of pictures when I’m in every single scene. It is tough. My wife is doing it now for the first time, and I’m smiling going, ‘Uh huh.’ It’s great to have a colorful role like in Wall Street, but Charlie Sheen is there carrying everything. So usually I know what’s needed. Where the comic relief has to come, where the suspense has to come, where the pacing has to come–I just sort of think that way. Then I encourage people and I want the actors to be as good as they possibly can. I remember learning that from Paul Newman. He talks about that a lot, not to be threatened, but to be gracious and encourage as much talent as possible.
On Black Rain:
Black Rain is one of my favorite pictures. I like that picture a lot. [Director Ridley Scott] is the real thing. He’s an extraordinary visionary. He has incredible stamina. Not really articulate–He sees it and he knows, and we just had a wonderful experience on that picture. That was like the magic of what movies are about, with a Japanese cast, too, that didn’t speak any English…We were in Osaka for about five months and then we had to bring part of the picture back, because it was just too difficult to shoot over there. It was not an anti-American thing, but I think simply it was that the film industry is not a really big part, particularly at that time, of Japan’s economy. So they didn’t give the kind of cooperation in Japan that we’re used in other parts of the world. There was no police protection there, which is why most Japanese films, if you look at them, are shot in the countryside. No one ever tries to do a picture in the city. It’s too tough.
On The War of the Roses:
[Director] Danny [DeVito] is one of my oldest buddies. He and I were roommates in New York when we were first starting together…That was the third picture that I had done with Kathleen. So I know why so many actors and actresses in the old days worked together, because there is that comfort factor where you don’t have to go through the introductions anymore. You know each other and so there is already a more relaxed ability. You’re able to rival each other’s lines and you know each other’s rhythms. I think that really helped a lot…The War of the Roses was a little further out. We got away with it. I remember reading the script and saying, “This is wonderful, but we have to change the ending. There’s no way that they can die. You can just let them die.” They played it right to the end, and I’m proud about it. I love that movie. That’s the kind of picture that’s so exciting the first time that you see the audience, because you have no idea how it’s going to play out. [Danny] is very detailed. He got hurt because he used to go over schedule so much and that really, really hurt him, but he’s got a very good character eye and everything is storyboarded and a strong visual elements. He’s more of the David Fincher school, which is surprising, him being the actor that he is. But he’s very, very fixated in the look of his film.
On his sexually-charged man-as-victim films, Basic Instinct and Disclosure:
Basic Instinct…That was a conscious slam dance. It was a kind of very conservative time and we just felt that we needed to do it–do a heavy duty “pant” movie… Disclosure: To pull that one off–the poor subjected male, the hard-working guy seduced by Demi Moore. That was some good acting! [Laughs]
On his decision to star in Falling Down, a film the studios balked at initially:
No one wanted to make that picture. If you think about it, there really isn’t a protagonist in the classic sense of the word. Who you are rooting for in this movie? The timing was sort of interesting because Southern California was the center of the defense industry, not Hollywood, for a very long time. And at the end of the Cold War, all of these people in the defense industry were given their pink slips because they weren’t needed anymore, and I was fascinated by that whole concept in Ebbe Roe Smith’s script…I just thought that it was interesting and was exactly how I was feeling for a lot of these guys who were patriots and said all of the right things and did all of the right things for their country, and then as a “Thank you very much” they got “We don’t need you anymore”…The haircut scared me. There was that decision, and again, it’s as simple as your hairdresser. You’re sitting there thinking about what you want to do and someone is talented enough as a hairdresser to go, “Why don’t you go for it and do a flattop kind of thing? Just do it!”…[Director] Joel [Schumacher] was a good friend of mine. Years before, my girlfriend was an actress named Brenda Vaccaro, who was in Midnight Cowboy and she was the flavor of the month at that time in Hollywood. I was with her and we would go to all these dinners where they would have these tables with all of the place settings, and we’d go around and look at the names on the settings and there was always that one table that had no place settings, and that’s where I was [Laughs]. I used to run into Joel Schumacher there at that table a lot. We would joke about that a lot. But we got to know each other at those dinners. I knew him from Flatliners and I just thought that he would be a good choice, and he turned out to be great.
On changing course with the romantic comedy The American President:
I try to mix it up. I figure that if you’re fortunate enough to have some success in your career then it’s your responsibility to kind of push yourself and try to do different things and comedy wasn’t what I was well known for. So I always tried to find that kind of dent and I thought that film was lovely. I mean, the thing that I’m pretty proud about is that most of the ladies that I’ve worked have done their best work, going back to Sharon Stone or Annette Bening or Glenn Close or Kathleen Turner. Part of it is that I try to be generous and, particularly in those kind of sex films, there is a comfort factor that is really necessary to make someone feel secure in an environment, to know that you’re kind of looking out for them. Selfishly, it’s so you can make the best movie possible.
On The Game:
The only thing that’s tough with David [Fincher] is that he’s such a visionary. So you realize that a lot of what he’s talking about, if he’s happy with your performance, is that he’s much more consumed with the look of everything. That was a tedious, tough shoot, but I liked The Game because, again, it was unpredictable. You don’t quite know where it’s going. Most movies you can kind of guess the ending about halfway through the picture, which is why I hate to say that I don’t really see a lot of movies. I’m a sports fan. You never know how it’s going to end in sports.
On working with Steven Soderbergh in Traffic:
He’s quite a talent. I mean, not only did he direct it, but he filmed it. He shot it. He was the cameraman. He literally would shooting it and on top of that could tell you your lines if you forgot your lines. He’s very kind of understated and a joy to work with. I’ve been very fortunate in not having to work with tremendous kinds of egos involved on either side. I go back to Karl Malden on that: When you’re doing a television series, which is a 52-minute film shot in seven days on location, you chip in. You don’t have time for all of that. You’re trying to make it a comfortable environment, as much as you can, and to do the best work possible. That’s all that matters and the rest of it is all insecurities and all of that. So you try and rid that as much as possible.
On the films of his father, Kirk Douglas:
I love Champion, and in an interesting way my father made sort of six “sensitive young man” roles before he did Champion and had turned down another big studio picture to do that film for Stanley Kramer. He got an Oscar nomination and it changed his career. My favorite film that my father did is a picture that still doesn’t get a lot of attention called Lonely Are the Brave. It’s a lovely story about a contemporary cowboy…Spartacus was a great, great picture, and I think it hurt a little bit because Ben Hur came out the year before and I think won some phenomenal number of Oscars, ten or something like that. There’s no comparison, with all due respect, if you look at the two of them together. My father, who was producing, had to replace Anthony Mann, who was directing, with Stanley Kubrick, and he was all of 28 years old when he directed Spartacus. It’s interesting that Stanley never includes that in any of his resumes because he came in to replace Anthony Mann. It was the biggest budgeted picture that Hollywood had made, per se. The screenwriter was blacklisted at that time and we went through a whole big issue. Dalton Trumbo was his name, and my father supported him and he got his name on it at that time.
On growing up in star-studded Hollywood:
Tony Curtis was a great friend of my father’s. He was married to Janet Leigh at the time and they used to be over at the house a lot with Frank Sinatra and a lot of other people, and I remember as a kid being out there visiting him there one summer and them all hanging out. They were saying to each other, “Who is the hottest actress? Who is inherently sexy? Someone that you’ve worked with and just think is so hot?” They were all talking and I was just listening and they all concurred, everyone concurred, that Jean Simmons–who was in Spartacus–was considered the sexiest actress to work with… Frank Sinatra was “Frank Sinatra,” [but] Burt Lancaster was “Burt.” They had us over to the house and you’d see him at work, and I guess that you don’t know any better. That’s your life. …You’re really fortunate that you can see what your dad does, or your mother. My mother is an actress, too, and my folks got divorced when I was five and I grew up with my mother in New York City, but with respect to that my first birthday, my one-year-old birthday, was in Bermuda. My mother and father came down here in the early years during the summertime. Whether it’s a theater–my mother was in the theater–or what, it’s one of the few jobs that as a kid you can see what your parents do and most times you go to the office and their on the phone or whatever and you don’t know what they’re doing. But this was something that you could see, and I think that probably as far as being second generation, it’s really helped me to understand all of the press stuff and all of that, so that you don’t get overly excited and you understand that that’s an inherent part of your job and your work.
On turning down Basic Instinct 2:
It’s not a bad script. I mean, they asked me to take part in it, but I’ve done my job. So it’s not one that I wanted to go down and do, so to speak. We’ll see. It’s not a bad script and so hopefully it works out well. [Sharon Stone] was great in that movie.
On the actors he’d love to work with:
Jack Nicholson is one of my best buddies, and although I produced Cuckoo’s Nest I never really had a chance to work with him. My favorite actor is Albert Finney. Steven Soderbergh did a small trick, a wonderful trick on me in that he got Albert to play a small part in Traffic which I didn’t know he was going to do. So I’ve had that joy. As far as working with Catherine, I would love to, but it wouldn’t be a romance or a couple thing. I’m actually looking at one project now where maybe I’d be the villain or the adversary. I think that it’s true that there’s a real lack of interest [in real-life couples] together on the screen.
On slowing down his Hollywood output:
My priorities are different, clearly. I’ve started a family. I’ve got two young children and I took a three-year sabbatical really. If you asked me 20 years ago, this is not a business where I think you can balance your personal life and career. Something has to take the lead, and I’ve always been envious watching people who have normal jobs come back and have a strong family life. I didn’t. My career dominated my life for most of my adult experience, and now that has changed. My wife is an accomplished actress who is a lot younger than I am. She’s going to have her time in the spotlight. I’m enjoying being a good father. I enjoy my work for the United Nations. I’ve been working a lot with them about weapons of mass destruction and small arms. I enjoy that opportunity of taking your exposure, the fact that people know you around the world and you get to talk about something else besides movies.
