Transcript
TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I’m Tonya Mosley. My guest today, Oscar-winning actor and producer Michael Douglas, has spent much of his career playing men consumed by money, ambition, sex and control. As Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street,” he made greed is good a catchphrase. In “Fatal Attraction” and “Basic Instinct,” desire turns dangerous. And in “The War Of The Roses,” marriage becomes warfare. And in “Traffic,” the drug war reaches a father’s own family.
In his new memoir, “One Helluva Ride,” Michael Douglas writes that playing these flawed American men wasn’t exactly a stretch. He grew up the son of Kirk Douglas, one of the biggest movie stars of his generation. Michael won his first Oscar for producing “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” a film his father had spent years trying to make so he could star in it. And when Michael later won an Oscar for acting in “Wall Street,” he thanked his father for helping a son step out of a shadow.
But the memoir also looks at what was happening off screen, a troubled first marriage, affairs, rehab, Stage 4 cancer and the addiction and legal troubles of his oldest son, Cameron. Michael tells that story through 12 of his films, tracing the moments when his work and his private life collided. And Michael Douglas, welcome to FRESH AIR.
MICHAEL DOUGLAS: Thank you, Tonya. And thank you so much for a lovely introduction.
MOSLEY: This was a book that I really enjoyed. Thank you so much for writing it. And, you know, for millions of people, your father was larger than life. He was Spartacus. And you spend a big portion of this book talking about what that meant for you. And you write that when you were young, he was just out of reach. What did that distance actually look like for you when you were a kid?
DOUGLAS: Well, Dad was overwhelming. He, just simply as a person, he had an energy, a physical strength, a tenacity that was very unique. And then as he grew and his career grew – and Spartacus led the army, and “The Vikings” when he walked across the oars, and the Westerns, when he drew a gun faster than anybody else – he seemed like an impossible man to match. And I think both my brother and I, there was a question and an issue of, how can we ever be the man that our father is?
He was making five to six movies a year, was really overwhelmed with the pressure and with his guilt of having divorced my mother when I was 5 and my brother, Joel, was 3. And so when we saw him, because we were growing up on the East Coast with my mother – and when we would come out to see my father, he was so guilt-ridden about not being the father that he had hoped to be, because his father had totally ignored him and given him no attention growing up. So there was a degree of pressure when we came together that he meant well, but there was such an intensity about him that it made it awkward. He was also of that generation that physically corrected behavior. And so…
MOSLEY: He would hit you guys.
DOUGLAS: He would hit us, yeah, he would hit us.
MOSLEY: I mean, corporal punishment. Yeah.
DOUGLAS: Corporal punishment. My mother had the hairbrush. And that was a generation, you know, that that wasn’t so unusual. So the early years were tentative. We admired him but were slightly afraid of him.
MOSLEY: Your mother, Diana Dill, had her own acting career. And when you were about 5, she and your father separated. And she married Bill Darrid, who was an actor, writer and producer. And there’s a moment that you write about when one day, you guys are talking and suddenly you realize he’s actually listening to you, and you become emotional. Why did you become emotional?
DOUGLAS: What happened and I realized, and because of my early experiences with my father, I was used to people not listening to me. And I looked up at him in his eyes. And I saw a man who was listening, listening to what I had to say. And Bill turned out to be a wonderful surrogate father who my father greatly admired and called him that. He said Bill was your surrogate father, and I’m eternally grateful for the responsibilities he took in raising you.
MOSLEY: You tell some really great stories about your origin, growing up. There’s a particular story you tell when you’re 21 years old, and you’re finding yourself. You are out there in the world. You’re actually in college. Your father gives you $10,000 and told you from then on that you were on your own. He also had given you two Italian leather suitcases.
DOUGLAS: (Laughter) Yeah.
MOSLEY: What did you discover you could do with those suitcases?
DOUGLAS: Right. So I turned 21. And Dad said, all right, son. And he gave me a bond, a $10,000 bond, which I was very grateful for. And I know a lot of other people out there didn’t have that opportunity. But he said, you’re on your own, so good luck. And I said, well, Dad, I’m very grateful. But, you know, I’m in college. And, you know, tuition and expenses.
And so, one of the major transitions that had happened to me in going to college at the University of California at Santa Barbara, after having kind of grown up in the East Coast, going to private schools, prep schools, all-boys schools – you know, many, many schools have a college adviser when you’re in high school. And they have these brochures. And I stopped at one of the brochures. It said on the top, campus by the sea. And then underneath of it was a picture of a guy walking down the beach carrying a surfboard with two girls in two-piece bathing suits, you know? So I was like, wow, I want to go there.
MOSLEY: (Laughter).
DOUGLAS: And, of course, Dad was very happy because he thought – oh, isn’t that wonderful? – my son wants to be closer to me. And within the first year that I was out there, I started sliding into the artist section. And by my second year, I became a full-fledged hippie, and all the wonderful flower child qualities that still remind me what a special, magical time that was. And, of course, one of them was marijuana.
So that was the background that was going on. And I’m still trying to financially get by. And then I realized that my father had one Christmas given me these beautiful, soft leather Italian suitcases. And each suitcase could fit 22 kilograms of marijuana in it. And so I would go back on the holidays, back east to see my mother, after paying maybe – I think it was like $70, $75 a kilo for the marijuana in California. And I would go back…
MOSLEY: You became a drug dealer.
DOUGLAS: I became a drug dealer. I became a drug dealer.
MOSLEY: (Laughter).
DOUGLAS: I did. And I would take these 44 kilos back and sell them like $500. And that was how I was able to get through all of that. But it was a story which I didn’t tell for years. But Dad kept telling my brothers, Joel and Peter and Eric, you know, look at your oldest brother. He’s never asked for anything. You know, just – and I was in my 30s. Finally I said, Dad, I’ve got a story I’ve got to tell you. And I told him this (laughter). And I still remember. And his mouth throbbed. I said, I just want you to know it, you know, ’cause you kind of beat up on the kids about, you know, their – needing, but this is the reason why I didn’t need any money.
MOSLEY: You tell some great background stories of the people that became your lifelong friends around this time. You meet Danny DeVito, and you guys were part of this summer theater for theater people, the O’Neill Theater in Connecticut. You eventually become roommates in New York, and you guys are just two actors trying to make it. You’re still figuring out who you are, apart from your father. But what did being around Danny in particular give you permission to be?
DOUGLAS: Let me go back a little bit, just to give a background on the Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theater because it was such a crucial part of what’s happened in my career in the future. And I went back the last two summers of the college and then the third summer when I was out of college, and the O’Neill Theater had a playwriters conference. And I was able to be there at an extraordinary fortunate time of great writers, like John Guare, Israel Horovitz, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard. It was a great, great period.
And so for three summers, you would kind of sit there on the sidelines listening to the director talking to playwrights as to how they can restructure this or that to make something better. So I make a point about this because this was the core foundation of my career for the future because I’m really proud of the screenplays, the movies that I made, that I worked on because they were so well structured. It made a big impression on me. But in the second year, that I was there, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts came up with a production, and Danny DeVito was part of the acting ensemble. And Danny – I know this is hard to believe – had long hair, all the way down his back. He was, you know, a real hippie.
MOSLEY: You guys are very much like the Odd Couple, if for nothing else, just in the visual. It’s funny there’s that movie that he was in with Arnold Schwarzenegger, where they’re opposites. It really could have been the two of you.
DOUGLAS: Yeah. Danny is not tall, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who was less conscious of their height. He was happy in his own skin, had a great sense of humor.
MOSLEY: He seemed to have an assuredness about his place as a creative, as an artist. And so I did wonder what being around him, being such a good friend and living with him, kind of gave you insight on regarding yourself. What did he kind of give you permission to be?
DOUGLAS: Danny just seemed to accept me for who I was, never went on about my dad or this or that, just sort of took me at face value. He allowed me a vulnerability that I hadn’t felt before. I didn’t feel like I had to protect myself. We just had good times together but just kind of hit it off. I think we both share a kind of a dark humor, the “War Of The Roses,” which…
MOSLEY: You all worked on together.
DOUGLAS: Which we worked on together. And we kind of rooted for each other. I knew, you know, how hard he tried, but he also gave his best shot. Even dealing with rejection, showed me how to behave or how to handle yourself as I dealt with my own.
MOSLEY: Our guest today is Michael Douglas. His new memoir, “One Helluva Ride,” tells the story of his life through 12 of his films. We’ll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROBBEN FORD AND BILL EVANS’ “CATCH A RIDE”)
MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today, I am talking with Michael Douglas about his new memoir, “One Helluva Ride.”
You know, Michael, there’s something almost perfect about the way you and your father came to the story of “Cuckoo’s Nest” from two different directions. So he was already, at the time, one of the biggest stars in the world and saw the character of McMurphy from that story as really the role of a lifetime. And you were in college at UC Santa Barbara, taking LSD, protesting the war, just basically being a hippie, when you encountered the book by Ken Kesey about the counterculture that he was writing out of. And years later, after your father had spent nearly a decade trying and failing to get this movie made, you stepped in. And you write, it was pure instinct. The truth is, I had no idea what I was doing.
Where did you get that confidence from at that moment when you’re still trying to figure out things? Because you had had no track record as a producer when you decided to do this.
DOUGLAS: No, I didn’t. And Dad was selling the property. He had tried for years to get it. And R.P. McMurphy, the lead of the book, was a great character for him, a fabulous character. And then he tried for many years with his production company to make it, and he couldn’t get it made. So he was selling it. And I happened to hear – overhar when I was at the office sometime. And I said, no, Dad, don’t. No, please don’t it. Don’t sell it. Look, let me run with it. I’ll try to get you the money you want for it, get you to play the part and produce it.
MOSLEY: Right.
DOUGLAS: And Dad – so I’ll be very grateful. I don’t he had much hope. And he said, OK. All right, I’ll give you a year. And I was able to do…
MOSLEY: Your confidence to do this – right? – though, never having produced it – I mean, in one sense, you went into this wanting to fulfill your father’s dream and make the movie with him as McMurphy. But instead, you eventually had to tell him that he wasn’t going to play this part, in part because by the time you were able to get it made, he was too old for this part. Jack Nicholson ended up taking on that role. And I was just wondering, do you think becoming your own man kind of required the courage to disappoint your father?
DOUGLAS: That’s a good question. I certainly didn’t know that at the time. I knew this was the most difficult thing that I ever would have to do or I had been able to do up to that point was to tell Dad that he wasn’t going to play the part. Again, as the producer – one of the producers – it wasn’t simply only my decision. It was the decision of the director, Milos Forman. And – but it was very hard because over the years, I recognize how seldom you get a really good part. And this would have been one of Dad’s greatest parts to play, and he would have killed it. But 20 years had gone by, almost. Almost 20 years since he’d been trying to get on. And his position had changed in the industry, so it was the hardest decision to tell him.
And in the years when he would remind me afterwards, I would say – because I did split my producing deal with Dad, and he was able to make more money off of that deal than any picture he had ever made as an actor. But when I took him up to show him the first cut of the movie, and when he came out, and he couldn’t have been more of a gentleman. He said, Michael, he did a fantastic job. It’s just a wonderful, wonderful movie. And Jack Nicholson did a great job. So it was a tough moment, and he was a total, complete, you know, gentleman about the whole thing.
MOSLEY: I think oftentimes, people tend to assume that movie stars live in a bubble. But in particular, I’m thinking about “The China Syndrome,” “Wall Street,” “Falling Down,” “Traffic” – they all tapped into something people were feeling before Hollywood caught on. Where were you picking that up and picking it up to the degree that you were willing to fight to the end to make sure that these types of films got made? And, ironically, they always came right at the moment where we were at the flash point of a particular issue, like the drug war or the riots in Los Angeles right before “Falling Down.”
DOUGLAS: I’m a news junkie. I follow the news and politics too much. And some things you also learn, for instance, “The China Syndrome,” I thought, when I first read the script, I said, what a great horror movie. I’ve never thought about a nuclear power plant being the monster, but this is a great horror picture. Now, in doing the research to make this horror movie, I learned a lot more about nuclear reactors and what was going on at that time. I was able to reach out to two GE scientists who used to work on the nuclear – on the atomic plants that General Electric made, who had had a loss of faith and come over to the other side. They shared with us, us being Jane Fonda, you know, my other co-stars…
MOSLEY: Co-stars.
DOUGLAS: …And our director, some of the issues that exists with plutonium and things I learned about – the half life of plutonium and how it stays with us and the dangers of it. And so we use them. The end of our movie was a possible meltdown, and they helped us with what was the most likely scenario and all of that.
So when the picture came out, there was a lot of criticism of how cavalier we could possibly be. And then the amazing thing happened, which was the movie opened, and it opened with good reviews and a lot of discussion. And then 12 days later, Three Mile Island happened in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which was a situation very similar to our movie. And for me, it was an epiphany. I am not a religious person, but this was as close to religion that I’d come to. And that act, I felt that somebody was telling me something about the severity of this and something that I should continue working on for the rest of my life.
MOSLEY: Our guest today is Michael Douglas. And you can keep up with FRESH AIR by subscribing to our podcast on Apple or Spotify. And leave us a review. It helps us a lot. We’ll be right back after a short break. I’m Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN SCOFIELD’S “CHICKEN DOG”)
MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Tonya Mosley. And my guest today is Michael Douglas, Oscar-winning actor and producer, whose career has spanned more than six decades. He first became widely known on the television show “The Streets Of San Francisco,” then won his first Oscar as a producer on “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.” He went on to become one of Hollywood’s biggest leading men, starring in films including “Romancing The Stone,” “Wall Street,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Basic Instinct,” “The American President” and “Traffic.” Douglas grew up as the son of movie star Kirk Douglas, and his new memoir is called “One Helluva Ride.”
All right, Michael, when “Fatal Attraction” comes out in 1987, there’s something that starts to happen in your career. The men you’re playing and the life you’re living begin to overlap. This is what you say in the book. And you write that you want it to make a movie about lust and how it can destroy a man’s life. And then you add, as someone who walked right on that edge sometimes, it fascinated me. What did you recognize in Dan Gallagher?
DOUGLAS: “Fatal Attraction” was the first time that I changed my whole approach to acting. Somebody had told me earlier in my career, you know, Michael, the camera can always tell when you’re lying. Ooh. Ooh, look at the camera. In those days with those thousand foot mags of film, and they looked like X-ray machines. The camera could always tell you’re lying.
MOSLEY: And what does that mean that you’re not – what does it mean when you’re lying? Because you’re pretending anyway, right?
DOUGLAS: Well, you are, except that it’s meant to me sort of method acting and the only way that you can act is to tear the makeup off your face or wipe it off and get down to your skin. And it’s a very painful, frustrating way of acting. And so I start “Fatal Attraction.” I’m reading the script and ready to, you know, dig into my character and say, OK, OK. He’s a lawyer in New York, and I say, I’m a lawyer – I could be a lawyer in New York. He has, you know, children with a lovely wif. And I said, yeah. And that’s the case. He’s an adulterer. Yeah. That might be. You know, that might be. And so all of a sudden, I realized acting is lying. You’re trying to create and persuade an audience with your lies that you’re telling the truth.
And what it did, Tonya, is it totally freed me up. It totally changed my approach to how – about acting. And I realized that “Fatal Attraction” was more just about trusting how to be yourself. Being yourself on screen is not easy. Everybody thinks it might be. But being on screen, none of us think that we have enough to give, just for ourselves to exist on screen. But, again, this was such a wonderfully conceived script, a what-if conceived script, that it was the ultimate nightmare. And it just hit off all the right reasons. Glenn Close – you know, God bless her – was so wonderful. Nobody thought she was right for the part. She knew she wanted to do it. Then she finally said, I’ll audition for it. She was a major actress. And she came in – and I just saw her audition tape recently – and she killed it.
MOSLEY: The film became a cultural phenomenon, for sure. But there’s something, though, that starts to happen to your career around this time, ’cause there’s “Fatal Attraction,” and then there’s “Basic Instinct.” And then, by this time, though, it’s like the public had come to see you as kind of a sexual man, you know? Like, you started to take on this other persona. Did people start confusing the men you played with the man that you actually were?
DOUGLAS: Well, two things happened, Tonya. One, the combination of the success of “Fatal Attraction,” followed by “Wall Street” three months later – right? – was a big breakthrough for me. And when I went up and received my Oscar for “Wall Street,” I thanked my father because I finally felt that I was out of his shadow. Those two pictures in that year was when I felt I was my own man. Now, after that, “Basic Instinct” happened. And in my personal life, I was a mess. My stepfather, Bill, had passed away. My marriage was in bad shape. My oldest son, Cameron, was having serious drug issues and incarcerated. I was drinking too much and drugging too much right after “Basic Instinct.” And I went to rehab.
And what’s great about rehab is you have this anonymity with a group – in my case, even though you knew who I was. But you kind of have committed yourself to protecting each other. What happened was there were a couple of guys – I don’t know – in my group who made a deal with a nurse in the office who were able to grab my files out – my files through that. And they made a deal and sold them to a British tabloid paper. And, you know, whatever there was there, but this brilliant editor wrote an article about me being in rehab for sex addiction, which was not the case whatsoever but was – made for really good print and everyone went, ooh, very exciting. And because of “Basic Instinct” and because of “Fatal Attraction,” five years apart, it led into that.
MOSLEY: Yeah.
DOUGLAS: So I’ve had to deal with this for 25 years, 30 years, however long it’s been, with that tabloid story, which created this image.
MOSLEY: You write pretty candidly about this whole time in your life, including the rehab, and you name names of the women you had affairs with in this book. And you write that before revealing these intimate relationships, you actually called each of the women involved to ask permission. Why did you want to write about it? Why tell the truth now?
DOUGLAS: Well, because these were important people in my life, on a friendship basis and otherwise. A couple of them I did not call because our relationships had been made public in the press before. But two of them, Kathleen being one, and the other one…
MOSLEY: Kathleen Turner.
DOUGLAS: Kathleen Turner. And the other one, people will discover when they’re reading the book.
MOSLEY: Read the book.
DOUGLAS: That, you know, they’re part of my life. And this is all pre-Catherine, my wife of 26 years. And when you have a 25-year age difference (laughter), it’s hard. I mean, there’s people and affairs we’re talking about when Catherine was 6 years old. And I just felt that besides the aspect of having an affair, they were important people in my life. We were friends, and at that particular time, meant a lot.
MOSLEY: Our guest today is Michael Douglas. His new memoir, “One Helluva Ride,” tells the story of his life through 12 of his films. We’ll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS’ “H.S.”)
MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today I am talking with Michael Douglas about his new memoir, “One Helluva Ride.”
You write so beautifully about your relationship with your son, Cameron, the struggles he dealt with and the time he served for his choices. And I just wonder, as a parent, how watching Cameron’s addiction might’ve made you actually understand more about your own, maybe that you hadn’t before?
DOUGLAS: That’s a good question. Well, the predominant one is, had he witnessed me earlier in his life, you know, partaking in illicit drugs that made it easier for him to pick it up? That’s a guilt that I have always felt. And I’ve talked to Cameron about that. We have a history of a lot of celebrities whose parents were drug addicts. And it was detrimental to their development and had to – so I think I certainly assume some responsibility for that.
But on the other hand, which is hard, is, I know as a parent now how painful and how exhausting, exhausting it is to have a child under the influence of drugs. And I lost a brother, Eric, in a drug overdose. And before he died, I watched my father go to these group therapy sessions into his early 80s, and listening to Eric complain about his performance as a father and said – you know what? – I’m not going to do that. I’m sorry. Whatever mistake I’ve made, at a certain point in life, you’ve got to say, we got to move on. And it’s up to that addict.
And there was that moment where I told Cameron. I said, Cameron, if you see me pulling away from you, it’s because I am because I’m afraid you’re either going to kill someone or you’re going to kill yourself. And I must say that gave him a little food for thought but wasn’t enough to stop him. But he got a rough time as a nonviolent drug offender. He did 7 1/2 years in federal prison. He was used a lot as sort of, like, an example that we don’t make exceptions because it’s a movie star’s son. And I’m very proud of the way he’s turned out, so.
MOSLEY: How is he today?
DOUGLAS: Good. Yeah, he’s really good. I’ve got two lovely grandchildren, Lua, one – and she’s 8 now – and Ryder. And Cameron’s doing great.
MOSLEY: Your relationship with your father, it changed dramatically in the last third of his life. And there is a particular moment in 1991. He had survived a helicopter crash. And you write that, in that time afterwards, during his recovery, this strong, intimidating man that you knew was suddenly vulnerable. And he promised you, as your father, that he was going to be different.
And several years after that, he suffered a severe stroke and he could barely speak. And he received this honorary Oscar around that time. And it’s a very moving moment because he goes to this ceremony. You and your brothers are in the audience. And he was only supposed to just say one thing, thank you. But he decides to acknowledge all of you. Let’s listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KIRK DOUGLAS: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I see my four sons. They are proud of the old man.
(APPLAUSE)
DOUGLAS: And I am proud, too, proud to be a part of Hollywood for 50 years. But this is for my wife, Anne. I love you.
(APPLAUSE)
DOUGLAS: And tonight, I love all of you. And I thank all of you for 50 wonderful years. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
MOSLEY: Oh, Michael, when you hear that now, what do you think your father had finally come to kind of understand?
DOUGLAS: Yeah, he – but going back to the helicopter crash, which he was in a helicopter, and they hit a aerobatics plane, and the 18-year-old student and the instructor crashed and died instantly in flames. And his helicopter fell 40 feet. And I went to see him in the hospital, and he was literally black on one whole side of his body from the top of his head all the way down. Not one bone broken, but he was black and blue. And he was consumed with the idea of, why am I alive and this 18-year-old kid is dead? And he began to study the Old Testament. He became a different person. He was fortunate enough in the beginning of his third act to completely change to a compassionate, loving, giving man not consumed with his own career. So we ended up having, really, a lovely, extraordinary relationship for the last 25, 30 years.
MOSLEY: You make this connection in the book that your father changed after that crash and the stroke. Your son changed after prison. You changed after your tongue cancer diagnosis. And you write that cancer made you a free man. Free from what?
DOUGLAS: Free from – the plus and minuses of being a second generation is you feel a responsibility to your previous generation, i.e., your father and not wanting to betray him or embarrass them. And sometime after you get a Stage 4 diagnosis, and you get through it, this is gravy. This time is just gravy. This is – you know, we talk about complaining about getting older, and yet, the other choice – (laughter) the other choice isn’t so hot. So, you know, make sure you’re still around, and it’s happy and just makes you cherish that much more the time you have and how fortunate I have been.
MOSLEY: This was such a pleasure to talk with you, Michael Douglas. Thank you so much.
DOUGLAS: Tonya, thank you. That was really well done, and I really appreciate it.
MOSLEY: Michael Douglas’ new memoir is called “One Hell Of A Ride.”
Coming up, TV critic David Bianculli reviews a new miniseries on Netflix adapted from John Steinbeck’s “East Of Eden,” starring Florence Pugh. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLARK TERRY & SWING FEVER’S “TOPSY (LIVE)”)
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