`Life`s been sort of nice this year.”
Now that may be the understatement of the year, considering its source:
Michael Douglas, 42, who currently is starring in two of the top five grossing movies in America this week: ”Wall Street,” which just opened, is third;
”Fatal Attraction,” which is now well into its four month, is still fifth.
But that`s just one way of measuring Douglas` good fortune in 1987. Let us count the other ways:
– He said his actor`s salary has increased enormously since his first big hit, ”Romancing the Stone.” ”I`m now among the top five or six actors in the business. Yes, it`s somewhere between $4 and $6 million per picture now.” And that`s not counting his percentage of any profits.
– His film production company, which went into high gear after his first production, ”One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest,” won five top Oscars, now has 16 projects in various stages of development.
– His father, Kirk Douglas, called him and gave him glowing reviews of his work this year. ”With `Fatal Attraction` he told me that it`s always very hard to play a character who isn`t flashy but is the rock that holds the movie together and moves the story along. Glenn Close`s character will get the attention, he told me, but he said he thought I really did a fine job in the trenches. And after he saw `Wall Street,` he said he always knew it would be a breakthrough for me, as it had been for him, when I would successfully play a heavy. His exact words words to me were: `You`ve really found yourself as an actor. You`ve played every kind of character now. You can do anything.` ”
– And everything is secure on the home front, too, with Douglas enjoying his 10-year marriage to Diandra, a native of Majorca, now a New York socialite, model and documentary filmmaker affiliated with the office of film and television of New York`s Metropolitan Museum.
”We have one son, Cameron, 9, a hockey player. I`m very, very lucky I got married relatively late in life. It would have been a mess if it had happened earlier. I had the usual troubled adolescence and lots of career and personal lows in my 20s. But now I have my health; there have been no major tragedies in my life. Like I said, life`s been sort of nice this year.”
In repayment of his good fortune, Douglas said he intends to step up his already considerable charitable contributions. ”I plan to investigate more where I give. I`ve been shocked when I`ve checked on some major charities and found out how much goes to administrative expenses.”
Among the causes he said he supports: The Access Theater for handicapped actors in San Francisco; ”two or three” coalitions to help the homeless; the Eugene O`Neill Theater`s playwright conference; and the UCLA screenwriting fellowship in the memory of Diane Thomas, who wrote ”Romancing the Stone.”
Douglas also is politically active with time and money. ”Everybody thinks I`m crazy, but I`m supporting Jimmy Carter for President. I think history will show he was a good man, that he was right about a lot of issues that we are paying for today, that he now would know better how to deal with Congress-his major downfall in the past. It also helps that he`s been in the office before. Yet everybody is avoiding him, except Paul Simon from Illinois who went to Georgia to have his picture taken with him.”
All of this good fortune and goodwill might make Michael Douglas come across as a saint, which is ironic because the role that catapulted him into his enviable position is that of a man who cheats on his wife.
”No,” Douglas said with a laugh, ” `Fatal Attraction` hasn`t had the kind of effect on my social life that I`ve been reading about in the press. Remember, I said I was lucky to get married relatively late in life. The only time I`ve been involved in anything like what happens in the film was when I was the one who got dumped on and sought a revenge of sorts.
”A girl who I was living with in college just took off one day. She got married. I didn`t see her for the longest time, until I was doing `Streets of San Francisco,` and by then her marriage was breaking up. We tried to get back together, but it did not work out because there was a lot of anger and hostility in me, and that`s the main reason I think I pursued her.”
But Douglas said those thoughts weren`t in his head when he saw ”Fatal Attraction” with an audience.
”I`ve just sat there thinking, `Great movie!` I haven`t stuck around for the discussions in the lobby or in the parking lot.”
Douglas then spoke about the genesis of the most talked-about movie of the year. ”I had a similar idea many years ago after reading a book called
`Virgin`s Kiss,` about a young, bored, psychiatrist, who cheated his way through school, had seen a hundred attractive clients, when suddenly this frumpy woman comes into his office and gives him the biggest turn-on of his life and has him breaking every ethical code of his profession.
”Well, four years ago I ran into (producer) Stanley Jaffe, and we talked about what we were working on, and he said he had a project about how lust destroys somebody`s life, that it was in draft form, and that there was a part for me. I told him about the book I`d read, and eventually we did get together.”
Asked to account for the film`s extraordinary impact, Douglas said that it offers something for everyone.
”For me the appeal is this very powerful, visceral instinct for obssessive lust amid seeming decency and normality. My character wants to go beyond the norm. I also think in a general way the film has hooked into a very deep hostility that now exists between the sexes.
”For some women, I know that they find themselves thinking about the guy who dumped on them and who they regret letting off too easy.
”For some men, let`s face it, they have a lot of repressed hostility toward women. They`re the ones at the end of the picture yelling, `Kill her!”`
The ending of ”Fatal Attraction,” which also stars Anne Archer as Doublas` wife, has been the subject of much discussion. If you are among the few who haven`t seen the movie, skip the next few paragraphs.
”The controversy wasn`t just between two endings as it`s generally been presented in the press,” Douglas said. ”We considered about nine different endings. `Fatal Attraction` is a morality tale, and when we working on it in 1986, we had to think: `How much does somebody do that`s wrong, and what is their penalty charge?`
”The original ending had Glenn`s character committing suicide after placing my fingerprints on the knife so that I`m taken away for murder. But that left everyone unsatisfied. All three characters, including Anne, have lost. Then we came up with an ending where after I`ve been led away, Anne finds a tape in which Glenn says she`s going to kill herself, and you`re left with the idea Anne`s going to get me off.
`But when we looked at the picture with that ending, we realized that we hadn`t really taken into account all the steps that Glenn had taken against my character and how they built the anger of the audience and how they needed something done to her to get their release.
”When she attacks me in my home, that`s when the audience loses it for her, even though she`s a very sick woman. That`s the logic that led to the current ending. Also, and I haven`t said this before, I think the ending we chose had a lot to do with how Glenn played the character of Alex. She`s tough. We considered Barbara Hershey for the role, and if we had cast her, I think she would have played the character much softer, in ways that would have created more sympathy for Alex.
”With Glenn you felt her clear rage. With Barbara you might have felt she really was in love with this guy, and that could have confused the audience. Beyond that, I don`t like the criticism we`ve been getting for
`changing` the ending. Rewrites are done in novels and the theater all the time.”
Okay, so much for the ending of ”Fatal Attraction.” Which leads us to the beginning of Douglas` current film, ”Wall Street” in which he plays Gordon Gekko, a vulgar stock manipulator and trader in illegal information who corrupts a young stockbroker (Charlie Sheen) into participating in a hostile takeover of his own father`s company.
Douglas has won a lot of praise for his role, and last week won the Best Actor award from the National Board of Review for his performance. But one critic thought he overplayed the role-that the real stock manipulators are much cooler than Gekko, who talks like a drill sergeant to his troops.
”I think there`s a public and private side to this guy,” Douglas said in defense of his performance. ”You see him as a very polished, controlled speaker when he`s at that public stockholder`s meeting. But in private he can be real tough. I`ve met some of these guys, and they are all very different.
”Look, there are guys like Donald Trump who are not that humble. There are guys with tremendous egos who may hide it better, like T. Boone Pickens and Carl Icahn. And there are others who are more conservative but have a very false sense of humility. What you saw was the way the part was written-nobody`s life is that dramatic-and I played it to the hilt.
”But I think what the film really captures,” Douglas said, ”even more than my character, is that there is this whole community out there that isn`t doing anything for anybody. Whether they have $10 million or $100 million doesn`t really matter. They`re doing deals. That`s what I learned while making the picture: It`s not the money; it`s the deal.”
Douglas had to ring off from New York; he had a screening of ”Wall Street” that night in New York, his home base, where he maintains an apartment in the city and a home in Westchester County. He also has a home in Santa Barbara.
Later in the week, he would call again and talk some more from a Los Angeles hotel room where he was meeting with his production company.
Through it all, he couldn`t have been more polite, engaging or enthusiastic. He, too, liked to deal. Fortunately, for us, however, Michael Douglas` deals have resulted in some very entertaining motion pictures.
