Michael Douglas: The World on a String

Q: Those Carolco guys made you rich. Was it hard to back out on them?

A: Yeah, it was. They're good guys. I've always erred on the side of being gracious, but I must admit I made a couple of cracks about the fact that I would not be doing for the director of Cutthroat Island what maybe the leading lady would be doing.

Q: The American President was a departure from the films we just mentioned, in that you played a virtuous president--apparently Hollywood's hope of what Clinton could have been. Did you think that film deserved to do better?

A: Yeah. I loved the movie. There was confusion. It was a romantic comedy, but there were people who wanted to push it as an issues picture. That hurt it. If it had been marketed as a romantic comedy, it would probably have done better commercially.

Q: What's the best decision, business or creative, that you've made as a producer or actor?

A: [Long pause] Any decision I ever made was always based on the material, but I've worked diligently on defining the backend, the profits. As we all know, the history of profit definitions is a labyrinth. I think that through hit and error I have had a certain degree of success defining the backend, the gross definitions, particularly in foreign territories. Paying attention has paid off. I think I've audited every single movie I've ever done, and I can say I've always been at least able to cover my audit costs [laughs hard].

Q: Have you made more money producing or acting?

A: Well, I guess it's gotta be acting. There's a little difference between the salaries a producer gets and an actor gets. What you're hinting at is an area that's always bothered me. Some people think I've been so business smart. But I had to learn about this stuff maybe more than other people. You've got to remember where I started out. Cuckoo's Nest was an independent production, financed by a man in a small company out of his pocket. The China Syndrome was what was called a negative pickup, where a studio gives you a letter of credit that they will make the picture for that amount of money and then you are responsible for this or that. Romancing the Stone was a similar situation. My history was outside of the studio system, so I had a crash course in stuff that I didn't necessarily understand. Economics wasn't my specialty. As a producer you learn that stuff the hard way.

Q: A lot of people probably don't realize you produced many pictures you weren't in, like The Rainmaker and Face/Off

A: I'm changing that strategy now, because it proved a bad decision. I was concentrating on my responsibility as a producer, and I made a mistake in not searching out more projects for me. Some guys book three years ahead, but I never know what I'm going to do, what I'll feel like, or what's going to come. Now it has reached a point where material has gotten thinner. I wish I could say there were even two roles out there I wish I'd done. And it's not just me--there are a couple other guys who don't know what they're doing next either. I've got some good stuff that's getting closer, but it takes a minimum of about three years. I've gotten hurt because I had nothing in development for me.

Q: If the movies are bad now, imagine what's in store as studios greenlight twice as many projects because of the expected SAG strike next summer.

A: Studios look like they're stockpiling. The film business may be a relatively small percentage of the overall business of the conglomerates who own the studios, but it's the locomotive in terms of corporate image. It still has a hold over these people. I fear they will use this strike to really clean house.

Q: As someone who's both a producer and an actor, what do you feel about these upcoming negotiations?

A: I'm nervous about who on the studio side is going to emerge as a leader. There seems to be very little agreement, and if it happens by committee, you've got a big slew of people with different tensions. You've got News Corp. in Australia, plus French and Japanese companies.

Q: You must be more relaxed fathering a baby at 55, when you're financially secure, than the first time, when you were struggling to make a career for yourself.

A: It's true. You're not struggling with the balance between your ambition and your responsibilities as a husband and a father. I'd love to find the next picture, but nothing's going to take me away from enjoying time here. Dylan just passed six weeks now, and for us to have all of this time to spend together is nice. I admire Catherine so much. She's at the top of her heat, and, boom, she goes off to have a baby. She's sorting through all these offers she's gotten.

Q: Is there a downside to becoming a father at 55, like the changing of diapers, which you must have thought was long behind you?

A: There's an element of that. Look, I'm happy to get up at night, but I ain't getting up at eight o'clock for work every morning, so I'm really blessed. We can afford some help, too. This is the part where you feel so happy about your hard work paying off. There are moments of "What am I doing?" and people look at me like, you know...But I'm really excited about it. Catherine wants three, so that'll need negotiating. I've got to talk about that third one. But I keep teasing her that I'm the only one hoping for an actors' strike, so that maybe we can slip the second one in.

Q: You look at guys like Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Anthony Hopkins and Sean Connery, and they seem to embrace the aging process. Warren Beatty seems to rebel against it. As you get older, do you think about making that transition?

A: The guys you mention had careers playing characters. Sean has been all over the place and wears well. Not a lot of guys look like him. Clint, too, plays those characters that were not totally based upon being God's gift to women. And Jack is Jack. Warren, not to take anything away from him, was a beautiful young leading man in the classic Hollywood tradition. They're all good actors.

Q: What's in the future for you?

A: Just keep trying to play good characters. And, hopefully, age well.

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Michael Fleming interviewed Helen Hunt for the November issue of Movieline.

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