Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin. And here's the thing, Mr Douglas. Michael
Speaker 1: Douglas is American acting royalty. He's the son of Kirk Douglas,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest actors this country has ever seen.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, that alone would insure him a place
Speaker 1: at anyone's dinner party. But Michael Douglas is his own man.
Speaker 1: He has two Academy Awards as an actor and a producer,
Speaker 1: and has played some of the most iconic roles in
Speaker 1: film over the past thirty years, roles that have challenged
Speaker 1: the way we think about family, power, money, sex, Gordon
Speaker 1: Gecko in Wall Street, Nick Curran in Basic Instinct, as
Speaker 1: well as Romancing the Stone, Traffic and Wonder Boys. Michael
Speaker 1: was at his home in New York City when I
Speaker 1: visited with him. He's worked with everyone from Oliver Stone
Speaker 1: to Curtis Handsome to Steven Soderberg. In seven, he worked
Speaker 1: with British director Adrian Line on Fatal Attraction. Douglas says
Speaker 1: Line was one of the best. He was great and
Speaker 1: he has a great knock and talent for that. And
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, when Glenn and I when we
Speaker 1: were doing Fatal Attraction and we have the scene in
Speaker 1: the kitchen, well the first time when we were kind
Speaker 1: of going at it, got her up on the kitchen sink,
Speaker 1: and so he did a take on that and said,
Speaker 1: well that was that was one of the love That
Speaker 1: was just great. What could we do? I think? And
Speaker 1: Gla said, well, maybe I can take the water and
Speaker 1: I can stick my wet fingers in his mouth. Lovely,
Speaker 1: lovely love love how many of your fingers you get
Speaker 1: all of your fingers into his mouth? Tommy exactly, I'd
Speaker 1: love to see that. He was great, he was love,
Speaker 1: his holmes and a lot of fun. Every other day
Speaker 1: he said, well, the only eyes I should get bull
Speaker 1: and shape this picture. No, no, no, no awork, Laya
Speaker 1: should look good just the way you are in about
Speaker 1: three weeks. Jeez, Michael, Mike, you look at Rson Wells.
Speaker 1: But that's that favor. They loved to shoot that down angle,
Speaker 1: you know, and we all look better with the camera
Speaker 1: above our eyeline. And don't you drop that camera? You Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you work, Now, what's it been like for you
Speaker 1: now in terms of you show up and you're pretty
Speaker 1: fastile at getting there emotionally, in terms of how you
Speaker 1: want to play it, and is it more technical for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: someone early on in my career told me, you know,
Speaker 1: the camera can always tell when you're lying. Oh. I
Speaker 1: was like, the camera can tell what I'm lying. So
Speaker 1: I used to me. I used to I used to
Speaker 1: method up. I gotta be truthful. One day I said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I lie every day. I said, but
Speaker 1: if you're lying, I mean not me. I'm different. I'm talented, right,
Speaker 1: exactly what's acting about except lying? That freed me up
Speaker 1: a whole lot. What I realized that. But the last
Speaker 1: ten years is the business changed dramatically. The technical part
Speaker 1: is definitely to me now it's all, you know, where's
Speaker 1: my life? Where's the camera? Raise that camera. I used
Speaker 1: to say, well, we gotta have a clean take, and
Speaker 1: I gotta burn one great connected master. Now I'm like,
Speaker 1: we got four pickups of this line and it's so technical.
Speaker 1: To me now, it's unbelievable. I learned that a lot
Speaker 1: from actually and Jack Nicholson on Cuckoo's Nest. I was
Speaker 1: watching you know, the it's editing. You do someone's take
Speaker 1: after take it. Then you go someone's look at the
Speaker 1: dailies and you see how my new the differences are
Speaker 1: and then they can judiciously edit. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: working with some people early on and they didn't know better,
Speaker 1: and I was looking at people and I say, my god,
Speaker 1: when they watch the dailies of this, they're going to
Speaker 1: really be unhappy because this person is as boring as
Speaker 1: you could possibly mean. They're not doing anything. And that
Speaker 1: was my sin was I felt like I always had
Speaker 1: to be acting or or doing something. And I guess
Speaker 1: my question is, sometimes you go to work and you
Speaker 1: gotta you know what you want to do. What do
Speaker 1: you do when you go to a movie and the
Speaker 1: director has nothing to offer you, He's really just a
Speaker 1: traffic cop point a camera. My feeling is with movies.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, if you get a good
Speaker 1: part and the get go is a great part, you know,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you get a good part and a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of pictures I've done where I'm in
Speaker 1: every single scene and I'm caring the plot line and
Speaker 1: somebody else has got the colorful good part. But I
Speaker 1: always think that if you if the pictures cast properly,
Speaker 1: or if you're cast right, I never expect to hear
Speaker 1: much from a director. You don't know, the world is
Speaker 1: so different Now I've got people welcome to me all
Speaker 1: the time, quoting some of the most corrosive lines from
Speaker 1: Glen Garry Glenn Ross. I think it's good to talk
Speaker 1: about the kind of funckishness of the sales industry. When
Speaker 1: I say, you know, coffee is for closers, and you
Speaker 1: say greed is good. Do you think in our lifetime
Speaker 1: that that line has changed? You read is good where
Speaker 1: people really believe that's true. Well, the affirmation that I
Speaker 1: got from that villain, from that community, from that from
Speaker 1: that community. You know, if I get one more drunken
Speaker 1: guy from the street, hey man, great is good. You're
Speaker 1: the man. You're why I got into this business. And
Speaker 1: everything I quoted. Hey, you know what, I was a villain.
Speaker 1: I got people welcome to me drunk in the lobbies
Speaker 1: of hotels, and they're going come do that speech because
Speaker 1: I'm in sales, baby. Yeah. And I'm saying, they're going,
Speaker 1: you don't get it, man, this is like Arthur Miller.
Speaker 1: We're trying to wake you up. But they're like, no,
Speaker 1: they don't know. They love the accoutrements and and and
Speaker 1: you spoke, well, what is your relationship to go into
Speaker 1: the movies? Now? Yeah, I'm really embarrassed to say this,
Speaker 1: but I'm not a movie goer. I don't see many movies.
Speaker 1: I waste so much time watching news and sports. I
Speaker 1: love watching sports because you know, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how it's gonna end. My problem with movies, you know,
Speaker 1: is you get halfway through a movie and you see,
Speaker 1: I was right. I love making movies, but I'm really
Speaker 1: bad Alex when it comes to seeing them. When you
Speaker 1: were younger, did you always since you were headed in
Speaker 1: this direction in some way? I never. I never thought
Speaker 1: I was. I mean probably a lot of it was
Speaker 1: resentment as a young kid my folks getting divorced and
Speaker 1: both the me actors. But I never even thought about
Speaker 1: the doing this at all. And I said, I was
Speaker 1: like a junior in college. What were you dreaming of
Speaker 1: doing back then? Nothing? Really, I was a hippie, you know,
Speaker 1: and I mean in the early sixties, and they took
Speaker 1: me into the vice Chance's office and your third year
Speaker 1: college and you're not a major, al right, So I
Speaker 1: guess you know, drama should be easy. You know, I
Speaker 1: had both parents. I hung around. My mother was in
Speaker 1: a lot of theater and so it hung around there.
Speaker 1: But there's not something I dreamed about. But the success
Speaker 1: you have now came in stages. When you were younger
Speaker 1: and you did your early films, you were what you said,
Speaker 1: the gentle young man. But I wonder in your case
Speaker 1: because you eventually played a very tough, very powerful actor
Speaker 1: on film. So do you think when you were younger
Speaker 1: you pulled your punches because you didn't want to step
Speaker 1: on what you thought was your dad's territory. You don't
Speaker 1: want to compared to him. First of all, you look
Speaker 1: at his career. He played a sensitive young man for
Speaker 1: his first six or seven pictures until he had a
Speaker 1: movie called The Champion. I just think I was just
Speaker 1: trying to define who I am, because the one problem
Speaker 1: about being second generation is, you know you, half of
Speaker 1: me is made up of my father's jeans. My mother, Diana,
Speaker 1: is an actress too, but not as well known. So
Speaker 1: when you see behavioral or mannerisms that are like your father,
Speaker 1: I feel like it takes swift from your individuality, right,
Speaker 1: And it's sort of like earlier on. I just was
Speaker 1: trying to find out who I was, and being a
Speaker 1: nice guy was a way of pleasing everybody. But the
Speaker 1: truth be told in a villain is the best way
Speaker 1: to go playing a bad guy, better lines, it's more
Speaker 1: colorful audiences by care siously love you because a lot
Speaker 1: of time is everything that they want to do in
Speaker 1: real life, but they can't do what you can do
Speaker 1: in the movies. Contrary, women is taking him so much
Speaker 1: longer to be comfortable in playing the villains. Mad I
Speaker 1: look back to I was producing Cuckoo's Nest and all
Speaker 1: the actresses that turned down the part of Nurse Ratchet
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to play a villain, Louise Flesh
Speaker 1: of us Oscar, Yeah, you know, for playing it well.
Speaker 1: When I went to Strasburg the acting school, we did
Speaker 1: a gender reversed production of Cuckoo's Nest and the girl
Speaker 1: was McMurphy and all the inmates were females, and I
Speaker 1: was Nurse Ratchet as a man. That's a great idea.
Speaker 1: Is your relationship with your dad more fathers son now?
Speaker 1: Or is it more too great colleagues in motion picture history? No,
Speaker 1: it's more father's son. It's more fun. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: ninety four years old. I'm just so proud of him.
Speaker 1: And you know, he wasn't a great dad as in
Speaker 1: the prime as an actor. He was, like a lot
Speaker 1: of us, were consumed with his career. For him, it
Speaker 1: really started when he had his helicopter accident when he
Speaker 1: was seventy with a friend helicopter and they hit a
Speaker 1: aerobatic plane and the when they were taking off and
Speaker 1: the people nearrobatic plane crashed and died instantly, and the
Speaker 1: helicopter dropped about forty ft and he just was black
Speaker 1: and blue. Started him on this you know why am
Speaker 1: I alive and this eighteen year old student pilot and
Speaker 1: the instructor dead. So he started getting back into his
Speaker 1: religious reading the town mood, reading the Old Testament, working
Speaker 1: with a rabbi, and has become a much more spiritual person.
Speaker 1: And I looked at to him with all of the
Speaker 1: great things that he's achieved in his acting career and
Speaker 1: producing career, which a lot of people don't really realize
Speaker 1: how much she produced. I am in so all of
Speaker 1: him in the third act of his life. And I'm
Speaker 1: sixty six now, and and I think of him being
Speaker 1: seventy and what he's accomplished between seventy and ninety four,
Speaker 1: which is about nine books. Called him last week. The
Speaker 1: housekeeper said he's done at the office. What the hell
Speaker 1: you doing down to the office, you know, he's, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just finishing the editor of my last book. You've
Speaker 1: got another book that's yeah, yeah, yeah, what what else?
Speaker 1: Because well, I got a book on sculptures. He said, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's crete. It's really good. You know. So
Speaker 1: he's he's on. So I look at him much more
Speaker 1: um as a father now because I'm you know, much
Speaker 1: less competitive with him. What did he do to you
Speaker 1: or not do for you? The positive or the negative
Speaker 1: that you've passed on to your children. The negative is
Speaker 1: you got to watch your quick temper. You think you
Speaker 1: had a temper like your death. No, No, I didn't
Speaker 1: have people. People people did people? I mean it was
Speaker 1: it was right, I think I realized now because he's
Speaker 1: a white Russian Jew, you know, Belarus and all of that,
Speaker 1: and well that and also he saw how much any
Speaker 1: Semitism there wasn't the world because people would talk to
Speaker 1: him as didn't know it was a Jew. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you should please come sit down. None of those exactly
Speaker 1: would see that exactly exactly because he changed his name
Speaker 1: is not no longer Danielovitch did not not as bad
Speaker 1: I mean, I've learned to monitor it or to be
Speaker 1: aware of it. You used to have a short handle,
Speaker 1: remember a lot better now, Yeah, because I don't care
Speaker 1: as much that there's things that you can control. Is
Speaker 1: that God grabbed me the serenity to accept the things
Speaker 1: I cannot change, and the courage to change the things
Speaker 1: I can, the wisdom and know the difference. And it's true.
Speaker 1: Mine was even worse, it was even more narcissistant. I
Speaker 1: was just angry because nobody else cared about it, whatever
Speaker 1: it was, as much as I did. I wonder what
Speaker 1: was your relationship like with your mom in terms of
Speaker 1: your career. What would you and she talk about? Did
Speaker 1: she have a lot to say to you about the
Speaker 1: business and what she thought about what you did? You
Speaker 1: seemed very geared towards making your dad. Well, my mother's
Speaker 1: English background. She was not so much the business. She's
Speaker 1: she's very bright and it's probably more politely critical. Mia.
Speaker 1: As an actor, it was that bad, not bad? What
Speaker 1: did you get from your mother? You in diplomacy? The
Speaker 1: guy that could produce films. I think Jack Lemon said
Speaker 1: it when we were doing China Syndrome. He said, Michael,
Speaker 1: he said he hits you with a thousand powder puffs.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes that to produce to be able
Speaker 1: to massage people and work with them and get people confrontational.
Speaker 1: You know, it really does to try to get people
Speaker 1: in that way, and I think she has that. I
Speaker 1: think my father has made it more difficult for self
Speaker 1: and his confrontational and this anger, you know, in his career.
Speaker 1: The positive side of Kirk is a sense of tenacity
Speaker 1: and stamina. My son is a cross country runner now,
Speaker 1: my ten year old son, Dylan doing this now with
Speaker 1: ten years old serial starting about tracks star and your
Speaker 1: older son has had his problems. What's been your relationship
Speaker 1: with your son's alcoholism and drug addiction? UM. I think
Speaker 1: there's a certain genetic part, and I think as far
Speaker 1: as drug addiction, you know, your peer group plays a
Speaker 1: huge part of that. I'm of the belief that you know,
Speaker 1: fourteen years old, as a parent, you've lost a lot
Speaker 1: of your influence other people and by their peer group
Speaker 1: that triggers and starts it off. And then in my
Speaker 1: oldest son's case, there was no end until he was incarcerated. UM.
Speaker 1: I think secrets play a part in this, and the
Speaker 1: fact that whether it's a bad marital relationship that you're
Speaker 1: trying to keep from your children, and the tension is
Speaker 1: there and you're not really kind of upfront. I mean,
Speaker 1: this go around, I'm finding myself much more honest with
Speaker 1: my seven year old daughter than I ever thought I
Speaker 1: would be. Also, just because of what they have access to.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just watching Glee, which was which is
Speaker 1: our family night. You know, I don't know why I'm
Speaker 1: so surprised. I am. I'm looking at it and they're
Speaker 1: watching you right or wrong without without any kind of
Speaker 1: ratings on it. You know, two boys kissing each other
Speaker 1: and all that, besides the gay actually physically seeing things
Speaker 1: and free for all, and it's a little a little difference.
Speaker 1: So I think that in that way, uh, trying to
Speaker 1: get to get or not not keeping as many secrets.
Speaker 1: Isn't it funny how people men in particular who have
Speaker 1: I don't want to put the stellically who played near
Speaker 1: the third rail sexually speaking, are very sensitive about that.
Speaker 1: When the children are growing up, they're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't need to watch that. Yeah, I mean, your
Speaker 1: dad has that great line. My son was sent to
Speaker 1: rehab for sex edition problem, and how much did you
Speaker 1: inherit that which is this is what men are supposed
Speaker 1: to do? Um? Probably, probably, I'm sure you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm watching. I mean my father has been very fortunate
Speaker 1: second wife and his French and they've been married fifty
Speaker 1: six years, I think, and has a different had a
Speaker 1: different attitude earlier on he was a rascal. More from
Speaker 1: My conversation with Michael Douglas is coming up in a minute.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing
Speaker 1: I'm at, like Baldwin, here's the thing. I'm talking with
Speaker 1: Michael Douglas at his home in New York City. So
Speaker 1: you've been sick. What was your relationship to cancer before
Speaker 1: you had cancer? How was it in your life? Family? Friends,
Speaker 1: never really nothing in my my my father, remember I
Speaker 1: had a little skin thing. My mother had getting a
Speaker 1: slight skin issue, but no real history when you know
Speaker 1: and then what do you find out? How I actually
Speaker 1: was Right after I finished The Wall Street Money Never Sleeps,
Speaker 1: my throat was a little sore, and I thought maybe
Speaker 1: it was from you know, like from tension, from the
Speaker 1: part where you haven't placed your voice where you're swallowing
Speaker 1: your words. And your your speak from the back of
Speaker 1: your throat had a little bit of a like a
Speaker 1: sword gum. And I saw doctors. I thought it was
Speaker 1: some sort of sore, and antibiotics, this and that, and
Speaker 1: then you know, I said with it and went on
Speaker 1: for another couple of months. Your your general practitioner, then
Speaker 1: send you an experts. I go to your nose and
Speaker 1: throat guy, a periodontist, and this and that and another
Speaker 1: round of antibiotics. And then I went away for the summer,
Speaker 1: and I came back and I was in Canada, and
Speaker 1: I called and said, listen, something's going on here, all right,
Speaker 1: something is really going on here. How much time has
Speaker 1: passed you first? Now we're in August, and I first
Speaker 1: went to him in January, so it's almost more than
Speaker 1: half a year. Half a year finding ear nose and
Speaker 1: throat doctor at the Jewish Hospital in Montreal, Quebec. And
Speaker 1: he literally opened my mouth and he took a tongue
Speaker 1: to press it. And I'll never forget that moment when
Speaker 1: he looked up at me and looked back down, I
Speaker 1: knew and he said, well, I guess we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a bye. Popsy, he said, biopsy, he said well, there's
Speaker 1: a polet here and it was on my tongue. Two
Speaker 1: days later he called me back in and said, you
Speaker 1: got cancer. For for head and neck cancer, the best
Speaker 1: place with Sloan Kettering, and I went down and within
Speaker 1: a week and found out that it was stage four,
Speaker 1: which is the maximum, so seven weeks of radiation and chemo.
Speaker 1: The reality is, with all the doctors that I could
Speaker 1: have here in New York, if I had been checked
Speaker 1: back in January for head and neck cancer, this could
Speaker 1: have all happened a lot early. And the thing with cancers,
Speaker 1: you want to get it as early as you can.
Speaker 1: Because I want to mention that I came to this door,
Speaker 1: to your home here in New York fully expecting you
Speaker 1: to look. I'm gonna be very honest with you now.
Speaker 1: As great as you look now, you look pretty damn good.
Speaker 1: I really went to I got to go to Cross three.
Speaker 1: You're working at your normal self. You look fantastic, and
Speaker 1: I lost a little bit of weight to help that.
Speaker 1: But you know, you got a jumpy one. The one
Speaker 1: advantage of this is deciding I'm taking the rest of
Speaker 1: this year easy, enjoy my family, and just take her easy.
Speaker 1: Now you had kids, you had your son's ten So
Speaker 1: you had your son when you were how old? Six?
Speaker 1: Should I have more kids? Yes? Yes, I mean at
Speaker 1: this very moment, the door opens, I think, here's my daughter.
Speaker 1: Think wait a minute, this is Harris. Hello. Rris was
Speaker 1: coming home from school and she jumped into the chair
Speaker 1: next to her dad's. Has she seen a couple of
Speaker 1: your films at this I have hardly any movies that
Speaker 1: she can see. Julie and I and the other one
Speaker 1: The Stone. I don't feel like my favorite movie well
Speaker 1: because a long time she didn't really know what I did.
Speaker 1: You know, she knew mommy because Chicago and all that.
Speaker 1: Mommy was an actress the longest time. He didn't know it.
Speaker 1: Wants said to me, my friend said, what does your
Speaker 1: dad do for a living? And I said he makes
Speaker 1: pancakes And they were like, I want to go to
Speaker 1: a house. I love tanking. Michael Douglas will be flipping
Speaker 1: pancakes for a few more months before he begins filming
Speaker 1: the lead role in Liberaci. Matt Damon will be his lover.
Speaker 1: He live Racci was a lovely guy. I mean the truth.
Speaker 1: I haven't played a lot of nice guys. When my
Speaker 1: dad was in his prime kirk Is as an actor.
Speaker 1: They were good guys and bad guys, black hats and
Speaker 1: white hats. And not over analyzing it, but I think
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War had a lot to do with redefining
Speaker 1: a bottle. You know, we thought we were good and
Speaker 1: then I'm seen in a different light in some of
Speaker 1: the situations that we're in. Now, I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to here's the Thing