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Michael Douglas: Thrilled


Poor Michael Douglas. In Fatal Attraction, he was the target of a bunny-boiling Glenn Close. In Disclosure, he faced sexual harassment at the hands of Demi Moore. And now, in The Game -- a thriller from Seven director David Fincher that opens Fri., Sept. 12 -- the beleaguered actor finds himself tormented by a most unusual birthday gift: a harrowing "life experience" that threatens to destroy his world. While it stops somewhere short of the events in the film, Douglas's offscreen life is equally intriguing. After all, not many people get involved with a cult, go club-hopping with Sean Penn and survive to sing a rendition of the Howdy Doody theme song.


Q:You certainly project confidence. Have you ever felt as vulnerable as your character in The Game?
 
A: Yes, I have, on a couple of occasions that come to mind. I almost drowned once, thought I was going to die. And then on another occasion, which is closer, I got involved with a cult group who threatened my life. And I remember a time when everything else failed and I thought this might be it. They were around me, surrounding me in a group physically, and I thought that was going to be it.

 
Q: Would you like to play "the game" if it really existed?
 
A: I think I'm a bit of a risk-taker. I'm an adrenaline junkie. I enjoy the rush of, the little rush of danger, the rush of the unknown sometimes, either in working or -- you know, I used to like to race cars and motorcycles and jump off, when I was a kid, high places into water. I think part of the choices, part of the reasons of some of the choices I make is the danger factor about treading in unknown waters. I mean, this picture's a pretty weird picture, you know, kind of goes against the grain. I've always sort of been attracted to ambivalent characters, let's say, not your straight-on heroes, for the most part. So, yeah, there could be an aspect that I'd like, yeah, playing the game.

Q: You often play characters who are at best morally ambiguous and, at worst, downright bad. Why do you find yourself attracted to these roles?
A: I do like the ambiguity of characters. However, you have to remember that Wall Street gave me an Oscar. And Gordon Gecko was a bad, bad boy. We audiences tend to love bad boys and we acknowledge them all the time. I don't know what it is. People think it's good acting, you know. It's just the script. But niceness is not rewarded very much. Kindness is not rewarded very much as far as drama is concerned. It's not something that we see. Comedy is not -- which is really hard to do -- is not rewarded enough. But you look back, you look at Paul Newman, Cool Hand Luke, my dad's first real attention with Champion. We like our boys bad, you know.

 
Q: You shot The Game in the Bay area, where you'd started your career in the '70s with The Streets of San Francisco. Was it good to be back?
 
A: It was. Well, I was back for Basic Instinct -- you know, also -- but it was fun. The difficult part was we shot so many nights. It's not as if, you know, we got a chance to really enjoy the city a little bit. However, when [The Game costar] Sean [Penn] was there, I was able to -- our lunch hour was like 12:30 to 1:30 in the morning. So I started taking Sean out to a few of the clubs, just trying to make him -- he's in the process of moving up to the Bay area. So we spent our lunch hour hittin' the clubs. You know, we're downtown and walk in, have some fun, dance a little bit and then go back to work. You pick clubs where you get a little help, not strong-arm help but, you know, you know the owners and they help you out a little bit and -- it's a delicate balance. I hate that, big, heavy, you know, bodyguard number and all of that. But, you know, they're pretty cool. I mean, San Francisco, I guess, because I've been there so much, they feel like you're part of being there. If you're gonna go there, you're gonna go there to be able to talk to some people, too. You know what I mean? It's not as if -- I mean I hate that whole idea if one goes out, if a celebrity goes out in public, they're going there, in part, to deal with all that, to talk to people and see people and do the best they can to be part of a group. And to do that whole isolation -- you say, then what the hell you goin' out for?

 
Q: You've said that when you first started out, acting was really tough for you.
A: I was not inherently a ham. So, yeah, when I first started acting in college, I had terrible stage fright. I used to keep a wastebasket offstage and would puke in it before I'd go on, and it was just a struggle to stand up there. And I was really fortunate enough with Streets of San Francisco that they couldn't pull me off with a hook, that I was on a series and after doing 104 hours in front of a camera I began to get more and more comfortable. But for a long time, those cameras looked like an X-ray machine in my dentist's office, you know. And somebody told me early on, "You know, the camera can always tell when you're lying." Ooh. And I thought, wow. But then I realized later on, "What do you mean, the camera can tell? I could lie right here in front of everybody's face -- 'Yes, I am.' They can't tell anything." You know, so it's a strange thing, but it was a real relief to realize. Boy, they really got me intimidated with that line. Like, this camera can see something the regular, normal eye can't. Acting is lying. Acting is believing. We don't, you know, re-create by real life every moment we have. We use technique and we find ways of accomplishing that effect.

 
Q: With all the tabloids and the intense media scrutiny, is it harder to be a star now than it was in the heyday of your father, Kirk Douglas?

 
A: Yeah, well, I think that it's harder. But, certainly, that tabloid area is a nightmare. It really is a nightmare and it's continuing to get worse. I do believe that you're gonna begin to see a more organized reaction -- response from the industry -- because they're just takers. They don't give anything. You know, they basically have created a generation of spies. If you open up our trade papers, if you open up The Hollywood Reporter or the Variety today, you'll look in the back and there'll be a large ad that says, "We pay for information." In this case, it's from the Enquirer. And so you have created a generation -- around the world, mind you -- of people who know that if I have any information or a photograph or any recorded thing, I can sell it to somebody, and I get money. That has bad overtures for me too, you know, World War II and all of that. I think a lot of people are -- and the public, too, is beginning to get a little embarrassed about it and their own tastes. They're saying, "Well, that's what they want." Well, I'm not sure that's what they want. It's like television saying, "That's what they want." I think it's the easiest and cheapest form of entertainment, just as on television, doing these real-life document shows is the cheapest way, you know, of doing productions. You know, on the other hand, you know, my father looks at how we're being compensated in this generation and he just shakes his head and can't even conceive of it.

Q:On a completely different note: What did you used to watch on TV when you were a kid?
 
  A: Cisco Kid, Amos 'n' Andy, Lash La Rue, Howdy Doody.  


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