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A Walk on the Dark Side: In 'Perfect Murder,'
Michael Douglas Plays Another Malevolent Character
By Roger Moore, Journal Now
June 5, 1998
NEW YORK -- Michael Douglas used to love playing heroes on the screen. Then, he felt the
lure of ''the Dark Side.''
It began with Wall Street (1987), where he made the ruthless raider Gordon Gekko and his catch-phrase, ''Greed is good,'' part of the national vocabulary.
He made the funny ugliness of divorce even uglier in The War of the Roses (1989), and became the face of white male rage in Falling Down (1993). Even his supposed heroes, in Basic Instinct (1992), Disclosure (1994) and last fall's The Game, were dark and dangerous men.
So he wasn't the least bit shy about signing on to play the murderously jealous husband in A Perfect Murder, an updating of Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder.
''After The Game, the last thing I was looking for was another Prince of Darkness,'' he said. ''And this guy was too much like Gordon Gekko (Douglas' character in Perfect is also a Wall Street tycoon). Playing villains is the safest thing in the world, though. There's no struggle to it, no ambivalence. He's just a white shark going after his prey.''
''A lot of your leading men will not allow themselves to look this malevolent,'' said Andrew Davis, who directed A Perfect Murder. ''They don't want to be booed. But Michael likes this. He's very funny about it. He's been around some very dark characters in the movie business, and he brings them to roles like this.''
Douglas has spent his life in the movies, first as the son of film icon Kirk Douglas, then as a producer who won an Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1976) and a TV star (The Streets of San Francisco), before breaking into movies as an actor and reaching the heights of stardom with Wall Street, for which he won a Best Actor Oscar.
''That was the one that really did it for me,'' he said. ''I've been working a lot more lately because, when you think about it, I've only had 10 years of opportunities to act in the movies I want to make.''
With all that history in the movie business, Douglas is full of studio savvy and showbiz anecdotes.
For instance, remaking an Alfred Hitchcock movie brings back this memory: ''My first job was working as an assistant film editor on Lonely Are the Brave,'' he said. ''It's my favorite picture of my dad's. It was at Universal, and down the hall from us, they were editing Psycho. And during lunch, we'd take our break sitting down there, watching outtakes of Janet Leigh in the shower scene. Going, 'OK, OK. Stop it there.' ''
As a successful producer whose company has made hits that did not have him in front of the camera, Douglas is not above second-guessing what other producers and film studios are doing with movies in which he is just an actor for hire. He is amused at the trouble that Warner Brothers is going through over A Perfect Murder.
''I think the studio made a big mistake with this early comparison to the original (Dial M for Murder),'' he said. ''There is no comparison. It's a different movie, and they're taking away from the good job Patrick Kelly did with the script. He did a helluva job, changing and updating this thing.''
A Perfect Murder has undergone reshoots and re-editing, as recently as two weeks before its release. Douglas isn't surprised by that.
''The picture had a really good buzz, and we were chugging along to release this nice fall movie,'' he said. ''But Warner Brothers has been on a not-so-good roll for a long time. They had a good picture. Decided to jump it up to summer. They had good responses in test screenings and thought they might be able to tweak the ending to get it to work even better.
''We're doing it right to the wire. The trouble is, all the endings they've tried work. Which one do we use? It's like Fatal Attraction that way. It all depends on how dark and sick you want to be.''
Douglas wanted to make his villain someone that people could sympathize with. His character is being cheated on by his wife.
''I tried hard, for the first act, to make her look bad. She's the cheater. It's like, 'Aaawwwwww, Mikey. Is she cheating on you?' Then, we get into the piece and you see what I'm really like.
''I was an adulterer (in) Fatal Attraction, so I was culpable in that. And in this one, she's an adulteress. But adultery's one thing. Attempted murder is a whole other degree of evil.''
Douglas is tan and fit in person, looking much younger than his 53 years. The hair's still full, tousled and brownish-blond. He wears glasses. And there's no sign of the rumored face lift that he is supposed to have had. He laughs easily and lets drop, several times, that he is ''recently single.'' Since his divorce, he has been linked with newscaster Elizabeth Vargas.
His mother is from Bermuda, and Douglas has gotten in touch with her roots recently by buying a hotel and resort there, Ariel Sands. He spends his spare time playing golf, going to sporting events and planning his next film. He is set to star in U-571, a World War II submarine thriller.
After producing and starring in a string of films and having the responsibilities that go with wearing two hats, Douglas is interested in kicking back and having more fun with acting.
''Acting is about being selfish,'' he said. ''It's about what's in front of you and you are the most important thing in the world. And most really good actors are very self-involved, selfish people. You have to be that way.
''Producing is being involved with everything that's going on around you. I've done both at once and it is contradictory.''
Besides, producing a movie isn't what it used to be.
''As a producer, you used to be responsible to most of the development process of getting the movie together, actors, script, director, so that a studio would want to finance it,'' he said. ''Now, producers pass on those responsibilities to somebody on a lower rung. Decisions are made by committee. The studio has its input and everybody else has a say, too. That's why you have studios reshooting movies at the last minute. So much money's involved that everybody's afraid of failing.''
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