by Marc Eliot
Disclosure is based on a Michael Crichton novel whose movie rights Crichton had sold to Warner Bros. for $1 million prior to publication. Miloš Forman was set to direct and very much wanted to professionally reunite with Michael. However, differences between Crichton and Forman developed, and Forman left the project. He was replaced by Barry Levinson.
For Michael, the film’s real-life echoes, intentional and otherwise, are Grand Canyon deep. Here he is playing another passive man opposite another attractive, sexually aggressive woman who inflicts vengeful damage on his career and his family life when he doesn’t satisfy her carnal desires. And as in Fatal Attraction, the seduction is ultimately not a successful one (but given the way it is presented, with Moore in high heels, black dress, and on her knees, most men would probably be quite satisfied with that failure). Overly complex and dull corporate intrigue fills out the story, and the plot that unfolds is predictable and meandering. There are more twists here than in a Philadelphia pretzel, without enough salty dialogue or action to give it any real taste. The film is helped somewhat by Donald Sutherland’s nuanced performance as the outgoing corporate head, hurt by Demi Moore’s unheated (and unheatable) seductress, and balanced by Michael’s carefully layered if overly flat portrayal of a man caught in the middle of a battle of intrigues, on the one side sex and temptation, on the other money and position, neither of which, in the end, brings him any measure of personal satisfaction.5
Disclosure opened December 9, 1994, positioned as one of the big holiday films, and it didn’t disappoint. Made on a budget of $55 million, it grossed $83 domestic and an additional $131 million overseas.
For Michael, it was another critic-proof release. Roger Ebert’s review, one of the less vociferous, called it “a launch pad for sex scenes.”
Janet Maslin, writing in the New York Times, said, “Meredith’s subversion of old-fashioned womanly wiles is too stiffly contrived to be upsetting. But what’s legitimately disturbing about Disclosure is its utter confusion of technology and eroticism. The computer-age products in this film easily eclipse the human players, and the sex appeal of ingenious engineering is everywhere. Ms. Moore’s bold mega-cleavage, presented almost as weaponry during the story’s brief, all-important seduction scene, fits in perfectly with this film’s other technological marvels.”
Good or bad, mediocre or marvelous, the film had given Michael one more chance to play a romantic lead. On-screen, he looked tired, almost bored as he went through his paces—certainly no match for Moore’s “mega-cleavage.” This would be the final role of his career in which Michael would be seen on-screen primarily as a sex partner—he had finally aged out of that type of role—but for one last time onscreen he had found a way to save himself (that is, the character he was playing) from the grip of a sexual predator (his co-star). Rob Edelson describes Michael in this period as a “contemporary, Caucasian middle-to-upper-class American male who finds himself the brunt of female anger because of real or imagined sexual slights.” Familiar, if well-worn turf for Michael.
In real life, the stakes were much higher. Up next for him was not another movie role but one last real-life attempt to save his marriage.
Or save himself from it.
1 Eszterhas is the only credited screenwriter for Basic Instinct.
2 BoxOfficeMojo.com and IMDb.
3 He was fine with the salary cut. The studios were on one of their drives to lower all salaries, which had gotten, to their way of thinking, out of control. Michael received $6 million for Shining Through before his $14 million deal with Carolco for Basic Instinct. Wrote J. Hoberman in the Village Voice (March 7, 1995): “Originally asked to play the heroic (but henpecked) cop, Douglas intuitively asked for the more fiercely self-pitying and demonstrable role of the laid-off defense worker. No less rabble-rousing than Fatal Attraction, Falling Down inspired audiences to cheer as Douglas trashed a Korean grocery, battled a bunch of Latino gang-bangers, dissed a homeless panhandler, and terrorized the robotic counter kids in a generic fast-food parlor.… Falling Down, one of the first movies to portray Los Angeles as the new behavioral sink, was in production during the 1992 riots.”
4 While admitting to the alcohol abuse, Michael has always denied he was or has ever been treated for sex addiction (according to the clinic, sexual addiction occurs when a person has an uncontrollable urge to indulge in sexual practices without emotion). The Sierra Tucson Clinic does treat sexual maladjustment cases, although it also treats a variety of addictions, including drugs and alcohol. The actor Rob Lowe checked into Sierra Tucson in 1988 after being caught on video in a hotel room in bed with two women. Another famous alumnus is Ringo Starr.
5 Despite persistent rumors, Michael denied that he and Demi had had an affair during the making of the film, not that he didn’t think about it: “I had a crush on her. But she was happily married [to Bruce Willis].” Michael, People magazine, July 6, 2009.
In 2010’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. REBEL ROAD ARCHIVES
CHAPTER 16
I’m feeling a little sad today, a little sad … I’ve been packing up my things, going through old boxes, and it brings back memories.
—MICHAEL DOUGLAS
Two MONTHS BEFORE DISCLOSURE’S DECEMBER 9, 1994, opening, Michael celebrated his fiftieth birthday, as the cracks widened in his life’s smooth exterior, especially in his marriage. Like his father with his first wife, Michael had married a woman incompatible with the demands of the Hollywood lifestyle. Like his father, Michael had wanted to be married and single at the same time.
Even after his stint in rehab, nothing improved between him and Diandra, and he continued to commute back and forth from Hollywood to Santa Barbara, where Diandra continued to live in their house with Cameron. If there was any change, it was a subtle, interior one. Michael no longer had classic rock on his car cassette player. Now he was into Deepak Chopra’s books and the audio version of John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.
Despite this relatively late arrival of New Age sensitivity, he knew his marriage was over. Only a month before, he had been telling friends that he wanted to have another baby with Diandra, but when he brought the subject up she would have none of it. Like so many of his most memorable screen characters, he remained passive until Diandra finally let the matrimonial ax fall.
In June 1995 Diandra hired a legal team and began preparing for a real, i.e., legal separation from Michael, citing irreconcilable differences.
Then, early in 1996, Michael and Diandra began attending mediation sessions to see if a reconciliation was possible.
PERHAPS AS A WAY of escaping his marital problems, Michael accepted a lucrative acting assignment to play the role of the president of the United States in Rob Reiner’s The American President, opposite Annette Bening, Warren Beatty’s wife, in what was intended as a cutesy homage to the pre-Lewinsky Clinton administration. To make sure he “got it right,” with Clinton’s permission Michael stayed a few nights at the White House and trailed the president to get down what was “presidential” about him.
According to Bening, the shoot itself had a great feel to it. “It was an incredibly warm, congenial experience. Michael is truly a professional guy.… I loved working with him.”
Hollywood has always tried to capture the mood of the country and sell tickets with its portrayal of popular sitting presidents—FDR in Michael Curtiz’s 1942 Yankee Doodle Dandy and Kennedy in Leslie H. Martinson’s 1963 PT 109, the latter released earlier the same year JFK was assassinated. By the 1990s the approach had turned to fictitious scenarios that portrayed characters resembling sitting presidents. (Reiner was a big Clinton supporter and very pro-Democrat, undoubtedly one of the reasons Clinton felt safe in allowing the production to come inside the White House.)
Audiences loved the film, a testament as much to Michael’s resilient star power as it was to Reiner’s directing and Clinton’s popularity. The American President also benefited from a clever script by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who
had signed a three-picture deal with Reiner’s Castle Rock Entertainment, of which this was the last. Sorkin then went on to create the TV series The West Wing, which bore more than a passing resemblance to The American President.
Made for $62 million, the film earned $108 million from its worldwide release.
WHILE MICHAEL WAS making The American President, his son quietly entered rehab for what had become an unshakable addiction to cocaine. An angry Diandra put the blame for Cameron’s problems squarely on Michael’s shoulders. While Michael had tried to bond with Cameron and help him develop his talents—knowing his son had an interest in music, in 1993 Michael invested in a new record label, the Third Stone, to help kick-start Cameron’s budding music career—Diandra faulted him for not being around nearly enough to morally guide his son and set a good example for him (Michael was no Boy Scout when it came to drugs). On November 17, 1995, Diandra filed the papers she had prepared for a legal separation from Michael in Santa Barbara through her lawyer, Dennis Wasser, citing irreconcilable differences.
“It’s a lot of years,” Michael said not long after he was served. “We’re residing in separate abodes, and we’re just talking. It’s eighteen years we’ve been married.… I mean we have a lot of time invested, and a lot of wonderful experiences and a lot of love … but at this particular time I can’t say exactly what’s gonna happen. We both have a son we love a lot, and hopefully we’ll be able to resolve things in a positive way.”
It’s telling that nowhere in that public statement did Michael say he wanted the marriage to continue. There remains, in fact, some question as to who actually moved first for divorce and who wanted to remain married. Some sources claim Michael felt horse-collared by Diandra and had wanted a divorce for years, but his passivity, and his fear that he was just like Kirk when it came to women and wives, may have prevented him from taking any action. Others claim that Michael desperately wanted to stay married, if for no other reason than not having to pay Diandra a one-time settlement that could reach as high as $50 million, not counting child support.
While the financial details of their separation were slowly being worked out, Michael was careful not to be seen in public with any women. During this time he also did a series of commercials for Infiniti cars. “It was a phenomenal amount of money,” he said, “and I was able to fund my charitable foundation that does lots of different things, from environmental groups to AIDS groups.” Michael was pushing himself hard, as if to prove to Diana via his charitable actions that he was, after all, a good person.
Diandra, meanwhile, as if to underscore that this time she really meant it, began openly dating landscape artist Ken Slaught, who had designed the gardens of the Douglases’ Santa Barbara estate.
Then, in January 1996, tragedy struck again when seventy-nine-year-old Kirk suffered a life-threatening stroke. Partially paralyzed and unable to speak clearly, he went through an epiphany about his life similar to the one he had after the helicopter crash—the way he had treated his family, the distance that had grown between him and Michael, and this time the hard fact that he would likely never act again. Now with his career gone he wanted nothing but to be surrounded by family.
Michael and the others stayed by Kirk’s side throughout much of the early stages of his difficult and exhausting rehabilitation. At night, Kirk would read books about Judaism and try to reconnect with the religion he had so long ago abandoned in the name of assimilation.
The only bright spot during this period came in March, when Kirk, still barely able to walk on his own or speak, received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar. That night Michael was in the audience, and the TV cameras showed clearly the tears streaming down his face when the award was made. “You could have taken him out there in an iron lung, there was no way he was gonna miss that one.… [T]he buildup was difficult, because Dad was struggling with his speech at that time … [T]his is a moment to enjoy, I told him. Just enjoy this; let’s not make this a test. For me, his Oscar was late [in] coming. My emotion was that the industry finally stood up and acknowledged him, which was long overdue.”
Also long overdue was the movie Michael’s father had promised they would make together. To date, nothing had occurred on either side to make it happen, and now, with Kirk partially paralyzed, it would likely never become a reality. It was tough for Michael to take, because he felt that was the only way he would ever be able to claim equal footing with his father.
Sherry Lansing saw it for as long as he knew Michael: “He went through every day of his life being compared to his father.”
Michael continued to walk a delicate path. Though Diandra was there for Kirk as much as she could be, Michael knew his marriage was unsavable. “I believe in love and marriage, [but] I’m on my own now and that’s kind of exciting, [although] the thought of growing old alone scares me.”
WITH HIS FILM CAREER hot after the success of The American President, Michael decided to throw himself into his work, and to once more try his hand at producing. To do so he partnered with former William Morris agent turned producer Steven Reuther to form Douglas/Reuther Productions. They quickly found backing and secured a domestic twelve-picture distribution deal with Paramount. The company’s primary outside investor was Bodo Scriba, whose German-based Constellation Films provided $500 million in production money in return for foreign distribution rights and a 30 percent share of Douglas/Reuther stock. Several other smaller investors became minority stockholders in the company. In all instances, Douglas/Reuther maintained all copyrights and negatives for future rentals and sales.
With the money in place, Michael and Reuther announced an ambitious schedule of twelve pictures, at least three of which Michael would appear in. It was the kind of grand-scale deal only someone with Michael’s credentials and Reuther’s inside savvy could make. Reuther, a few years younger than Michael, was, like his new partner, something of a multitalented Hollywood player. He was tall and extremely good-looking, loved the ladies, and had a laser eye for spotting scripts that could be made into megahits.
Reuther began his career at the William Morris Agency in its legendary mailroom, like so many future Hollywood heavyweights would, including David Geffen, and quickly became the first assistant to veteran über-agent Stan Kamen. In that role Reuther got to work closely with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. A quick learner and a smooth operator, Reuther also became an expert in film finance and structured numerous movies for the agency, and pioneered the use of Canadian tax shelters as a way to get independent films funded.
Reuther and Michael first met via Adrian Lyne. Reuther had helped develop 9½ Weeks, the prequel, as it were, to Basic Instinct. What initially attracted Michael and Steve to each other was their desire to get beyond the sappy, fake-feeling love stories that were being ground out by the studios because they were cheap, easy sells at home and abroad. Michael and Steve wanted to make films that were closer to their own personalities: tough, macho movies, heavy on the action, light on the love.
The first Douglas/Reuther project was an appropriately macho true-life adventure film starring Michael, Val Kilmer, and two killer lions. The Ghost and the Darkness, directed by Stephen Hopkins, is based on the 1907 book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo by John Henry Patterson, who shot and killed two lions that had been terrorizing a railroad construction site in Kenya. The workers called the lions “The Ghost” and “The Darkness” for their stealth and nighttime attacks, which continued unabated until Patterson hunted down the animals and killed them.
The story was a good one, better because it was true, and devoid of any romantic overtones. Patterson’s story had knocked around the studios for six years, with an original script by veteran screenwriter William Goldman. When it finally came to Michael’s attention, he hired Goldman to revise his script and make one of the lead characters, Charles Remington, an American. Remington helps Patterson, who at this point in the script has failed in all his attempts to kill the lions.
Michael wanted the character expanded a
nd Americanized so he could co-star in the film with Val Kilmer, who was signed to play Patterson. His reasoning had more to do with his being a producer than a movie star. Movies that take place in foreign countries with foreign lead characters do not do as well in the States as those with American characters. It is one of the reasons David Lean’s 1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai has an American hero, played by William Holden, despite the fact that the story takes place in a Japanese POW camp for British officers held in Burma during World War II. Holden, who was a huge star at the time, accounted for a good part of the film’s American success; it is the same reason John Sturges’s 1963 The Great Escape has several American characters, although the story was originally based on a true-life escape incident in which no Americans were involved. The combined American star power of Steve McQueen and James Garner helped turn that film into a major hit.
Goldman, however, vehemently argued against Americanizing and padding the part, primarily because Remington was originally a smaller character whose mysterious nature was something Goldman thought made the story better. “In The Ghost and the Darkness the lions were my passion. I wanted to write about brute power and horror and fear, and at the heart of it, existence, even for nine months, and even in Tsavo, of evil moving among us.… [T]he producers said they will make it only if they can get one of these three stars to play Patterson, the main character: [Kevin] Costner, [Tom] Cruise, or [Mel] Gibson.… [T]he problem was, you don’t get people like that for pictures like this.” Costner had actually agreed, but when the studio hedged, hoping to get Cruise, Costner walked. Then Cruise passed, and the picture was dead until Michael and Steve Reuther came aboard as producers, with Michael agreeing to play Remington. And after his performance in 1995’s Batman Forever, Val Kilmer was a hot commodity and Michael and Steve offered him the other lead.
