by Marc Eliot
The action-adventure film was shot in South Africa for tax purposes, which was right up Michael’s midlife macho crisis alley. At first Goldman was thrilled to have Michael on board as an actor, but the scriptwriter quickly grew disenchanted with his choices as a producer: “I have worked with Redford. I have been in a room with Beatty. They are brilliant men, passionate about what they produce, and boy are they not dumb. Well, Michael is their equal [as a producer].…
“Who’s better [as an actor]? My answer is: at what he does, no one. And just what does Douglas play so brilliantly? This: the flawed contemporary American male.…
“[Then] Michael decided to play the part himself. My initial reaction was delight.… But shit, as we all know, has a way of happening. The first thing that went was the name.… I loved ‘Redbeard’ [the character’s original name, but] I lucked into the name Remington pretty quickly.… Then, sharply, I was into nightmare. Michael wanted Remington to have a history.…
“I did what Douglas wanted.… [I knew] we could cut it all out in the editing process. [But i]f you saw the movie, you know [the backstory of Remington] did not get cut out.…
“Michael wanted the audience moved when Remington died … [but] what he succeeded in doing was destroying him.…
“Guess what—when we had our first sneak, one of the questions the audience was asked was to rate the characters in order of how they liked them. And the audience rated Michael Douglas fourth [and Kilmer third, both behind the two lions].…
“A lot of cuts and pads were made to be sure he was more sympathetic … [but] the audience wasn’t buying it.… [W]hen your two stars are rated below two supporting players, do not put a down payment on that beach house in Malibu.…
“I also feel that if Douglas and Kilmer had been in Butch Cassidy [and the Sundance Kid, which Goldman wrote] instead of Redford and Newman, you would not remotely be listening to anything I have to say about Hollywood.”
THE FILM OPENED on October 11, 1996, at a cost of $55 million and only grossed $38 million domestic, $75 million overseas. While that may seem like a clear $20 million profit, the economics of Hollywood require that a film double its cost to break even, taking into consideration advertising, promotion, prints, and other costs of postproduction. In the end, The Ghost and the Darkness needed to make $110 million before it made any money.
That the film wasn’t a big hit did not bother Paramount. They were eager to keep Douglas/Reuther Productions in-house, confident that they would eventually hit it big.
Paramount’s gambit paid off when the second film of the deal, in which Michael did not appear, proved a smash. Face/Off, starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in a clever variation on the familiar switched-identities plot, with evil masked as good and good masked as evil, was a thrill ride of a motion picture. Released in 1997, directed by action stylist John Woo, Face/Off delivered on its premise and reinvigorated the stalled careers of both its stars.
The script, by Mike Werb and Michael Colleary, had been knocking around for years, unable to find any interest from the studios, until Douglas/Reuther Productions came aboard. The original choices to play the crisscross leads were Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and at one point even Jean-Claude Van Damme was considered. Made for $80 million, the film returned a quarter of a billion dollars (worldwide) and confirmed the status of Douglas/Reuther Productions as one of the hottest independent companies in town. Paramount then gave them the green light to make anything else they wanted, with no prior studio approval.
They quickly signed on to do the legal thriller The Rainmaker, based on the novel by John Grisham and helmed by marquee director Francis Ford Coppola.
The only problem was, Michael’s heart was no longer in producing that film, or any film.
Burnout had set in.
MICHAEL HAD FINALLY been worn down by his family’s laundry list of problems, including Cameron’s ongoing troubles with drugs, Diandra’s formal divorce proceedings, which she had begun in 1997, two years after filing for legal separation, and Kirk’s stroke. All of it had wiped him out, and he didn’t want to work so hard anymore producing difficult movies with difficult co-stars. Why bother? His acting salary was currently between $15 million and $20 million per picture. He would gladly surrender a lot of the behind-the-scenes power for a little more of that easy two-dimensional love and glory. “I love acting,” he said simply, when asked why he was suddenly getting out of the producing business.
There was also the practical side of the business. Responsibility had taught him that if nothing else, the movie business was about numbers. If everything went completely right, which it almost never did, the twelve-picture Douglas/Reuther commitment with Paramount would not be completed until Michael was in his mid-sixties. He didn’t want to work that long and that hard.
What may have prompted these stop-and-smell-the-roses midlife revelations, and another factor that prompted Michael to pull the plug, was Bodo Scriba’s surprise decision to sell his shares in Douglas/Reuther to Leo Kirch, another German investor. When that deal subsequently fell through, Scriba exercised his “out” option, pulled his money, and exited the company. Its other, smaller investors, shaken by the company’s sudden financial hole, followed suit until it no longer made sense to keep the company together; it would be far too difficult for Douglas/Reuther Productions to make any more films under the present distribution deal with Paramount. The only way to get out of that commitment was to dissolve the company. If Michael had been on the fence, this pushed him over, a confirmation to him that he was doing the right thing. Amidst all this, there was talk throughout Hollywood that the personal relationship between Michael and Reuther was shaky at best. In response to the rumors of internal discord and financial disarray, at a press conference, a spokesperson for the company announced, “Michael and Steven will go on to produce films.” When asked if that meant they would continue to work together, the spokesperson replied, “I did not say that.”
Michael elaborated and explained he was getting out of the producing business for good and that his decision had nothing to do with Reuther. “You want to spend more energy and time just looking for parts for yourself, developing material, rather than serving a company or producing. I look back a little longingly at the days when I had one or two pictures at a small company, where I could focus and enjoy acting more.… I became the producer as prisoner. I would come off an acting role and deal with a large number of projects that weren’t in good shape and it was hard to focus on one.…
“Reuther and I partnered to finance our own movies and distribute through Paramount, and through the experience gained new respect for the people at studios who green-light pictures.” But, in the only reference he would make to the financial mess, he added that it had made him feel “saddled with business-related problems that weren’t enjoyable to solve.”
Later on, he elaborated: “I had to remind myself why I was spending so much time producing when I really love acting … One of the mistakes I made as a producer is that I never really developed anything for myself. When you run a production company, you don’t really think that way. I actually haven’t made that many movies. My dad’s made 84, partly because they just made movies back then, before television, but even among my generation and younger, there are a lot of actors who have made a lot more movies than I have.”
In other words, good-bye hard work producing (and Reuther), and hello again easy-street acting.1
MICHAEL HAD FOUND two scripts he liked. The first was The Game, directed by David Fincher, who had made some noise with 1995’s Se7en, a twisty thriller about a serial murder who kills according to the tenets of the seven deadly sins; it starred Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman.
In The Game, Michael plays Nicholas Van Orton, an emotionally bankrupt businessman and control freak, who receives a birthday gift that involves a series of life-threatening challenges, all part of a sophisticated game. While Michael was making the film, he logged some interviews to be used a
fter it opened. Robert Hofler, writing for Buzzweekly, threw Michael a curve about his relationship with his wife (they still hadn’t arrived at a financial settlement or signed the 1997 divorce agreement; neither seemed especially eager to do so). Michael didn’t appear to mind being asked about it or to confirm the end of his marriage. “Diandra and I are on very good terms. Absolutely. We were married 20 years. There were a lot of loving times. Would I get married again? Sure. In a nanosecond. I’d like some more kids, too.”
HIS NEXT FILM was Andrew Davis’s A Perfect Murder, reuniting him with producer Arnold Kopelson, with whom he had worked on Falling Down. The film was intended to be a loose remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 Dial M for Murder, one of the master of suspense’s minor explorations of his crisscross theme, wherein one character gets another, ostensibly innocent, one, to participate in a murder for which the latter has no apparent motive. Although, as Hitchcock himself often said, Dial M was “a case of drained creative batteries, running for cover,” it was nevertheless one of his most popular audience pleasers. It was based on a hit play by Frederick Knott, who was also credited as the screenwriter.
It is not hard to understand why Michael was attracted to this film, the first since Wall Street where he could play an out-and-out villain, in this case a murderer, instead of the essentially good but passive guy who is drawn into trouble. “It was fun to revisit the type. I usually think the bad guy is the most interesting character in the story.” In the film, a handsome, older, and sophisticated husband (played by Michael) plots to murder his wealthy and sophisticated wife.
Hitchcock’s original Dial M hired hand, Swann (Anthony Dawson) is blackmailed by Wendice (Ray Milland) into killing Wendice’s wife, Margot (Grace Kelly). However, when Swann tries to strangle Margot, she winds up instead killing him, and the film takes off on a Hitchcock joyride. After Margot is convicted of murdering Swann, her secret American lover, mystery writer Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), who happens to be visiting Wendice and Margot in London, figures out how and why Wendice wanted Margot dead (he wanted her money and blackmailed someone to do the dirty deed). In one of Hitchcock’s more devilish touches, Margot, about to go to the gallows, is miraculously rescued; in fact, she changes places with Wendice, who, as the picture ends, is likely headed to the gallows himself, while Margot is free to marry Mark. All of it is played with speed, sophistication, wit, and scissors-sharp badinage.
In Michael’s updated version, the locale is shifted from London to New York. The classic latchkey mixup remains, but even in the original it was one of the weakest aspects of the murder plot because it was so confusing; here it is utterly incomprehensible (the words “locksmith” and “duplicate keys” keep popping into the viewer’s mind as simpler ways to commit the crime and get away with it). A Perfect Murder fails on almost every level of suspense and drama. Whereas Hitchcock knew how to twist the audience’s emotions, Davis could not effectively involve the viewer to the point where any twisting is possible. In Hitchcock’s version, the climax and dénouement are immensely satisfying; the capture of Wendice and the freeing of Margot suggest a restoration of law and order, the return of civilized behavior to a civilized world.
Davis’s version ends in a confusing bloodbath, devoid of any obsession, compulsion, obsessive-compulsion, moral ambiguity, or emotional irresistibility. Nor is there any hint left of what the original hinged on—the crisscross. It is burning and predictable, and Michael seemed to know it, looking wan and uninvolved on-screen.
At least part of his malaise may be attributable to the bad chemistry between Michael and his co-star, Gwyneth Paltrow. She was at the front side of her career, an emerging star, who happened to be the daughter of Michael’s good friend Bruce Paltrow, producer, TV director, and fellow liberal activist. Things began well enough but quickly fell apart between the two when Paltrow, then twenty-five years old, made no secret of the fact she thought Michael was too old to play opposite her romantically and was not believable as her husband. Early on she let her feelings be known to a reporter who passed them on to the public: “It’s sort of creepy if in real life I’d be married to Michael Douglas. There’s definitely an uncomfortable age difference.”
Michael didn’t appreciate her feelings or the way she had so openly expressed them. Paltrow’s confession was a violation of sorts of one of the few ethical codes Hollywood has when it comes to movies: men are never too old to play opposite even the youngest of female co-stars. Michael believed that the stigma of his alleged sex addiction of the early 1990s was part of the reason Paltrow had publicly attacked him. In response he said, “I thought [Gwyneth’s comments] were sort of silly. I was playing 48 and she [Paltrow] was playing 28. And what’s the big deal? I know guys in real life who have these trophy wives who are 20 years younger … but it went hand-in-hand with the ‘sex addict’ stuff that started … when I went into rehab right after Basic Instinct.”
The two would never work together again.
ON SEPTEMBER 10, Michael, looking strong and happy, accompanied by his still-frail father and a grinning Jack Nicholson in his obligatory dark glasses, put his hand- and footprints into cement alongside Kirk’s in the courtyard of Mann’s (Grauman’s) Chinese Theatre. Kirk later joked with reporters, telling them, with a bit of sarcasm cut with bitterness, that he thought Michael’s footprints should be much bigger than his. This echoed what Kirk was telling his friends every chance he got, that Michael had made more money with one picture than Kirk had made his whole career.
TWO DAYS EARLIER, on Monday, September 8, The Game had been gala-premiered with a traditional Hollywood roving-spotlight red-carpet affair, held at the same famed theater. Among the stars who attended were Michael Keaton, Anthony Edwards, and Rhea Perlman (who was married to Danny DeVito). Michael entered to a round of applause and took a seat inside, but ten minutes after the film started he slipped out and made his way across the street and up the block to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where he had arranged a suite so he could watch the Oakland Raiders play the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday Night Football. Made on a budget of $50 million, The Game did $14.3 million its first regular weekend and eventually returned $109 million (worldwide), making it a sizable hit.
The film, however, received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, said, “Michael is the right actor for the role. He can play smart, he can play cold, and he can play angry. He is also subtle enough that he never arrives at an emotional plateau before the film does, and never overplays the process of his inner change.”
Janet Maslin, reviewing The Game in the New York Times, said, “Michael Douglas, in the film’s leading role, does show real finesse in playing to the paranoia of these times.”
Peter Travers, in Rolling Stone, criticized the film: “Fincher’s effort to cover up the plot holes is all the more noticeable for being strained.… The Game has a sunny, redemptive side that ill suits Fincher and ill serves audiences that share his former affinity for loose ends hauntingly left untied.”
ON FEBRUARY 28, 1998, after being honored (along with Clint Eastwood) with an honorary César at the French film industry’s annual equivalent to the Oscars, Michael traveled to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, in the Czech Republic, where he was once again celebrated for his contribution to world cinema. When asked to say a few words, Michael couldn’t help but make a reference to Kirk and the lifelong struggle he had had to emerge from his father’s Cinemascope shadow: “Being the son or daughter of a successful person means it takes a little longer to find out who you are.”2
On July 30, 1998, he was installed as a United Nations “Messenger of Peace” by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a distinction shared at the time with few other public figures, including French-Algerian singer Enrico Macias, opera star Luciano Pavarotti, author Elie Wiesel, and basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson. At the news conference following the ceremonies Michael said, “I hope to use the entertainment communications ability we have around the world to
talk a little less about movies and hopefully a lot more about some of the issues pertaining to the United Nations. I’m fortunate to be able to focus on some of the issues that mean a lot to me, especially nuclear nonproliferation.… [T]his probably means as much to me as any of the two Oscars that I got.”
A PERFECT MURDER, targeted as a summer movie, was released on June 5, 1998, for Warner Bros. in association with Kopelson Entertainment. The reviews were mixed, but James Berardinelli, a major contributor to Rotten Tomatoes, a film-review website, came closest to capturing the film’s essence when he astutely wrote that it “has inexplicably managed to eliminate almost everything that was worthwhile about Dial M for Murder, leaving behind the nearly-unwatchable wreckage of a would-be ’90s thriller.”
Once again, as with most Michael Douglas movies, reviews didn’t matter. With a budget of $60 million, the film eventually grossed $128 million worldwide despite the zero chemistry between Michael and Paltrow.
IN THE SUMMER of 1998, on the heels of the success of A Perfect Murder, came Diandra’s legal representatives, who presented Michael with a revised version of the divorce settlement. In addition to a reported $45 million in cash, Diandra was to keep the eight-bedroom villa in Santa Barbara and the home they had in Majorca. Michael would keep the Central Park West apartment. It was an interesting irony—Diandra had been the one who’d demanded they live in New York, while he had always loved Santa Barbara.
