First the family, the relationship with the patriarch Kirk, a Hollywood pioneer who died almost a hundred years ago, and then his commitment against the proliferation of living room guns, the relationship with the younger generations, twenty-year-old daughter Carys Zeta, the magical encounters of a two-Oscar-winning career (first as producer for Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and second as the protagonist of Wall) Street by Oliver Stone), many prizes and since last night also the Palme d’Or. Michael Douglas, 78, escaped throat cancer and has been treated for sexual addiction (not to mention alcohol and drug addiction) in the past. The face of box-office Hollywood in the 1980s, he is in the age of accounts and anecdotes, like the many he told and applauded in the masters class at the Cannes Film Festival. Like then, it was 1992 when “we shocked the audience in Cannes with the premiere of Basic Instinct.” Perhaps Paul Verhoeven’s film would go almost unnoticed, then it was a scandal that went down in history. I remember the faces of the viewers with all these explicit sex scenes, with Sharon Stone and Jeanne Tripplehorn on the giant screens. An embarrassing dinner followed.
But there wasn’t a French woman who didn’t convince her husband to go to the cinema.” Another memory linked to Cannes is more recent for Behind the Candelabra, in which Douglas is a giant in the interpretation of the pianist Liberace. “I had been doing cycles of chemotherapy to fight the cancer that was affecting my throat and tongue. The script was wonderful, but as we began preparing with Steven Soderbergh, I realized that, without even telling myself, I was a skeleton. So it was postponed until I recovered. “It’s one of my favorite movies,” he says, adding the anecdote: “This amazing actor, Matt Damon, played my lover.” We had a sex scene, he approached me and I whispered to him, “I don’t mind .” For Basic Instinct, the intimate trainer was also on set, Sharon was crazy, you have to think of those moments as dance, as choreography, hand first here, lips there…” Another climate for the entertaining. The War of The Roses, another box office hit, 1989, starring Kathleen Turner: “I talked director Danny DeVito, one of my best friends, into changing the ending, they ended up killing each other.” When it came to the other Shooting the version where Kathleen was hanging from the chandelier, Danny would retrieve lunch and let her levitate screaming.” Another of his best friends besides Jack Nicholson is Oliver Stone, who directed him on Wall Street. “For Gekko, he wanted to be a real villain, but obviously that didn’t work out because that character is ingrained in everyone’s heart. To make me meaner, he provoked me: “You’re high on drugs,” he said, to infuriate me.” This achievement, which won the statuette, prompted Michael Douglas to take the leap into the family, their comparison with the great Kirk is apparently a subject for psychoanalysis. “I finally stepped out of his shadow,” he says, but then adds, “I admire him more and more, he was an extraordinary man and today he would be proud of me.” “I think,” he continues, “that my family is everything, alone I’m not much, the award I received also made me happy because I feel my family is proud of me, their support is fundamental.” His daughter Carys Zeta accompanied mom to Cannes and dad “want to be an actress,” says Michael. He is interested in the relationship with the younger generations: “I was involved in the Avengers because I wanted to get in touch with all the children who have no idea about my previous films.” And then “Ant Man” and “Avengers” made me go to Comicon, which is a crazy place I found myself like a kid in a candy store.” More recently, he has reduced his involvement in cinema because of the Netflix series The Kominski Method, which he has just done was filming a miniseries in France in which he plays Benjamin Franklin, America’s Founding Father, and “I’m taking a break now to focus on my commitment to Nations Unite Against Guns.” He’s confident the writers’ strike will happen soon it is decided: “It’s just allegations, their salary is minimal, streaming has exploded, but only the stars are benefiting.” could become a problem, but I’d like to turn into an oleogram to talk to.” At the end of the meeting, he repeated like a mantra: “Believing in yourself is what you do every day, day after day must learn. Never stop, it’s never enough.”
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