Episode 968 - Michael Douglas
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:If you're new here, well, let me show you around.
Marc:This is my garage.
Marc:This is the new garage where I do the podcast.
Marc:It's sort of in flux right now.
Marc:There's a few guitars laying around.
Marc:There's shit all over the floor.
Marc:Couldn't find my Wawa pedal for like a half hour.
Marc:It was just in a bag.
Marc:I got to get some work done in here.
Marc:These sound panels were made by some guy that I met at a studio.
Marc:They're working out pretty well.
Marc:Sounds pretty nice.
Marc:There's just shit not unpacked and printers on the floor and wires everywhere.
Marc:But this is the new look.
Marc:So...
Marc:If you're just coming around, you'll hear the old garage and some of the older shows.
Marc:But this is a new garage.
Marc:I don't know how much you'll be able to tell the difference in sound.
Marc:But but this place is sort of it's a little more chaotic right now.
Marc:And it seems to be doing all right.
Marc:Are you all right?
Marc:Everybody all right?
Marc:I do want to tell you this.
Marc:that the t-shirt the new aaron draplin design wtf t-shirt at podswag.com slash wtf or by if you get it you can go to a click on the merch link at wtfpod.com that t-shirt it's a hit folks people are loving it it's hot it's happening go get yourself one did i mention michael douglas is on the show
Marc:Who doesn't love Michael Douglas?
Marc:I love Michael Douglas.
Marc:Are you kidding me?
Marc:Man, how good was he?
Marc:He's been good in a lot of shit.
Marc:But how good was he in that Liberace movie, that HBO Liberace movie?
Marc:Who are you talking to, Mumbles?
Marc:Who are you talking to mumbles?
Marc:I can't do it.
Marc:But but yeah, he's been in a lot of stuff and he's always pretty good and he's produced and he's done.
Marc:He's it was it was a great talk and it's coming at you momentarily.
Marc:I got the cats.
Marc:The cats are very excited to see me.
Marc:But now here's where my brain is right now.
Marc:And they've been eating the same food for a while.
Marc:It's good food.
Marc:I think it's wellness.
Marc:It's like chicken and herring.
Marc:But they're not that excited about it anymore.
Marc:So then I went out and bought this Dave's food because Sarah the painter, she's all into the Dave's food.
Marc:It's no grain, all good shit.
Marc:And I bought it like I had like a salmon and tuna one and I put that out in the Buster, Buster Kitten.
Marc:You know, he's not so hot on the wet food.
Marc:It's hard to get him to eat the wet food.
Marc:He likes the dry food, nothing I can do.
Marc:But I put out this tuna and salmon shit and it was like crack, man.
Marc:They just fucking went through it.
Marc:Do people still say that like crack?
Marc:Is that is that nostalgic?
Marc:Is that outdated?
Marc:Is crack like crack?
Marc:Is there crack anymore?
Marc:It seems that culturally in terms of addiction and death in that area of engagement that we're going down, we're not going up anymore.
Marc:I guess that's not true.
Marc:I guess it seems like crack is way out.
Marc:Meth and and fentanyl, fentanyl, fentanyl, you know, go fast, go slow, go dead.
Marc:either way but anyway so talking about cat food i'm just telling you where my brain is at right now so i just bought some more dave's fishy food herring and tuna fishy as shit man and i don't know if you're a cat owner but cats are pukey and you never know what the new food so right now like i fed them the new food and they inhaled it and they fucking loved it but now i'm sort of i had to go i shut the door to my bedroom i shut the door to the living room because um
Marc:One thing about fishy food is that when they throw it up, that's a fishy stain on your fucking sofa that's very hard to get out.
Marc:So I'm trying to hedge, temper, whatever the word is, curb the possibilities of what's going to be thrown up a pond.
Marc:I don't know if they're going to throw up.
Marc:But this is where my heads are at.
Marc:Are they puking up fishy food on something I love or something I sit on or something I'm going to have to clean?
Marc:I know it's not my bed because shut the door.
Marc:Powerful stuff.
Marc:Don't you wish I was talking about sports or something?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Is that who you wish I was?
Marc:I got some emails that are nice.
Marc:I got some nice emails.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:This is something.
Marc:Maybe you can relate to this in your life.
Marc:When I did the Beacon Theater last weekend, the subtext of it was I wanted to correct what I thought were mistakes at Carnegie.
Marc:Now, Carnegie Hall was an amazing night.
Marc:It was a big night for me.
Marc:But I don't know if people experience this...
Marc:In whatever you're doing, you must experience some version of it.
Marc:You know, when you show up for work and you're in it and you're you're you're just you just you're nailing it.
Marc:And I don't like to use that fucking word.
Marc:You're just in your body.
Marc:You're in your shit.
Marc:You're in your work and you're operating on all cylinders.
Marc:And then if before that happens, the thing that stops that from happening.
Marc:Sometimes is that you just get a little bug in your brain that it's not going to work out or it's not going to be good or it's not going to go the way you want it or you're not going to nail it.
Marc:I don't like using that word.
Marc:But but that can fuck you up because then you're self-conscious.
Marc:You're not in it and you don't feel grounded and you feel like you're a little just a little bit desperate, a little bit got a little like, you know, you're too vulnerable or
Marc:to be doing what you're doing, but you got to do it because it's your job.
Marc:This is a long way of saying is that as good as Carnegie Hall was, even though I did two hours, whatever, and I was up there a long time and I made that place an intimate environment.
Marc:In my mind, I was like the first half hour of my Carnegie Hall show a couple of years back, I felt like I was struggling.
Marc:I felt that any minute
Marc:That the funny would dissipate.
Marc:It would just be me up there wondering why people weren't liking me or or being too serious and demanding some sort of emotional support.
Marc:See, that should all be the subtext of good comedy, not up front.
Marc:But I mentioned it at the Beacon and I need to sort of apologize because I got this email from New York City as a subject line from NYC.
Marc:Hi, Mark, my wife, Lee, and I saw you this last time at the Beacon and love the show, but we kept hearing how you felt the Carnegie show was not as good.
Marc:We were there sitting right next to your family and we thought your show then was better if it has to be graded.
Marc:But that's the BS thing about grading.
Marc:It implies something is better or more valuable or what the fuck ever.
Marc:The Carnegie show was different and we enjoyed the difference very much.
Marc:My wife pointed it out best when she said that the Carnegie show was more personal.
Marc:It was less joke related and more Mark related.
Marc:Like we were getting a look into how you look at things spontaneously.
Marc:You consulted your notes more at Carnegie like you just wrote something down on the subway.
Marc:I probably did.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I probably had.
Marc:Of course, there was plenty of showmanship at Carnegie, but there was also some of you just grooving with things.
Marc:And it was great to see your mind working and the audience loved it.
Marc:The Beacon Show is great, too.
Marc:Definitely more bit related.
Marc:But even with that, you'd go off on tangents and assure us you were coming back.
Marc:But that tangential thinking of yours is really amusing.
Marc:Some may.
Marc:qualify laughter as the delightful response to astonishment and the reward for learning something new in that sense comedians are our teachers they show us other ways to think about things and especially about humans following your tangents of thought
Marc:is part of the real delight in seeing you perform and to listening to your interviewing.
Marc:So yes, Beacon was tight and well done with a nice sprinkling of Marin flourishes, but Carnegie felt like more full-on Mark, bolstered occasionally by set bits.
Marc:Both shows are great to be at, so thank you from both of us, David and Lisa.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I, you know, and I've, I've learned this lesson before.
Marc:Like if you don't feel like you did as good as you should, just keep your mouth shut about it because you don't know what other people's experience of.
Marc:And I think that applies to anything.
Marc:Like if you're not feeling like you're hitting your mark, just shut up about it.
Marc:You don't know if people are paying attention to you in the same way that you are.
Marc:Does that make sense?
Marc:Is that at all helpful?
Marc:Can I read you one other email?
Marc:Would that be all right?
Marc:Comedians laughing.
Marc:Oh, this is not the one I wanted to read.
Marc:But this is a nice one.
Marc:I'll read this.
Marc:Comedians laughing is the subject line.
Marc:Dear Mark, I have been a fan for a long time, almost since the beginning.
Marc:I remember hearing the Gallagher and Carlos Mencia and Robin Williams interviews and having my mind blown.
Marc:I avidly sought out each past episode as I kept up with all the new ones.
Marc:I can't listen to every episode now, but I always listen when you're interviewing a comedian, not only because I love comedy and comedians, but because there's this thing that happens every time you interview a fellow comic.
Marc:At some point, one of you makes the other laugh and you both just let it rip the kind of deep.
Marc:full-throated laughter that is so rare in the world.
Marc:It's like a tonic for the soul just to hear it.
Marc:And often you are laughing about something awful, some terrible thing that happened to one of you, but you look back on it and laugh and laugh and laugh.
Marc:It's a beautiful thing.
Marc:Some true deep wisdom.
Marc:Thanks for bringing it.
Marc:It brightens my day and my world every time.
Marc:Best, John.
Marc:Yeah, man, you know, what comedians find funny, it does go pretty deep.
Marc:So, all right, I think we're okay.
Marc:I wanted to read this other one, but why am I even telling you?
Marc:Maybe I'll read it next time.
Marc:What difference does it make now?
Marc:Am I right?
Marc:Michael Douglas is here.
Marc:Michael Douglas is someone I feel like he dug deep into my brain because my mother, I think, had a crush on him, really.
Marc:I remember watching the streets of San Francisco at the base of my parents bed because my mom would lay in bed and watch it.
Marc:You know, they watched the TV in their bedroom.
Marc:We'd all go in there at some point.
Marc:But yeah, so I think that was it.
Marc:It was the streets of San Francisco.
Marc:But he feels like somebody I've watched my entire life because I have.
Marc:He's now starring in the new Netflix original series, The Kominsky Method, along with Alan Arkin.
Marc:It's available for streaming tomorrow, November 16th.
Marc:This is me and Michael Douglas talking right here in the new garage.
Music
Marc:Nice to see you.
Marc:Thank you very much.
Marc:Nice to see you.
Marc:Nice to be here.
Marc:I feel like I've known you my entire life.
Marc:Well, gosh.
Marc:You look younger than that, man.
Marc:I'm 54, dude.
Guest:I'm 54.
Guest:I'm 74 next week, so there you go.
Marc:But just from when I was a kid, my mother watching Streets of San Francisco.
Marc:You were too young to stay up that late.
Marc:I remember.
Marc:I remember.
Marc:But it's weird when I talk to people that I feel like were active parts of my life throughout the entire thing.
Marc:A couple questions up front.
Marc:How's your dad doing?
Guest:My dad's great.
Guest:As good as you can be at 102 in December.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:He's...
Guest:He's discovered FaceTime, so all we do is try to keep a curfew because we live back east.
Guest:He tends to forget about the three-hour time change.
Guest:We're an early-to-bed family, but he loves it.
Guest:So he hits that FaceTime button, and there he is, and you have a nice conversation.
Guest:And we say goodnight or goodbye.
Guest:And the only problem is maybe 10 minutes later, he calls again and says, how are you?
Guest:I said, dad, we just talked.
Guest:We talked 10 minutes ago.
Guest:All right, right, right, right, right.
Guest:Is he by himself?
Guest:No, he's with his wife, my stepmother.
Guest:They've been together 65 years.
Guest:And she's there.
Guest:She gets angry when I tell people how old she is.
Guest:So I won't do that.
Guest:But she's crazy.
Guest:Close behind them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the two of them are quite a pair.
Guest:You know, I go over, have good conversations with them, a little dinner, and I get out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Usually I'm a little hoarse from speaking so loudly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm always trying to check on their hearing aids, but bless them, you know?
Guest:I mean, just...
Guest:So genetically sound.
Guest:Genetically sound.
Guest:You know, the only one he always asks me is, are you working out?
Guest:Are you working out?
Guest:And I said, I am dad, although I travel is sort of hard.
Guest:And I look back and he had a trainer, Mike Abrams.
Guest:He had a trainer forever, like 40 years.
Guest:I remember he worked with this guy.
Guest:And then one time I went to see dad when he was 90.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And he was, you know, he wasn't too, what's wrong, Dad?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mike died.
Guest:Mike Abrams died.
Marc:His trainer.
Guest:Oh, Dad, I'm sorry.
Guest:How old was Mike, Dad?
Guest:94.
Guest:94.
Guest:And he was working out with Dad when he was 90, so.
Guest:I would have liked to have seen that.
Guest:That should have been a fitness video.
Guest:That was a special generation.
Guest:Everything they say about that generation is true.
Marc:So he's out here?
Marc:He lives out here forever?
Guest:Yeah, he lives out here in Beverly Hills forever.
Guest:And you grew up out there?
Guest:here no no no I grew up I grew up back East basically really yeah my mother and father met each other in acting school American Academy of Dramatic Arts yeah in New York in New York City yeah and you know they were they were both at the school together my mother was was Bermudian British uh-huh lied about her age yes very tall for 16 years old and came to the States American Academy
Guest:My father, Belarus, Russian Jew, immigrant family, came over here in 1914.
Guest:He was born in 1916.
Guest:Opposites attract.
Guest:They got together.
Guest:And then soon after that, my father got a contract that came out to Hollywood.
Guest:I proceeded to chase every skirt in town and my mother said, time out.
Guest:And so my brother and I, we all moved back east.
Guest:So I grew up in New York City and would come out and visit my father on the holidays over time and then
Guest:Then grew up in Connecticut with my stepfather and my mother.
Marc:So your relationship with Kirk was on and off?
Guest:No, we always maintain he was a very guilt-ridden father in terms of the one thing, you know, his father never gave him much attention at all or really acknowledged any of his success.
Guest:And so I think when they divorced, I think he felt guilt.
Guest:So he was always, we'd see him on holidays, no matter how hard he was working on pictures.
Guest:um a lot of pictures a lot of movies over 100 movies you know those are the days before television yeah before television five movies five movies a year you'd be making did you get introduced to the like when did you become sort of you know driven towards acting i mean because of him or being my mother was
Guest:I was an actress too.
Guest:Oh, that's right, yeah.
Guest:No, really, you know, I was in my junior year of college.
Guest:I went to the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Guest:I was a hippie, 1963.
Guest:So you were out here with him then?
Guest:I wasn't with him, but I moved to college.
Guest:I'd gone to schools in the East Coast.
Guest:When I came to college, I came out here.
Guest:So you were a hippie.
Guest:And I was a hippie.
Guest:And finally, I was in my junior year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they said, you got to declare a major.
Guest:You know, you got to, you can't keep taking general education.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I thought theater would be the easiest.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Easiest because my mom was an actress.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So was it like that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was it.
Guest:I started reluctantly.
Guest:I was a terrible actor.
Guest:Kirk used to tell me that.
Guest:He did?
Guest:Well, I was bad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was not inherently talented.
Guest:I'm a grinder.
Marc:Really?
Guest:I'm a real grinder.
Marc:Well, in the hippie thing, like, you know, like at that time in the, you know, out here in L.A.
Marc:or in the country, I mean, like how active were you?
Marc:Or were you just doing the long hair?
Guest:We had a community group up in Santa Barbara.
Guest:Actually, those were my first theatrical productions.
Guest:We used to put on Greek comedies.
Guest:A bunch of long hairs?
Guest:A bunch of long hairs.
Guest:We'd put a sheet over us to look like togas.
Guest:And we used to work out.
Guest:We'd take the cardboard roll of the inside of a paper towel thing.
Guest:We'd tie a string to our hand, and we'd make it like a phallus.
Guest:And we'd point, and the phallus would rise, the string.
Guest:You know, that was sort of the beginning.
Marc:Experimental theater.
Guest:Experimental theater, right.
Guest:And the beginning of the Pleasure Fair, the first years of Renaissance Fair, and driving up to San Francisco on a motorcycle to Fillmore to see the car.
Guest:It was a great time.
Guest:Yeah, good time.
Guest:It was a great time.
Guest:Like in the late 60s?
Guest:Late 60s.
Marc:Now, did you hang out with any of the, so you weren't locked in with other, like, actors, kids?
Marc:Because I had Peter Fonda in here a few weeks ago.
Marc:And it just seems like there was a community.
Marc:Like, the Hollywood community was smaller.
Guest:It was tight.
Guest:It was tight.
Guest:You didn't go on location.
Guest:The back lots of 20th Century Fox, Universal, everything was shot in town, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So, you know, when I would visit my father when I was a younger kid, yeah, sure, I knew Frank Sinatra Jr.
Guest:and Candy Bergen.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Everybody was around.
Guest:Your dad's friends?
Guest:My friends, Billy Lancaster, was good friends with my brother, Joel.
Guest:So it was a very tight community.
Guest:Jamie Lee Curtis and all of that.
Guest:And you knew all the parents too.
Guest:Knew all the parents.
Guest:Have dinner together and stuff.
Guest:Yeah, that's the biggest, that's probably the biggest advantage of being second generation is to be able to see these movie stars with their foibles.
Marc:As people.
Guest:With their insecurities.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:With their people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:As real people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think it,
Marc:it's i think it allows you to conduct yourself as a person sure when when you have a victory of success right and yeah i mean you've had a tremendous amount of success so your dad tells you you're a shitty actor and so what do you because like you know you're a very good actor obviously so how does that i mean even with grinding i mean like how do you what where do you train initially
Guest:Well, I worked hard at it.
Guest:I say that he was the same breath.
Guest:He went to every one of my productions, every one of my shows, and was the first guy to tell me when I did a little Michel de Gelderod play.
Guest:He said, Michael, you were good.
Guest:You were really good.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And that was that.
Guest:Did you train?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did.
Guest:I was fortunate enough in the summer times, I went back to a place called the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theater in Waterford, Connecticut.
Guest:They had the National Playwrights Conference.
Guest:And I worked there basically just in construction and trying to build theaters, but I would get a chance to play small parts.
Guest:And they had a...
Guest:is National Playwrights Conference.
Guest:And it was at a time when there were just these great writers, Israel Horowitz, John Guare, a whole bunch of really, really fabulous, Sam Shepard.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So I started doing these last two, three summers.
Guest:That's where I met Danny DeVito at this theater and all of that.
Guest:Oh, you did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you knew him when he was starting out?
Guest:I knew him when he was at the American Academy.
Guest:I knew Danny DeVito when he had long hair.
Yeah.
Guest:really and that's when he had hair period forget bc that's pete that's bd before nanny yeah so there we were one day i'm looking out in new london out of long island sound with the fog coming in the hoop the fog horns yeah and this little guy comes up to me and uh you know and he uh long hair hey hey hey
Guest:You get high?
Guest:I said... And that was the beginning?
Guest:That was the beginning, yeah.
Marc:And he's around.
Marc:He's in this new thing.
Marc:He's in the Kaminsky Method.
Marc:He shows up in a lot of your movies.
Marc:He was a dear friend.
Guest:But to finish your thing, yeah, so after...
Guest:When I graduated from school, I went to New York City, studied with a guy named Wynn Handman, who, bless his soul, is 94 years old and he's still teaching.
Guest:And then basically got picked up with a CBS Playhouse.
Guest:They were still doing those?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:So you're a regular player on the CBS Playhouse.
Guest:No, the CBS Playhouse was like an original production, and it was one-off.
Guest:It was with Tish Sterling, I remember.
Guest:And so I did that, and I got some attention, and then came back out to Hollywood and started.
Guest:And then you started a couple TV things, and then you got straight to San Francisco.
Guest:TV things.
Guest:I did two or three movies that were turkeys, and then I started going into episodic television, medical center, FBI.
Marc:Medical center.
Guest:Chad Everett.
Guest:Chad.
Guest:At Everett, right.
Guest:And then the streets came up.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Which was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
Marc:Did you know Malden when you were a kid?
Guest:No, I didn't.
Guest:Although both Carl and my father were in summer stock together and they both changed their names at the same time.
Guest:Carl was Mladen Sekulevic.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He's a Serb.
Guest:And dad was Istio Daniellovic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And those are two tough names in lights, right?
Marc:But they weren't friends?
Marc:No, they were friends.
Guest:They didn't know each other.
Guest:They were friends that summer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they both basically changed their names.
Guest:Carl and add to Kirk.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you did a lot of streets of San Francisco.
Marc:104 hours.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:104 hours.
Guest:And you got an Emmy for that?
Guest:No, I was nominated two or three times.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But that's the whole basis and structure of my life or my success was those hours with Carl Malden from Gary, Indiana, Steel Mill Town, who taught me the value and work ethic.
Marc:Really?
Guest:He was the guy?
Yeah.
Guest:He was the guy.
Guest:And the structure of working on an hour show, which is actually 52 minutes in seven days of filming with a new director every week, new guest stars.
Guest:And I learned my responsibility of carrying the plot line or this or that.
Guest:So all the business stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The business, but just the technical parts of, and also whatever stage fears that I had from earlier, just staring at that camera every day reduced that.
Guest:And it also, so when I left that show after four years and it was a big hit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:to go produce One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Guest:And everybody thought I was crazy.
Guest:Why are you leaving a hit show in your fifth year?
Guest:I was just doing well.
Guest:Oh, they were going to keep doing it?
Guest:Oh, the show was a big hit.
Guest:So did it go on without you?
Guest:Yeah, it went on only for one more season with another guy.
Guest:What happened to that guy?
Guest:Richard Hatch, it didn't go so well.
Guest:The show didn't work out.
Guest:Carl and I, I think Carl was, you know, but I look back and again, I have to remind people, you know, I mean, in this day and age of the contracts, you think, back then I went to Quinn Martin, who's a big, big television producer, and Carl said, I'd like to leave.
Guest:I have a contract, but I'd like to leave.
Guest:And, I mean, today you say that, you say, yeah, fat chance.
Guest:I mean, they both said, hey, I know how much this means to you.
Guest:Go for it.
Guest:It's okay.
Marc:So it was towards production.
Marc:And that seemed like a weird jump in and of itself, right?
Marc:You're leaving because you want to get into- Producing, not stepping into acting.
Marc:And what was the story like?
Marc:Because I know that it's probably something you've talked about, but in terms of how Cuckoo's Nest worked, getting from... Because I know there was tension with Kesey, right?
Marc:There was.
Marc:And it went from... Your dad had, what, the rights to the stage play?
Guest:No, he acquired the rights to the book.
Guest:He acquired the book in galley form.
Guest:He owned the book.
Guest:Kirk did.
Guest:Kirk did.
Guest:1959.
Guest:Because he wanted to play McMurphy.
Guest:McMurphy, yeah.
Guest:He wanted to play McMurphy, and he had the book...
Guest:adapted by Dale Wasserman into a play.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And at the height of his career, at the height of his career, right after Spartacus, he went back to New York and did this play, made a commitment, you know, as a big movie star.
Guest:With the idea that it would be successful.
Guest:He would receive some critical acclaim.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they would make it into a movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Didn't do well.
Guest:Wasn't received well in production.
Guest:The play.
Guest:The play was not.
Guest:It was a little ahead of his time.
Guest:And so it closed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It closed after a period of time.
Guest:He then tried for a few years to try to get it made into a film or to make a film.
Guest:But nobody wanted to do it.
Guest:He was obsessed with it.
Guest:Well, he liked it.
Guest:But it's like a lot of projects he had.
Guest:But he wanted to get it made in a film.
Guest:He couldn't get it.
Guest:Meantime, I go into college.
Guest:Now the book has come out.
Guest:Three years, four years later, you take a 20th century American literature class.
Guest:One Flow of the Cuckoo's Nest is 20th century American lit.
Guest:And it's great.
Guest:It's a fabulous story.
Guest:It is.
Guest:And so now I've gone off and I've started my career.
Guest:And as I said, I've had a little bump in the road.
Guest:We're out of feature films.
Guest:We're starting to do episodic television.
Guest:And I hear the dad is now selling his rights.
Guest:He's given up trying to make it.
Guest:He wants to sell the rights to him.
Marc:When you say that, okay, so you did a few films and then you do episodic television, did that seem like a demotion to you?
Marc:I mean, on some level, were you gunning for movies to be in movies and that doing episodic television at some point became sort of like, well, this isn't where I want to go.
Guest:Yeah, well, sure.
Guest:I mean, if you're fortunate enough to get a contract, a movie contract, and at that time it was with CBS Films, and you're starring in movies.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I remember my first movie was actually shown at Radio City Music Hall.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And one of my friends, you know, Radio City Music Hall has got 6,000 seats.
Guest:And he called me.
Guest:How was it?
Guest:It was a long pause.
Guest:Michael, there were more people on stage than there were in the audience.
Guest:You see the Rockettes.
Guest:The Rockettes were all TV.
Guest:There was nobody.
Guest:So, yeah, so it was a demotion.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there always was a big separation between television.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And movies where they have to pay to see you.
Marc:So it was a double-edged sword.
Marc:You got an incredible amount of education about the nature of working and acting, but you wanted to do bigger things.
Guest:Well, I wanted to produce.
Guest:I mean, if it wasn't for Cuckoo's Nest, I mean, I never thought about producing.
Guest:I just had a passion for this project.
Guest:I loved this book.
Guest:So did you have to buy the rights from your old man?
Guest:No.
Guest:I said, let me run with it for a year, and then let me try to get it set up.
Guest:So it took longer than that.
Guest:And he said, you know, he's very nice and give you an opportunity.
Guest:But I said, no, we'll share the deal.
Guest:You'll get the credit from your company and I'll try to get you the part that you want to play.
Guest:It's such a great part.
Guest:So he has not forgiven me for this day that he didn't play that part.
Guest:And I explained to him and he sort of blames it on me.
Guest:And I said, wait a minute, what happened to directors having the choice?
Guest:But years had passed and he was older than two and his career had changed.
Marc:So like, oh, he was too old to play McMurphy at that time.
Guest:A little older, yeah.
Marc:It was a little older, exactly.
Marc:So you brought Milos in?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I brought Milos Forman in.
Guest:I developed a screenplay originally.
Guest:With?
Guest:With a guy named Larry Hauben.
Guest:He was a friend of mine.
Guest:And then I went through some of my father's back files of the people that expressed interest over the years.
Guest:And I found this group led by Saul Zantz out of Fantasy Records in Berkeley, California.
Marc:Time has not done his reputation well.
Marc:With the Credence Clearwater.
Marc:With the Credence Clearwater.
Guest:Certainly as a film producer who also did Amadeus and others, he had great taste.
Guest:There has been obviously a lot of discussion and debate with Credence Clearwater and John Fogerty.
Guest:Zantz can't dance.
Guest:Sure, Zantz can't dance.
Guest:He took the whole catalog.
Guest:All of that.
Guest:But he was my partner who did a great job together.
Guest:But that wasn't, it just turned out, I mean, it was just a passion for that project.
Guest:I didn't think of being a producer.
Guest:But I realized that with my four years of 104 hours of streets that I had learned a whole hell of a lot about producing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I knew a lot.
Guest:And so it paid off.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And Nicholson, you know, did you know him before?
Marc:No.
Guest:And he wasn't necessarily our first choice.
Guest:One of the directors that expressed strong interest for was Hal Ashby.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Hal Ashby.
Marc:Just a new doc about him.
Guest:New documentary out about him.
Guest:He was quite a guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you did Harold and Maude and the landlord.
Guest:Being there.
Guest:Shampoo.
Guest:Shampoo, yeah.
Marc:Oh, and the last detail.
Guest:Last detail.
Guest:Well, that was the whole point because it didn't work out with Hal.
Guest:Hal and Saul didn't hit well.
Guest:And when we got with Milos,
Guest:We were trying to find out who to play McMurphy.
Guest:And Marlon Brando turned the part down.
Guest:Gene Hackman turned the part down.
Guest:And I know it's hard to think about Jack now because he looks so perfect for the part.
Guest:But at that point, Jack was sort of the gentleman, the gentleman young man.
Guest:He was an easy rider.
Guest:He was the intellect college guy and all of that.
Guest:And Hal said, listen, I just did this picture.
Guest:It hasn't come out yet called The Last Detail.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:where I think you'll see a Jack that you hadn't seen before.
Guest:And he showed me some outtakes and some scenes from the picture, which I then shared with Zack.
Guest:And so we went in that direction.
Guest:Milos for a while was infatuated with Burt Reynolds.
Guest:May he rest in peace.
Guest:And if you think about it, Burt would have been a very interestingly and charming choice.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I love the- Could have done it.
Guest:Milos's lines are, no, no, Bert, he's got cheap charisma.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Cheap charisma.
Guest:Yeah, what is that?
Guest:It's a great line.
Guest:But he's a wonderful guy.
Guest:It was an interesting idea, but he did okay with Jack.
Marc:Yeah, and the movie turned out incredibly well, obviously.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:I watch it once a year, I think.
Marc:There are certain movies that I watch once a year.
Marc:I just watched Wall Street again, actually, on the airplane.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Your movie.
Marc:I haven't seen that for a while.
Marc:You haven't?
Marc:Yeah, you're great in it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it was a great part.
Marc:So what was it like?
Marc:Before we move off of Cuckoo's Nest, what was the dynamic with Keezy?
Guest:Well, when we first got together with Saul, is that my partner?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We went up to Ken, to say to Ken, and we offered Ken a writing deal to write the screenplay.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we said, listen, you write the screenplay, and we gave him a percentage.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And so Ken wrote the screenplay, and like a lot of authors of books, screenwriting and the visual of a movie is a different medium.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the screenplay just didn't work out.
Guest:So he did write something.
Guest:He wrote a screenplay.
Marc:Well, the whole book is from the point of view of the chief.
Guest:The book is from the point of view of the chief and can continue to have the movie from the point of view of the psychedelic psychedelic psychedelic of the chief.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Vision and all of that.
Guest:The poetry of that.
Marc:And so it didn't work out.
Marc:And you were trying to make a, like it was on your mind that you needed to sell this movie.
Marc:So you weren't making some sort of experimental film.
Guest:Well, it was a, I mean, it was a unique project.
Guest:It was just a point of view that we didn't share.
Guest:And we realized in hindsight, we shouldn't have.
Guest:that it's extremely difficult for a writer of a novel, you know, to be able to open himself up to think in terms of a screenplay.
Guest:But in any event, we got into a contractual, silly kind of contractual issue, which I think was as much in hindsight about saving face where, you know, Ken said, well, basically he said, I get a percentage of,
Guest:whether I do it or not.
Guest:So I get that percentage, but then I should obviously get another percentage.
Guest:And it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no.
Guest:And he didn't want to have lawyers, no lawyers involved.
Guest:He didn't want to have lawyers or anything like that.
Guest:He wanted to have Hell's Angels do it, do the negotiation.
Guest:So it was unfortunate.
Guest:I spent time with him up there, and he was obviously a key member and was on the bus.
Guest:Yeah, all up on the hog farm you went up there.
Guest:Yeah, we up there and all of that.
Guest:And he's an amazing guy and is the only unfortunate and disappointing part of this whole story.
Guest:And it ended up we kept maintained his interest in escrow for him as this struggle and debate went on and on.
Guest:And then finally, Saul said, look, we're going to donate your share to the University of Oregon to the Ken Kesey and create the Ken Kesey Chair in American Literature.
Guest:And he settled.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:That was it?
Marc:And there's a story that he claimed to never have gone to see the movie.
Marc:That's what he said.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there was some story about a Hell's Angel or what was it?
Marc:No, someone asked him about...
Marc:Why hadn't he seen the movie?
Marc:He said, well, if a bunch of Hell's Angels came up to your door and said, we're out front raping your daughter, you want to come watch?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you know that story?
Marc:Something like that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The mythology?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was unfortunate.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It really was.
Guest:And it was the one part because it was a magical experience.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I always wished that he could have been part of it.
Guest:And you pull your buddy Danny in.
Guest:Well, Danny had been, DeVito had been in the first off-Broadway production because after the failure- As Martini?
Guest:As Martini.
Guest:Because after my dad's failure of the Broadway production, then the book came out and then the play was revived and became a very big kind of off-Broadway San Francisco productions, off-Broadway in New York.
Guest:And Danny was the first guy that was cast because I-
Guest:I dragged Milos down to see the production, and he had Martini down, so he was the first cast out of the box.
Marc:Yeah, it's a great character.
Marc:I just get sort of caught up with the nostalgia of it, I guess.
Guest:No, it was a magical story because it was all about innocence.
Guest:I mean, we look back at hindsight.
Guest:We shot in a state mental hospital in Oregon in January.
Guest:I mean, it gets dark at 3 o'clock, 3.30 in the afternoon.
Guest:The whole thing could have been done on a set.
Guest:The magic of finding the Indian, the big chief, Will Sampson, finding this amazing guy was just a fortunate man.
Guest:And all those cats, Christopher Lloyd's in there, and the guy, who was Cheswick?
Guest:Yeah, Cheswick.
Guest:Yeah, he was on.
Guest:We thought we might have to leave Cheswick up there for a while.
Marc:So then after that experience of producing, you kind of leaned into acting for a while, and then-
Guest:Well, no, I'm now an Academy Award winning producer.
Guest:I got an Oscar as a producer, and yet I'm a television actor who's trying to get into feature films.
Guest:And there was a big disparity back then.
Guest:Before me, there's only two guys I could think of who had been in television shows, Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen.
Guest:who had made the transfer from television into feature films.
Guest:Did you know those guys?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I knew Steve McQueen produced one of the first movies I ever did, so I knew Steve.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:It was called Adam at 6 a.m.
Guest:I got to know Steve pretty well.
Marc:He was a lovely man.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you went out, so you're still part of you, like you wanted to get credibility as a film actor.
Guest:Yeah, and I couldn't, so that's why I started producing The China Syndrome, and I got a part for me in the picture.
Guest:It was the secondary lead.
Guest:Jack Lemmon, huh?
Guest:Yeah, Jack Lemmon, Jane Fonda.
Guest:How was Jack?
Guest:Jack was the best.
Guest:This is a picture again.
Guest:It took me longer to set up.
Guest:He waited a year.
Guest:This was a strong issue, the nuclear...
Guest:Yeah, meltdown.
Guest:Nuclear power and the meltdown was an issue that was very dear to his heart.
Guest:And he waited a year for that part.
Marc:Jane Fonda was great.
Guest:It's a great movie.
Guest:It was.
Guest:And then Romancing the Stone, again, was a picture where I was fortunate to get into it.
Guest:Then I was producing pictures.
Guest:So you produced and that.
Guest:I starred in that, right?
Guest:Yeah, I produced that.
Guest:But then I had pictures like Starman, which Jeff Bridges did, which I was not approved.
Guest:I was not approved by the studio as an actor, as an actor for that.
Guest:With John Carpenter?
Guest:Well, John Carpenter.
Marc:Directed it, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a good movie.
Marc:It was an interesting movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you just produced it, but you wanted to be in it.
Marc:Yeah, I wanted to be in it.
Marc:You wanted to be the main guy?
Marc:I wanted to be the Jeff Bridges part, yeah.
Marc:And this is after Romancing the Stone, which was a huge hit, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you're like a movie star for that movie, like the adventurous comedic lead almost of romancing this stuff.
Guest:Yeah, but even then I was fortunate to get it.
Guest:I mean, it was a tight budget picture.
Marc:Have you been producing?
Marc:You couldn't cast yourself?
Marc:I couldn't cast myself.
Marc:Because the studio said, what do we know about you?
Guest:Well, that's the way you're approved.
Guest:Carl Malden's not here.
Guest:Well, yeah, it's not television.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:It's not television.
Marc:So it's still a fight when you're making millions of dollars for these guys?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No one's willing to gamble at it?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:So when did that turn around?
Guest:For me, ultimately, it really ultimately didn't turn around until the year 85 with the combination of Fatal Attraction and Wall Street.
Guest:The two pictures came out within three months of each other.
Guest:Fatal Attraction was a...
Guest:A huge commercial success as well as sort of viscerally hitting a note.
Guest:And then Wall Street, you know, I had a great part and got the Oscar.
Guest:So that was the year that both took me, I think, out of the shadow of my father's shadow as well as really established me as, you know,
Marc:So it's so weird because I wouldn't have thought looking back on it that it would be seen that it took you that, like, you know, that was a struggle.
Marc:Because you're a big mocker in show business at that point.
Marc:Right.
Marc:As a producer.
Guest:As a producer.
Marc:But in your heart, you're like, why can't I...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it was.
Guest:It was... Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, this is the one area where being your father's son is not really a big benefit because people say, oh, you know, you look... It's just like your father.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:It's just like...
Guest:You know, and you're trying to establish your own identity.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And create who you are.
Guest:And so sometime, and interestingly, my father in his career early on, he played a lot of sensitive young men roles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it wasn't until he did a picture called The Champion where he played a prick, you know, a boxer and a tough guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And for me, it wasn't until Wall Street where I played a Gordon Gekko tough guy that really helped identify my character and sort of
Guest:Separate me from that.
Guest:Morally compromised, sympathetic character.
Guest:I don't know if Gefko is completely sympathetic.
Guest:I wouldn't say sympathetic.
Marc:Human.
Guest:Yeah, human.
Guest:And that's basically been the crux of my career is the gray area.
Guest:I am, and it might be, we talked earlier about the Vietnam War, where the biggest difference I see is between...
Guest:and white hats in World War II and the Westerns and good guys and bad guys.
Guest:And then for me, from the 60s, 70s and everything, it was more of a gray area as to who's right and who's wrong.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What's good and what's bad.
Guest:Now we have what's true and what isn't.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You know?
Guest:And that is an area that I guess I didn't consciously...
Guest:do it but has overcome if I look back over all my projects is this area of people struggling to do the right thing but still have avarice and those desires and everything else and how do you do the right thing that's interesting
Marc:Because it's interesting because the 70s movies during the war, you know, where these antiheroes that sort of became championed were more sort of existentially challenged, you know, as opposed to morally challenged.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And your dad, too, like he played a lot of heavies.
Marc:yeah i mean out of the past is one of my favorite movies yeah i fucking love that movie ace in the hole oh ace in the hole jesus it was hard to find that movie for a while so as you do these movies like and then there was you did a couple where the guy you know you were at the you were at both sides of it you were the guy having the affair and in what the fatal attraction then in in perfect murder i mean the one with demi moore which is the one oh that was disclosure
Guest:Where you played the other side of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm surprised.
Guest:I shouldn't even mention this.
Guest:But during this whole Me Too movement and everything, I've been surprised that people haven't jumped out at that picture.
Guest:That was a little in your face where we kind of did a reverse thing on harassment.
Guest:We had a female boss harassing.
Marc:Yeah, why it hasn't been used as an example.
Marc:Yeah, it seems like they're more concerned.
Marc:It's a tougher thing to...
Marc:In terms of holding people accountable for the work they did, they're more concerned with what you did.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right?
Marc:But so as you continue to act, I mean, you were able to really have a shot at everything, you know, action hero.
Marc:I tried.
Guest:I mean, I think the thing that I'm most proud about now is that you're right.
Guest:Most actors sort of find a...
Guest:a mold or a certain identity.
Guest:And people say to me all the time, they say, Michael Douglas, you know, when I see your name, I don't know what it's going to be, but I know it's going to be good.
Guest:And I go, all right, man, thank you.
Guest:I'll take that.
Marc:It's true.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, so it's true.
Marc:You bring yourself to all of it.
Marc:There's something about you that we all kind of know.
Marc:I think that's the nature of like, yeah, I mean, you're a movie star, you know, and you're a great actor.
Marc:But like there's something about you're not a character actor per se.
Marc:I like I love to do character.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But you're going to be, you know, happy to see Michael Douglas.
Marc:You know, you're not one of those like, who's that guy?
Marc:I see that guy all the time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You're not Ned Beatty.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Not yet.
Guest:God bless him.
Guest:Still fighting my weight though.
Marc:You've played presidents.
Marc:You've done the whole thing.
Marc:But there are certain characters also in the Kaminsky method as well because
Marc:there's a movie about old guys right and about guys that are dealing with those issues uh but like you've it seems like there's been a lot of points in your life where you've played characters that you relate to certain you know elements of your life i mean like traffic that was a hell of a role traffic was a was a great i'm i'm uh i keep up on current events i mean i read i read a lot of newspapers i like to think that i'm sort of in in touch with stuff and
Guest:And so, you know, people, I do take pride in sort of learning what the zeitgeist is.
Guest:So whether it's a movie like Falling Down.
Guest:That was an insane movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who directed that?
Marc:Joel Schumacher.
Marc:I mean, Falling Down, like that part, like how do you, I mean, because like out of all the films you've done that I've seen and remember, that was something where you almost lost yourself.
Marc:Where you could watch that movie and it wasn't a Michael Douglas movie in a sense.
Marc:So what was the story around taking that part and how did you approach it?
Guest:I just... It was just Ebby Rose with a beautifully written script and to me...
Guest:It was right after the Vietnam War was over.
Guest:And it's hard for a lot of people to remember.
Marc:Oh, the character.
Marc:Not the movie wasn't made then.
Guest:Yeah, no, the character, the whole thing.
Guest:And people kind of forget in L.A., but L.A.
Guest:was sort of the defense center.
Guest:It wasn't about movie business.
Guest:We had our major defense contractors were here in Los Angeles.
Guest:Oh, with the rockets?
Guest:Yeah, and all.
Guest:And so here was a guy who was a patriot in the country and was pink-slipped.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:for his job in the defense contracting business because the war was over.
Guest:We don't need you anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And who kind of just lost it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and was in a divorce with his wife and this and that and lost his identity and, and, and this vision of, of having a, of drop, leaving his car caught in a traffic jam and walking across LA and, and, and dealing with every politically incorrect situation might happen to you.
Marc:It was like a, uh, like it was, uh, uh,
Guest:picaresque it was like candide yeah just you know from it just gets worse and worse it wasn't funny it well some of them were funny and that's the other area i love i mean it's a lot to do with the kaminsky method i love nervous laughter i love dramedies you know yeah in this area where you go because that's what life is about well yeah the scene with forest what was uh what's his name you know from yeah fred forest fred forest yeah
Marc:That almost got comedic.
Marc:He played that so broad.
Marc:Or the Korean grocery stores.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Your reactions, that's true.
Marc:There was definitely comedy in there.
Guest:There was.
Guest:Dark comedy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I love dark comedy.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I'm a sick guy.
Marc:No, no, I love it too, but in really thinking about it, it is almost a comedic character, that character, because it's like life is shitting on him.
Guest:Well, you just can't believe the absurdities, just the insanity of life not making any sense.
Marc:But when you immerse yourself in a role like that one, and not unlike... Like Kaminsky Method, this new series on Netflix, I think it's pretty close to...
Marc:familiar territory for you as a person, you know, in terms of show business, maybe in terms of who you are.
Marc:But when you really think about something like falling down or like playing Liberace.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, Liberace is a guy, but this falling down guy, I mean, when you approach as an actor, what do you got to turn on or off in you to sort of like, you know, to peel away at that thing?
Marc:Do you think about that?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's the writing.
Marc:It's the writing.
Guest:And you picked, you know, Ebby Rose Smith, it's just really, really good writing.
Guest:And, you know, then you work, Jack Nicholson always accuses me, you know, Mikey, Mikey D, you're a hair actor, you know.
Guest:I mean, different ways, you know, like, you know, like falling down is a flat top.
Guest:But you find it different ways.
Guest:You know, Gordon Gekko was, you know, Pat Riley.
Guest:You know, you find different kind of hair thing.
Guest:You find different stuff that kind of helps.
Marc:It's true.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:You put the pants on and you become the guy.
Guest:You know, that's what I do.
Guest:And that's the fun is there's basically two ways of acting.
Guest:You know, one is putting on the mask and the clown and that's the joy of character acting.
Guest:That's the fun of character acting is you create this kind of character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It gives you all the freedom in the world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or you're doing stuff where you're stripping everything off.
Guest:You're going down to your skeleton.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that.
Guest:So for the longest time, somebody told me early on about acting and said, you know, the camera can tell when you're lying.
Uh-huh.
Guest:Ooh, ooh, the camera can tell when you're lying.
Guest:So earlier in my career, acting was so painful because I was dealing so much with reality and trying to be truthful and acting was painful.
Guest:And then one day I said, wait a minute.
Guest:I lie every day.
Guest:At least once a day.
Guest:I lie about something.
Guest:That's what it's about.
Guest:I lie.
Guest:And all of a sudden I realized, acting's all about lying.
Guest:It's just being a good liar, isn't it?
Guest:And I sound so silly now, but it totally freed me up and gave me, almost made me, I started laughing with the freedom that it gave me.
Guest:I can do anything I want.
Guest:So it's a contradiction to the camera always not the truth.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That was bullshit.
Guest:No, exactly.
Guest:You look right.
Guest:That camera's like John Lovett's character.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm going to do that.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can say anything you want.
Marc:Now we have a president that makes a career out of lying.
Marc:Well, exactly.
Marc:And 40% of the country somehow believes it.
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:I didn't realize you produced The Rainmaker.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Francis Coppola.
Guest:I love that fucking movie.
Guest:Matt Damon was so good in that role.
Marc:It's a great script.
Marc:It's like one of these weird, like Coppola, some of these cats that you came up with, they get known for this weird swath of time, and then they get a little inconsistent, but The Rainmaker's a great, solid movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Yeah, it was.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, but he really, it was his baby.
Guest:And Francis was, you know, it just was great.
Guest:Francis, was he championing that whole thing?
Guest:Well, we brought him in and he took care of it.
Guest:He was always wonderful.
Guest:Emails, like the first time I knew about emails.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But he would, you know, keep you a bridge and everything, what he wanted to do and what he was doing.
Guest:But, you know, you just, you were in the hands of somebody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had gotten to know him from when I was in San Francisco on the television show.
Marc:Oh, you did?
Guest:Because he had that building right downtown.
Guest:American Zoetrope.
Guest:In North Beach forever.
Guest:North Beach, right.
Guest:The big copper building.
Guest:Right, and then La Tosca, a little bar right underneath there.
Marc:Yeah, now they've got the winery and everything.
Guest:All this stuff.
Marc:So when you do something like, what was your experience in, because traffic's heavy, man.
Marc:I mean, your story in that movie is heavy.
Marc:You got a daughter who's strung out, and you're the drug czar, and you've had your own experience with drugs.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You got sober?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You mean me personally?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was in rehab in 1991.
Guest:Probably more alcohol, but drugs were part of it.
Guest:Did you stay off it?
Yeah.
Guest:Not really.
Guest:I mean, I think everything became a question of moderations, you know, and all of that.
Guest:But, you know, yeah, just not liking the way you wake up in the morning anymore and kids and...
Guest:you got out of control going on but you have to uh um yeah i think you all have to be careful like i've got um i've had addiction issues in my family i've lost a brother i knew um eric i knew him went from the comedy scene because it back in new york used to walking around all sweaty with his dog
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And Eric lost Eric.
Guest:Yeah, it's sad.
Guest:And my oldest boy was a heroin addict.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:He spent seven and a half years in federal prison.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:I didn't know that.
Guest:Yeah, for a nonviolent drug offense.
Guest:How's he?
Guest:He's fine, thank you.
Guest:He's doing really well.
Guest:He's an actor, a really good actor.
Guest:Oh, good.
Marc:That's hard to get through.
Marc:It's really hard to come back from that.
Marc:It's good to hear.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, he's doing good.
Guest:But, you know, I think you learn about genetics amongst other things.
Guest:You've got to be more careful.
Marc:You saw it in your family?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So both sides.
Guest:And, you know, I think my younger ones, it's been great.
Guest:I mean, unfortunately, with the difficulties.
Guest:Your new ones.
Guest:My new ones.
Guest:So they keep a much closer eye on it.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and you have a conversation about it ongoing.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Well, that's great.
Marc:The Liberace movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I've watched that thing like five times, man.
Marc:You're so fucking good at it.
Marc:The two of you are too good at it.
Guest:I can't, like, did you know Liberace?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I mean, not well, but I did.
Guest:He was around, right?
Guest:He was around when my father played some Palm Springs.
Guest:I would go out on holidays and visit.
Guest:And I do remember one day...
Guest:We're driving home.
Guest:Everybody had convertibles back then.
Guest:Nobody worried about the sun.
Guest:But there was, you know, dad stopped.
Guest:This guy pulled up in a Rolls Royce convertible.
Guest:It was a bright day.
Guest:All I remember is I could hardly see him.
Guest:You were a kid?
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I was maybe 16.
Guest:Uh-huh, yeah.
Guest:And I could hardly see him just because the sun was banging against his gold and he had diamonds.
Guest:And it was just, he was simmering.
Guest:It was, hey, Lee, how are you?
Guest:Hi, Kirk, how are you?
Guest:You know, and they just would say,
Guest:It was just the best.
Guest:He was a sweet guy, right?
Guest:Lovely guy.
Guest:Everybody loved it.
Guest:A wonderful host and a great guy.
Guest:And, you know, that project, you know, for a lot of reasons, meant so much for me because, you know, I had a stage four cancer bout.
Guest:which I was fortunate enough to get through.
Guest:That was recently.
Guest:Well, six, seven years ago now.
Guest:But, you know, it was a time, you know, I had two other friends had the same cancer I had, Larry Hagman, you know, was one, and then Nick Ashford of Ashford and Simpson.
Guest:That's how Hagman died?
Guest:Was it mouth cancer?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It started there?
Marc:Throat cancer.
Marc:Throat cancer.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:From smoking?
Marc:Don't know what.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know what...
Marc:Wasn't there some rumor going around from eating pussy?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Who started that one?
Guest:Well, no, there is an HPV-16 virus, which is an HPV-16 virus which can cause...
Guest:Cervical cancers and throat cancers and this and that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I did have HPV-16 virus.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:But also, if you have that virus, it's the best opportunity you have of overcoming.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Your cancer.
Guest:So I got a little trouble just for spreading the message.
Guest:There's a vaccination that is out there.
Guest:And would encourage all younger people before they become sexually active to take the vaccination and will limit about half a dozen different cancer viruses.
Guest:From the HPV.
Guest:From the HPV.
Guest:You got into trouble for saying that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was taken the wrong, you know, the tabloids pick it up and they make it.
Guest:You're trying to do a public service and they turn it into dirt.
Guest:But yeah, so anyway, but one of the things, mine was getting dentists, for instance.
Guest:It was very simple for dentists when you went in for dentistry, just to stick their fingers down the back of your tongue and throat to check for tumors, which they were not doing before.
Guest:And now many, many doctors and any of your listeners, I would encourage you to ask their dentists.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:They'd have them.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you were able to, it was an advanced stage.
Guest:Yeah, so it was an advanced stage.
Guest:So anyway, getting through, the Liberace thing came, and I was so excited about it, so excited about it.
Guest:And then Matt was already there, and Steven Soderbergh, and then they came to me.
Guest:I was just in remission.
Guest:And they said, you know, each of us, we got projects to do.
Guest:We're going to put this off for a year.
Guest:We're going to put this off for a bit.
Guest:We got projects to do.
Guest:And I was heartbroken because I thought, oh, no, this isn't going to happen.
Guest:This is not going to happen.
Guest:But the truth was, and I still get emotional about this, both guys...
Guest:I mean, I was happy to be alive.
Guest:I didn't really look at myself.
Guest:They could look at me and I was 30 pounds underweight.
Guest:There's no way this guy does not look- From chemo.
Guest:From chemo and radiation.
Guest:And so they put it on themselves.
Guest:They said, let's wait a year and let Michael get back and get his weight back and all of that.
Guest:And so-
Guest:And what I was able to do was have an extra year to work with the piano and work on the voice and all of that stuff.
Guest:And it just made it so much more rewarding when it all came about.
Marc:And I imagine the struggle with Liberace's disease, like he must have been right at the forefront of your recollection.
Marc:The struggle with which?
Marc:With his disease, like with AIDS that he couldn't talk about.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But like, you know, your immediate memory of that fear and that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I look back and again, Matt Damon, you know, would I, you know, it was fine for me at my age to do Liberace and do a character and gay guy dying.
Guest:Would I in the prime of my career, you know, as a leading man have done this?
Guest:I.
Guest:You don't know, you know?
Guest:So, I mean, Matt Damon, I take my hat off.
Guest:He dove into that project, Matt, and it was great.
Marc:He's really the best of his generation, really.
Marc:When he puts his mind to it, it's really something else.
Marc:Yeah, I'm impressed with him, too.
Marc:That scene in the hot tub where you go like, who are you talking to, Mumbles?
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:I'll wait the whole fucking movie to hear you say that.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So let me ask you a question about, like, a couple of odd questions.
Marc:I'm going to talk a little bit about the Kaminsky Method.
Marc:Like, you did the remake of The In-Laws.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And was you in Albert Brooks?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you didn't do the first one.
Marc:You didn't produce it, did you?
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:But that's Alan Arkin, who you're now working with.
Marc:Alan Arkin, Peter Falk.
Marc:Alan Arkin was in the Ridgewood.
Marc:Serpentine, Shell Serpentine.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:I always wonder about why things are remade.
Marc:I mean, I understand sequels.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it seems like there's a lot of stuff that gets remade.
Marc:And if you have a connection to the first one, you're sort of like, why are you going to do that again?
Guest:No, it's true.
Guest:But it's a funny movie.
Guest:Yeah, it was a funny picture.
Guest:It was a gig that came up.
Guest:And quite honestly, for me, and this is part going into the Kaminsky method, which is comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love comedy.
Guest:I'm not inherently a comedian.
Guest:I'm fascinated about comedy.
Guest:I think comedy is always short-changed.
Guest:I think we all love our funny friends, right?
Guest:When it comes Oscar time, nobody ever acknowledges a comedic performance, which is so much more difficult than drama.
Guest:We all know how to be...
Guest:dramatic sure sure we all know how to be confrontational yeah sad intense it's the people that find that that comedic interpretation of life can make you chuckle yeah yeah so Reynolds is great at it Ryan he's fantastic oh my god I mean the Deadpool stuff is just unbelievable
Guest:So as to the in-laws, that's probably why I definitely want to do that because I'm always trying to find out, which is what brought me to Chuck Lorre and the Kaminsky Method, one of the reasons why I was so excited to do this.
Guest:I mean, Chuck Lorre is such a good writer.
Marc:Yeah, it's a tricky thing you're doing.
Marc:Like when he came to you with it, did he have Arkin already?
Marc:No.
Marc:No, I was the first writer.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:And have you worked with Alan Arkin before?
Guest:Had I?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I hadn't worked, nor had Chuck.
Guest:I mean, Alan's got a real... He's out of the Second City.
Guest:He's got a comedic background.
Marc:Oh, no, he's great.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's fine, but no, we had not...
Marc:Is he pleasant to work with?
Marc:I'm sort of fascinated with that guy.
Marc:You?
Guest:Yeah, he's... Yeah, he's... All right, all right.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:No, he is.
Guest:I have a great relationship.
Guest:I love working with him, and he's great.
Guest:But there's a little bit of that cantankerous quality that we love in the character that is in Alan, although he would not want to admit it, but he's got a little wonderful...
Marc:quality he's a he's a brilliant actor and and the the two of you like it seems to me that at the ages you guys are at that this stuff that you that that's in the the kominsky method the things you're dealing with as aging men are very you know they're happening they are happening and the the thing and the beauty is that there's never very much fun that you can find about getting old chuck lorry he finds getting old funny
Guest:And so one of the things that I'm just loving about that is finding these comedic moments in part about getting old and two guys who've known each other for a long time and together.
Marc:And that's the interesting thing I noticed about watching it.
Marc:I'm about halfway through, so don't ruin it for me.
Marc:But the way he writes, it's a type of writing.
Marc:When you see a sitcom like The Big Bang Theory or Two and a Half Men or whatever the other ones he does, that's a three-camera setup.
Marc:You're going joke to joke.
Marc:So then when you do a single camera thing like this or more of a film-like kind of thing, and he's still writing bits, but he has to tweak it a bit.
Marc:It's almost like Neil Simon in a way where the dialogue is not essentially organic, but it has to be played properly.
Marc:you know, for it to work.
Marc:And you guys are doing great at it.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:It's a very astute difference between, I mean, the one camera versus four cameras, like night and days.
Guest:I mean, I'm sitting now in such envy of the Big Bang Theater.
Guest:They're like 35-hour weeks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe 40-hour max weeks.
Guest:Yeah, right, yeah.
Guest:We're doing 70, you know.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:It's entirely different kind of stuff.
Marc:Well, it's like vaudeville.
Marc:It's almost like a stage production.
Guest:Yeah, but it's two-dimensional in the sense that the audience is right out in front.
Guest:You have a live audience in front with them for cameras and whatever else versus actually just shooting kind of real scenes and locations.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But I'm loving it, and I can't say enough about the writing.
Guest:This is why all the good writers, screenwriters included, have moved over to television.
Guest:Because in television and the streaming areas, not only are you a writer, you can be the showrunner, you're the producer of the show.
Guest:It's much more financially beneficial.
Guest:And now with this stuff, with the Kaminsky method, half-hour comedy.
Guest:It can be 25 minutes long.
Guest:It can be 35 minutes long.
Guest:No commercials, fuck shit, piss, whatever you want to say or do.
Guest:It's like a movie.
Guest:So I'm having a ball.
Marc:Yeah, and I think it's a generational thing.
Marc:I see what he's trying to do, what you guys are doing.
Marc:It's something that my parents could love, but there's also an element where you're watching pros and you're seeing them interact with people of a different generation.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And, you know, it sort of, it definitely all works.
Marc:I was very, you know, I was happy to see you guys.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:That's great to hear.
Guest:But we're still, you know, but you're right.
Guest:I mean, I play an L.A., Los Angeles acting teacher, Sandy Kaminsky.
Guest:You know, we've got a lot of students.
Guest:And so we have this whole, and obviously, you know, assuming there will be upcoming seasons.
Guest:We're going to develop these younger kids that are in the classes and all of that and deal with this generation.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So that's the next phase.
Guest:I would think so.
Guest:And working with Chuck is great?
Guest:I don't know how he does it, man.
Guest:I mean, he promised us that he would be there like...
Guest:every day and he and he was and you know i'm looking he's got the you know he's got the big bang he's got young sheldon he's got mom you know it's just uh it's it's an amazing he's got all the money yeah yes he does so now you know so now you just come out here to work you're mostly in the east coast i live east coast i'm just out here for a few days uh emmys are coming up on monday they asked me to do something for that well they used to be more fun didn't they the award shows
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, yeah, everything seemed to be a lot more fun.
Guest:I mean, just we had more autonomy in the 70s and 80s.
Guest:It wasn't such vertically integrated.
Guest:I mean, studios, you went to the head of a studio and that was the boss.
Guest:That was the boss.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, it's just a division head of some huge vertically integrated company.
Marc:And also, I remember, I think it was Nicholson talking about what the Golden Globes used to be.
Marc:Oh, man.
Guest:It was rough.
Guest:It was like crazy, right?
Guest:Oh, it was insane between, you know, between the amount of drinking was going on, what was going on in the bathrooms, you know, what was happening.
Guest:It wasn't on TV either.
Guest:It wasn't on television, exactly.
Guest:I was going to just say that's what changed all these awards was the fact that they had to clean up their act.
Guest:To try to sew it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had a funny story.
Guest:I just got to remember.
Guest:I was saving the Golden Globes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was nominated for the Golden Globes.
Guest:I'm staying out.
Guest:I'm staying out of the Bel Air.
Guest:The Bel Air Hotel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm getting ready to go to the Globes.
Guest:I come out in the lobby and there's George Harrison.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he had just won Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And the thing had come back.
Guest:But Paul hadn't shown up.
Guest:I think there was some friction or whatever.
Guest:Anyway, I was just talking to him.
Guest:I said,
Guest:Just say, big fan, fantastic.
Guest:I go to the Golden Globes.
Guest:I win.
Guest:I took my mother.
Guest:I win.
Guest:By the time I finish all the press and everything and I come back out, everybody's going home.
Guest:You do all the press and go home.
Guest:So I take my mother to another home.
Guest:I go back to the hotel.
Guest:I'm feeling sorry for myself.
Guest:I sit there with my Golden Globe.
Marc:Where's the party?
Guest:Where's the party?
Guest:1230, my phone rings.
Guest:I said, yeah, hello, Michael.
Guest:I said, yeah, it's George.
Guest:George goes, hey, hi, George.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Me and my mate, we're just down here.
Guest:We thought maybe Ian would come over.
Guest:I said, yeah, yeah, come on, come on over.
Guest:Come on over.
Guest:So I knock, knock, open the door.
Guest:George Harrison walks in and Bob Dylan.
Guest:No.
Guest:Bob Dylan was the biggest fucking dog I have ever seen in my life.
Guest:I was a small pony.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he comes in and...
Guest:I order some caviar, a bunch of caviar.
Guest:Bob sits down, not saying much.
Guest:Bob's not talking.
Guest:The dog is walking.
Guest:I got to look up over the top.
Guest:The dog is walking back and forth in front of us.
Guest:All of a sudden, the dog smells the caviar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:smells here next thing and it goes 150 bucks a lick you know i'm looking as bob dylan's dog man is bob dylan's dog when i keep looking at bob dylan but hey you know he's not saying nothing you know so finally i see bob hasn't said where he finally opens his mouth he goes far out he likes caviar
Marc:that was it that was it that was all he talked that's all he did far out he likes caviar that's funny man it's funny too that like that moment that feeling of like you know you've reached this success like you know like where's the party there's no party and you're probably a huge fan of bob dylan and you never met him before never met him before you know that's the way it goes down yeah
Marc:It's nice to still be a fan of somebody.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, look, man.
Marc:Oh, Ant-Man 2.
Marc:You did both of those movies, right?
Guest:The two Ant-Man pictures.
Guest:We have Ant-Man and the Wasp is coming out in October now on the- DVDs or whatever the streaming.
Marc:Yeah, I just had Paul in here.
Guest:He's a great guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Paul's a guy who's got very, very funny.
Guest:He's funny.
Guest:He doesn't think he's funny.
Guest:Yeah, no, he's just so wiggy.
Guest:He's got a great ability, very dry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so I did all that, and they're going to probably do another one of those, and another season of The Kaminsky Method.
Guest:I got a Chinese movie I went and did.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:It was a Chinese-Chinese movie.
Guest:I went over to China, and I went all by myself, and I did a...
Guest:I did a Chinese movie.
Guest:I had one woman that couldn't bring anybody with me and had somebody translating for me.
Guest:I had my sides in English.
Guest:I didn't know what the hell a movie was about.
Guest:You have no idea?
Guest:Well, I've seen it now.
Guest:How is it?
Guest:Movie is fantastic.
Guest:It was number one picture in China.
Guest:It's a huge picture.
Guest:It's a big special effects green screen.
Guest:It was beautifully done.
Guest:It was really interesting.
Guest:Beautifully done.
Guest:I'm sort of a...
Guest:variation of a Gordon Gekko, Western, greedy, capitalist kind of villain character.
Guest:It was fine.
Marc:You just did it for fun, or you what?
Guest:I did it for the money, and I did it for... To see China?
Guest:To see China.
Guest:And, you know, my history as a producer, I produce pictures all over the world, in South Africa, everywhere, you know?
Guest:So I enjoy it, and it was a chance.
Guest:And that's the beauty of movies is...
Guest:Is there exactly the same cruise?
Guest:Everything is the same.
Marc:You get it.
Guest:It's a wonderful international language that we all share.
Marc:And do you still, like, you're not adverse to doing smaller pictures?
Marc:I saw Kopelman's picture, the solitary man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a heavy part, and that was good.
Guest:I love them.
Guest:I'm not adverse to it, but I now enjoy the streaming area because...
Guest:Solitary Man or another picture called King of California where you bust your ass.
Guest:You work for nothing.
Guest:There's no marketing budget.
Guest:You are the marketing budget.
Guest:You got to go.
Guest:And they ultimately end up playing for a week in theaters.
Guest:Then they go direct to streaming anyway.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So these areas now with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Facebook.
Guest:My wife, Catherine, has a series called Queen America that she's doing for Facebook.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's coming out in November.
Marc:So you're saying it seems more advantageous in a sense to, like when you do a smaller movie, that means you're expected to be involved in the promotion.
Marc:You don't really know if it's going to go anywhere, if anyone's going to see it, and the money's not good.
Marc:So now with...
Marc:With the streaming structures, you can get paid reasonably well, and people watch it.
Guest:Yeah, and you have a built-in audience.
Guest:I mean, saying that, Netflix, I believe, is doing three times more feature films than any studio, but they're going to release it day and date with their streaming outlet.
Marc:The only problem I found being on a show on Netflix is that with the streaming thing is that it really is like they'll drop all of them, and then people will watch them in a day.
Marc:right and then they they're like when's when's the next one coming it's like i don't know fucking year yeah and that's just the way it is where it's an interesting that's where we're doing that november 16th you know all eight episodes boom yeah that's it and then like you know the people they like the show but there's nothing you can do whereas at least back in the day it was you got to keep up with the story you got to sit down and record it in a week it's a valid point i i don't know how they're yeah i mean i guess that's the way people want they're willing to wait what are they going to do that's the way it is now yeah
Marc:Well, look, you look great.
Marc:I'm glad you're healthy.
Marc:Thank you so much.
Marc:Real privilege, honor, and a privilege to talk to you.
Marc:It was a treat to be out here.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:That was a great talk.
Marc:I enjoy.
Marc:He's a very happy guy.
Marc:Very kind of like great energy, man.
Marc:It was great to kind of look at him and talk to him.
Marc:I feel that a lot.
Marc:Like I'm just, hey, I'm looking at Michael Douglas for an hour and we're talking.
Marc:Look at, look at, look at across from me.
Marc:It's Michael Douglas talking to my face.
Marc:He's talking, his face is talking to my brain and he's looking at my face and we're talking.
Marc:And not only was he talking to my face out of his face, he's also in the new Netflix original series, The Kominsky Method, along with Alan Arkin.
Marc:You can stream it starting tomorrow, November 16th.
Marc:I found my wah-wah pedal.
Marc:You know what that means.
Marc:I think you do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Boomer lives.