Michael Douglas is discussing changes in Hollywood over an Oscar-winning acting career that has culminated with the rise of digital technology and streaming platforms.
“The biggest change in my lifetime and career has been digital,” especially in sound production, Douglas said during an informal conversation at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Friday. He recalled in the 1970s filmmakers having more control over the production process, while the studios focused on the distribution business.
“It’s gone the other way in terms of both studios or in this case streaming services and now this latest chapter is the advent of Silicon Valley dumbing down and just taking over what we thought was this big industry,” Douglas argued.
“Between Apple, Amazon and Netflix, the designs of their companies, they’re so huge, they can afford so much,” he added.
During the wide-ranging conversation that focused in large part on his early achievements, Douglas recalled how it was hard making it as an actor in Hollywood in the shadow of his father, Kirk Douglas.
And he doesn’t take kindly to be called a “Hollywood nepo baby,” even though he is one, amid rising criticism of celebrities whose fame and fortune follows possibly getting a leg up from their family in a competitive entertainment industry
“I don’t know a father in whatever business, be it a plumber or a contractor or a carpenter, who doesn’t try to help his son join him,” Douglas told the Jeddah audience. “I’m a nepo baby too, you know? So that’s the way it goes,” he added.
Overcoming early reluctance to follow his father into acting, Douglas recalled how Kirk helped him executive produce Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which eventually became a best picture Oscar winner and a big money earner for Kirk.
In 1962, Kirk acquired the rights to make Broadway stage and film adaptations of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Michael had to convince him to allow him to produce the movie adaptation. “I sort of impulsively said, “Let me run with it,” Douglas recalled, before his father gave him the nod.
Back in the acting game, Douglas saw his star rise in the late 1980s with roles in hit movies like Fatal Attraction and Wall Street, and later with a lead role in the 1992 drama Basic Instinct. Douglas revealed making it as an actor and a Oscar winner required him to overcome early bouts of stage fright.
“There’s a risk factor that also gives you the nerves when you’re starting a project. But then the nerves are just part of your career, part of your work,” he explained. In August 2010, Douglas disclosed that he had developed a throat tumor, which required medical treatment.
Having recovered, “now, I’m having a very nice time enjoying my life. I’m not retiring,” Douglas insisted. His more recent roles have taken him into new genres, including Netlfix’s The Kominsky Method and the Benjamin Franklin TV miniseries.
And he did Ant-Man and The Wasp to get into green screen acting, a first for Douglas. “I still have to find a horror movie,” he added.
Douglas’ wife Catherine Zeta-Jones was also at the Saudi Arabia festival for a similarly wide-ranging conversation, where she touched on her recognition for Chicago, theater background and next foray into the indie film world. “I want to turn up. I want to do some interesting work,” she said of her next project. “It goes back to my theater thinking, because I don’t feel I have to prove anything to anybody. I don’t have to work hard for other people.”
The Red Sea Film Festival continues through Dec. 14.
