A-List: Michael Douglas
By Josh Spiegel
September 23, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com

You're standing on my foot.
For a long while, time was kind to Michael Douglas. He turns 66 on September 25th, but if it weren’t for the recent cancer diagnosis, you’d never know it. Now, though, even after his recent, honest yet upbeat appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, people look at him and get concerned. And why not? Michael Douglas has been, for the past few decades, one of the great American actors, playing the charming cad, the should-be-hated but liked-and-loved playboy. Before he became known as the slicked-back shark Gordon Gekko in 1987’s Wall Street, Douglas was known both as an actor on The Streets of San Francisco and for his producing prowess. It still impresses me that he was one of the producers behind the 1975 adaptation of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, winning his first Academy Award, this time for Best Picture.

Douglas has been in the spotlight recently, in no small part because of the throat cancer he’s been diagnosed with, but he’s also got a big return to the cinematic spotlight this weekend with the timely sequel to Wall Street, called Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (which is a pity, because my money usually likes to pay for hotels, randomly). As in the predecessor, Douglas will play Gordon Gekko, the financial guru who likes to make as much money as possible, as ruthlessly as possible. For this role, Douglas won a Best Actor Oscar, and there are unsurprising rumblings that he may yet find his way onto this year’s Oscar nominations list. The movie looks nothing if not classy (Douglas stars alongside Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin, and Frank Langella), but who’s to say it’ll hit big? As we consider this, let’s go into this week’s list, about the career of Michael Douglas.

Solitary Man

I want to start off with Douglas’ most recent performance, in the 2010 indie character study Solitary Man. Douglas plays…well, he plays yet another version of the character he always plays, a slick-talking wheeler-dealer. Here, he’s a disgraced car salesman who used to be on the top of the world, one of the faces you’d always see on billboards or on local TV ads. Now, he’s trying to recapture his glory and coast on the looks that still woo some pretty young women. He ends up getting the chance to move forward as he revisits his old college and meets up with some new and old friends. The story, from co-director Brian Koppelman, isn’t the best but there’s no question that the film is worth watching thanks almost completely to Douglas’ tour-de-force performance.

Douglas, of course, gets to show off his effortless chemistry and charisma with a great supporting cast, including Jenna Fischer, Jesse Eisenberg, Mary-Louise Parker, Danny DeVito, and Susan Sarandon. The film’s not flawless, and I wasn’t especially thrilled with the final scene, as it felt a bit too rushed. That said, Solitary Man, an early release that got pretty much buried this spring, is worth watching for being a mature, adult drama with a sterling lead performance. What works isn’t just that Douglas is playing a character that fits him like a glove; obviously, that helps but it makes the performance all that more challenging. If we know he can play this character, what if it looks tired? Douglas is able to find new notes to play here, playing one of the truly loathsome characters of his filmography, a guy no one should like but…well, he’s one of the types to sell you your own shirt. You just buy it.

Wall Street

Here we are with the role that not only has defined Michael Douglas’ career, but has defined generations. The quote “Greed is good” is one of the most memorable in this slick piece of studio entertainment from Oliver Stone, who’s come back to direct the sequel. Just as the financial markets were on the brink in 1987, so it goes now. Back in 1987, Gordon Gekko, the slimeball who knows how to best navigate the treacherous world of Wall Street, was an antihero but the most classic kind. On the one hand, of course you hate Gordon Gekko. Look at the guy. He’s the picture of American greed, of sleaze, of excess. On the other hand, look at the guy. He’s so slick, he’s so rich, he’s so loved, he’s a stock market version of James Bond. Why not be the guy?

As with all great antihero performances, the film dies or lives on the lead actor. There have been plenty of antiheroes in movies and in television, and the character only works if you buy the actor playing him or her. If Gordon Gekko never goes beyond being one of the most loathsome American film characters, then Wall Street won’t work. The movie doesn’t just work, of course - as mentioned earlier, it got Douglas an Oscar - but it’s helped make Douglas a star. In fact, it’s made Douglas Gordon Gekko. No, he’s not a greedy SOB, but when the Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps trailers roll, the audience is automatically interested, because we all know what we’re going to get. Nothing is more fun than watching a guy at the top of his game be forced to fall to the lowest of the low. No one’s better at it, in Wall Street or otherwise, than Douglas.

Falling Down

If the typical Michael Douglas role can be visualized by what he does in Wall Street, the complete antithesis is his role in the 1993 drama Falling Down. The movie’s about a day in the life of yet another cubicle drone, but someone who’s been pushed too far. With a crew cut, spectacles, tight pants and a pocket protector, Douglas plays William Foster, known as D-Fens thanks to his license plate. He gets stuck in traffic one morning in the middle of Los Angeles, and can’t take it anymore. He’s lost his wife due to his behavioral problems and just wants to see his daughter on her birthday. Unfortunately, doing that after abandoning his car in rush hour means he has to walk. One thing leads to another and pretty soon, D-Fens is being hunted by the LAPD.

Falling Down is by no means a subtle movie, and some of the dialogue Douglas has to spout against the intense rebellion going on in parts of the Los Angeles area in the early 1990s is just wee bit painful. Having said that, Douglas is paired with Robert Duvall here. Duvall plays the lead cop looking for Douglas, the prototypical older cop who’s this close to retiring. Duvall’s character is similarly disillusioned with his life and job, but he’s not going nearly as far off the rails as D-Fens is. Still, their intersecting paths make the film interesting, and I do have a particular penchant for “day in the life” kind of movies. Falling Down is not Douglas’ best film, but it is one of the most compelling (and directed by Joel Schumacher, of all people), and the Douglas-Duvall combination makes for riveting cinema.

Traffic

The last film on our list is going to highlight Michael Douglas playing a politician who could never exist in real life: an honest-to-goodness saint. In the 2000 film Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh, Douglas plays the complete opposite: a politician who talks big and does nothing of consequence. Granted, both characters want to do good; the difference is that Traffic is far more clear-eyed and realistic about how things work in Washington, D.C. Douglas plays Robert Wakefield, who’s just been appointed the drug czar by the President when the film begins. Wakefield, like most Frank Capra idealists, wants to make change in the world and win the war on drugs. It’s never easy to do so, and it’s especially difficult for Wakefield, as he discovers that his wholesome daughter is getting addicted to drugs under his very nose.

Douglas gets to play Wakefield as one of his prototypical down-to-his-last-straw characters, a man who ends up being pushed to the breaking point. Wakefield starts out not just as an idealist, but as someone who has no idea how the world he wants to control works. By the time he goes to get his daughter and give her the help she needs, he realizes that the world is a darker place. In some ways, the storyline he has in the multilayered ensemble piece is a bit contrived - well, of COURSE his daughter would be on drugs while he’s trying to fight the war on drugs - but Douglas is one of the most dedicated performers in the film (and make no mistake, the performances are all pretty much top-notch), so he’s able to sell even the most hackneyed premise.

The American President

We’re only days away from the release of The Social Network, one of the most anticipated films of 2010. It’s from director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin, a profile of, essentially, how Facebook was created and who got destroyed in the process. Sorkin’s career looks to be heading upward very soon, as all of the early raves for The Social Network have taken specific note of Sorkin’s dialogue. Of course, it’s no surprise, as Sorkin has shown a talent for dialogue in television, on Broadway, and in previous films such as A Few Good Men and The American President. The latter film stars Douglas as a Bill Clinton-esque idealist President who falls for an even more clear-eyed lobbyist, played by Annette Bening. Douglas and Bening have great chemistry, but Douglas also does very well with Sorkinese dialogue.

The major rivalry in the film plays between Douglas’ President Andrew Shepard and a conservative Presidential nominee, Robert Rumson (played by Richard Dreyfuss, who does better pretending to be a Dick Cheney type here than he did playing Dick Cheney in W.). The climax comes in a speech he gives to the press corps and the entire country. Of course, the film’s premise - that the world would be so fascinated by a President having an innocuous relationship with a woman - is crazy stuff straight from the Frank Capra playbook. Having said that, the movie is charming, features many great Sorkin touches (the walk-and-talk from The West Wing was perfected here), and Douglas plays a sharp, smart President, someone you’d want to be your Commander in Chief. It’s probably his most honest, true, and innocent role, but Douglas is nothing if not versatile in the film.