Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 26, 1993 TAG: 9302260183
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAL VINCENT LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
STAR TACKLES YET ANOTHER SOCIAL MOVIE
The middle class is "mad as hell, and they aren't going to take it anymore," says actor Michael Douglas.They're "the people who have always done everything right and now have nothing to show for it."
Douglas isn't lobbying President Clinton over economic programs. He's in New York promoting his new movie "Falling Down," which stars Douglas as a white-collar worker who goes berserk under the stresses of urban life.
The movie, opening today, may be a trifle extreme, but to Douglas, it's just the latest of his punch-the-button social movies meant to stir more than happy thoughts.
Douglas, 48, first got into serious movie-making when he produced "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the 1975 film that won four Oscars and stirred controversy with its portrayal of mental health treatment.
Since then, Douglas has tackled everything from nuclear mishaps ("China Syndrome") to marital discord ("War of the Roses"). "Flatliners," which he produced, and the upcoming "Made in America" continue to deal with changing trends and public concerns.
It is "Falling Down," though, that he hopes will stir concern for what he calls "these little guys that go unnoticed. They're about to explode, and no one seems to be noticing."
Douglas plays a Los Angeles motorist who goes crazy in the midst of the hottest day of the year when he is trapped in a traffic jam. He abandons his car on the freeway, then wrecks a convenience store after the owner insists that he buy an 85-cent can of soda. (He leaves 50 cents in the wreckage, saying, "I'm rolling back the prices to 1965.")
Identified as D-FENS, the letters on his personalized license plate, the Douglas character, clad in white shirt and tie, creates vigilante-like trouble across town. Along the way, he has confrontations with neo-Nazis, fast-food employees, Koreans, Mexicans and other ethnic groups, laying the grounds for detractors to perhaps label the movie both racist and trouble-mongering.
D-FENS evolves as a psychotic killer who may even threaten his own family.
Douglas is picky about choosing movie roles, which may be why he hasn't caught up to his superstar father, Kirk Douglas.
"Dad was in more than 70 pictures. I'm just up to 21," the younger Douglas said as he sat for interviews at the Regency Hotel in New York.
"They were on a merry-go-round back in my father's era of stardom. Today, success is being able to work as hard as you want to do. I haven't worked since last June. I'm always looking for a good script, but it isn't easy."
The younger Douglas was raised by his mother, English actress Diana Douglas, but visited his father's movie sets each summer. His first work was on the set of "Spartacus."
After attending a fashionable prep school, he gave up Yale for the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he majored in theater. His first work came in TV, culminating in the long-running series "Streets of San Francisco." His first movie was as a teen idol in 1969's "Hail, Hero!"
"I was kinda a late bloomer as an actor," he said. "I wasn't taken seriously until I produced `One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.' Since then, my successful actor roles have been ones with an edge."
Certainly there was an edge to Douglas' roles as the adulterous husband in "Fatal Attraction," the conniver in "Wall Street" and the battling husband in "War of the Roses."
"It seems that, like my father, people want to see me in dark pieces," said Douglas. "I'd like to play an outright hero soon."
Douglas got involved in controversy again when "Basic Instinct," one of the biggest hits of last year, drew protests from gay rights groups because, they claimed, it stereotyped its villainess.
"I approved of their right to protest, but the protests died when they saw the film," Douglas said. "That was not an anti-gay film."
Politically, he describes himself as a liberal, "but that doesn't mean I just make liberal movies. Movies are meant to entertain. I guess, more than anything else, I'm just an old hippie at heart."
He wants to take time off "to read, just to read" and to spend time with his family, which includes a 14-year-old son.
"I'd like my late career to be like that of Paul Newman - just doing worthwhile things I'd like to do," he said.
The arguments have already surfaced as to whether D-FENS is a hero or not.
"I like the struggle of the man," Douglas said "and I think that makes him a hero, in a way. He's just crossed over the line. I think lots of people, particularly men, will look at him and realize how close they might have been to crossing over the line at times - how much they'd like to fight back at rude people everyday."
Douglas feels the Vietnam War is the dividing line in American modern history - the line between when things were going right and began to go wrong.
"Up to the '50s and early '60s, things made sense in this country," he said. "Then that war put people at odds with each other. The protesters on one side were heard. On the other side, there were the people who continued to do what they had always thought was right but didn't get much to show for it. That's the kind of guy D-FENS is."