by Marc Eliot
Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Even given all of its inconsistencies, implausibilities and recycled clichés, Black Rain might have been entertaining if the filmmakers had found the right note for the material. But this is a designer movie, all look and no heart, and the Douglas character is curiously unsympathetic. He plays it so cold and distant that the heartfelt scenes ring false. And the colors in the movie—steel grays, gloomy blues and wet concrete, occasionally illuminated by neon signs, showers of sparks and exploding automobiles—underline the general gloom.… The story of Black Rain is thin and prefabricated and doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny, so Scott distracts us with overwrought visuals.”
Vincent Canby, in the New York Times: “Mr. Douglas throws himself wholeheartedly into a role that is short on both interest and charm. He acts hard. Mr. Garcia’s role is less off-putting and he’s good company as long as he’s in the picture. Kate Capshaw, who looks like a Vogue model, is a most unlikely Osaka bar hostess.… Ridley Scott’s ‘Black Rain,’ based on an original screenplay by Craig Bolotin and Warren Lewis, plays as if it had been written in the course of production. There seems to have been more desperation off the screen than ever gets into the movie. As bad movies go, however, the American ‘Black Rain’ is easy to sit through, mostly because of the way Mr. Scott and his production associates capture the singular look of contemporary urban Japan.”3
Indeed, for all its shiny, buff exterior, the film was instantly forgettable. There was nothing about it except the Mylar-like visuals that had become a trademark of Ridley Scott’s vision since his 1982 futuristic thriller Blade Runner. (Many believed killing off Andy Garcia’s character midway through the film also killed the audience’s interest in it.) If Michael here was trying to combine the characters of his last two megahits, the passive/explosive Dan Gallagher from Fatal Attraction and the hard-as-nails Gordon Gekko, the mix didn’t take—too much yeast. And on Michael’s part, a notable lack of sexual intensity.
Yet, despite the Garcia misstep, audiences loved the film. It opened at number one, grossing just under $10 million its first week, stayed on top the second, and with a $30 million budget grossed nearly $43 million domestically and $88 million worldwide. Black Rain was a certified hit in almost every way except creatively for Michael, even though it owed its success to his star power. And for all that success, it was dwarfed at the box office by several other big movies, headed by Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ($475 million, the number one film of the year), Tim Burton’s Batman ($411 million), and Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future Part II ($331 million).
THE WAR OF THE ROSES opened on December 8, in time for the big holiday season, and proved another smash for Michael at the box office, $87 million in its initial domestic release, outgrossing Black Rain in the States, making it the eleventh-highest-grossing U.S. film worldwide and the twelfth-highest-earning domestically.
It was especially well received by the critics. Janet Maslin, writing in the New York Times, said, “Mr. DeVito happens to have more of a taste for gleeful malice than any cinematic figure this side of Freddy Kruger.… The film’s outstanding nastiness, which is often diabolically funny until a poorly staged final battle sequence simply takes things too far, has something real and recognizable at its core. The Roses may be caricatures, but the rise and fall of their romance and the viciousness of their fighting will be elements that many viewers can understand.… [T]he film’s tone may be slightly shaky at times, but when its humor works, it’s very funny indeed. Mr. Douglas and Ms. Turner have never been more comfortable a team, and each of them is at his or her comic best when being as awful as both are required to be here.”
Roger Ebert, in the Chicago Sun-Times: “The War of the Roses stars Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as the doomed Roses, and although both actors also teamed with DeVito in Romancing the Stone, no two movies could be more dissimilar. The War of the Roses is a black, angry, bitter, unrelenting comedy, a war between the sexes that makes James Thurber’s work on the same subject look almost resigned by comparison.… There are a great many funny moments in The War of the Roses, including one in which Turner (playing an ex-gymnast) springs to her feet from a prone position on her lawyer’s floor in one lithe movement and another in which Douglas makes absolutely certain that the fish Turner is serving some of her clients for dinner will have that fishy smell.” Ebert put the film in the tenth spot on his list of the best movies of the year.
The film could be taken as a fantasy extension of Michael’s relationship with Diandra, perhaps one of the reasons he wanted to do it. Its themes dealt with both suppression and release. During production, it at once kept him away from Diandra and reminded him of her every day, in the guise of Kathleen Turner, who kept wanting to leave the project because she hated the script. She actually turned it down twice and agreed to make it only if the characters were made older, so she wouldn’t seem even more miscast than she already was.
Both Kathleen and Michael were doing some “doubling” in this film as well, mirroring their long-standing offscreen romantic association, if somewhat darkly (one of the real reasons Turner may not have wanted to make it). And it was hard work. The final sequence, with Michael and Turner dangling from a chandelier before they fall to their unfunny deaths, took three full days to shoot.
Michael was well aware of the thematic connections the film had to his marriage. “Yes,” he told one reporter, “I admit, I should align what happened to the Roses to my own situation. I could see firsthand how marital situations can just slide out of control for a succession of reasons.”
When Jaffe and Lansing threw an extravagant pre-opening screening party for the film, Michael showed up without Diandra.
As an actor, he was hotter than ever. But as a husband, he was a failure. Threatening once again to file for divorce because of Michael’s endless work schedule and the increasing reports in the press of his playing around, Diandra gave Michael a new ultimatum: marriage counseling or legal separation.
Michael countered this latest threat with a promise to Diandra that he would not do any more acting for a long time but would continue to wear his producing hat.
MICHAEL’S STONEBRIDGE, meanwhile, had a firm commitment to begin production on its first film, Joel Schumacher’s Flatliners, with Julia Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland (another real-life couple “doubled” on-screen—they were engaged at the time); upon its release, on August 10, 1990, the film grossed more than $90 million, a solid moneymaker for Stonebridge and reestablished Michael as one of the most powerful producers in the industry.4
Michael was then drawn to two scripts he thought might be right for him to act in, despite his promise to Diandra. One was Shining Through, a mindless soap opera that was based on the bestselling novel by Susan Isaacs and had a plot line similar to Romancing the Stone but a far different feel. An ordinary American woman, in this instance a secretary, gets involved with international intrigue replete with Nazis under the table. Michael liked the part of Ed Leland, believing he could pull off the role of the lawyer/spy without breaking a sweat. The other was something called Basic Instinct, with a role right in his wheelhouse, a detective with dual addictions—drinking and a beautiful, sexually crazy women.
Shining Through seemed an easy enough deal. Fox okayed a production budget to include on-location filming to accurately evoke the film’s World War II setting. The shoot was originally intended for Budapest, but the fall of the Berlin Wall made it possible to film in East Germany. The locations were quickly changed to East and West Berlin and Potsdam, and production started in October 1990. Studio work was now scheduled to be done at DEFA Studios, the state film studios of East Germany. But because all of Berlin’s great train stations had been destroyed in the war, the production had to move to the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, the largest rail station in Europe, built in 1915.
Michael didn’t complain about anything. As a producer on an acting assignment, he knew better, even when the phones didn’t work.
Perhaps that was a mixed blessing—being in Europe allowed Michael to rekindle his relationship with British heiress Sabrina Guinness, whom he had first met and briefly dated in London. She was the former girlfriend of Prince Charles and had more recently been seen in public with actor Steve Guttenberg. She had also dated Mick Jagger and Jack Nicholson (and after Michael, Paul McCartney). One night, on a brief furlough from shooting, Michael flew to London to meet up with Guinness, and the two were caught by a photographer from a European magazine that splayed their picture across its front pages. Soon everybody—including Diandra—knew they had been together in London while Michael was supposed to be filming and behaving himself in Germany.
WHAT MAY BE SAID of Shining Through, in addition to the fact that Hitler’s Germany didn’t make a very good backdrop for a soap opera, is that it gave soap operas a bad name. American half-Jewish blond beauty Linda Voss (played by the decidedly non-Jewish American blond beauty Melanie Griffith), spying for America in the heart of Berlin during World War II, is somehow able to slip in and out of Germany more easily than a teenage hottie gets past security at a Justin Bieber concert. Michael, playing her boss, Ed Leland, does so as well. In one especially incredible sequence he manages to escort her by train through Germany across the border into Switzerland (at least one surmises that is the locale, although the white backgrounds look like generic Hollywood Goodguysville) dressed in full Nazi military regalia and attempting to pass through armed checkpoints manned by angry, suspicious, but none too bright Nazi officers and customs even though Leland cannot speak a word of German. (The ruse doesn’t work and a shoot-out occurs.)
Rumors of an affair between Griffith and Michael quickly flared. They called enough attention to themselves to prompt Melanie and her then-husband, Don Johnson, to issue a formal statement through their publicity representative, Elliot Mintz, after principal production was completed, that “Don and Melanie are very much in love. They are together in Aspen over the holidays … to the best of my knowledge there is nothing wrong with their marriage.” This is known in Hollywood as a non-denial denial. Michael’s PR guy, Allen Burry, got into it as well. He issued a statement saying that “Michael and Griffith simply made a movie together and enjoyed each other’s company. That was the extent of it.” Ditto. Both statements appeared to protest too much and a bit too insistently about “nothing.”
Griffith and Johnson were divorced for the second time in 1996.
THERE WAS RELATIVE peace in the uneasy valley of Diandraville for a while, until early in 1991, when Michael officially committed to Basic Instinct. Talks had first begun with Michael to be in the film months before he went into production in October 1990 on Shining Through, and if his asking price of $15 million plus points wasn’t exactly agreed to, the final number, $14 million, was close enough for him to say yes. Diandra didn’t want him to do it, or for that matter to work at all, except with her on saving their marriage.
THEN, ON FEBRUARY 14, 1991, everything changed. Michael was notified that seventy-four-year-old Kirk had been flying over Santa Paula, California, when his helicopter collided with a stunt plane. Two nineteen-year-olds aboard were instantly killed in the crash, but Kirk somehow had survived. Also with him in the copter was Noel Blanc, who had taken over vocal duties at Warner from his father, Mel Blanc, the longtime voice of Warner Bros. cartoons. Blanc suffered a broken leg, broken ribs, and possible internal injuries. Both Kirk and Blanc were rushed to Santa Paula Memorial Hospital; both were officially listed in stable condition, with extensive cuts and bruises all over their bodies. In truth, Kirk’s injuries were more serious, and he was on a life-and-death seesaw. When he was at last able to be moved, Kirk was flown from Santa Paula Memorial to Cedars-Sinai in Beverly Hills.
Michael was, understandably, badly shaken when he heard the news. He dropped everything and went directly to the hospital to see his father. There wasn’t much he could do except stand by his side, which he did for hours at a time.
It marked a turning point in their relationship. When Kirk awakened in his hospital bed, he openly embraced his son and, with tears in his eyes, promised Michael that from now on things would be different between the two of them. They would be much closer than they had been, and he would try to be the father to Michael he never was. He told Michael the crash and his near-death experience had made him realize he had a lot of making up to do, and he promised they would make a picture together as soon as he was able to get around.
Kirk, being the physical fitness devotee that he was, recovered fairly quickly. And with the recovery the distance between the two quickly returned. The film he promised Michael from his hospital bed they would make together as soon as possible did happen—one stroke and twelve years later.
MICHAEL, STILL SHAKEN by his father’s near-fatal crash, and with his marriage hanging by a thread, began preparing for Basic Instinct’s April 1991 production start. He felt he had no choice: it had been four years since Fatal Attraction and Wall Street, and he needed a bigger hit than The War of the Roses or Black Rain.
He was forty-six now, and his famous dirty-blond hair was starting to turn gray. He was, for the film business, a little too old to play romantic leading men, and his last two films had situated him firmly amidst the monotony and mediocrity that engulfed most aging male movie star roués (it usually happened ten years earlier for leading ladies). He didn’t need the money—he had always had deep pockets; what he did need was to do something great again, something that would reestablish his Oscar-winning stature in the world of filmmaking.
He wasn’t just being paranoid. He was having trouble competing for decent scripts with the other big-name actors of the day—even the ones who, like him, and with few exceptions, were starting to show their age. Robert De Niro, exhaling after his breathtaking early run of films that had seen him compared continually to prime Brando, would be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 Cape Fear. Al Pacino, also entering the twilight of his prime time, was in production for James Foley’s Glengarry Glen Ross, which would be released in 1992; his performance would steal the show and bring him a 1993 Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.5 But Michael did not have either De Niro’s edge or Pacino’s swagger. Both of them were considered more actor than movie star; Michael was considered more movie star than actor. Compared to them, Michael was paper money; De Niro and Pacino were gold coins.
Michael, therefore, not only wanted Basic Instinct, he needed it. He knew he was chasing himself to catch up to the glory of his past, and he believed this was the movie that could do it. He was both very right and very wrong. The film would be a sensation, but all the heat and attention would go to his co-star, Sharon Stone. One quick flash of her pubic hair would make her a star—if not at the morning-after water cooler, like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, then in the night-before wet dreams of the film’s male viewers.
And no actor could compete with that.
1 Robert Harmon’s The Tender was eventually released in 1991 on TV in America as The Tender; its title was later changed to Eyes of an Angel. After Travolta’s comeback in 1994 via Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, the film was released on video with its original title and on DVD in 2002. Michael Douglas is listed as one of the producers.
2 Bigstick had given up producing films in favor of speculating in real estate. Michael was a canny investor. He also invested heavily in a recording company, starting up a new label and signing bands, and letting Cameron be a part of that company. As a silent partner, he also purchased at least part of the popular L.A. Weekly, then an alternative and free-swinging quasi-political, social, and pop-cultural rag whose back-of-the-book massage parlor ads helped keep the otherwise free newspaper financially healthy. Not all his investments panned out. Years later, he went into a complicated film development and production deal with Zack Norman, his friend and co-star in Romancing the Stone, that eventually wound up in litigation.
3 A Japanese film also called Black Rain, Shohei Imamura�
��s Japanese-language film exploring the legacy of the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, opened the same week. It was that Black Rain that played the New York Film Festival.
4 Stonebridge did not enjoy continued success. Its next three films all flopped—Sheldon Lettich’s 1991 Double Impact, a Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle; Craig Baxley’s 1991 Stone Cold, starring muscle-bound hunk of the month Brian Bosworth; and Martin Davidson’s 1991 Hard Promises, with Sissy Spacek and William Petersen. Only Flatliners, the only film that Michael had personally produced, ever made any money for Stonebridge. In 1992 he split with Rick Bieber and heavily cut back the staff of the company.
5 Pacino lost to Gene Hackman in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven but won Best Actor that same year for his performance in Martin Brest’s quirkily entertaining Scent of a Woman.
With Karl Malden in The Streets of San Francisco. They costarred in this series from 1972–1976. Rebel Road Archives
Holding his Oscar for coproducing 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Kirk did not show up for the presentation of the awards. He watched the ceremony at home on TV. AP Photo
With his new bride, Diandra, attending the 1977 Oscar ceremonies in Hollywood. Copyright Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images
With Geneviève Bujold in 1978’s Coma. Rebel Road Archives
With Jane Fonda in The China Syndrome, 1979. Rebel Road Archives
A bearded, smiling Michael miscast as a prematurely retired baseball player who falls in and out of love with mathematics professor Jill Clayburgh in It’s My Turn, 1980. Rebel Road Archives