by Marc Eliot
“Oh yeah?” he said. “Who might that be?”
“Dede Allen.” Dede had edited Wonder Boys.
His face melted back into the smile. “She’s a great lady,” he said. “She’s got a great bullshit detector.” The elevator came to a halt on the ground level. He gave me a take-care wave and ran out.
A few weeks later I happened to be having dinner in Hollywood with Dede, who was a longtime friend. She had been kept out of the world of directing when she was young by Hollywood’s notorious glass ceiling (she did the cutting on Arthur Penn’s 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, which many consider the film’s saving grace and which established her credentials as one of the premier editors in the business). She was also one of the executive producers on Warren Beatty’s 1980 Reds, though working with Beatty literally drove her crazy. After completing the film she had a nervous breakdown. By the time she got to work with Michael on Curtis Hanson’s 2000 film, she had become a wise, talented, and patient mother figure to everyone aboard, including Michael.
Anyway, at that dinner I told her what Michael had said. She laughed and replied, “He’s a wonderful guy to work with.” When I asked her what that meant, she referred first to his on-set “sanity,” and to his ability to work with talented people to both his and their best advantage. This was rare in narcissism-driven Hollywood, she said, where ego outruns integrity ten times out of ten. She also admired Michael’s courage to be daringly political, both in real life and in movies such as The China Syndrome. This was particularly significant to Dede. In her earlier years she was forced to live in New York because her husband, a TV journalist, had been blacklisted.
When Dede did Wonder Boys, she told me the story of the day Bob Dylan showed up at her office to watch some rushes before he wrote (or pulled out of his trunk) the song “Things Have Changed,” which would become the movie’s theme and eventually earn him an Oscar. She said he was quiet and polite, spoke little, watched the scenes on an edit screen, disappeared, and returned the next day with the completed song. I’ve always loved the thought of Dede and Dylan as a team. And I have to say, “Things Have Changed” is one of the better late-Dylan tunes.
Whenever a biography I had written was published, Dede, like a good mother should, always gushed about it, while Steve, her husband, who was a bit on the cranky side, would talk to me out of the side of his mouth and say, “Another one of those books about lousy fathers and great sons?” Steve recently passed away. I wish he were still alive for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that this time I could say to him, “Yes, Steve, this really is one of those books about lousy fathers and great sons!”
Sad to say, Dede passed away before Steve, in 2010. She was a good friend of Michael’s, a good friend and unofficial surrogate mother to me, and a neighbor on both coasts. She is missed.
Michael’s reputation as a producer who consistently turns out good, occasionally great films is second perhaps only to Clint Eastwood’s. Neither Michael nor Clint might be the best actor of his generation—that would, of course, be Nicholson or De Niro—but Michael is without question the best producer/actor of his time. (Clint upsets the balance of comparison because of his career as a director, something Michael never tried.) Many of the best and most charismatic actors who are contemporaries of Michael’s failed more than once to successfully produce movies with or without themselves in them.
The traditional Hollywood power structure is producer, screenwriter, star, director. In the seventies, when the studio system finally crumbled and independent movies became more viable, the director moved to the top, and the producer was put into second position. Michael, understanding his strengths and weaknesses and the times he was living in, went against the popular tide and shunned directing in favor of producing. His four-corner Oscar sweep in 1975 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest not only restored the producer to the top of the hierarchy of the business of mainstream filmmaking but reminded the industry that producing, not directing, was where the corporate power really was.
Through friends such as Zack and Dede (who were not specifically interviewed for this biography), and dozens of others, I was able to write this biography of Michael. And because Michael is still with us and remains a powerful force in Hollywood and New York, I feel I should refrain from naming most of the others who bravely helped. Those who wouldn’t do on-the-record interviews helped to point me in the right directions. I thank them one and all.
One note that belongs in the small-world category: In the early ’80s, Steve Reuther, who had the dark good looks of a movie star (tall and smart and fast and strong), was my agent at William Morris when I first moved to Hollywood and became involved with scriptwriting. I have mostly good memories of Steve. In one of the more incredulous moments of my life, I was actually shoved by a producer trying to buy the rights to one of my earlier biographies, in Steve’s office. It threatened to turn into a brawl. Steve immediately got between us, settled down the producer, and by the end of the meeting, made the deal. This guy, I thought to myself, is going places. I can understand why Michael and Steve would want to work with each other. In theory, at least, it seemed an ideal pairing, tempered by the clash of two powerful men.
Fortunately, Kirk has written a number of memoirs that have proved extremely helpful. Even Michael’s mother, Diana, wrote a highly useful family history. While those books were filled with information, some if it perhaps blurred by sentiment and failing memory, their greatest value was in leading me to primary sources. My aim whenever I write a biography is to understand the subject, and his work, and how one feeds into the other—how the man reflects the movies and the movies reflect the man. I have tried to link together the chronological, emotional, and creative in this biography of Michael Douglas.
I wish to thank the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; I state emphatically, once again, it is the best research facility for American film in the world. I also wish to thank the Cinémathèque in Paris, the London Academy of Film, Turner Classic Films, and several private collections, which together have allowed me to see every Michael Douglas feature film, most of the documentaries, and many of his TV appearances, including several episodes of The Streets of San Francisco. Although I did not talk to Michael for this book, I am grateful for his continual openness—about both his work and his life—in his many illuminating interviews and recorded conversations.
I wish to thank my main researcher and fact checker, Jesse Herwitz (blame him!); my agent, Alan Nevins, at Renaissance Literary and Talent; my longtime editor, Julia Pastore, and all the good and talented people at Crown Archetype, especially Tina Constable, Mauro DiPreta, Tammy Blake, and Meredith McGinnis.
And to you, my loyal fans, I know that we will meet again, a little farther up the road.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARC ELIOT is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books on popular culture, among them highly acclaimed biographies of Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart; the award-winning Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince; Down 42nd Street; what many consider the best book about the sixties, his Phil Ochs biography, Death of a Rebel; Take It from Me (with Erin Brockovich); Down Thunder Road: The Making of Bruce Springsteen; To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles; and Reagan: The Hollywood Years. He has written on the media and pop culture for numerous publications, including Penthouse, L.A. Weekly, and California Magazine. He divides his time among New York City, Woodstock, Los Angeles, and the Far East.
www.marceliot.net
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