THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 88 FEBRUA RY 12, 2020
DEPALMA: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX/PHOTOFEST.SHADOW, TRUMBO: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES. ZETA-JONES: GREGG DEGUIRE/GETTY IMAGES.DOUGLAS: SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES. POSSE: COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION.ONCE: JERRY TAVIN/EVERETT COLLECTION.‘MY GOD, WE HAVE
KIRK DOUGLASIN OUR
STUDENT FILM’W
hen I was teaching a filmmaking
course at Sarah Lawrence College
in the late 1970s, Kirk joined me in
producing a super-low-budget feature titled
Home Movies. My concept for the course
was to show the students how to make a
low-budget feature by making a low-budget
feature. Once the class had written the script,
we sought out financing and started cast-
ing. Since Kirk and I had enjoyed working
together on The Fury, I asked him to join our
project. He agreed immediately and even
invested in it with me (along with George
Lucas and Steven Spielberg). My students
were shocked and surprised: “My God,” they
exclaimed, “we have Kirk Douglas in our
student movie!” They created and wrote a
character — a film school teacher called the
Maestro — for him to play. I have fond memo-
ries of Kirk sitting on a tree branch with his
co-star Keith Gordon in the middle of the
night instructing him on the virtues of Star
Therapy (“You must be the star of your own
life,” his character lectured, “not an extra!”).
A star: No one embodied it better.Brian De Palma (left) with Douglas as
they shot a scene with film school students
at Sarah Lawrence College in 1979.Right: Douglas
and son Michael
on the set of Cast
a Giant Shadow in- Below, from
left: Cameron
Douglas with
father Michael,
stepmother
Catherine
Zeta-Jones and
grandfather Kirk
on the Walk of
Fame in 2018.
Blacklisted sceenwriter
Dalton Trumbo, whom Douglas
hired to rewrite Spartacus.By Brian De Palma
I
f you asked Kirk Douglas who broke the Blacklist, his
answer was always an emphatic Kirk Douglas (he even
subtitled one of his memoirs “Breaking the Blacklist”).
And he was at least half right. His decision, in 1960, to include
Dalton Trumbo’s name on the credits of Spartacus — buck-
ing the ban that kept accused communists from working in
Hollywood (at least under their real names) through the 1950s
— definitely put a big crack in it. “It was a terrible period, the
McCarthy era,” Douglas told THR’s Scott Feinberg in a 2012
interview, “one of the most embarrassing things in our history.”
Technically, director Otto Preminger was first, announcing
months before Spartacus’ release that he would be crediting
Trumbo as the writer of Exodus when it opened two monthsBreaking the Blacklist With Savvy and Star Power
after Spartacus. The debate over who deserves more credit
has been raging ever since, but Douglas has an edge: He took
a bigger risk. “There were blacklisted directors working in
Europe,” says John McNamara, who interviewed Douglas while
researching his screenplay for the 2015 film Trumbo. “But when
a movie star got blacklisted, that had a worldwide effect. There
were few places for someone like Douglas to hide if things had
gone badly.” Shrewdly, Douglas did hedge his bet: He hired
Trumbo under a pseudonym (Sam Jackson) and waited until
Universal had spent $8 million before springing the news on
execs. “The studio would have closed the picture, but they got
too far down the road,” Douglas said to THR. “The picture cost
$12 million. At the time, a lot of money.” — TRILBY BERESFORDEven though you sort of saw it coming — he
was 103 — it’s still difficult. I take solace in
that I’m just so proud to be his grandson and
that I had the opportunity to spend time with
him. Years ago, when I was DJing in New York
— he must’ve been in his late 80s, early 90s
— he and [wife Anne] showed up at 12:30 a.m.
I had gone on at midnight. It really was
amazing. We couldn’t even talk because the
music was so loud, but that’s what they did.
They always showed up for the family. He
believed in me even when maybe I had given
up on myself.” Cameron Douglas, grandson