Michael Douglas on Sex with Matt Damon: 'Once You Get That First Kiss In, You are Comfortable'

Michael Douglas talks about playing Liberace  in the upcoming HBO biopic Behind the Candelabra, in a New York magazine cover story.

Says Douglas, of his love scenes with Matt Damon (who plays his younger lover Scott Thorson):

“Once you get that first kiss in, you are comfortable. Matt and I didn’t rehearse the love scenes. We said, ‘Well—we’ve read the script, haven’t we?’  The hardest thing about sex scenes is that everybody is a judge. I don’t know the last time you murdered somebody or blew anyone’s brains out, but everyone has had sex and probably this morning, which means everyone has an opinion on how it should be done.”

Douglas says the sex is not shied away from:

The sexual content—the gayness of Behind the Candelabra—made it a tough sell to the studios. It was originally conceived as a feature film rather than an HBO movie, but none of the major movie companies wanted to finance the film, which cost only $23 million and featured two major stars. “Everybody loved the script [by Richard LaGravenese, based on Scott Thorson’s memoir of his life with Liberace],” said Jerry Weintraub, the veteran producer who worked with Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra and knew Liberace. “The party line was that Behind the Candelabra would not appeal to anyone who is not gay. Interestingly, they forgot that Liberace’s own audience in the fifties and sixties was not gay. It was purple-haired ladies who loved his act—he knew how to take the audience upside down, sideways, and backward. He was an artist, and yet, when I saw him at his house, he was free and open with his sexuality. There were men in every room! I didn’t care—it just meant there were more women for me!”

Douglas adds, later:

“Liberace worked hard. When Scott Thorson became a drug addict and Liberace’s work was imperiled, their relationship cratered. When I watch the movie, I forget it’s Matt and me pretty quickly. And soon after that, I forget it’s two guys. The fights, the love—it’s a couple. There’s always that moment in a relationship where somebody has gone too far or they’ve done something that can’t be forgotten, and, suddenly, a little tendon is popped, and it never comes back. The only people you can forgive after something like that is your family. Lee tried, but he couldn’t forgive Scott until he was about to die.”

The film premieres May 26 on HBO. Here's the trailer if you missed it.

Weekend Movies: The Great Gatsby

 
Leonardo DiCaprio welcomes you to the summer's most lavish party

BY NATHANIEL ROGERS 

"Gatsby. What Gatsby?"

Daisy asks with a rush of girlish 'it can't be!' alarm, her nerves far overpowering the tiny glimmer of hope you think you hear in her voice. Which is as sensible a reaction as anyone could have when hearing about the arrival of another Jay Gatsby in movie theaters. You don't mean THE GREAT GATSBY, do you?

The F Scott Fitzgerald classic is a tough book to crack for filmmakers, its power so tied to its gorgeous (slim) prose, its subtle and cynical evocations and condemnations of American wealth and unspoken caste system. Further complicating adaptations is that the story is subjectively narrated. It's all told by Nick Carraway and his is, despite blood ties to the wealthy, an outsider's point of view. It's an easy book to love but a difficult one to adapt. But Hollywood keeps trying once every thirty years or so. 

The story, if you are unfamiliar (though you won't want to admit that out loud) follows the attempts of the elusive mysterious extremely wealthy Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) to win back his lost love Daisy (Carey Mulligan) who he abandoned many years earlier while penniless to seek his fortune. That sounds like something out of a fairy tale, but to the novel's credit Fitzgerald doesn't exactly take it at face value as a hero's journey; what's so heroic about vast sums of money used only for personal gain?

Gatsby buys up an estate in West Egg Long Island where he has a direct eyeline across the water to a similarly palatial home in East Egg where Daisy lives with her rich and shady husband Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) who is carrying on an affair with low class Myrtle (Isla Fisher) who lives above a gas station in "The Valley of Ashes" which director Baz Luhrmann stages like it's the 10th circle of hell. Gatsby throws decadent flashy parties hoping to lure Daisy in and seduces her cousin Nick (Tobey Maguire, our narrator) into helping him facilitate the reunion.

Which gets this party (aka movie) started AFTER THE JUMP...

Family Malfunctions in the New 'August: Osage County' Trailer: VIDEO

Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Sam Shepard, Abigail Breslin, Juliette Lewis, Chris Cooper, and Benedict Cumberbatch go sniffing around for Oscar in the new trailer for August: Osage County, the adaptation of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

'Lavender Scare' Documents Government's Gay 'Witch Hunt' Lasting Four Decades: VIDEOS

Back in 2011 I posted about a documentary in progress called The Lavender Scare, chronicling the U.S. government's gay 'witch hunts' beginning in the 50's and 60's and efforts by early gay activists like the late Frank Kameny to put a stop to them.

The filmmakers are funding the home stretch of their film via Kickstarter and are excited to debut a couple of new clips from the project on Towleroad. Anyone with an interest in LGBT history should find these fascinating.

The first clip, “You can’t be gay and work here” is the story of Jamie Shoemaker, a linguist for the National Security Agency.

The filmmakers write:

When it was discovered he was gay, his supervisor demanded his resignation, took his ID card, and had him escorted out of the building. This happened in 1980 – long after the time most people associate with the anti-LGBT witch hunt. Jamie immediately called Frank Kameny, who had been successful by that time in protecting the jobs of gay people in non-sensitive agencies. Jamie was different, in that his position required top-secret security clearance. The conclusion of the story (which is not revealed in the clip) is that after a six-month fight spearheaded by Frank Kameny, Jamie became the first gay person in history to be allowed to keep his top-secret clearance. It was a front-page story in the Washington Post.

The second clip, “We do not hire homosexuals” is the government’s response to the early days of the gay rights movement.

In 1965, Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols organized the first gay rights demonstrations the nation had ever seen. With a handful of others, they picketed the White House and other government buildings to protest the on-going ban on hiring gay and lesbian workers. On August 28th, they picketed the State Department. At a news conference the day before, Secretary of State Dean Rusk was asked about the protest. The derisive laughter from the press corps and Rusk’s dismissive response to the protest is chilling and hard to believe when seen from today’s perspective.

You can check out the filmmakers' Kickstarter HERE.

And the film's official site HERE.

I've reposted the trailer, AFTER THE JUMP...

George Clooney and Sandra Bullock Feel the Pull of 'Gravity': VIDEO

Alfonso Cuaron's International Space Station drama/disaster flick Gravity has just untethered its first trailer, so to speak. George Clooney and Sandra Bullock play two astronauts forced to deal with the consequences of a stranding due to some errant space debris.

Check it out, AFTER THE JUMP...

Lee Daniels' 'The Butler' Gets a Trailer: VIDEO

Last September Oprah published this photo to her Instagram account from the set of The Butler, which she was filming at the time. With her are the film's director Lee Daniels (Precious), Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan, and Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan.

The film is based on the life of Eugene Allen who served eight presidents as the head butler at the White House from 1952-1986, and the trailer has just been released.

Watch it, AFTER THE JUMP...

(via david mixner)