Michael Douglas, 20 years after 'Wall Street'

Twenty years after Michael Douglas appeared in "Wall Street," he is conducting interviews for his latest film in the kind of apartment Gordon Gekko might be living in if he were, like Douglas himself, flush with cash and in his early 60s.It's a ninth-floor aerie on Central Park West, one of three homes the actor owns - the others are in Quebec and Bermuda - and it's a monument to easy living and good taste
Shelves are lined with books, tables are filled with pictures of Douglas and his dad, Douglas and wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, the couple with their two kids, even Douglas with international figures like Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan (Douglas has long been involved with United Nations programs promoting nuclear disarmament and human rights). Douglas' two Oscars - for acting (as Gekko) in "Wall Street" and producing "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" - are unobtrusively tucked away in a side cabinet.

But the 63-year-old actor is not here to discuss past glories. He's publicizing a small indie film called "King of California," opening Sept. 14, in which he plays a schizophrenic convinced there's a Spanish treasure buried beneath the concrete floor of a nearby Costco. It's a charming little picture, and features one of Douglas' best, most endearing performances.
And it's a long way from the iconic, infamous, heart-of-steel "Wall Street" tycoon of 1987.

"It's fun playing crazies," Douglas says with a smile on his face and a glint in his eye. "The only thing you have to look out for is going too far over the top. Mania can get irritating if you don't find ways to mix it up."

"They were just seduced"

That he did in "Wall Street," whose 20th anniversary will be celebrated with a two-disc DVD due out Sept. 18 from Fox Home Entertainment. Douglas' Oscar-winning performance as the financial industry's most cutthroat, amoral wheeler-dealer still packs a wallop, as does writer-director Oliver Stone's incisive look at the "greed is good" '80s.

"If I told you the number of drunken investment bankers who've come up to me in restaurants and stuff over the years and said, 'You're the man,'" notes Douglas, "and tell me I was the guy that got them into the business. Well, I'm looking at them and you know, Gekko was the bad guy. He goes to jail. And they say, 'No man, you were so cool,' and it's wild. They just were seduced. It was such a well-written script. If you're gonna be the devil, you're gonna look good. The devil is not something ugly, the devil is there to seduce."

"That says a lot about the power of corruption in the social values," Stone says in a telephone interview, referring to Gekko's fans. "The worship of money came into being in the 1980s, and has grown to phenomenal proportions. Now corporations have replaced Gordon Gekko."

Stone admits he originally offered the Gekko role to other actors - Warren Beatty and Richard Gere turned him down - and that at the time Douglas, coming off the huge successes of "Romancing the Stone" and "Jewel of the Nile," was "a light comedian who did not have a heavy reputation." But Stone met with Douglas, liked him, "and I knew he was sharp with business, very financially oriented, he knew these people from Wall Street. And I always felt he had the genes of his father, that edge that Kirk had."

For his part, Douglas credits Stone for the success of the film. "It was such a well-written script ," he says, "and it was just a fantastic role that was handed to me."

A morality tale

Looking back after two decades, both men note that very few movies have dipped their toes into the Wall Street cesspool, probably because, says Douglas, "we did it really well." But the film holds up because, says Stone, "it's a morality tale, a 'Pilgrim's Progress.'" He is referring here to the Charlie Sheen character, Bud Fox, who is seduced by Gekko's wealth, flamboyance and amorality. "Every man gets lured by the bait," Stone says. "It destroys all his values, he realizes he crossed the line, so he makes things right and takes the guy down."

In the meantime, Douglas has his own ideas about Gordon Gekko 20 years down the road. "Wall Street" ends with the obvious implication that the Feds are onto him and going to send him to jail on any number of securities charges. So what happens next? Douglas has teamed up with screenwriter Stephen Schiff on "Money Never Sleeps," a sequel that will follow the financial industry's lizard king after he gets out of the slammer. (Stone will not direct.)

The film is only in the first-draft stage, but Douglas has already said that when it comes to Gekko, "I don't think he's different. He's just had more time to think about what to do."

And how will Gekko make a living in the hedge fund era? Well, says Douglas, "We first had to do some homework on what your limitations are after you've done time, what you can and cannot do on the market." So, he adds with a mischievous grin, obviously not wanting to give away too much, "we're kind of fascinated about these charitable foundations, and we're exploring that area."

Gordon Gekko, prince of philanthropy. The mind boggles.