Whatever Happened To: Michael Douglas?

["Whatever Happened To:...?" is an occasional feature about an actor or actress who, despite having had a highly successful film career at some point, has for some unknown reason faded from the spotlight in recent years. ]

If I didn't know better I'd propose a ridiculous theory here. While acknowledging the well-cataloged evidence of gender-based age discrimination in Hollywood (you might remember a rich discussion after I asked "Whatever Happened to: Meg Ryan?"), the case of Michael Douglas could fool you into thinking that the market isn't really flooded with opportunities for older men these days, either.

I even found a recent argument in favor of this idea, but a simple look back at Best Actor nominees this decade reveals a veritable AARP membership roster: Frank Langella (age 71), Richard Jenkins (age 62), Clint Eastwood (age 79), Peter O'Toole (age 76), Tommy Lee Jones (age 62), David Strathairn (age 60), Ben Kingsley (age ), Jack Nicholson (age 72), and Michael Caine (age 76). To be generous you could add Anthony Hopkins (age 71), who is perhaps deserving of a "Whatever Happened to...?" feature of his own (like Sean Connery), even though he was still great as recently as five years ago in Proof and The World's Fastest Indian.

So yes, I do know better than to make the age discrimination argument for Douglas, and even contrarians could continue arguing that there are even older (mostly British?) women landing major roles in recent years (Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Imelda Staunton, Judi Dench). But...yeah, that's a pretty short list.

In any event, where does all of this leave 64 year-old Michael Douglas, a well-respected Best Actor winner who could command as much as $20 million per picture as recently as 10 years ago?

Fatal Attraction (1987), Falling Down (1993), Disclosure (1994)

I think the secret to much of his success, in addition to acting talent, confidence, a gravely voice and good looks, was a keen sense of self-awareness. He appeared to know exactly which roles suited his look and his style, like Tom Cruise or George Clooney behind him. This made him an easy target for the criticism of "always playing the same misogynistic/womanizing character", but the other side of that coin is "always playing the same misogynistic/womanizing character really, really well". Which is not to say that Douglas never took off his suit and stepped out of the office and away from the women. Movies like Falling Down (highlighted as an Underrated MOTM last summer), The Game, and even Wonder Boys showed Douglas in more emotionally tormented roles, while other performances (Romancing the Stone, The Jewel of the Nile, The Ghost and the Darkness) showed that he wasn't afraid to break a sweat out in the wild.

Somewhere around the year 2000, however, Douglas must have become restless in these roles. Wonder Boys was a bit of risk for him artistically, and despite the positive reviews the film received, he was pretty hurt by his peers' cool reception to it. IMDb quotes him as saying, "Wonder Boys was a huge disappointment personally. I loved the movie and we didn't even get critically acknowledged as far as awards go. I thought it was a fucking disgrace. I'll be honest - it really hurt my confidence. It was a punch in the gut."

How this affected his future choices in roles I can't say, but as I see it, 2000 was the year his career took a downward turn. Coincidentally - and I really do think it's a coincidence - it was also the year that he married Catherine Zeta-Jones, his junior by 25 years to the day (they share the same birthday, which is completely useless information that you now have stuck in your head).

The Game (1997), Traffic and Wonder Boys (2000)

But what actually happened after the year 2000? Well, he began exploring roles in comedy films (as well as a guest appearance on TV's "Will & Grace"), and almost immediately had two of the worst years of his career: 2001 (One Night at McCool's and Don't Say A Word - the latter maybe being an unintentional comedy) and 2003 (The In-Laws and It Runs in the Family, the latter of which also starred his father, Kirk, the screen legend-turned-MySpace blogger). As with Meg Ryan, these duds were followed, perhaps coincidentally, by a complete hiatus from any acting roles - nothing at all until 2006, when the terrible trend unfortunately picked right back up where it left off with The Sentinel and You, Me, and Dupree, both of which were almost universally panned. (Ironically, the same year he wisely declined to reprise his role opposite Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct 2.)

Those two movies in 2006 marked my last sightings of Douglas on the big screen, because by the time The King of California arrived in very limited release in 2007, it wasn't clear whether Douglas was still taking acting seriously. Either that or nobody recognized him in a wild-eyed, bearded role as an estranged father living in a mental institution. The movie earned moderately positive reviews but did little to revive his acting career, which may not have been his motive in the first place, since in recent years he has been an advocate for nuclear disarmament as well as an announcer for the NBC Nightly News.

Which brings us to 2009, where Douglas has just played - this is unbelievable- a supporting role to Matthew McConaughey in the ridiculous Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Roger Ebert deadpanned in his review, "Michael Douglas is widely said to have modeled his hair, eyeglass frames and general appearance on the noted womanizer Bob Evans, but actually he reminded me more of Kirk Douglas playing Bob Evans. It's an effective performance either way you look at it." Meanwhile, my neighborhood critic Colin Covert observed that "Michael Douglas, as the playboy uncle who raised the orphaned Connor, returns from the dead, introducing the spirits that will teach his nephew a cautionary lesson. Douglas, radiating an arid narcissism, does look as if he was recently exhumed. Whether this is a deliberate makeup choice or unfortunate lighting is hard to guess." The movie comfortably holds a 28% on RT and 34 rating on Metacritic.

What is Douglas doing in these movies? We can't be entirely sure, but if not for Oliver Stone it nearly would have been time to completely write off Douglas' career from this point on. Stone, who directed Douglas in his Best Actor-winning performance in 1988's Wall Street, has recently announced plans for a sequel titled Wall Street 2 (originally Money Never Sleeps), due out in 2011. Douglas will reprise his role as Gordon Gekko, with Shia LaBeouf (man, I'm getting so good at spelling that) and Javier Bardem in supporting roles.

Hopefully it will be a return to form for Douglas, even if his character is a complete weasel. As Gekko, he boasted, "I look at a hundred deals a day. I pick one." Douglas himself could have said the same thing 10-15 years ago, but sadly, these days it doesn't appear those deals are landing on his desk very often.

Whatever Happened To: Meg Ryan?

Forget Proof of Life. We need proof of a career. How did Meg Ryan go from commanding $15,000,000 a picture just seven years ago to playing bit parts in low-budget indie failures, like last year's In the Land of Women, or this year's straight-to-video My Mom's New Boyfriend?

Age discrimination? Poor choice of roles? The death of the respectable romantic comedy? Call it what you want to, but it's clear that one of the biggest box-office stars of the 90's (over $1 billion grossed worldwide between '93 and '98) has dropped off big time. Here are the numbers.

It's not as if Ryan has moved on to another career, either. Sure, she hasn't kept up the same pace as she used to, but aside from a three year hiatus after the legendary 2004 bomb Against the Ropes, acting has still been her main gig. You've probably even recognized her in the trailer for the upcoming The Women, where she'll join Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing, Bette Midler, and Candice Bergen in a remake of the 1939 classic that no doubt provided inspiration for "Sex and the City" so many years later. Was Ryan included in this ensemble because of lingering doubt that she can still carry a movie as the lead, or is this what's left of her career going forward?

Let's go back to my three initial inquiries.

Age discrimination - If you ask me, she still has star looks at 46 years old (above in The Women), so aside from there being few parts written for 40-somethings, this doesn't seem like it would be the major issue. It's just that she'd have to fight Diane Lane over those few roles.

Poor choice of roles - Certainly something to be said here. Following up You've Got Mail in 1998 with the sci-fi romantic comedy Kate and Leopold in 2001, she completely changed gears with Proof of Life (which was decent, mostly because of Russell Crowe), In The Cut (in which she appeared nude and simulated oral sex with Mark Ruffalo), and the aforementioned Against the Ropes (in which she played a female boxing promoter). Read through those again. Meg Ryan?

I'm not advocating that actors do the same thing over and over again, but there has to be some understanding of risk, and it's hard to argue that Ryan's early 2000's character choices did not do serious damage to her career. Blame can be placed at other weaknesses in those films, or poor execution overall, but it's a moot point by now. If you're going to branch out, you have to do it wisely.

The death of the respectable romantic comedy - If we consider Notting Hill the last peak in romantic comedies (earlier eras belonging to Woody Allen), there haven't been too many in the last decade to speak of. Every now and then one will come along, like 2 Days in Paris or Definitely, Maybe (which I include based on hearsay alone), but the genre hasn't been very healthy since J-Lo and Jessica Alba received the baton from Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, or even Cameron Diaz.

But if Ryan deliberately moved away from romantic comedies in the early 2000's, the lull of romantic comedies shouldn't have made a huge difference.
So it comes down to possibly choosing the wrong roles at the wrong time...or, a wild card. While promoting In the Cut in 2003, Ryan had an infamous interview with British talk show host Michael Parkinson. The only summary I could find was from IMDb:

[The October 2003 episode of Parkinson's chat show has become part of British television history due to the actress's bizarre behavior in which she gave only one word answers to questions and stared icily at the host. Ryan appeared on the program to promote her erotic thriller, In the Cut (2003), but refused to answer Parkinson's questions about the drastic change from her typical romantic comedy roles. At one point Parkinson said in exasperation, "What would you do now if you were me?" to which Ryan replied, "Why not wrap it up?" About the televised debacle, Parkinson later said that Ryan was his "most difficult TV moment." He felt her rude behavior toward his fellow guests, Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, whom she deliberately turned her back on, was unforgivable. Parkinson said, "I should have closed it. But listen, it happens. She was an unhappy woman. I felt sorry for her. What I couldn't forgive her for was that she was rude to the other guests." In a 2006 interview with "Marie Claire" magazine, Ryan blamed Parkinson's paternal manner for the failure of the interview. Ryan said, "I don't even know the man. That guy was like some disapproving father! It's crazy. I don't know what he is to you guys, but he's a nut. I felt like he was berating me for being naked in the movie. He said something like: 'You should go back to doing what you were doing'. And I thought, are you like a disapproving dad right now? I'm not even related to you. Back off, buddy. I was so offended by him." Ryan also underscored the difference between American and British TV interviewing styles. "I realized it's not like an American talk show where it's seven minutes and then there's a commercial break. I had to do 20 minutes straight with this guy, and I could either walk off - which wouldn't be good - or try to disagree with him very respectfully."]

Maybe not a fair reason for her career to tank, but still an example of how bad P.R. can have serious repercussions. It's really too bad for Meg Ryan, who was great in the 80's (Top Gun, Innerspace, When Harry Met Sally) and on fire in the 90's (Sleepless in Seattle, Courage Under Fire, City of Angels).

Next up after The Women is next year's Serious Moonlight, starring Timothy Hutton, Kristen Bell, and Justin Long. The synopsis?

"When a high-powered female attorney discovers that her husband is about to leave her for another woman, she prevents him from doing so by binding him to the toilet with duct tape. Complications ensue when burglars break in to the couple’s home."

*shakes head in pity*

Whatever Happened To: Mike Myers?

I loved Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. In fact, let's stick with present tense. I still love it. It was stupid, bold, at times clever and almost always original. Sure, it wasn't (and still isn't) a classic comedy for the ages, but it was innocent, inane fun for Americans in the happy-go-lucky late 90's.

Mike Myers hadn't been heard from in four years leading up to it, which was bizarre since we'd all grown so close to him on SNL. After Wayne's World and Wayne's World 2 (speaking of which - whatever happened to Dana Carvey?), Myers went from the indie favorite So I Married an Ax Murderer in 1993 to the international favorite Austin Powers in 1997. The next year, he played his most impressive role to date as Steve Rubell in the now all-but-forgotten 54, and it appeared, at least for a short period, that Mike Myers was on the way to a long and diverse career.

Then, all of a sudden, we had way too much of a good thing, and Myers became, well, I don't want to say lazy, but...I struggled through Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and absolutely suffered through Austin Powers in Goldmember. Shrek was a fun animated film and, dare I say, it even deserved to win the first ever Oscar for Best Animated Feature over its Pixar-produced competition, Monsters, Inc. Fine. But Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, now Shrek Goes Fourth (and who knows how many more)? Turns out that in the last 11 years, Mike Myers has had only two leading live-action film roles: Austin Powers and The Cat in the Hat. How is that possible?

I remember reading this New York Times article ("Mike Myers: Intentional Man of Mystery") a year and a half ago, which proved that I wasn't the only one wondering where Myers was. The article suggested that he was uber-picky about choosing roles but mentioned that a "comedy about a relationship guru" was one of the projects Myers had been working on. This, we now know, was The Love Guru, opening next Friday. Myers' agent in the article: “He’s a love guru. He’s somebody who’s become an expert on relationships. That’s what leads me to think that if it works, it can be a franchise. The guru can be thrust into all kinds of situations in that regard.” Sigh. Another franchise, huh?

Mike, some advice: ditch your agent. The guru is near and dear to your heart and you have an incredible marketing push behind it. I get that. But seriously, something's not clicking with The Love Guru.

I can chuckle at those pictures at first glance, and I've tried to find some laughs on the YouTube channel and the Pitka's Book Club and the guru e-cards, but it's not really working (I don't even get it - what are you doing with Peyton Manning?) Ben Kingsley's appearance in The Love Guru trailer briefly piqued my interest, but if I want to see him in a movie this summer, I'll watch him in The Wackness.

Next year, Myers will be bringing us The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (a remake of the 1947 version starring Danny Kaye), which interests me for really no other reason than the fact that Mike Myers is not going to be wearing a ridiculous costume for the first time in a long time.

But seriously, Mike - you realize you have a lot more potential than all of this...right? We just haven't seen it fulfilled in over a decade.

Whatever Happened To: Sean Connery?

All of the anticipation for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull got me to wondering: what happened to Indy's dad, Professor Henry Jones?

To get one fact immediately out of the way: it's not a mystery. Sean Connery effectively announced his retirement in a 2005 interview with The Scotsman, explaining he was "fed up with the idiots...the ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and the people who green-light the movies." Of course, this was on the heels of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, his last film role and an all-around critical and box office failure, but we'll forget about that for a moment.

The real question is, when did the dashing actor's career start going downhill? I would argue that he peaked in the late 80's - early 90's before nosediving right after The Rock in 1996. After that film (which was more of a career saver for Nicolas Cage than anything else), Sir Connery was in only five more films: The Avengers, Playing By Heart, Entrapment, Finding Forrester, and, of course, the aforementioned LXG. Not the smooth exit we might have expected from the original James Bond.

But aside from six Bond films and a Supporting Actor Oscar win in The Untouchables, could you make a case that Connery really had an impressive film career in the first place? His classic looks and oft-imitated Scottish brogue made him an iconic figure in Hollywood, but he's not regarded as the best actor of his generation or anything, right? In fact, take away his memorable roles in Highlander, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and Medicine Man, and Connery doesn't have many post-Bond credits worth mentioning. If it wasn't for 007, he might have just been known as another bodybuilder turned actor. (I'm almost tempted to question the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award he received from the American Film Institute, placing him in the company of some of the most influential Hollywood figures in history). But he was Bond, and that might have made all the difference. That and the fact that women find him disarmingly attractive, "for an older guy."

Since his retirement Connery, now 78, has remained mostly quiet, persevering through several health problems and campaigning for Scottish independence from the UK, despite his acceptance of the British knighthood in 2000. I can't really put my finger on why, but I'm a little puzzled by the purpose of his official website (not to be confused with www.yourethemannowdog.com). If he's trying to remain relevant he might want to try to cash in on more SNL skits, but I have to say, the website's "Spot the Young Connery" game is kind of fun - for one play.

Doesn't anybody in Hollywood have one last good role for Sean Connery?

Whatever Happened To: The Brat Pack?

For months I've meaning to do some kind of John Hughes filmography review, but I haven't been able to get to it yet. Hughes has been generating interest lately because he wrote the recent released Drillbit Taylor, his first screenplay since (can you guess...) Beethoven's 5th in 2003. Anyway, the Los Angeles Times recently profiled the former teen actors from Hughes' popular 1980's movies.

Some observations:

• Wow, Judd Nelson looks completely different. I didn't expect him to still look like John Bender (The Breakfast Club), but he owned that character so much I guess I just thought John Bender was an actual person.
• Who would have thought you'd have to watch the ABC Family Channel to see Ally Sheedy again?
  
• Anthony Michael Hall is going to be in The Dark Knight? Wouldn't have expected that from the former Rusty Griswold (National Lampoon's Vacation), Farmer Ted (Sixteen Candles), Brian Johnson (The Breakfast Club) and Gary Wallace (Weird Science).
• Macaulay Culkin. What is with the freaky stuff? I'm starting to think that in real life you're much closer to your character in The Good Son than you are to those in Home Alone or Uncle Buck.
• I completely forgot Alan Ruck (Ferris Bueller's Day Off) was the annoying bus passenger in Speed.
• Michael Schoeffling (Sixteen Candles) - really? A carpenter? Good for you.
• I don't know if I'm more surprised that Gedde Watanabe (Sixteen Candles) is still playing up Asian stereotypes or just that he's acting at all.

Hope to complete the Hughes list some time this month...

Whatever Happened To: Dan Aykroyd?

When was the last time you saw this guy?

Granted, I skipped last year's I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, but before that, Dan Akyroyd's last notable role came in...Blues Brothers 2000 in 1998? Well, I skipped that, too, so I'm going to have to go back even further - to Grosse Pointe Blank in 1997. If that would have been the last role for this Canadian comedic star, all would be well. Unfortunately, most of his movies since then would be lucky to make the 2:00 AM slot on WGN: Diamonds, Pearl Harbor, Loser, Crossroads (yep, with Britney Spears), and Christmas with the Kranks. Even The First Church of Dan Aykroyd has shamefully closed its doors.

In case you've forgotten, Aykroyd was a writer and cast member for the first four seasons of "Saturday Night Live." In case you've forgotten, he went on to own the 80's (along with his SNL co-stars) - find your favorite among Trading Places, Ghostbusters, Spies Like Us, Dragnet, The Great Outdoors, and Ghostbusters II. In case you've forgotten, the man was nominated for an Academy Award for Driving Miss Daisy!

So what's he doing now? You guessed it - aside from serving as the official Hollywood consultant for the Mutual UFO Network, Aykroyd moved into the wine-making business. Go figure.

Just me, or is that a perfect role for him to play next? If there is a next role...