{"id":41375,"date":"2025-07-05T18:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T18:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/41375\/"},"modified":"2025-07-05T18:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T18:19:09","slug":"michael-douglas-has-no-intention-of-returning-to-acting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/41375\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Douglas Has ‘No Intention’ of Returning to Acting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMichael Douglas<\/a>, who is at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival<\/a> to present a newly restored print of Milo\u0161 Forman\u2019s classic \u201cOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest,\u201d spoke at the festival about his fears for democracy in the U.S. under the Trump administration. When asked at a press conference about the state of politics in his home country, the Oscar-winner said the nation is currently \u201cflirting with autocracy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI look at it generally as the fact of how precious democracy is, of how vulnerable it is and how it always has to be protected,\u201d he added. \u201cI hope that what we\u2019re struggling with right now is a reminder of all the hard work the Czechs did in gaining their freedom and independence. Politics now seem to be for profit. Money has entered democracy as a profit centre. People are going into politics now to make money. We maintained an ideal, an idealism in the U.S., which does not exist now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actor wrapped his comment by saying he prefers \u201cnot to go into too much detail\u201d as \u201cthe news speaks for itself.\u201d \u201cI myself am worried, I am nervous, and I think it\u2019s all of our responsibility to look out for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe screening of the multiple-Oscar-winning film took place half a decade after \u201cOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest\u201d played in Karlovy Vary and honors the classic\u2019s relationship to the town and Forman\u2019s home country. The director was a loyal supporter of the festival and, along with Douglas, \u201cCuckoo\u201d producer Saul Zaentz and Danny DeVito, who also appeared in the film, were all recipients of the festival\u2019s Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema. Douglas was joined in the spa town by Zaentz\u2019s nephew, producer Paul Zaentz, and members of Forman\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe festival was just beginning when we first came here,\u201d reminisced Douglas. \u201cIt was a new festival and Milo\u0161 felt it was important to his country to be at the festival. I remember we had a good time, it\u2019s a charming, charming town. It\u2019s highly unusual to be supporting and honoring a movie from 50 years ago. It was a reminder for me of how special that picture was. It\u2019s a treat to come back here to the scene of the crime, where Milo\u0161 was brought up, with all of what he accomplished.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actor looked back at the legendary 1976 Oscars Best Picture line up, which included Forman\u2019s eventual winner alongside \u201cDog Day Afternoon,\u201d \u201cJaws,\u201d \u201cBarry Lyndon\u201d and \u201cNashville.\u201d \u201cI ask you, in the last 20 years, has there ever been anywhere near that kind of quality of movies there?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tZaentz agreed, adding that he wouldn\u2019t remake the film now, but is currently working on a series adaptation of Ken Kesey\u2019s classic from the point of view of Chief Bromden. \u201cWe just made an arrangement with Kesey\u2019s family, to possibly do a television series, but it\u2019s based on the book and the book was told through the eyes of Chief Bromden. At the end of the first series, the Jack Nicholson character would die. And then the second year would be what happens to the Chief after he escapes. That I\u2019m ok with, but never a remake of the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe producer also mentioned he is working on an adaptation of an off-Broadway play, titled \u201cBackyard Desert,\u201d and which trails four U.S border agents in Arizona who meet a dying Mexican immigrant trying to cross the border. \u201cThey realize these are real people escaping terrible situations who deserve to be respected, not thrown into concentration camps in the Everglades. We\u2019re halfway through with the budget and hoping to be able to film it in October.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tZaentz is also working on a TV adaptation of another one of his uncle\u2019s Oscar-winning films, \u201cThe English Patient,\u201d although he says the \u201cbeautiful\u201d script he currently has right now \u201cis too expensive for the streamers.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s based on what was in the book that was not in the movie. We\u2019re rewriting it now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile most of the press conference revolved around the 50-year-old film and Douglas\u2019 legendary career, the actor also spoke about his present and future, most specifically his battle against throat cancer. \u201cStage 4 cancer is not a holiday, but there aren\u2019t many choices, are there?,\u201d he said. \u201cI went with the program, involving chemo and radiation, and was fortunate. The surgery would have meant not being able to talk and removing part of my jaw and that would have been limiting as an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI have not worked since 2022 purposefully because I realized I had to stop,\u201d he added. \u201cI had been working pretty hard for almost 60 years, and I did not want to be one of those people who dropped dead on the set. I have no real intentions of going back. I say I\u2019m not retired because if something special came up, I\u2019d go back, but otherwise, no.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDouglas did say he has \u201cone little independent movie\u201d he is \u201ctrying to get a good script out of,\u201d but wrapped by stating that, \u201cin the spirit of maintaining a good marriage,\u201d he is \u201chappy to play the wife\u201d to his long-time wife Catherine Zeta-Jones for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Douglas, who is at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival to present a newly restored print of Milo\u0161…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":41376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,32653,32654,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-41375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-karlovy-vary-film-festival","10":"tag-michael-douglas","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114802010710885676","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}