Why Did Michael Douglas Give His Dad Half the Deal?

Michael Douglas says four really great parts in a career is lucky, and R. P. McMurphy was one of them. His dad was 60 or 62. The director and the financing did not see his dad in the part, so Douglas told him it was not going to happen. Douglas had gone to the mat. They were still producing the picture, and he gave his dad half of his producing deal for the opportunity.

They made the movie. Douglas brought his dad to Berkeley, California to see the final cut. His dad came out of the theater and called it a hell of a movie. Every few years, after a couple of pops, his dad would say he could have done the picture. The Streets of San Francisco was a big hit, the number one show on ABC, averaging 24 or 25 million viewers a week. ABC was a brand new network, and the series was syndicated all over the world. People asked why he would leave in the fifth to produce a little indie film, and he was not even going to act in it.

Douglas had never thought about producing. He was in love with the project. Across 104 episodes and 104 hours of television with Carl Malden, he had learned production, and he was shocked by how much he knew when the picture came together.