Michael Douglas
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The Joe Rogan Experience · #2565 - Michael Douglas
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Why Did San Francisco Protesters Target Basic Instinct?
Michael Douglas says Basic Instinct drew a protest from the LGBT community as soon as the production thought it was shooting the movie in San Francisco. The offense was a bisexual woman who was an ice pick killer. Douglas told the protesters that villain parts are the best parts to play. The protesters called the role a derogatory statement on a bisexual woman, and they were serious.
The production ended up shooting scenes in San Francisco with 40 SWAT officers surrounding the whole block to hold off the protests. Douglas asked how the protesters knew the plot and how they knew the script. They got hold of it. Someone linked the writer's script, which Douglas sets aside as another story.
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How Did Drug Dealing Pay Michael Douglas's School?
Michael Douglas got through the rest of the expense of school by dealing drugs. He did it a couple of times. He told his dad the story because he never asked him for anything: he was a drug dealer.
Joe Rogan asked how many trips he made, and Michael Douglas said twice. Joe Rogan asked how he stopped when it was so much money and very profitable. Michael Douglas remembered a kilo was $75 out west and sold for $500 or $600 or $700 back east. Then the hippie scene began to change. Ex-cons were coming out of jail, the scene got infiltrated, and the drug dealers started getting violent, uglier, and a little heavier.
Joe Rogan credited him for getting just two trips and out. A lot of people woul
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Why Did Gavin Newsom Veto the California Homeless Audit?
Joe Rogan says California spent $24 billion on the homeless, and Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill to audit where the money went. Rogan says a lot of the homeless money probably went to NGOs, just as fire money from the Pacific Palisades fire was distributed to like 100 different NGOs. The fire money was supposed to go to the people who were losing their houses.
Joe Rogan says people raised the money and had goodwill because they thought it would help people who were barely paying their mortgages, lived in a great neighborhood, and then lost everything. None of the money went to them. He says the outcome disturbs people, and it should. He also says the outrage does not dismiss or condone corruptio
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How Did Danny DeVito Balance Romancing the Stone?
Michael Douglas calls Danny DeVito one of his oldest friends. They have made three pictures together. On Romancing the Stone, the early picture, Michael Douglas did not have a real, clear part. A character was there, and Michael Douglas knew Danny DeVito could fill it out.
Romancing the Stone had to hold a delicate balance, a romantic adventure mixed with comedy. People said you really cannot do that. Danny DeVito came in and created material that was not in the script, and the new material helped keep the balance of the picture.
Michael Douglas asks who has had a longer career than Danny DeVito and notes that Danny DeVito was on Taxi. They were roommates in New York in 1976, and that is h
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Why Does Joe Rogan Want Comedy Kept Disrespected?
Joe Rogan says comedy should stay the underdog and should be disrespected. People are still going to want to see it and love it. Too much love, respect, and too many awards water comedy down until it becomes something that tries to please everybody. Hate from some people and love from others keeps comedy in the right place. The people who practice it still have to treat it with respect.
In Austin he bought a club and started one as a home for working comedians, especially the young ones coming up. A talent coordinator watches the open mics, and there are two nights of them. Every Monday they do a show he calls the most popular live comedy show in the country. People get one minute of standu
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Why Did Michael Douglas Do the Alan Arkin Series?
Michael Douglas says comedy never gets treated the way it should at the Academy Awards. People cherish funny friends, and comedy is rare and hard to do, yet a comedian does not win an Academy Award for his performance. The snub is what fascinated him.
After his cancer, Chuck Lorre came up to him. Lorre had the series they did with Alan Arkin, and Michael Douglas did the series just to understand comedy.
Joe Rogan says he had Chuck Lorre on the day before. Michael Douglas asks if he did. Joe Rogan says yes: Chuck Lorre was great, incredible, and a very interesting guy.
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Did the Gun Law Kill Phil Hartman?
Joe Rogan says he is never going to use a gun on a wife or a husband. It is not him. He tells people not to be the type of person who would use a gun on a wife or a husband.
The example is personal. Phil Hartman was Joe Rogan's good friend. Hartman's wife shot him in the head while he was asleep. Joe Rogan does not think the killing happened because the law allowed them to have a gun. He says she would have killed him either way. A gun was just an easy way to kill somebody.
Joe Rogan keeps the cause on the person who decided to kill. The law that allowed them to have a gun is not the cause he accepts, and the gun is the method that made the killing easy.
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Why Was the Manson Family Looking for Terry Melcher?
Michael Douglas had a run-in with the Manson family. He said it, then said it again. Joe Rogan asked if he really did, and Douglas said yes. Douglas says they talked about it in the book.
When the murders happened, the Manson family was actually looking for a guy named Terry Melcher. Terry Melcher was Doris Day's son, and he was a rock and roll producer. Charlie Manson was a musician, and he believed he had some talent. Douglas says the girls sometimes would be used by Manson to have fun or to make it happen. Manson was pissed off at Melcher. He thought Melcher was living in the house where Sharon Tate and the other ones were.
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Why Did Michael Douglas's Grandfather Leave Belarus?
Michael Douglas's grandfather on his father's side left Belarus in 1902. Two other brothers were bank robbers there. They went to jail, the grandfather got out in 1902, came to the country, and changed his name.
Michael Douglas had thought the grandfather left around 1914, in the time of the Russian Revolution, while Cossacks were rounding up Jews and putting them in pogroms. Belarus was part of Russia around the turn of the century, in 1900. Henry Gates's Find Your Roots did the homework and put the departure in 1902, tied to the two brothers. The area in Belarus sits right near Chernobyl in Ukraine, on the border with the little town the family came from. The town was downwind of the expl
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What Nuclear Deal Does Michael Douglas Want From Trump?
Michael Douglas hopes President Trump makes a deal with Putin for the United States and Russia to give up nuclear weapons. He says the weapons are totally obsolete and would destroy the world, and he calls it mutual assured destruction. If Trump spent the next three years of his presidency negotiating with Putin, Douglas says we could get rid of nuclear weapons, and he guarantees he would commit his life to Trump getting the Nobel Peace Prize because Trump would deserve it.
Joe Rogan calls the proposal a great utopian idea and agrees a world with no nuclear weapons would be awesome if the species agreed there is no need for something that can kill every man, woman, child, every animal and p
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Why Does Joe Rogan Call a Celebrity Coin a Bribe?
Joe Rogan says a celebrity crypto coin is a new thing to rig and a way to bribe people. He says his buddy Kurt Metzger thinks the buyers are gambling addicts and that a coin is a new thing to gamble on.
Joe Rogan walks through a Michael Douglas crypto coin. Someone puts in a million dollars or five million dollars and says the money is an investment in the coin. Fans buy in and hope to get out before the crash, because everybody kind of knows the coin is going to crash. The money that was supposed to be for the coin gets pulled out immediately and handed over. Offshore corporations or other tricky filters suck the money out.
The same stretch calls the setup a Ponzi scheme and the Wild West
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Why Do People Resent a Star With a Famous Father?
Joe Rogan tells Michael Douglas the pressure came from being the son of a great man, on top of youth, good looks, and fame, a gift and a burden at the same time. Michael Douglas says kids can be nasty once they know who your mother is and who your father is, because they make assumptions about the family.
Joe Rogan asks whether nearly every business runs on the same family help. Every mother and father tries to get a son or daughter ahead. Restaurants make it super common. At Gaetano's in Las Vegas, the dad started the place and the son runs it. Cleaning businesses and groceries follow the same pattern. A family business is a normal thing. People single out celebrity instead, because fame i
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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, averagi
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Why Did Michael Douglas Refuse to Buy a Gun?
Michael Douglas did not get a gun after being told to get one. He has thought about it and still stays away. Too many family members have been injured, and guns have been used in other ways. Michael Douglas says the statistics of gun control are not good.
Michael Douglas followed a trail and saw a cat's leg. People had dismembered her two cats all the way across the yard. Michael Douglas talked with the police about what was going on. Right after the talk, the Manson murders happened, and they tied the killings together. Police came into the house and said to get a gun, which he did not. They said if the killers came up, drag them across the front door so they were inside the house. The lin
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Why Still Back the United Nations?
Michael Douglas supports the United Nations because it was designed after World War II as a place for countries to get together. There is no reason for any more wars, yet more conflict is going on than ever before.
In college, a lecture from the man behind the geodesic dome, who also wrote a book called Spaceship Earth, showed how tiny the planet is. Telescopes were looking farther and farther out. Michael Douglas is sure something else is out there in the universe, and maybe people will find it, but right now Earth is all there is. The planet is beginning to crumble worldwide with the climate. After two major world wars and a period of relative peace, things are beginning to crack again. T
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Why Did Wall Street Guys Root for Gordon Gekko?
Michael Douglas said the movie was his fault, and that Gordon Gekko was a hero. Joe Rogan asked how many guys did cocaine and became terrible stockbrokers because of Wall Street.
After the picture came out, half-drunk Wall Street guys in New York told Douglas he was the man. Douglas said he was the villain. They wanted the clothes, and nothing had any morality. Joe Rogan said they wanted the most expensive suits possible, the coke, and the stolen money, and that Douglas was like Tony Soprano for Italian guys. They loved the pizzazz. They rooted for a bad guy. Douglas said Wall Street came out in 85.
Douglas called the reaction an eye opener. The traders wanted the character anyway, and pla