Michael Douglas is out promoting his autobiography “One Helluva Ride“, roughly translating to “It’s Been a Real Wild Ride.” While a guest of the American Cinematheque, he looked back on the making of his first leading role on the big screen, namely Romancing the Stone by Robert Zemeckis, a film co-starring Kathleen Turner. It hadn’t even been conceived for him, but the project came to life by accident, while the production of the sequel The Jewel of the Nile proved far tougher, paradoxically.
Romancing the Stone, Michael Douglas’ Fortunate Rise to Stardom
For Romancing the Stone (1984), the good Michael Douglas was slated to be only a producer: in that role he had won the Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but as an actor he was regarded as one from TV (think The Streets of San Francisco): “I had produced this film Starman with Jeff Bridges; I would have liked to star in it, but I wasn’t approved,” the actor explains as an example. With Romancing the Stone, the project was taking bolder chances than the Indiana Jones-style adventure the genre suggested, because, for instance, Douglas himself advocated for Robert Zemeckis to direct, at a time when he had just two flops to his name; it was precisely the success of Romancing the Stone that opened the door to Back to the Future a year later. The point is that, when it came time to cast the film’s male lead opposite Kathleen Turner, a writer out of his depth in a dirty, action-packed life, Douglas faced a string of refusals: Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Sylvester Stallone all passed because they were not convinced about playing nearly a sidekick to a female heroine. To prevent the project from failing, Douglas then made a second bold move and offered himself for the part of the adventurer Jack. The troubles did not end there: when he and Zemeckis tied the knot with a rough patch, the studio forced reshoots that the studio was unhappy with, even though the original budget had already been exhausted. The rest is history, with the film’s success turning Douglas into a commanding on-screen presence.
The setup for the sequel The Jewel of the Nile (1985, directed by Lewis Teague) proved even more challenging: Douglas and Turner grew apart after a previously secret relationship had ended, and Turner was hardly eager to return for a sequel, yet she lost a legal battle when the original contract—which had also bound her to a potential follow-up—was challenged. Filming in Morocco began in the worst possible way, with several crew members dying in an aircraft accident while en route to the location. The shoot then faced what Douglas recalls as an attempt at extortion: a demand of two million dollars by authorities to prevent a mandatory six-week collective quarantine, citing a case of suspected hepatitis within the crew. Douglas ultimately fled Morocco, paying under-the-table fake passport stamps in a state of fear of being discovered at any moment (no wonder he chose to share this story only now). Neither the studio (Fox) nor the American ambassador could offer transparent assistance, and the studio had made clear from the outset that Douglas himself would bear the financial and logistical burden of any hiccup. A genuine nightmare!
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