©Courtesy of Netflix, The Kominsky Method
Eighty-year-old Michael Douglas, one of the most esteemed actors of his generation, says he is so disillusioned with the state of American politics that he is quitting the profession. Speaking at the Karlovy-Vary International Film Festival in Prague, Douglas warned that the nation is “flirting with autocracy” under the Trump administration.
Douglas was in the Czech capital to present a newly restored print of Miloš Forman’s classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which he produced along with Saul Zaentz in 1975, when he was 30. Douglas appeared in the film along with Danny DeVito.
The veteran actor told a press conference at the festival: “I 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. I hope that what we’re 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 center. People are going into politics now to make money. We maintained an ideal, an idealism in the U.S., which does not exist now.”
Douglas also told festival-goers: “I 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’m not retired because if something special came up, I’d go back, but otherwise, no.”
Michael Douglas is currently working on a film adaptation of Backyard Desert, an off-Broadway play about the clashes between migrants and agents at the US-Mexican border. According to the actor, the agents “come to realize these are real people escaping terrible situations who deserve to be respected, not thrown into concentration camps in the Everglades. We’re halfway through with the budget and hoping to be able to film it in October.”
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