I'm Alec Baldwin. And here's the thing, Mr Douglas. Michael Douglas is American acting royalty. He's the son of Kirk Douglas, one of the greatest actors this country has ever seen. In my opinion, that alone would insure him a place at anyone's dinner party. But Michael Douglas is his own man. He has two Academy Awards as an actor and a producer, and has played some of the most iconic roles in film over the past thirty years, roles that have challenged the way we think about family, power, money, sex, Gordon Gecko in Wall Street, Nick Curran in Basic Instinct, as well as Romancing the Stone, Traffic and Wonder Boys. Michael was at his home in New York City when I visited with him. He's worked with everyone from Oliver Stone to Curtis Handsome to Steven Soderberg. In seven, he worked with British director Adrian Line on Fatal Attraction. Douglas says Line was one of the best. He was great and he has a great knock and talent for that. And I remember, you know, when Glenn and I when we were doing Fatal Attraction and we have the scene in the kitchen, well the first time when we were kind of going at it, got her up on the kitchen sink, and so he did a take on that and said, well that was that was one of the love That was just great. What could we do? I think? And Gla said, well, maybe I can take the water and I can stick my wet fingers in his mouth. Lovely, lovely love love how many of your fingers you get all of your fingers into his mouth? Tommy exactly, I'd love to see that. He was great, he was love, his holmes and a lot of fun. Every other day he said, well, the only eyes I should get bull and shape this picture. No, no, no, no awork, Laya should look good just the way you are in about three weeks. Jeez, Michael, Mike, you look at Rson Wells. But that's that favor. They loved to shoot that down angle, you know, and we all look better with the camera above our eyeline. And don't you drop that camera? You Yeah, when you work, Now, what's it been like for you now in terms of you show up and you're pretty fastile at getting there emotionally, in terms of how you want to play it, and is it more technical for you. Yeah, someone early on in my career told me, you know, the camera can always tell when you're lying. Oh. I was like, the camera can tell what I'm lying. So I used to me. I used to I used to method up. I gotta be truthful. One day I said, wait a minute, I lie every day. I said, but if you're lying, I mean not me. I'm different. I'm talented, right, exactly what's acting about except lying? That freed me up a whole lot. What I realized that. But the last ten years is the business changed dramatically. The technical part is definitely to me now it's all, you know, where's my life? Where's the camera? Raise that camera. I used to say, well, we gotta have a clean take, and I gotta burn one great connected master. Now I'm like, we got four pickups of this line and it's so technical. To me now, it's unbelievable. I learned that a lot from actually and Jack Nicholson on Cuckoo's Nest. I was watching you know, the it's editing. You do someone's take after take it. Then you go someone's look at the dailies and you see how my new the differences are and then they can judiciously edit. I mean, I was working with some people early on and they didn't know better, and I was looking at people and I say, my god, when they watch the dailies of this, they're going to really be unhappy because this person is as boring as you could possibly mean. They're not doing anything. And that was my sin was I felt like I always had to be acting or or doing something. And I guess my question is, sometimes you go to work and you gotta you know what you want to do. What do you do when you go to a movie and the director has nothing to offer you, He's really just a traffic cop point a camera. My feeling is with movies. I mean, first of all, if you get a good part and the get go is a great part, you know, and sometimes you get a good part and a lot of a lot of pictures I've done where I'm in every single scene and I'm caring the plot line and somebody else has got the colorful good part. But I always think that if you if the pictures cast properly, or if you're cast right, I never expect to hear much from a director. You don't know, the world is so different Now I've got people welcome to me all the time, quoting some of the most corrosive lines from Glen Garry Glenn Ross. I think it's good to talk about the kind of funckishness of the sales industry. When I say, you know, coffee is for closers, and you say greed is good. Do you think in our lifetime that that line has changed? You read is good where people really believe that's true. Well, the affirmation that I got from that villain, from that community, from that from that community. You know, if I get one more drunken guy from the street, hey man, great is good. You're the man. You're why I got into this business. And everything I quoted. Hey, you know what, I was a villain. I got people welcome to me drunk in the lobbies of hotels, and they're going come do that speech because I'm in sales, baby. Yeah. And I'm saying, they're going, you don't get it, man, this is like Arthur Miller. We're trying to wake you up. But they're like, no, they don't know. They love the accoutrements and and and you spoke, well, what is your relationship to go into the movies? Now? Yeah, I'm really embarrassed to say this, but I'm not a movie goer. I don't see many movies. I waste so much time watching news and sports. I love watching sports because you know, I can't tell you how it's gonna end. My problem with movies, you know, is you get halfway through a movie and you see, I was right. I love making movies, but I'm really bad Alex when it comes to seeing them. When you were younger, did you always since you were headed in this direction in some way? I never. I never thought I was. I mean probably a lot of it was resentment as a young kid my folks getting divorced and both the me actors. But I never even thought about the doing this at all. And I said, I was like a junior in college. What were you dreaming of doing back then? Nothing? Really, I was a hippie, you know, and I mean in the early sixties, and they took me into the vice Chance's office and your third year college and you're not a major, al right, So I guess you know, drama should be easy. You know, I had both parents. I hung around. My mother was in a lot of theater and so it hung around there. But there's not something I dreamed about. But the success you have now came in stages. When you were younger and you did your early films, you were what you said, the gentle young man. But I wonder in your case because you eventually played a very tough, very powerful actor on film. So do you think when you were younger you pulled your punches because you didn't want to step on what you thought was your dad's territory. You don't want to compared to him. First of all, you look at his career. He played a sensitive young man for his first six or seven pictures until he had a movie called The Champion. I just think I was just trying to define who I am, because the one problem about being second generation is, you know you, half of me is made up of my father's jeans. My mother, Diana, is an actress too, but not as well known. So when you see behavioral or mannerisms that are like your father, I feel like it takes swift from your individuality, right, And it's sort of like earlier on. I just was trying to find out who I was, and being a nice guy was a way of pleasing everybody. But the truth be told in a villain is the best way to go playing a bad guy, better lines, it's more colorful audiences by care siously love you because a lot of time is everything that they want to do in real life, but they can't do what you can do in the movies. Contrary, women is taking him so much longer to be comfortable in playing the villains. Mad I look back to I was producing Cuckoo's Nest and all the actresses that turned down the part of Nurse Ratchet because they didn't want to play a villain, Louise Flesh of us Oscar, Yeah, you know, for playing it well. When I went to Strasburg the acting school, we did a gender reversed production of Cuckoo's Nest and the girl was McMurphy and all the inmates were females, and I was Nurse Ratchet as a man. That's a great idea. Is your relationship with your dad more fathers son now? Or is it more too great colleagues in motion picture history? No, it's more father's son. It's more fun. I mean, he's ninety four years old. I'm just so proud of him. And you know, he wasn't a great dad as in the prime as an actor. He was, like a lot of us, were consumed with his career. For him, it really started when he had his helicopter accident when he was seventy with a friend helicopter and they hit a aerobatic plane and the when they were taking off and the people nearrobatic plane crashed and died instantly, and the helicopter dropped about forty ft and he just was black and blue. Started him on this you know why am I alive and this eighteen year old student pilot and the instructor dead. So he started getting back into his religious reading the town mood, reading the Old Testament, working with a rabbi, and has become a much more spiritual person. And I looked at to him with all of the great things that he's achieved in his acting career and producing career, which a lot of people don't really realize how much she produced. I am in so all of him in the third act of his life. And I'm sixty six now, and and I think of him being seventy and what he's accomplished between seventy and ninety four, which is about nine books. Called him last week. The housekeeper said he's done at the office. What the hell you doing down to the office, you know, he's, well, I'm just finishing the editor of my last book. You've got another book that's yeah, yeah, yeah, what what else? Because well, I got a book on sculptures. He said, well, that's that's that's crete. It's really good. You know. So he's he's on. So I look at him much more um as a father now because I'm you know, much less competitive with him. What did he do to you or not do for you? The positive or the negative that you've passed on to your children. The negative is you got to watch your quick temper. You think you had a temper like your death. No, No, I didn't have people. People people did people? I mean it was it was right, I think I realized now because he's a white Russian Jew, you know, Belarus and all of that, and well that and also he saw how much any Semitism there wasn't the world because people would talk to him as didn't know it was a Jew. I'm like, you should please come sit down. None of those exactly would see that exactly exactly because he changed his name is not no longer Danielovitch did not not as bad I mean, I've learned to monitor it or to be aware of it. You used to have a short handle, remember a lot better now, Yeah, because I don't care as much that there's things that you can control. Is that God grabbed me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the courage to change the things I can, the wisdom and know the difference. And it's true. Mine was even worse, it was even more narcissistant. I was just angry because nobody else cared about it, whatever it was, as much as I did. I wonder what was your relationship like with your mom in terms of your career. What would you and she talk about? Did she have a lot to say to you about the business and what she thought about what you did? You seemed very geared towards making your dad. Well, my mother's English background. She was not so much the business. She's she's very bright and it's probably more politely critical. Mia. As an actor, it was that bad, not bad? What did you get from your mother? You in diplomacy? The guy that could produce films. I think Jack Lemon said it when we were doing China Syndrome. He said, Michael, he said he hits you with a thousand powder puffs. You know, it takes that to produce to be able to massage people and work with them and get people confrontational. You know, it really does to try to get people in that way, and I think she has that. I think my father has made it more difficult for self and his confrontational and this anger, you know, in his career. The positive side of Kirk is a sense of tenacity and stamina. My son is a cross country runner now, my ten year old son, Dylan doing this now with ten years old serial starting about tracks star and your older son has had his problems. What's been your relationship with your son's alcoholism and drug addiction? UM. I think there's a certain genetic part, and I think as far as drug addiction, you know, your peer group plays a huge part of that. I'm of the belief that you know, fourteen years old, as a parent, you've lost a lot of your influence other people and by their peer group that triggers and starts it off. And then in my oldest son's case, there was no end until he was incarcerated. UM. I think secrets play a part in this, and the fact that whether it's a bad marital relationship that you're trying to keep from your children, and the tension is there and you're not really kind of upfront. I mean, this go around, I'm finding myself much more honest with my seven year old daughter than I ever thought I would be. Also, just because of what they have access to. I mean, it's just watching Glee, which was which is our family night. You know, I don't know why I'm so surprised. I am. I'm looking at it and they're watching you right or wrong without without any kind of ratings on it. You know, two boys kissing each other and all that, besides the gay actually physically seeing things and free for all, and it's a little a little difference. So I think that in that way, uh, trying to get to get or not not keeping as many secrets. Isn't it funny how people men in particular who have I don't want to put the stellically who played near the third rail sexually speaking, are very sensitive about that. When the children are growing up, they're like, no, no, I don't need to watch that. Yeah, I mean, your dad has that great line. My son was sent to rehab for sex edition problem, and how much did you inherit that which is this is what men are supposed to do? Um? Probably, probably, I'm sure you know. I mean, I'm watching. I mean my father has been very fortunate second wife and his French and they've been married fifty six years, I think, and has a different had a different attitude earlier on he was a rascal. More from My conversation with Michael Douglas is coming up in a minute. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing I'm at, like Baldwin, here's the thing. I'm talking with Michael Douglas at his home in New York City. So you've been sick. What was your relationship to cancer before you had cancer? How was it in your life? Family? Friends, never really nothing in my my my father, remember I had a little skin thing. My mother had getting a slight skin issue, but no real history when you know and then what do you find out? How I actually was Right after I finished The Wall Street Money Never Sleeps, my throat was a little sore, and I thought maybe it was from you know, like from tension, from the part where you haven't placed your voice where you're swallowing your words. And your your speak from the back of your throat had a little bit of a like a sword gum. And I saw doctors. I thought it was some sort of sore, and antibiotics, this and that, and then you know, I said with it and went on for another couple of months. Your your general practitioner, then send you an experts. I go to your nose and throat guy, a periodontist, and this and that and another round of antibiotics. And then I went away for the summer, and I came back and I was in Canada, and I called and said, listen, something's going on here, all right, something is really going on here. How much time has passed you first? Now we're in August, and I first went to him in January, so it's almost more than half a year. Half a year finding ear nose and throat doctor at the Jewish Hospital in Montreal, Quebec. And he literally opened my mouth and he took a tongue to press it. And I'll never forget that moment when he looked up at me and looked back down, I knew and he said, well, I guess we're gonna take a bye. Popsy, he said, biopsy, he said well, there's a polet here and it was on my tongue. Two days later he called me back in and said, you got cancer. For for head and neck cancer, the best place with Sloan Kettering, and I went down and within a week and found out that it was stage four, which is the maximum, so seven weeks of radiation and chemo. The reality is, with all the doctors that I could have here in New York, if I had been checked back in January for head and neck cancer, this could have all happened a lot early. And the thing with cancers, you want to get it as early as you can. Because I want to mention that I came to this door, to your home here in New York fully expecting you to look. I'm gonna be very honest with you now. As great as you look now, you look pretty damn good. I really went to I got to go to Cross three. You're working at your normal self. You look fantastic, and I lost a little bit of weight to help that. But you know, you got a jumpy one. The one advantage of this is deciding I'm taking the rest of this year easy, enjoy my family, and just take her easy. Now you had kids, you had your son's ten So you had your son when you were how old? Six? Should I have more kids? Yes? Yes, I mean at this very moment, the door opens, I think, here's my daughter. Think wait a minute, this is Harris. Hello. Rris was coming home from school and she jumped into the chair next to her dad's. Has she seen a couple of your films at this I have hardly any movies that she can see. Julie and I and the other one The Stone. I don't feel like my favorite movie well because a long time she didn't really know what I did. You know, she knew mommy because Chicago and all that. Mommy was an actress the longest time. He didn't know it. Wants said to me, my friend said, what does your dad do for a living? And I said he makes pancakes And they were like, I want to go to a house. I love tanking. Michael Douglas will be flipping pancakes for a few more months before he begins filming the lead role in Liberaci. Matt Damon will be his lover. He live Racci was a lovely guy. I mean the truth. I haven't played a lot of nice guys. When my dad was in his prime kirk Is as an actor. They were good guys and bad guys, black hats and white hats. And not over analyzing it, but I think the Vietnam War had a lot to do with redefining a bottle. You know, we thought we were good and then I'm seen in a different light in some of the situations that we're in. Now, I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the Thing

I'm Alec Baldwin. And here's the thing, Mr Douglas. Michael Douglas is American acting royalty. He's the son of Kirk Douglas, one of the greatest actors this country has ever seen. In my opinion, that alone would insure him a place at anyone's dinner party. But Michael Douglas is his own man. He has two Academy Awards as an actor and a producer, and has played some of the most iconic roles in film over the past thirty years, roles that have challenged the way we think about family, power, money, sex, Gordon Gecko in Wall Street, Nick Curran in Basic Instinct, as well as Romancing the Stone, Traffic and Wonder Boys. Michael was at his home in New York City when I visited with him. He's worked with everyone from Oliver Stone to Curtis Handsome to Steven Soderberg. In seven, he worked with British director Adrian Line on Fatal Attraction. Douglas says Line was one of the best. He was great and he has a great knock and talent for that. And I remember, you know, when Glenn and I when we were doing Fatal Attraction and we have the scene in the kitchen, well the first time when we were kind of going at it, got her up on the kitchen sink, and so he did a take on that and said, well that was that was one of the love That was just great. What could we do? I think? And Gla said, well, maybe I can take the water and I can stick my wet fingers in his mouth. Lovely, lovely love love how many of your fingers you get all of your fingers into his mouth? Tommy exactly, I'd love to see that. He was great, he was love, his holmes and a lot of fun. Every other day he said, well, the only eyes I should get bull and shape this picture. No, no, no, no awork, Laya should look good just the way you are in about three weeks. Jeez, Michael, Mike, you look at Rson Wells. But that's that favor. They loved to shoot that down angle, you know, and we all look better with the camera above our eyeline. And don't you drop that camera? You Yeah, when you work, Now, what's it been like for you now in terms of you show up and you're pretty fastile at getting there emotionally, in terms of how you want to play it, and is it more technical for you. Yeah, someone early on in my career told me, you know, the camera can always tell when you're lying. Oh. I was like, the camera can tell what I'm lying. So I used to me. I used to I used to method up. I gotta be truthful. One day I said, wait a minute, I lie every day. I said, but if you're lying, I mean not me. I'm different. I'm talented, right, exactly what's acting about except lying? That freed me up a whole lot. What I realized that. But the last ten years is the business changed dramatically. The technical part is definitely to me now it's all, you know, where's my life? Where's the camera? Raise that camera. I used to say, well, we gotta have a clean take, and I gotta burn one great connected master. Now I'm like, we got four pickups of this line and it's so technical. To me now, it's unbelievable. I learned that a lot from actually and Jack Nicholson on Cuckoo's Nest. I was watching you know, the it's editing. You do someone's take after take it. Then you go someone's look at the dailies and you see how my new the differences are and then they can judiciously edit. I mean, I was working with some people early on and they didn't know better, and I was looking at people and I say, my god, when they watch the dailies of this, they're going to really be unhappy because this person is as boring as you could possibly mean. They're not doing anything. And that was my sin was I felt like I always had to be acting or or doing something. And I guess my question is, sometimes you go to work and you gotta you know what you want to do. What do you do when you go to a movie and the director has nothing to offer you, He's really just a traffic cop point a camera. My feeling is with movies. I mean, first of all, if you get a good part and the get go is a great part, you know, and sometimes you get a good part and a lot of a lot of pictures I've done where I'm in every single scene and I'm caring the plot line and somebody else has got the colorful good part. But I always think that if you if the pictures cast properly, or if you're cast right, I never expect to hear much from a director. You don't know, the world is so different Now I've got people welcome to me all the time, quoting some of the most corrosive lines from Glen Garry Glenn Ross. I think it's good to talk about the kind of funckishness of the sales industry. When I say, you know, coffee is for closers, and you say greed is good. Do you think in our lifetime that that line has changed? You read is good where people really believe that's true. Well, the affirmation that I got from that villain, from that community, from that from that community. You know, if I get one more drunken guy from the street, hey man, great is good. You're the man. You're why I got into this business. And everything I quoted. Hey, you know what, I was a villain. I got people welcome to me drunk in the lobbies of hotels, and they're going come do that speech because I'm in sales, baby. Yeah. And I'm saying, they're going, you don't get it, man, this is like Arthur Miller. We're trying to wake you up. But they're like, no, they don't know. They love the accoutrements and and and you spoke, well, what is your relationship to go into the movies? Now? Yeah, I'm really embarrassed to say this, but I'm not a movie goer. I don't see many movies. I waste so much time watching news and sports. I love watching sports because you know, I can't tell you how it's gonna end. My problem with movies, you know, is you get halfway through a movie and you see, I was right. I love making movies, but I'm really bad Alex when it comes to seeing them. When you were younger, did you always since you were headed in this direction in some way? I never. I never thought I was. I mean probably a lot of it was resentment as a young kid my folks getting divorced and both the me actors. But I never even thought about the doing this at all. And I said, I was like a junior in college. What were you dreaming of doing back then? Nothing? Really, I was a hippie, you know, and I mean in the early sixties, and they took me into the vice Chance's office and your third year college and you're not a major, al right, So I guess you know, drama should be easy. You know, I had both parents. I hung around. My mother was in a lot of theater and so it hung around there. But there's not something I dreamed about. But the success you have now came in stages. When you were younger and you did your early films, you were what you said, the gentle young man. But I wonder in your case because you eventually played a very tough, very powerful actor on film. So do you think when you were younger you pulled your punches because you didn't want to step on what you thought was your dad's territory. You don't want to compared to him. First of all, you look at his career. He played a sensitive young man for his first six or seven pictures until he had a movie called The Champion. I just think I was just trying to define who I am, because the one problem about being second generation is, you know you, half of me is made up of my father's jeans. My mother, Diana, is an actress too, but not as well known. So when you see behavioral or mannerisms that are like your father, I feel like it takes swift from your individuality, right, And it's sort of like earlier on. I just was trying to find out who I was, and being a nice guy was a way of pleasing everybody. But the truth be told in a villain is the best way to go playing a bad guy, better lines, it's more colorful audiences by care siously love you because a lot of time is everything that they want to do in real life, but they can't do what you can do in the movies. Contrary, women is taking him so much longer to be comfortable in playing the villains. Mad I look back to I was producing Cuckoo's Nest and all the actresses that turned down the part of Nurse Ratchet because they didn't want to play a villain, Louise Flesh of us Oscar, Yeah, you know, for playing it well. When I went to Strasburg the acting school, we did a gender reversed production of Cuckoo's Nest and the girl was McMurphy and all the inmates were females, and I was Nurse Ratchet as a man. That's a great idea. Is your relationship with your dad more fathers son now? Or is it more too great colleagues in motion picture history? No, it's more father's son. It's more fun. I mean, he's ninety four years old. I'm just so proud of him. And you know, he wasn't a great dad as in the prime as an actor. He was, like a lot of us, were consumed with his career. For him, it really started when he had his helicopter accident when he was seventy with a friend helicopter and they hit a aerobatic plane and the when they were taking off and the people nearrobatic plane crashed and died instantly, and the helicopter dropped about forty ft and he just was black and blue. Started him on this you know why am I alive and this eighteen year old student pilot and the instructor dead. So he started getting back into his religious reading the town mood, reading the Old Testament, working with a rabbi, and has become a much more spiritual person. And I looked at to him with all of the great things that he's achieved in his acting career and producing career, which a lot of people don't really realize how much she produced. I am in so all of him in the third act of his life. And I'm sixty six now, and and I think of him being seventy and what he's accomplished between seventy and ninety four, which is about nine books. Called him last week. The housekeeper said he's done at the office. What the hell you doing down to the office, you know, he's, well, I'm just finishing the editor of my last book. You've got another book that's yeah, yeah, yeah, what what else? Because well, I got a book on sculptures. He said, well, that's that's that's crete. It's really good. You know. So he's he's on. So I look at him much more um as a father now because I'm you know, much less competitive with him. What did he do to you or not do for you? The positive or the negative that you've passed on to your children. The negative is you got to watch your quick temper. You think you had a temper like your death. No, No, I didn't have people. People people did people? I mean it was it was right, I think I realized now because he's a white Russian Jew, you know, Belarus and all of that, and well that and also he saw how much any Semitism there wasn't the world because people would talk to him as didn't know it was a Jew. I'm like, you should please come sit down. None of those exactly would see that exactly exactly because he changed his name is not no longer Danielovitch did not not as bad I mean, I've learned to monitor it or to be aware of it. You used to have a short handle, remember a lot better now, Yeah, because I don't care as much that there's things that you can control. Is that God grabbed me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the courage to change the things I can, the wisdom and know the difference. And it's true. Mine was even worse, it was even more narcissistant. I was just angry because nobody else cared about it, whatever it was, as much as I did. I wonder what was your relationship like with your mom in terms of your career. What would you and she talk about? Did she have a lot to say to you about the business and what she thought about what you did? You seemed very geared towards making your dad. Well, my mother's English background. She was not so much the business. She's she's very bright and it's probably more politely critical. Mia. As an actor, it was that bad, not bad? What did you get from your mother? You in diplomacy? The guy that could produce films. I think Jack Lemon said it when we were doing China Syndrome. He said, Michael, he said he hits you with a thousand powder puffs. You know, it takes that to produce to be able to massage people and work with them and get people confrontational. You know, it really does to try to get people in that way, and I think she has that. I think my father has made it more difficult for self and his confrontational and this anger, you know, in his career. The positive side of Kirk is a sense of tenacity and stamina. My son is a cross country runner now, my ten year old son, Dylan doing this now with ten years old serial starting about tracks star and your older son has had his problems. What's been your relationship with your son's alcoholism and drug addiction? UM. I think there's a certain genetic part, and I think as far as drug addiction, you know, your peer group plays a huge part of that. I'm of the belief that you know, fourteen years old, as a parent, you've lost a lot of your influence other people and by their peer group that triggers and starts it off. And then in my oldest son's case, there was no end until he was incarcerated. UM. I think secrets play a part in this, and the fact that whether it's a bad marital relationship that you're trying to keep from your children, and the tension is there and you're not really kind of upfront. I mean, this go around, I'm finding myself much more honest with my seven year old daughter than I ever thought I would be. Also, just because of what they have access to. I mean, it's just watching Glee, which was which is our family night. You know, I don't know why I'm so surprised. I am. I'm looking at it and they're watching you right or wrong without without any kind of ratings on it. You know, two boys kissing each other and all that, besides the gay actually physically seeing things and free for all, and it's a little a little difference. So I think that in that way, uh, trying to get to get or not not keeping as many secrets. Isn't it funny how people men in particular who have I don't want to put the stellically who played near the third rail sexually speaking, are very sensitive about that. When the children are growing up, they're like, no, no, I don't need to watch that. Yeah, I mean, your dad has that great line. My son was sent to rehab for sex edition problem, and how much did you inherit that which is this is what men are supposed to do? Um? Probably, probably, I'm sure you know. I mean, I'm watching. I mean my father has been very fortunate second wife and his French and they've been married fifty six years, I think, and has a different had a different attitude earlier on he was a rascal. More from My conversation with Michael Douglas is coming up in a minute. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing I'm at, like Baldwin, here's the thing. I'm talking with Michael Douglas at his home in New York City. So you've been sick. What was your relationship to cancer before you had cancer? How was it in your life? Family? Friends, never really nothing in my my my father, remember I had a little skin thing. My mother had getting a slight skin issue, but no real history when you know and then what do you find out? How I actually was Right after I finished The Wall Street Money Never Sleeps, my throat was a little sore, and I thought maybe it was from you know, like from tension, from the part where you haven't placed your voice where you're swallowing your words. And your your speak from the back of your throat had a little bit of a like a sword gum. And I saw doctors. I thought it was some sort of sore, and antibiotics, this and that, and then you know, I said with it and went on for another couple of months. Your your general practitioner, then send you an experts. I go to your nose and throat guy, a periodontist, and this and that and another round of antibiotics. And then I went away for the summer, and I came back and I was in Canada, and I called and said, listen, something's going on here, all right, something is really going on here. How much time has passed you first? Now we're in August, and I first went to him in January, so it's almost more than half a year. Half a year finding ear nose and throat doctor at the Jewish Hospital in Montreal, Quebec. And he literally opened my mouth and he took a tongue to press it. And I'll never forget that moment when he looked up at me and looked back down, I knew and he said, well, I guess we're gonna take a bye. Popsy, he said, biopsy, he said well, there's a polet here and it was on my tongue. Two days later he called me back in and said, you got cancer. For for head and neck cancer, the best place with Sloan Kettering, and I went down and within a week and found out that it was stage four, which is the maximum, so seven weeks of radiation and chemo. The reality is, with all the doctors that I could have here in New York, if I had been checked back in January for head and neck cancer, this could have all happened a lot early. And the thing with cancers, you want to get it as early as you can. Because I want to mention that I came to this door, to your home here in New York fully expecting you to look. I'm gonna be very honest with you now. As great as you look now, you look pretty damn good. I really went to I got to go to Cross three. You're working at your normal self. You look fantastic, and I lost a little bit of weight to help that. But you know, you got a jumpy one. The one advantage of this is deciding I'm taking the rest of this year easy, enjoy my family, and just take her easy. Now you had kids, you had your son's ten So you had your son when you were how old? Six? Should I have more kids? Yes? Yes, I mean at this very moment, the door opens, I think, here's my daughter. Think wait a minute, this is Harris. Hello. Rris was coming home from school and she jumped into the chair next to her dad's. Has she seen a couple of your films at this I have hardly any movies that she can see. Julie and I and the other one The Stone. I don't feel like my favorite movie well because a long time she didn't really know what I did. You know, she knew mommy because Chicago and all that. Mommy was an actress the longest time. He didn't know it. Wants said to me, my friend said, what does your dad do for a living? And I said he makes pancakes And they were like, I want to go to a house. I love tanking. Michael Douglas will be flipping pancakes for a few more months before he begins filming the lead role in Liberaci. Matt Damon will be his lover. He live Racci was a lovely guy. I mean the truth. I haven't played a lot of nice guys. When my dad was in his prime kirk Is as an actor. They were good guys and bad guys, black hats and white hats. And not over analyzing it, but I think the Vietnam War had a lot to do with redefining a bottle. You know, we thought we were good and then I'm seen in a different light in some of the situations that we're in. Now, I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the Thing