try to look like an old man?

Yeah, but it didn't take long.

And so we have a drink together, and Antonio Banderas is there with Melanie Griffith, who I'd known and worked with before.

And we have a drink, and then they're going off for dinner together.

while the movie's being screened, and then they're going to go do a Q&A.

And so the last minute they're leaving, and Tony says, do you want to join us for dinner? And I go, well, I looked at Catherine, sort of like to get permissions, I don't want to propose.

She said, that's okay, sure.

and and you said that it was um throat cancer but it really wasn't throat cancer and explain everything to me and and and when did you first know something was wrong

Is your relationship with your dad more father-son now, or is it more two great colleagues in motion picture history?

No, it's more father-son.

It is.

It's more father.

I mean, he's 94 years old.

I'm...

I'm just so proud of him.

What's been your relationship with your son's alcoholism and drug addiction?

Do, do you remember, like, how, how vividly do you remember that conversation? Like, how he reacted?

Well, I just...

There wasn't a lot of conversation.

It was him just looking at me, you know, [laughs] and, and wondering...

I said...

And wondering whether I'd done everything and, and everything, and, and I had.

I, I, I tried.

Um, can you explain what you mean when you say why, why it's kind of, like, made you the better man that you are today?

wrong, right?

Not a sex...

No, it was a nightmare, really.

Well, it all went back to...

I went to rehab, culmination of a difficult marriage and a son that was in trouble with drugs.

Be careful what you do with success.

Also, my acting career had taken off and I was a big producer, had a big company, could finance movies.

Also, and

But I wonder when you were growing up, what was the most kind of surreal thing about growing up the son of Kirk Douglas as you look back on it?

It was that, it, it was, I led two lives.

You know, really, um, I was growing up with my mother.

Uh, they basically separated when I was five and my brother, Joel, was three.

But they, they'd just moved out to California at that age.

Kirk had started working.

And, uh, Kirk got pretty active, uh, in the field of, uh, infidelity and around.

So talk to me about that.

Oof.

So, um, this one guy, though, Shane Salerno, who I worked with on it, who was a screenwriter, and he'd done an adaption of a, of a, a script for me a long time ago, and I didn't, hardly remembered him.

And, uh, but he started sending me these notes, sort of like a coach, you know? Just these little notes.

"You can kick it.

You can do it.

You can do it." And I just remember being really touched by it.

And, and then afterwards, he got into more of a, being a literary agent, and he kept asking me about, you know, to write a, write a, a book and all of that.

First-

You are part of the machine.

It was Carl Malden, and I had three summers, two of them when I was still in college and one after, at a place called the National Playwrights Conference, Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theater, the National Playwrights Conference.

And what they did at the conference is they took six plays each summer.

And with a small acting ensemble group, they would mount the productions.

But it was all about the playwright.

So it was all about, as actors, we were secondary.

We would sit there and listen to the director talk with the playwrights, and they would do the rewriting.

He wants you to be a lawyer, correct?

... uh, which was the Salvation Army?

Yeah.

Cool.

Um, yeah, so look, as I was talking about on Sunday, um, you know, I grew up, uh, in a- I grew up in Mangere.

And, uh, my, my dad worked for, um, Pan American.

Um, and, um, he, he, he was an alcoholic.

And, um, and I, I guess I've got two distinct kind of memories of that.

What's that?

Thanks for joining us and we hope you're encouraged by today's teaching.

Kia ora koutou everybody watching this online.

This morning it's my privilege to bring a message on belonging matters from Welcome to Family referencing 1 Corinthians chapter 12, 12 to 27 and Ephesians chapter 2, 19 to 22.

But firstly, let me introduce myself.

Ko te mea tuatahi kai whaikara kai te atua.

I'm the first thing, glory to God.

Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[claps]

And, and il- illiterate, illiteracy.

My father was one of six.

He was the only boy.

He had six girls in the house.

A father who didn't give a shit about anything, but he had a horse and a wagon.

And so as he...

You didn't think you would follow your father's path.

[crowd cheers]

Dad was, was this, you know, incredible, you know, Spartacus.

He did the army.

Uh, s- uh, the Vikings, w- working on the oars.

He was the one who had developed the small trampoline so you could run up and hit the trampoline and jump up on a horse, you know, effortlessly.

He was, he, he was, he was larger than life, and how am I ever gonna be the man my father is?

We asked Michael to read the last page of his book.

As I finish the last page of this book, I could look back and say this: I have loved and lost.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and working hard with Shane.

Um, mostly I was living in Spain and Time change, we do two, three hours a day back and, back and forth.

Um, and then I got really scared because as opposed to a movie where you're playing a character, an actor, you know, your book you're just laying out, laying out your whole story and your life.

And so I'm, I've just been s- shocked and surprised and, and here we are.

I'm going number one in-

Uh-huh.

And, um, so I went into the editing room, and I looked at the two of the scenes with Charlie Sheen, a seduction scene, another one, and, um, and they weren't bad.

So how long did it take you to write this book?

About 18 months.

We started, uh, yeah, started, uh, last, uh, last year, uh, in the fall, or a little before.

Well, maybe s- maybe it's more than s- that a s- I don't know.

And, um, yeah, and it, it, uh, it started back, back then, and, uh, formed pretty well.

You know, trying to just, initially wanted to try a different way of writing it rather than just linearly.

But I thought it was important to talk a little bit about my mother and father and, and their whole history and backgrounds because they both were so different from where they came from, and understanding how lucky I was.

Yes

Oh.

And they were, they had taken off from an airport, and a Pitts aerobatics plane, which is those trail- trailblazers took off and didn't see him, and they hit.

They, the Pitts went down, get into fire, 18-year-old student pilot died and the instructor.

Dad fell about 40 feet, um, the air in the helicopter, the rotor was still going, gasoline coming out, and then caught on fire, and he didn't break a single bone.

I went to see him in the hospital, and he was black and blue from, from one side to the end.

But he left the hospital and he said, "Why am I alive and this 18-year-old kid is, is dead?" And it brought him back to his Talmudic roots.

He was a Russian Jew, but really hadn't been practicing for most of his life, and got hold of a, uh, a rabbi, local rabbi, and started working on the Old Testament.

I'm curious what that was like for you to walk down memory lane in that way, where I'm sure it sparked some great memories, but it also opens old wounds, and you have to check in with some of the people that you're gonna write about in the book and say, "Is it okay if I tell this story about you?" What was the process like? What did it feel like?

And that made headlines.

It made headlines because I was aware of something nine months before it was finally diagnosed, and misdiagnosed twice by my New York elite doctors.

And finally, uh, they discovered what it was, and by that time it was stage four, and very close...

It was in my tongue, but, uh, it was very close to going down to the lymph nodes.

I had to announce it because I was supposed to be doing a press tour for Oliver Stone's, our sequel to, uh, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

So, uh, my doctor said, "Michael, I think we should call it throat cancer rather than the tongue cancer, because if the chemo and radiation do not work, then the surgery involved is, is not attractive-"

What carried you through the moments when the outlook was so dire?

Family.

Before Michael went up to present, he was stopped by the FBI, warning him of a possible attack on his life.

We have information that someone will try to stab you with an HIV-infected needle tonight.

This was during the height of the AIDS crisis, and getting stabbed with an infected needle would essentially be a death sentence.

They had undercover agents spread throughout the crowd.

As I walked out, I took a quick glance into the crowd to make sure that no one was rushing to the stage.

A year later, there was fallout and a $25 million lawsuit, but not because their romance ended.

I had a contract with her for a, a sequel, The Jewel of the Nile.

She said, "Well, you really, you're not ready yet, and now Steven Spielberg has offered me this film." It became a, a, a legal battle, and we succeeded.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

I mean, you know, follow me.

The whole army's coming or he's, you know, on the Vikings, he's on the oars.

He was the fastest gunslinger and all the tricks that he knew.

I mean, he was, how could I ever be the man that my father is? Hmm.

And it was hard.

Can you talk about that just a bit?

Mm-hmm

... and the Westerns when he drew a gun faster than anybody else, he seemed like an impossible man to match.

And I think both of my brother and I, there was a question and an issue of how can we ever be the man that our father is? He was making five to six movies a year, was really overwhelmed with the pressure and with his guilt of having, uh, divorced my mother when I was five and my brother Joel was, was three.

Uh, and so when we saw him, because we were growing up on the East Coast with my mother, and when we'd come out to see my father, he was so guilt-ridden about not being the father that he had hoped to be because his father had totally ignored him and given him no attention, uh, growing up.

So there was a degree of pressure when we came together that he meant well, but there was such an intensity about him that it made it awkward.

And I just wonder as a parent, how watching Cameron's addiction might have made you actually understand more about your own maybe that you hadn't before?

That's a good question.

Um, well, the, the, the predominant one is had he witnessed, [laughs] had he, had he witnessed me earlier in his life, you know, partaking in illicit drugs, uh, that made it easier for him, um, to pick it up.

A lion of old Hollywood, he was actually Spartacus.

The Vikings were walking on the oars.

He was the one who had developed the small trampoline so you could run up and hit the trampoline and jump up on a horse, you know, effortlessly.

He was, he, he was, he was larger than life, and how am I ever gonna be the man my father is?

You know this.

We, I don't know this, and, you know, these are people that you, I had relationships with over my 82 years, you know, and many of them long before Catherine was born.

Uh, I mean, people date, Diane.

They, they, they do.

Yeah.

And Karl Malden, you know, was worshiped by, by Marlon Brando and- Yeah ... and was just a, a unbelievably hardworking actor and a really good actor.

So those five years, I did 104 hours, uh, that I spent- Wow ... with Karl Malden.

Wow.

And also structurally, once again, preludes, three acts, you know, prologues, learning structurally, you know, uh, what your responsibility as an actor is, and then working with different directors every week, and this- Mm-hmm ... was, was so, was so helpful and was- Yeah ... was a, was a tremendous opportunity, and then the, the God, from God that ch- was handed down was the, was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which was a project- Incredible ... my father had developed.

He'd gone back himself to Broadway to do the show.

It hadn't worked out.

Okay

Every time it comes on, it just sends me to a place and I love

it.

So there's lots of – one of the things I'm frustrated about when people say they don't like Coldplay is they don't listen to Coldplay.

So they don't listen to any of the other songs that you might actually love if you would remove yourself from this situation.

Do you know what I mean? So there's a brilliant song called Coloratura.

Have you ever heard of that? Okay.

I might have done because I've always had their albums and just listened.

But without criticism... surely you can't get better.

How do you keep mentally positive and resilient when you're battling health issues?

So I, I have, I am in a very intimate relationship with myself.

Uh, uh, uh, I ha- I talk to myself all the time, and I've done this since I was a child.

And, uh, it's like having a brilliant inbuilt therapist inside me.

And so I cut a deal with myself about 10 years ago, where I was kind of fed up of the world telling me who I was and what I should do.

And I realized there was something inside me that knew more, that knew better.

Uh, so I decided to go all in on myself and trust myself.

What has that experience of being the partner caring for her been like?

I vaguely remember that.

Yeah, he had purple hair.

So anyway, John Noel rings me up and he said, look, Pete, who won Big Brother with Tourette's, wants his hair colour in purple.

Can you do it? And I was like, yeah, sure.

You know, do anything for the money back in them days.

I was scratching around, you know.

But I said, he's got to come to my house.

that you seem to have.

Who was Michael Douglas before people knew that name?

I was just somebody having a go, really.

You know, like I moved to London in 1994.

I got a job at Weller as a teacher.

And what I did know about myself is that I was a performer, really.

I was a breakdancing champion when I was a kid.

I was an under-14s UK breakdancing champion, by the way.

see the results almost immediately.

How are you finding it, and why are you here from an industry side of things?

Um, well, look, i- what I, what I discovered really in lockdown, uh, was that there were millions of people out there who ha- didn't like their hair, had big hair problems, and didn't know how to solve them, and they were looking towards the industry for answers to their hair dilemmas and were getting no reply.

So I had worked in consumer products since about 2001.

I worked for Procter & Gamble, I worked on brands like Pantene, Head & Shoulders, Aussie, Clairol.

You know, I, I did the hair in TV commercials.

That is what I did as a hairdresser for a living, is I went all in on the retail side of things.

And, um, that's because I wanted to work in, in advertising really.

[laughs]