Steven Soderbergh’s biographical romance drama Behind the Candelabra has been a critical success. The Ant-Man franchise actor Michael Douglas starred in the movie opposite Matt Damon.
Adapted from Alex Thorleifson and Scott Thorson’s memoir Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace, the movie goes deep into the relationship of a gay couple in the $2.5 million movie. But there are a lot of things that happened during the production process of the movie.
Michael Douglas Refused an Intense Gay Scene in Behind the Candelabra
Michael Douglas played Liberace, a renowned pianist who fell in love with a much younger Scott Thorson played by Matt Damon. The chronicle of the tempestuous relationship continued for six years and the movie orbits around that. Douglas agreed to Steven Soderbergh’s movie when he was approached when he was doing the director’s previous film Traffic. “I was cast in Traffic as a government drug-enforcement czar in a gray suit and tie. And Steven came up to me and wanted to know if I ever thought about playing Liberace,” Douglas once told Vulture.
“I thought he was playing a game with me—like it was some mind-f*** trick to get me into the character. But I played along—I imitated Lee’s [as Liberace was known] voice briefly for him, and we went on with making Traffic.”
After the development of the film when the Ant-Man actor got the script, he found a scene that goes beyond his interest. Of course, he was perfectly okay with playing a gay lover but he asked Soderbergh to remove one specific scene which was, according to the actor, quite similar to gay p*rno.
“Liberace loved s*x, and I didn’t have a problem with that. But, at one point, Steven Soderbergh wanted to show [Liberace] watching a gay p*rno. I said, ‘I’d like my kids to see this R-rated movie, but I don’t want to show them a 14-inch d*ck! It was the only thing I objected to, so we cut to different parts of the apartment during the p*rno.”
The actor certainly hoped that in the near future, he would show his films to his kids and that was the scene he would never let his children watch that was supposed to feature the actor’s p*nis.
Michael Douglas Would Never Play A Gay Role in His Early Career
By the time the Oscar winner featured in Behind the Candelabra, he was already 69. Douglas who has been in the industry since the 1960s has made a glorious decade-spanning career. But the actor revealed that he would not be so comfortable playing a gay character in his early career. Of course, it was easier later as the actor met Liberace in real time and felt his life could be transformed on screen quite delicately. “I met him once en passant in Palm Springs at a corner,” Douglas told The Irish Times.
“The nice thing about this part is that I am playing a nice guy. I don’t get to play nice guys that often. He was so generous. He was such a nice fellow.”
Reportedly, many major studios have turned down Behind the Candelabra because the content of the movie was ‘too gay’ and later HBO picked it up but only for cable. When asked if the actor would have done such roles in his previous career he said, no. “No, not in the prime of my career,” he told the outlet.
“I wouldn’t have taken this role. I would have been scared in terms of where everything was at in the gay situation 20 years ago. We’ve come a long way. I don’t know. Matt is in the prime of his career and he didn’t even think about it. But there are not a lot of guys who, in Matt’s position, wouldn’t blink when offered that part even now.”
The reason? Douglas said that he would be nervous about his identity playing a gay character in his early days.
Source: Showbiz CheatSheet.
