Michael Douglas on His Timely Doc ‘America's Burning' and His Own Political Ambitions: ‘In 'American President,' I Knew How the Script Ended'

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David Smick was trying to decide on a title for his new documentary about the division taking place in America. 'I had a number of clever, abstract titles for the film,' he notes. He says it was executive producer Barry Levinson who told him: 'Dave, have you ever heard of the movie 'Dangerous Marine Animals on the Cape Cod Coast'? No, because they call it 'Jaws.' So, I went with 'America's Burning,' because I thought: you can picture that. And I had anticipated things were going to get worse.'
Smick premiered 'America's Burning' a year ago at the Tribeca Film Festival. Narrated and executive produced by Michael Douglas, the film features interviews from such figures as James Carville and Leon Panetta as it details the discord between people on opposite sides of the political spectrum. It also preaches optimism in urging people and politicians to strive for unity. At the time of its premiere, notes Douglas, 'It might have been perceived as being over the top. Now it's almost underestimating what's happened since then.' But still, he says, 'The message is more important and stronger than ever.'
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Smick, the chairman and CEO of the macroeconomic advisory firm Johnson Smick International as well as a bestselling author and filmmaker, is trying to maintain that positive outlook. 'I'm an optimist by nature, but there are a lot of challenges we didn't have a year ago,' he notes. 'We're discovering we're one recession away from a major social upheaval if we're not careful.' Smick points to 'so much underlying economic anger' over the distribution of wealth in the country despite our economic system being 'the envy of the world.'
Smick adds, 'We're doing terrific, except we've got this underlying potential cancer that could spread, and all we need is a stiff recession, and then we're going to see the anger come out of the woodwork, and people are going to be shocked, I think.'
Despite how much the world has changed since the film's premiere, Smick says he didn't see any need to add an epilogue or a coda for its streaming release. 'I didn't think it needed to be updated,' he notes. Though he is open to exploring the topic further, perhaps in a longer form. 'You go to these screenings, and I watch the audience. I wish I had two hours because there's so many issues you could get into, but you're limited. I'm thinking if we ever did expand it, it would be because someone came along and wanted to do a series.'
Bringing on the man who intoned the famous 'greed is good' line in his Oscar-winning performance in 'Wall Street' was a stroke of genius, but Smick also got a welcome collaborator with Douglas. The actor came aboard when the director sent him an early cut of the film, in which Smick had provided his own narration. 'It had his excellent voiceover. They didn't need me,' he notes. Disagrees Smick, 'I have a very soft voice, not very distinctive. I said to my producer, Ian Michaels, 'We should see if there's a celebrity that can dominate this.'' He hired a casting director to work with. 'I said, 'I'd like to have someone who's center, but left to center, who is troubled by the fact that the country is so divided. I think there's a part of the country we could never agree with, but someone who [people] could get behind a movie that may be represented about 70% of the country or 80% of the country.' And first was on the list was Michael.'
Douglas was instantly taken. 'It resonated with me, with all the concerns that I had, which was the loss of our middle class was having, the tremendous amount of money that the Supreme Court allowed into our elections and our lack of bipartisanship. I thought it was a good message, if I could help support it.'
And Smick wants everyone to know that Douglas' EP credit was earned – he didn't just read a script and do some promos. 'His contributions were enormous,' Smick says, adding that Douglas had suggestions about moving chapters around and rearranging some things. 'I would say, minimum, his changes injected 55% more energy into the film.'
Douglas says he was happy to lend his name to the film to attract attention. 'But the interesting and frustrating point was how difficult it was to get distribution,' he reveals. 'There were a lot of companies that, when we initially showed this, I think were a little afraid of it. Even though the attempt was to really be bipartisan, not picking on one party or the other.' He adds, 'So kudos to Amazon, and I'm happy they came around. And kudos to David, in terms of [how] he foresaw what was coming.'
Despite having portrayed one of cinema's greatest presidents in Rob Reiner's 1995 film 'The American President,' Douglas says he has no interest in aspiring to the White House in real life. 'No, no, I'm 80,' he demurs. 'That's the magic turn-off age.'
Smick, for his part, says people constantly come up to Douglas to repeat the lines from the film. 'That must happen like 10 times a month,' he says.Douglas responds, 'In 'American President,' I knew how the script ended. That's the big difference.'
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