How Nice Guy Michael Douglas Came to Star in ‘The China Syndrome’
Professor Lowell: …We came very close to The China Syndrome.
Kimberly: The what?
Lowell: If the nuclear reactor vessel — the core — is exposed…the fuel heats beyond…tolerance in a matter of minutes, nothing can stop it, and it melts right through the bottom of the plant, theoretically to China. But of course, when it hits ground water, it would blast into the atmosphere and send out clouds of radioactivity. The number of people killed would depend on which way the wind is blowing…render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable — not to mention the cancer that would show up later.
Richard Adams (Michael Douglas), a radical young cameraman, is working with Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda), a TV reporter, on what is shaping up as one of your everyday pro-nuclear-power pieces. They are at the Ventana Nuclear Power Plant in southern California, and Adams has just filmed Wells and a PR man talking about how the plant works. As soon as the PR guy is out of earshot, the long-haired, bearded and frumpy Adams recites: “Steam turns the turbine that turns the generator…. and the shit hits the fan.”
Moments later, in the visitors’ room, the TV crew feels a tremor. Adams, who’s been told he can’t film the control room just below them, casually props his camera up on a table, adjusts his lens and looks bored, while his camera captures shift supervisor Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon) accelerating from calm to panic as the rest of his staff run around the room pushing buttons, dials and levers in order to avert a catastrophe. Adams senses an antinuke scoop, but later, back in L.A., a cautious station manager refuses to air the story.
In his battle with the station executives, Adams is all agitated energy, ranting and raging. Without really knowing what had technically happened, he insists that he filmed a dangerous accident. He accuses the station of conspiring with the power plant — which is in the middle of safety hearings to license yet another plant — to cover up the incident: “You’re being pressured!” he screams.
“And you’re being hysterical,” the station manager calmly replies. Adams leans over the table and fixes the executive in an intense close-up. “And you’re being a chicken-shit asshole.”
Throughout The China Syndrome, Douglas, Fonda and ultimately Lemmon are forced into confrontations with the power and construction companies and the media in an attempt to get at the truth of the potential disaster. Their fight leads to a shattering climax, making China Syndrome an out-and-out thriller as well as a powerful antinuclear statement.
When he pulls his hands back over his forehead, Michael Douglas reminds you of his father, Kirk Douglas, with those intense green eyes and that square, hand-me-down jaw — clefted with what Michael calls “the K.D. dimple.” His long hair is ruffled; his maroon, knit tie is undone, and his shirt sleeves are not quite rolled up to the elbows. Behind him is a poster in Japanese, advertising One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which he coproduced in 1975.
Douglas, 34, who lives in Santa Barbara, is in the Hollywood office of his Big Stick Production Company, preparing for the March release of his latest production, The China Syndrome. As he talks about the film and about his life, he calls in help whenever he needs to nail down a fact. An assistant brings in an early draft of The China Syndrome script and, then, a note from Robert Redford rejecting a role in the film. (“The project,” Redford wrote, “is a very viable one. Probably next to the Karen Silkwood story, the best in this genre.” But, he added, “As an actor, I am looking for something different than the character in China Syndrome.”) Later, the assistant is asked to help recall some detail about his relationship with actress Brenda Vaccaro.
Which is to say that Douglas is an open sort. He says he had no strong pro- or antinuke stance before coming across Mike Gray’s script, “other than generally being a liberal. So, I was taking an antinuke attitude because my friends were.”
Actually, Douglas himself was once employed by one of the giants of the oil industry. It was 1964. He’d flunked out of the University of California at Santa Barbara after his freshman year; slunk back to Connecticut, where he’d spent most of his teenage years; and got a job at a gas station. And, Douglas points out, “I was a Mobil Man of the Month. I still have my certificate!” Douglas was nominated three times for Emmy awards for his work on the television series Streets of San Francisco. Cuckoo’s Nest got five Oscars. And yet he chooses to talk about being Mobil Man of the Month in detail. “I guess they have Mobil spies, who come in and get gas. You wash the windows, you wash the rear window, you ask to check the oil, you ask to check the tires.” Ah, the good old days. “Yeah,” Douglas agrees. “Now you’ve got self-service and to get full service you gotta bust somebody’s ass. But that was a good summer. I ran the tow truck. It was the first time I had a job of my own, and it was satisfying.”
Douglas was born into an acting family (his mother is actress Diana Douglas), but after some theater work, a few film roles and the part of a brash and sexy young cop in the hit TV series Streets of San Francisco, his greatest success and satisfaction have come from producing. “Shit, I can’t believe they pay you for it!” he says. “You make stories. You read something, you cry or you laugh, and you wanna make it!”
It was an emotional response then, and not politics, that got him interested in The China Syndrome? “The script got me excited,” he says, “because I saw it could be suspenseful. It was basically about a documentary film crew filming an accident at a nuclear plant. I found this parallel with Cuckoo’s Nest — individuals caught in a corporate or social structure that forces them to make a moral decision at the sacrifice of losing their lives. It’s an effort at what is basically Greek tragedy — classic drama situations.”