Never give up - Kirk Douglas
2001-02-16 11:40
Berlin - Screen hard guy Kirk Douglas, at the Berlin film festival to collect an award for his lifetime achievements, on Thursday picked out the 1960 ending of Hollywood's anti-communist blacklist as his proudest moment.
Douglas, 84, looked back on a career that has spanned more than 80 movies - although "I don't think I can think of more than 20 that I really like." Too much violence and over-reliance on special effects are diminishing movie-making, he said.
The three-time Academy Award nominee - for Champion" (1949), "The
Bad and the Beautiful" (1953) and "Lust for Life" (1956) - and
honorary Oscar winner is being feted with a retrospective at the
Berlin festival and on Friday will be awarded the Golden Bear, the event's top prize.
But "the one thing in my career I'm most proud of is the breaking
of the blacklist," he told a news conference.
At the height of the Cold War, Washington - egged on by Sen. Joseph McCarthy - was looking for communists anywhere in American society.
Frightened Hollywood studio heads established a secret blacklist of those named as communists in congressional hearings or even just suspected of leftist leanings.
The blacklist was broken in 1960 when writer Dalton Trumbo was
hired by Douglas to pen "Spartacus" and by Otto Preminger for
"Exodus".
"The McCarthy era was a terrible time in America," said Douglas,
who wasn't himself suspected of communist sympathies.
The Hollywood legend said his casting as the bad guy in so many
movies was a result of his picking projects that excited him -
"very often virtue is not photogenic," he insisted.
"We all have all kinds of evil as well as good things in us, so you draw on yourself," he added.
Character and personality have increasingly been pushed aside by
ever-more impressive effects and brutality, Douglas lamented.
"I feel that modern-day technology, special effects and the use of excessive violence have diminished slightly film-making," he said.
But Douglas - his voice now slowed by a 1996 stroke - hasn't turned his back on making movies, and said he would still like to work with US director Steven Soderbergh, whose drug-war drama
"Traffic" - starring the actor's son, Michael - is running in the
official competition in Berlin.
"I have learned one thing in life," he said. "Never, never give
up." - Sapa-AP
- SAPA