Michael Douglas Receives Surprise Karlovy Vary Award After Getting Old-Design Honor in 1998
Douglas, who was a producer on the Oscar-winning movie, traveled to the picturesque Czech spa town for the first time since 1998 to present the new version during its 50th anniversary year.
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After receiving a rapturous welcome on stage, Douglas shared some history about the film. He earned laughs and applause when he shared that he had arrived only three hours earlier and already enjoyed Czech duck and beer, namely Pilsner Urquell.
He expressed gratitude to the festival and also had a special thanks to his Hollywood legend father. 'I have to thank my father, Kirk, for getting the rights to the book,' Douglas said. 'He tried to get it made as a movie for many years, and he couldn't, and he was going to sell it, and that was when I stepped in and I said, 'Dad, please, please don't sell this.' I never thought about being a producer, but I loved this project so much. So I thank my father for giving me that opportunity and not selling it.'
After wishing the excited audience a great screening, KVIFF executive director Kryštof Mucha surprised Douglas by handing him a Crystal Globe statuette with the festival's trademark award design — a woman raising a crystal sphere. This version of the award has been used since the 35th anniversary of the festival in 2000, whereas Douglas had received the older design version, which Mucha explained had gained a reputation for not being easy to hold. He said Douglas could now replace the older with the handier new award.
As Douglas posed with his new statuette in front of a photo showing him holding the old award in 1998, the audience broke into an enthusiastic standing ovation. Photographers then snapped pictures of Douglas before he left the stage to a hero's farewell.
Asked about the new statuette at a press conference later in the day, Douglas said: 'They upgraded me.'
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest made Oscar history as only the second movie to win all five major Academy Award categories: best picture (Douglas and Zaentz), best director (Forman), best actor (Jack Nicholson), best actress (Louise Fletcher), and best adapted screenplay (Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman).
The new version, restored by the Academy Film Archive, screened as part of KVIFF's 'Out of the Past' section in a special gala. The legendary Douglas was joined there by producer Paul Zaentz, nephew of the late Saul Zaentz, who co-produced the film, as well as members of Forman's family.
Adapted from Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest centers on Randle McMurphy, a rebellious gambler whose defiance of authority challenges the rigid system of a mental institution. The story is often described as a parable of freedom versus control.
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Peter Sarsgaard On Awards, Elon Musk, And Dancing In His New Film ‘The Bride': 'It's About The Monster In All Of Us' – Karlovy Vary Film Festival
Peter Sarsgaard arrived in Karlovy Vary as one of the festival's few honorees without a new film in the lineup — instead, he presented his 2003 film Shattered Glass, a visionary real-life drama about an ethically unmoored journalist whose embellished stories in some ways foresaw the media landscape of today. That doesn't mean the actor has been idle; he came to the Czech Republic direct from the set of William Gibson's 1984 sci-fi classic Neuromancer. 'It's a big, ten-episode thing for Apple,' he reveals. 'I play a guy called Ashpool, who, if you've read the book, is a guy who's created something that's sort of like AI. He's the wealthiest person in the world, but the world is suffering. He's in his own small world of not suffering, and you see how that's an impossibility: Elon Musk may think he's going to go to Mars to get away from it all, but everything's going to follow him to Mars. There's no getting away. And who the f*ck wants to be on Mars?' 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And I felt like a non-actor for a long time, because a lot of the people who were actors that I grew up around were very theatrical people. And the class had a lot of those people. They asked me to read from this play, Bent, which is about homosexuals in the Holocaust, and it was an insanely dramatic scene where he has to prove his sexuality — prove that he's heterosexual — by having sex with a dead woman. And I mean, the stakes could not be higher! And I didn't know that I could do it. I thought, well, this is impossible. And then I started doing it, and it was like I slipped into [a trance] and I came out the other side and everyone was looking at me like they had just watched something, and I went, 'Oh wow, I'm really good at this. And so, I felt like I was really good at it kind of immediately. And I look back now and I see someone who needed to be seen, had a lot of emotions to let go of and express, and I was sort of just venting emotions for a long time. 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It was made for nothing. It had no money behind it. Awards are about money. Look, if you're on a big movie, that's a lot of voters that are just on your movie set that are going to vote for your movie, right? Or if your director has been nominated for 15 Academy Awards, chances are he will be nominated, the film will be nominated, and all the actors will be nominated. The awards are no litmus test of anything other than a certain degree of quality and popularity. I think awards are important for shining a light on movies that otherwise wouldn't have been seen. And so that's why, I guess in some sense, I'm into a kind of affirmative action with awards. We should really go, 'What needs it?' Not necessarily what deserves it, because who the f*ck knows what deserves it? We all have different opinions on that, but what could use a spotlight? What could use some attention? For me, a film like Nickel Boys, that deserves some attention. 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