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| actors were thrilled to play Liberace and his boyfriend in HBO's movie. |
NEW YORK – Every veteran actor has a method for getting into character. Particularly when that character is the flamboyant, flashy, sequin-loving crooner Liberace, and you're the guy portraying his naive yet callow lover.
When figuring out how to play Scott Thorson, the neophyte who shacks up with Michael Douglas' Liberace in Las Vegas and becomes his paramour, driver, and quasi-adopted son, Matt Damon turned to pal Heath Ledger, who had just brooded his way to an Oscar nomination as a gay cowboy in the groundbreaking Brokeback Mountain.
"I remember when I knew I was going to do this role, towards the end of '07, I asked Heath Ledger how he did it. 'What did you do on Brokeback?' He goes, 'Well, I drank 12 beers.' I laughed," recalls Damon. "And he said, 'No mate, I'm serious.' So I always had that in the back of my mind, that I could always drink 12 beers."
Or find a simpler solution to getting amorous on screen. "He thought about my wife," Douglas says with a laugh, referring to his stunning better half, Catherine Zeta-Jones.
The end result, Behind the Candelabra, airs Sunday on HBO after premiering in Cannes. It's a film that's raunchy and sweet and funny and heartbreaking all at once.
"They were so in love. There was an effortlessness about it. There was a comfort factor. When I saw it, I'm a terrible critic, but I forgot it was Matt and I really quickly. You close your eyes and it could be a guy and a girl arguing," says Douglas during a joint interview with Damon.
In person, the two are genial and professional in recounting in their long, strange road to Liberace.
The genesis of Behind the Candelabra lay with 2000's Traffic, the Steven Soderbergh-directed multi-layered drama about the drug world. While playing a stalwart government drug czar with an addicted daughter, Douglas first learned about Soderbergh's desire to tell the story of Liberace, the over-the-top entertainer who died of pneumonia caused by AIDS in 1987 without ever publicly disclosing that he was gay.
"Steven one day said to me, 'Would you want to play Liberace?' I thought he was messing with me. But time passed. And he got this book, Behind the Candelabra, and told the same thing to Matt," says Douglas.
Damon, 42, and Douglas, 68, knew each other in passing, but weren't close at that point. "I produced a picture in 1996, The Rainmaker, and you were so good. We knew each other off and on," says Douglas.
Which means, clarifies Damon, that Douglas was responsible for one of his breakout films, since without his approval, Damon would not have been cast in the big-ticket production. Later on, both collaborated on and off with Soderbergh. "We were both in Steven's stable of actors. I'd hear stories of Michael. Steven's stories are always about how someone works," says Damon.
After years of Douglas and Damon both mentioning the gestating Liberace film in interviews – without ever having a locked-in production schedule – the script, written by Richard LaGravenese and based on Thorson's memoir Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace, was finally ready. To his credit, Soderbergh waited for Douglas to recover after he revealed in August 2010 that he was being treated for Stage 4 throat cancer. ""These guys were great when I had my cancer bout. They were very polite," says Douglas.
Not so, quips Damon. "I tried to recast it," says Damon. "I think Clooney was available. Or Don Cheadle. He can do anything."
Nevertheless, once Douglas was cancer-free – "So far everything is good. I just finished my six-month check-up a couple of days ago. I'm working a lot. I just happened on some good material," he says – the film went full throttle, shooting in Liberace's actual estates.
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Michael Douglas, right, as Liberace and Matt Damon as Scott Thorson in HBO's 'Behind the Candelabra.'(Photo: Claudette Barius, AP)
The key, per Soderbergh, was to avoid any hint of kitsch and treat their relationship like what it was – something real and valid, if more than a bit over the top. Given that Damon has been married to spouse Lucy, with whom he has four kids (Stella, 2, Gia, 4, Isabella, 6, and Alexia, 14), for seven years, and Douglas tied the knot with Zeta-Jones in 2000 (they're the parents of Dylan, 12, and Carys, 10), it wasn't that much of a stretch.
"Steven talked about them as an old married couple, which we can both relate to," says Damon. "There's a way you sit in a room with someone you're in an intimate relationship with, the little things like the stroking of the leg. We thought about that a lot. You can't be winking at the audience. I was worried going into it -- every frat guy from time immemorial does a gay impression that's really funny to his friends. But that's demeaning. Neither of us wanted to fall into caricature. You relate to (Liberace and Thorson). There are aspects of them that are just like us. I was mindful of not camping it up."
Indeed, Liberace woos Thorson with fancy clothes and cars and bling. He tries to mold him, physically and psychologically, into his mini-me. Thorson, for his part, becomes rabidly jealous of Liberace's stable of admirers. And to the end, he insists that he's not actually gay.
"From my end, looking at Matt, he's probably the best listener of an actor I know, and listening is a lost art form. There was the right balance. He wasn't a hustler. He was a good-looking young guy with a sweetness about him. All the elements were right," says Douglas. ""Because you're bisexual."
"That's right," says Damon. "And Michael's job was even harder. How do you do that voice and all that affect without making a joke out of it?"
So, how did Douglas do it?
"He's a very big guy, barrel-chested. The voice took a lot of work. And the other part was that he was a really nice person. As much as being gay or all that, I seldom get a chance to play a nice person," says Douglas.
The love scenes, filmed in the bed and hot tub, are unforced, truthful and naturalistic. They kiss, like any other couple would on-screen. Damon prances and stomps around, and in one (for him) cringe-inducing moment shows his posterior, complete with tan lines.
"They are arguing before bed and you see the Brazilian tan line of his (butt). Oh god," sighs Damon.
Soderbergh doesn't dwell on the two being male lovers, and neither will, the actors hope, the viewer.
"It's pretty much the same thing (as shooting with a woman)," says Douglas. "We were relieved early on that our director was doing it in a tasteful manner."
Concurs Damon: "A love scene with a woman is just as awkward. You're surrounded by 40 people five feet away who are your friends. If you're straight, you're attracted to women, but it's not your wife. There's nothing romantic about it."
Their relationship unravels when Thorson's drug use escalates and Liberace replaces him with a fresher model. There's fighting. A lawsuit. And reconciliation: in one of the film's final moments, an emaciated, ill Liberace reconnects with Thorson.
"It's one of those scenes that's about making amends. The two of them are older. When it's life or death, what does any of the other stuff matter? It's really touching. It was very quiet that day. We shot it in his house," recalls Damon. "There's the added thing of Michael having battled things of his own and, thank god, come out on the other side. Everyone was very somber that day."
Douglas didn't otherwise dwell or agonize about playing a dying man. "You just keep it simple and show up," he says.
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