Oscar winner Michael Douglas has played a few rich bad guys in his career and in the indie thriller Beyond the Reach, he adds another one to the list.
Douglas portrays Madec, a millionaire with a penchant for hunting exotic animals. On a hunting expedition in the Mojave Desert to find bighorn sheep, Madec befriends his young tracker, Ben (Jeremy Irvine), but when things go awry, Madec turns on Ben, and the young man suddenly finds himself in a dangerous game of survival as he is forced to traverse the desert landscape while Madec tracks him.
I spoke with the actors about making the film, including working in the rough terrain, and Douglas explains why he likes to play bad guys. Plus, he talks a little about his upcoming Marvel summer movie, Ant-Man!
Step 1: The trick to playing rich baddies:
Michael Douglas: “Well, in The Game, he was not very nice from the beginning. You sort of love to hate him, but he was the victim in that one. The other ones… I’m thinking of The Perfect Murder and, of course, Gordon Gekko [in Wall Street]. I just have to say, it’s good to be bad. It’s fun. You’re kind of above everything. You can pay off anybody. You have no moral compass. You just try to make as charming as possible and fun, so everybody says, ‘I’d kind of like to be that guy!’ I sort of learned that after Wall Street. I had one guy from Wall Street saying to me, ‘You’re the man! You’re the man! You’re why I got into this business.’ I said, ‘But he went to jail.’ And he said, ‘Oh, that’s okay. It’s nothing.’ It’s fun, and then you can kind of twist it around. Once you’ve seduced and brought them in, then you can show how bad you can really be.”
Step 2: Shooting in the desert:
Douglas: “I was also the producer, so you have to see if they have 360 degree vision of what you’ve got, of what’s going on. I think back to Romancing the Stone, The Ghost in the Darkness, productions that I did in rough locations. It kind of brings everybody together. There’s not much else you can do out there in the Navajo Nation. It’s about an hour and a half away, if you’re lucky, from your hotel room bed, and so it brings out the best in everybody, or it doesn’t. In this case, we were very fortunate to have a great New Mexican crew made up of a lot of people who love mountain bikes, hiking and this and that. This is just the kind of picture that they wanted to be involved in. I think it was an inspiration for both of us to watch them climb up the rocks and go at it.”
Step 3: Explain what was the most difficult:
Jeremy Irvine: “Reading the script in my lovely apartment in London, to getting on a plane and being in this mad, alien environment, was challenging. Rattlesnakes like heat and so they like being under lights. And that’s also where the actor goes. So, yeah, that was a learning curve for me. First time you hear [makes sound of a rattlesnake], you go, ‘What in the hell was that?’”
Step 5: How to brave the elements wearing only your underwear:
Douglas: “In the same way I speak about Kathleen Turner, not being able to make [Romancing the Stone] without her, without her help and support, not many actors would put up with all the many things that she put up with. I don’t know how many actors would have dealt with this barefoot, in his skivvies and nice abs! Jeremy proved to be so committed to the role, and I’m sure it was a lot more difficult than he anticipated. He never once complained. On several occasions, we’d go for that additional take that wanted even though… so that is the kind of actor you want to be around because that sets the tone for your picture. Everybody else then picks up on it and wants to try and match the quality that he’s trying to achieve.”
Irvine: “First of all, when you hear someone like Michael is involved, any young actor is going to jump at that. For me the script was such a page turner. There’s almost no dialogue in the script, literally 90 pages of stage direction, which I found quite appealing. You’re going to have to do this all without words and that’s different, really cool. I don’t think I knew how tough it was going to be, but yeah, in my apartment in London, it sounded very romantic.”
Step 6: Those tidbits about Ant-Man:
Douglas: “If I give you any tidbits, I get a Marvel blow dart to my head, but yeah, it looks good. We just did a couple of re-shooting, ADR things, and it was the first time I’d seen a lot of it. Tonally, these Marvel guys haven’t missed yet. From Avengers and everything, this is more in tune with Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s got some humor. Paul [Rudd] does a great job. My kids are going to be very happy.”