Picturing Him in Sequins and Capes
Liberace’s Tale, From Michael Douglas and Steven Soderbergh
Claudette Barius/HBO
Michael Douglas, liberally costumed and onstage, as Liberace in “Behind the Candelabra."
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: May 17, 2013
When audiences looked at Liberace, they saw a bundle of contradictions wrapped in layers of fur, gold lamé suits and ostrich-feather capes. Here was a consummate entertainer who could make fans feel as if they were sitting next to him on his piano bench, yet who kept them at arm’s length. As much as his sexuality seemed to be on display — a detail that many close observers could detect in his flamboyant stage presence and outrageous costumes — it was something Liberace would never openly share with his adoring public.
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Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Michael Douglas with Matt Damon, right, who plays Liberace’s lover Scott Thorson.
A scene with Matt Damon, left, and Michael Douglas in the film about Liberace.
David Ashdown/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images
Liberace, in a photo from about 1980.
And when Steven Soderbergh looked at Michael Douglas, he saw Liberace.
It was a fact that neither man could completely explain about the genesis of “Behind the Candelabra,” a biographical film covering the private life of Liberace that will have its debut next Sunday on HBO.
From its announcement, “Behind the Candelabra,” directed by Mr. Soderbergh, has been as astonishing as its star subject’s preference for being driven onstage in a Rolls-Royce. It stars Mr. Douglas — a k a the “Wall Street” master of the universe, Gordon Gekko — as Liberace, the pianist who died in 1987, with Matt Damon — Jason Bourne himself — as his lover Scott Thorson. Reunited a few weeks ago at a suite in the Ritz-Carlton hotel on Central Park, the director and his leading men carried themselves like old Army buddies who hadn’t seen one another since the war. They reminisced about working together; Mr. Soderbergh and Mr. Douglas needled Mr. Damon about the spray-tan lines from his character’s Brazilian bikini bottoms.
And though they said they were at ease depicting the romance and breakup of two loud if not always proud men, there were also plenty of giggles about excessive makeup and fabulous outfits. Even if the film comes when Elton John and Lady Gaga can be as open about their orientations as they are brazen in their wardrobe choices, mainstream Hollywood in 2013 still needs some distance from an outré life like Liberace’s.
Back in 2000, when Mr. Soderbergh was working with Mr. Douglas on the drug-trade drama, “Traffic,” the director said he was inspired, “out of the blue,” to ask the actor if he’d ever thought about playing Liberace.
“I thought, am I mincing or something?” Mr. Douglas said. “I’m supposed to be playing a drug czar, and he’s asking me about playing Liberace. I thought he was messing with me.”
Mr. Soderbergh explained, “I guess I was picking up on something,” to which Mr. Douglas offered a snorting laugh. “My antennae are very sensitive.”
For Mr. Soderbergh, “Behind the Candelabra” represents at least a temporary farewell to a 25-year career of feature filmmaking. For Mr. Douglas, this same project is an unlikely comeback vehicle, one of his first movies since he disclosed in 2010 that he had started treatment for Stage IV throat cancer.
At the hotel, Mr. Douglas looked physically vigorous, but he spoke in a voice that was sometimes fragile and tentative. Mr. Damon and Mr. Soderbergh were gently protective of him, occasionally jumping in as he answered a reporter’s questions.
Mr. Douglas seemed sincere in his appreciation for the opportunity to play Liberace, whom he described as “a big, barrel-chested” guy with “one thigh the size of my two” and who represented the rare chance to lose himself in a vivid historical figure. “He was a really nice guy,” he said. “He liked niceness and for everybody to be happy, and I don’t normally get a chance to play guys like that.”
After his initial flash of inspiration, Mr. Soderbergh spent several years puzzling over how to best tell the story of Liberace — Wladziu Valentino Liberace by birth, Lee to his friends — whose concerts were equal parts rhinestones and rapid-fire performances of Tchaikovsky and Chopin.
The breakthrough for Mr. Soderbergh was his introduction to “Behind the Candelabra,” a tell-all book by Mr. Thorson, who filed a $113 million palimony suit against Liberace in 1982 and received a $95,000 settlement five years later.
Though the courts may have felt otherwise, Mr. Damon said the film adaptation, written by Richard LaGravenese, embraces the idea that “there really was a true and abiding love” between Liberace and Mr. Thorson.
“You should have that feeling that you’re observing something that’s a little too intimate,” Mr. Damon said, “and it would feel the same way if it were between a man and a woman. But it’s between a man and a man.”
Even so, Liberace is seen as conflicted, risking the loss of his career if the truth of his sexuality was discovered and feeling he was not able to come out to his fans, many of whom were oblivious to his orientation.
“In those days, you didn’t do that,” said Jerry Weintraub, who produced “Behind the Candelabra.” As a former promoter and artist manager, Mr. Weintraub knew Liberace and said that the pianist’s ostentation attracted its share of female admirers.
“There’s nothing that sells, in movies or on Broadway or on television, that’s not sex,” said Mr. Weintraub, who was also a producer of Mr. Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven” and its sequels. “Those women, they had a sexual thing with him.”
Conceived by Mr. Soderbergh as a theatrical release, “Behind the Candelabra” was unable to secure a distributor in the United States, despite the involvement of Mr. Douglas (who, besides “Traffic,” worked with the director on the 2011 film “Haywire”) and Mr. Damon (who appeared in several Soderbergh projects, including the “Ocean” films).
Though the movie will be shown in theaters internationally and in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Mr. Weintraub was certain that its frank depiction of gay characters had scared off American distributors.
“They’re not going to see it in Macon, Ga., or in the Bible Belt, I’ll tell you that, “ he said. “But a lot of those people will watch this in their home that wouldn’t go to the theater.”
The project was dealt a further blow when Mr. Douglas announced his cancer diagnosis, precipitating a yearlong delay and raising questions about whether it would proceed at all.
Mr. Douglas said he was told the delay was because of a conflict with Mr. Damon’s work on the science-fiction film “Elysium.” But he added: “I thought that they’re being good guys and kind of covering for me, because I was not ready. I was still pretty thin, and my strength was not there, and it would have been too early.”
Mr. Soderbergh said he used the hiatus to tell his crew about his planned feature-film retirement. And Mr. Douglas continued to hone his portrayal of Liberace.
“Tonally,” Mr. Douglas said, “I wasn’t sure sometimes about the flamboyance, how campy to get.” Still, Mr. Douglas said the character snapped into place on his first day of filming in a scene when Thorson, then an animal trainer, offers to help Liberace treat his dog, who is suffering from cataracts.
“Once I saw my poodle with the blind eye,” Mr. Douglas recalled, slipping into his adenoidal Liberace voice, “I said, O.K. That was it.”
As the relationship between Liberace and Thorson progressed to love and sex scenes, Mr. Douglas and Mr. Damon said the filming was unfamiliar but not uncomfortable.
Yes, Mr. Douglas said, “we made jokes about getting the ChapStick out and everything.”
Then, indicating Mr. Soderbergh, he added: “I wasn’t quite sure, knowing how sick this guy is, where we were going to go in some of the scenes. But very early on I realized Steven still had his taste buds about him. I thought, there are smart ways of handling the stuff but still giving it credibility.”
Nor did Mr. Douglas hesitate at playing a scene that depicts Liberace, ashen, dying of AIDS. Asked if this sequence caused him to contemplate his own recent brush with mortality, Mr. Douglas wryly answered, “I didn’t need a lot of Method stuff for that.”
He added: “My whole process was just, ‘I’m really happy I’m working again.’ It was all written there, and I was on a much more positive note, feeling good. You get a whole new appreciation about working, that’s for sure.”
Mr. Soderbergh said he was proudest of moments in “Behind the Candelabra” like one he called the “fat and happy” scene, in which Liberace and Thorson simply sit together on a couch, enjoying each other’s company.
“There’s nothing calling attention to itself,” Mr. Soderbergh said. “It just looks like two people in a relationship doing what most people do, which is watching television.”
For all his satisfaction with “Behind the Candelabra,” Mr. Soderbergh (who at the time of this interview had yet to declare, in a keynote speech at the San Francisco International Film Festival, that cinema “is under assault from the studios”) was not ready to say it had persuaded him to put off his retirement plans.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t know for how long.”
That piqued Mr. Douglas’s interest. “Ooh, this is changing,” he teased.
“No,” Mr. Soderbergh continued. “I’m just saying, if this were the last thing I did, I would be very happy, and it feels good to not walk away feeling like I whiffed.”
“Now I know if I do something,” he added with mock disappointment, “people will go, ‘You came back for that?’ ”
Mr. Damon said that if the film was Mr. Soderbergh’s swan song, it had succeeded in capturing “the absurdity and the tragedy” of “a real relationship.”
“I realized while we were doing it that all of our lives are totally absurd,” he said. “If you made a movie about any of them, it would be completely tragic and silly, but they matter to us.”
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