Michael Douglas worked in the Romantic drama movie Behind the Candelabra and for many people, it was Douglas’s one of the most incredible performances. The movie was released on 21 May 2013 and it was directed by Steven Soderbergh. In the same year, Douglas was not nominated at the Cannes Film Festival for the best actor.
Although he won many awards for the same movie, at Cannes Film Festival Douglas wasn’t even nominated. Douglas believes that legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg stood in the way of him receiving the Cannes best actor award in 2013.
Michael Douglas explained why Steven Spielberg didn’t support him and his film
Michael Douglas reportedly was very hopeful that he will be nominated at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival for the best actor award. The news came as a surprise and disappointment for Douglas and his Behind the Candelabra when he was not even in the nominations for the best actor. Later, the 78-year-old actor talked about what made him lose the award at the Cannes film festival. During an interview, the Fatal Attraction actor said,
“Steven Spielberg was president of the Cannes Film Festival the year that I was there at Cannes. The rumor was that I was sort of favored for the best actor award and that he put the kibosh on that because it was an HBO film — a film for television even though it had played theatrically.”
He further added,
“My feeling is that they’ve got to really loosen this up. Certainly it can play in a theater for a week or two, but then it should be entitled to be treated as a movie.”
Douglas was upset when he learned that Steven Spielberg did not vote for him, and didn’t even give him a chance to be nominated. The Game actor said he noticed there was a gap in the way the Cannes jury chose which films should be nominated.
Steven Spielberg said he is averse to streaming movies being nominated for the Oscars
From behind the camera, Spielberg has achieved some success in Hollywood. Even now, the filmmaker understands what the needs of Hollywood are and what style of the film will run in the industry. However, the filmmaker is said to be opposed to streaming films being nominated for prestigious awards. While talking about why he is averse to streaming films being nominated, the 76-year-old filmmaker said,
“The difference today is that a lot of studios would rather just make branded, tentpole, guaranteed box office hits from their inventory of branded successful movies than take chances on smaller films. And those smaller films the studios used to make routinely are now going to Amazon and Hulu and Netflix.”
Spielberg has also stated that movie streaming culture is a loss for many filmmakers. He described it as “throwing the filmmakers under the bus.” The director of Jaws stated that the Pandemic impacted many things for him and his other filmmaker films since the streaming culture became more prevalent during the pandemic.
Source: Cheatsheet
