Welcome to the Posts section of the official Kirk Douglas website. Its purpose is to let Kirk share his thoughts and activities with you, and to enable you to share your thoughts with him.
Below you’ll find links to the most recent "Reflections" and "Activities" posts.
Clicking the “Reflections” button to the left, you’ll be taken to a page where Kirk, a best-selling writer as well as a movie star, has posted his most recent thoughts and musings.
Clicking the “Activities” button, you’ll be taken to a page where you can learn about current and past goings-on in which Kirk is involved.
Clicking the "Kirk Douglas Theatre" button, you'll get the latest news about productions at the theatre, named to honor Kirk Douglas and established as the newest and most intimate of the Center Theatre Group's spaces, which include the Ahmanson and Mark Taper Theatres at the Los Angeles Music Center.
By clicking “Fan Mail,” you’ll have the opportunity to share your thoughts with Kirk.
Kirk Doulgas's new book, written with his wife Anne, Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter, and a Lifetime in Hollywood is now available. This link will enable you to order a copy, and have part of the proceeds go to the work of The Douglas Foundation.
Film legend Kirk Douglas and Anne Buydens, his wife of nearly sixty-three years, look back on a lifetime filled with drama both on and off the screen. Sharing priceless correspondence with each other as well as the celebrities and world leaders they called friends, Kirk and Anne is a candid portrayal of the pleasures and pitfalls of a Hollywood life lived in the public eye.
Compiled from Anne's private archive of letters and photographs, this is an intimate glimpse into the Douglases' courtship and marriage set against the backdrop of Kirk's screen triumphs, including The Vikings, Lust For Life, Paths of Glory, and Spartacus. The letters themselves, as well as Kirk and Anne's vivid descriptions of their experiences, reveal remarkable insight and anecdotes about the legendary figures they knew so well, including Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, the Kennedys, and the Reagans. Filled with photos from film sets, private moments, and public events, Kirk and Anne details the adventurous, oftentimes comic, and poignant reality behind the glamour of a Hollywood life-as only a couple of sixty-two years (and counting) could tell it.
Santa Barbara International Film Festival Fetes Martin Scorsese with Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film
- Created on Tuesday, 19 November 2019
- Written by Owen Gleiberman
--Variety November 14, 2019
When Martin Scorsese is directing a movie on all cylinders — and that, more or less, is the only way he knows how to direct — he can give you a rush you won’t get from any other filmmaker. The camera isn’t just gliding, it’s dancing, as if hypnotized into a trance by the characters it’s staring at. The music on the soundtrack is probably some kind of vintage rock ’n’ roll, but it’s the last song you’d expect to hear at that moment, which is what makes it the perfect song — one that fuses in electric counterpoint with the images, so that we’re not just watching the scene, we’re in the scene. And the actors are doing something that Scorsese invented, and a lot of filmmakers have imitated, but never with his bravura: They’re confronting each other, maybe shouting at each other, talking a blue streak of four-letter rage — and somehow it all plays not as a lowlife scuffle but as poetry, a kind of sense-quickening opera of ego.
Scorsese’s legendary body of work will be feted on Nov. 14 at the Santa Barbara Intl. Film Festival, when he will receive the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film.
Looking back over his career, which has thrived for half a century, the first thing a lot of people would probably say about Scorsese is that he’s married to the mob — not literally, of course, but artistically. The (mostly) Italian underworld of organized crime has been his passionate and obsessive subject, the muse he keeps returning to. Yet it’s worth noting that in Hollywood movies, the gangster has never been just a gangster. He was, and remains, a mythological figure who acts out the impulses — the power, cunning, appetite and violence — that all of us carry on some level inside. Scorsese, in his mob films, has taken the underworld and made it our world.
He did it in “Mean Streets,” the 1973 landmark film in which he drew on his upbringing in New York’s Little Italy to craft an answer to “The Godfather,” by capturing the flavor of the mob as it’s actually lived on the streets, in the bars, among the penny-ante hoodlums. And he did it in 1990’s “GoodFellas,” the mobster-as-suburban-sociopath masterpiece that was like the original version of “The Sopranos.” And he does it again, on a grand canvas, with a venerable filmmaker’s wistful vision, in “The Irishman,” a drama that sums up the life (and death) of the mob with a chill that will leave you exhilarated and devastated.
If Scorsese had made nothing but those three films, he’d be one of cinema’s timeless maestros. But, of course, he has given us so much more, from the indelible urban inferno of 1976’s “Taxi Driver” to the tormented romantic yearning of 1993’s “The Age of Innocence,” from the tumultuous religious passion of 1988’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” to the sinister noir stylings of 1991’s “Cape Fear,” from the self-destructive brute tragedy of 1980’s “Raging Bull” to the money-fever madness of 2013’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
It’s a fabulously eclectic slate of movies, yet what is it that binds them together? I think it’s that Scorsese, in nearly every film he has made, is looking at characters who push themselves to a kind of everyday extreme, because they’re searching for something — a way to reach into the raw experience of their lives and find a kind of redemption. It is, in essence, a religious quest. But though Scorsese, in discussing his films, has often invoked his Catholic background, the truth is that the people in his movies don’t seem to be able to find God in the world around them; they’re forced to look for God within themselves. And that’s true even of Willem Dafoe’s Jesus in “Last Temptation.” The brilliance of Scorsese as a filmmaker is that he absorbs us directly into that journey, inviting us to touch the hidden sanctity of everyday experience. Some people make feel-good movies. Scorsese does something more transcendent: He makes movies that you make you feel fully and divinely alive.
Martin Scorsese To Receive SBIFF’s 14th Annual Kirk Douglas Award For Excellence In Film
- Created on Tuesday, 27 August 2019
- Written by Pete Hammond
--Deadline.com August 26, 2019
Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese, whose latest film is the much-anticipated The Irishman, has been selected to receive the 14th annual Kirk Douglas Award For Excellence In Film from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The honor, which benefits SBIFF’s year-round educational programs, will be presented on Thursday November 14 at a Black Tie dinner at the Ritz Carlton Bacara.
Since 2006, the annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film has been awarded to a lifelong contributor to cinema through their work in front of the camera, behind, or both. Mr. Scorsese will be the fourth Director to receive this prestigious honor, joining the ranks of past honorees Hugh Jackman, Dame Judi Dench, Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, Forest Whitaker, Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Quentin Tarantino, Ed Harris, and John Travolta.
“Martin Scorsese is a brilliant filmmaker. He has made countless unforgettable films and is a true cinematic treasure. I am honored and grateful that he will receive the 14th annual Kirk Douglas Award.” states Kirk Douglas who incidentally will turn 103 in December.
Scorsese’s films including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, his Oscar-winning The Departed, Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, and many more from a remarkable career spanning over 50 years.
His next film, The Irishman is long-awaited and brings him together again with Goodfellas and Casino stars Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, as well as working for the first time with Al Pacino. The film is set to be released by Netflix, first in theaters and then the streaming service this fall.
The 35th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival will take place from Wednesday, January 15 –25, 2020.
Kirk Douglas, 102, poses for epic family photo featuring four generations
- Created on Tuesday, 27 August 2019
- Written by Pritha Paul
--meaww.com August 21, 2019
Michael Douglas' eldest son, Cameron, shared a photo of their big family on Instagram on Monday, August 19, that showed members spanning across four generations, including his 102-year-old grandfather, Kirk.
Kirk sat at the head of the table in the rare picture taken at the family reunion, while his wife Anne Buydens, 100, sat two seats away from him.
Apart from Michael, the picture also featured his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones and their two children – son Dylan, 19, and daughter Carys, 16.
Cameron was seen standing at the farthest corner of the picture, holding his 19-month-old daughter, Lua, with his girlfriend Viviane Thibes.
Lua and her father represent the fourth and third generations of the family, respectively.
Also present at the reunion were Kirk's son Joel, 72, and Peter, 63.
In the picture, Peter's wife Lisa Schoeder, and their two kids, Kelsey, 27, and Jason, 16, were also present.
The picture was captioned #FamilyFirst.
