This is what stimulated my interest in buying works of art from living artists. previous 1 2 next sort by previous 1 2 next Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. And poor Vincent, in his lifetime, sold only one painting for 400 francs or $80 dollars today. Books by Kirk Douglas (Author of I Am Spartacus) Books by Kirk Douglas Kirk Douglas Average rating 3.93 3,226 ratings 456 reviews shelved 7,708 times Showing 30 distinct works. They paid a fortune for it, reportedly $53 million. It's a beautiful piece of art with one white iris sticking up among a field of blue ones. As I write this, I look up at a poster of his "Irises"-a poster from the Getty Museum. My heart ached for van Gogh the afternoon that I played that scene. It was all too much for him, and he pulled the trigger and ended it all. Poor Vincent-he wrestled with his soul in the wheat field of Auvers-sur-Oise, stacks of his unsold paintings collecting dust in his brother's house. And how would you like to be an actor with no part to play, and no audience to watch you. How awful it would be to write music that no one wants to hear. How terrible to paint pictures and feel that no one wants them. I was haunted by this talented genius who took his own life, thinking he was a failure. In addition to hiring Kubrick onto 'Spartacus,' Douglas also recruited Kubrick. His voice in the pages of “I Am Spartacus!” carries the power of a self-made man who continues to meet life on his own terms but with grace and aplomb.“The biggest spur to my interest in art came when I played van Gogh in the biographical film Lust For Life. Shooting 'I am Spartacus' was only one clash in a timeline of Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kubrick's collaborative works. He gives credit, too - and plenty of hell to those who tried to stand in the way of what has become his signature film.ĭouglas is admirable not just because he’s still writing at 95 - this is his 10th book - and pushing back against a speech-impairing stroke he sustained in 1996.
He also had to deal with censors and ballooning costs - the film eventually cost three times more than expected - as well as an irascible actor in Charles Laughton and a brilliant, if cold, director in Kubrick.Ī lively narrator, Douglas puts the “I” in “I Am Spartacus!” No more modest today than he was a half-century ago, he takes lots of credit for a fine movie made against bigger odds than most films faced. Since the general still doesn't know who the real Spartacus is, all of the slaves are led to crucifixion. Not unlike Spartacus deciding whether to risk everything by leading a slave revolt in ancient Rome, Douglas debated whether to give Trumbo his screenwriting credit even if Universal might pull the plug on the movie. Spartacus is then willing to turn himself in to protect his friends by standing up and proclaiming 'I am Spartacus', but then the rest of the slaves show their loyalty to him by also proclaiming that himself is Spartacus in great numbers. With Trumbo doing a great job, the sham didn’t sit well with Douglas or Lewis.
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