Tales From the Douglas’ ‘Crypt’

The set on HBO’s “Tales From the Crypt” sound stage, a converted pasta factory in Culver City, had been transformed into the interior of a World War I bunker, dark and stuffy and shrouded in artificial fog. The young actor, portraying a lieutenant whose cowardice had just cost the lives of his fellow soldiers, had to do an emotional close-up, a scene where he desperately tries to save his own skin by lying to his father, the cold-hearted general who had sent him on the doomed patrol,

“I tried to save the men, sir,” the young actor said, looking appropriately frightened, nearly hysterical. “We ran into a German patrol

The scene would have been difficult under any circumstances, but what it made even tougher was the young actor had to play it straight into the face of a Hollywood legend. Kirk Douglas, in the role of the general, was right beside the camera, his monument of a face intense and unavoidable.

The young actor had spent a lifetime looking up to that face, living up to the legacy of being Kirk Douglas’ son. Eric Douglas, 33, was acting with his father for the first time and it couldn’t have been a more fitting role, the part of a son trying to earn his father’s respect.

“I shot as many as I could,” Eric Douglas repeated, trying the scene once more. He had already gone through a half-dozen takes, including one where he snapped at an “Entertainment Tonight” film crew, “I’m sorry but I can’t have an extra camera while I’m shooting a movie.”

Director Robert Zemeckis, the man who invited Eric and Kirk to do this “Tales From the Crypt” episode entitled “Yellow,” started giving Eric facial cues, wetting his lips, showing fear in his eyes, breathing heavily whenever he wanted Eric to do the same. But the younger Douglas was struggling with the scene, trying a little too hard.

“I just kept firing,” the young actor said, looking past Zemeckis and, once again, catching his father’s eye. “Sorry, sir. I can’t remember my last line.”

“The line,” Kirk Douglas said in his trademark clenched-jaw whisper, “is, I barely made it back alive. “ And then he broke character, just long enough to give his youngest son a reassuring nod.

Kirk Douglas never wanted his children to be actors. He worried that, sheltered by their Beverly Hills upbringing, they might be too fragile for the rejection and failure that is so much a part of the actor’s life.

“He always kind of pushed us away from the business,” Eric Douglas was saying, sitting in a hotel suite with his father a few weeks after the “Tales From the Crypt” filming. “But I’ve often wondered, Dad, if that wasn’t some kind of reverse psychology on your part. It’s like if you leave a little boy alone in a room and say, ‘Whatever you do, don’t play without those brown beads over there.’ What’s the first thing the kid does when you leave?”

“My theory,” Kirk Douglas said, sitting on the sofa across from his son, looking trim and limber, “is that if you want to go into this profession it has to be like an incurable disease. If you really want to be in it, nothing can stop you. But if you can be stopped, for hatever reason, then you shouldn’t be in it.”

Kirk Douglas is 75 years old and “Yellow” marks the first time he’s shared a stage with either of his acting sons. “I’m more interested in writing books than making movies,” he said. “There are really only two movies I wanted to make--one with Michael and one with Eric. I just didn’t think I’d be working with Eric first.”

He might not have gotten the chance if Robert Zemeckis, best known for directing the “Back to the Future” films, hadn’t come across “Yellow” in the 1950s E.C. Comics from which all “Tales From the Crypt” stories are drawn. Zemeckis immediately saw the story--with its World War I setting and a plot line involving cowardice, betrayal and firing squads--as a chance to pay homage to Stanley Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory,” the 1957 anti-war film that featured one of Kirk Douglas’ most compelling performances.

“I want us to keep redefining what ‘Tales From the Crypt’ can be,” Zemeckis said, acknowledging that “Yellow” is something of a departure from the series’ usual goop-and-giggles brand of macabre humor. “This does have a twist ending, which is the series trademark. But it really is more of a 30-minute drama, more like a mini-’Playhouse 90.’ ”

“I thought Eric did a fantastic job,” the elder Douglas said, asked to critique his son’s performance. “It was a very difficult role to play. He’s drunk, he’s frightened, he’s hysterical. Me, I’m just a son of a bitch all the way through. I just hope no one says, ‘That’s easy for Kirk. He’s been that way with his kids his whole life.’ ”

On the set, the elder Douglas had been a marvel to watch. He worked 18-hour days without a word of complaint, meticulously blocking out his scenes and rehearsing his lines even as crews worked noisily around him.

In contrast, Eric, whose career up to now has consisted mostly of bit parts and low-budget thrillers, barked at crew members, hid in his trailer and frequently held things up. At one point, he made his father, Zemeckis, cast member Dan Aykroyd and heavy-hitter producer Joel Silver wait for nearly 45 minutes before he’d come out of his trailer to take a publicity shot.

“Doing a movie is quite a test,” Kirk Douglas was saying. “There’s all the tension, the creative anxiety, all those things. And sometimes that’s even more difficult if you’re father and son. But if you can surmount that and come out with something good, then it’s worth it. And I think that’s what we did. I think we passed that test.”

“Tales From the Crypt” airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. on HBO.