Michael Douglas’s father admitted he would’ve treated him better if he’d known how successful he would become. Conan O’Brien: “Your father came on my late night show two times. And this is a big deal for me. He came on after his stroke. He had a very debilitating stroke, and he had a hard time communicating.” “He said, ‘I think Michael’s a much better actor than I am, and I was a good actor.’” Michael Douglas: “His best line after Cuckoo’s Nest, I remember, was, ‘If I knew you were going to be so successful, I would have been nicer to you.’” Conan O’Brien: “Which is a funny line, but also had some truth to it, too.” Michael Douglas: “It had some truth in it.”

Michael Douglas reveals what happened while filming Romancing the Stone with a 12-foot crocodile. Michael Douglas: “We had the crocodile’s mouth wired shut. And he was about, you know, 12 feet.” “He was kind of slow, and I picked up his tail a couple of times, just to test the weight of how I was going to be able to hold him.” “When the director called action, it was like this crocodile heard it. And the crocodile took off.” “I went down and I grabbed him. And he took his tail and he went whack, whack…” The crocodile escaped into the bay in Veracruz, Mexico. When the animal handlers tried to retrieve it, one of them jumped into the water. Michael Douglas: “The last thing I remember is this guy going down.” The handler was pulled out and rushed to the hospital with a badly mangled arm. That night, Douglas visited him after surgery. Michael Douglas: “I went over close to him, and he said, ‘My Rolex.’” The crocodile had bitten down on his wrist, but the watch had helped prevent even worse damage to his hand. The crew returned to the location the next day and recovered it from the water. Michael Douglas: “I always wonder why Rolex never came to me to do a commercial, you know? It was too good to be true.”

Sacha Baron Cohen says Gary Shandling helped save Borat when the movie was on the verge of being shut down. Sacha Baron Cohen: “Gary Shandling, who I love. He was my mentor when I came to Hollywood. He helped with all the movies. He actually saved Borat, the movie.” “Fox gave us three weeks to get the movie up and running, otherwise they were going to shut it down. We had no script, no story.” Cohen went to Shandling’s basketball game, where he was playing alongside comedians including Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell. During the game, he went up for a basket and landed on Shandling’s foot. Sacha Baron Cohen: “I go for a basket. I land on his foot, I roll my foot. And I hear the popping noise of two tendons…” “It was the best thing that happened because suddenly insurance kicked in. And for three months, I was on crutches, and in that time, we wrote a story, That extra time allowed them to hire Larry Charles, develop the story, and eventually make a film Cohen is still proud of Sacha Baron Cohen: “That guy never wanted a credit. He wanted to increase the peace. He just wanted to give love and help all of us.” “He would help with edits, he’d come to screenings, he’d come to read-throughs. He was just an incredible man.”