StudioLA's Jim Ferguson interviews Michael Douglas Star of Traffic

Jim asks Michael Douglas regarding his role in Traffic

Jim: I'm going to begin with congratulations!

Michael: Thank you, thank you very much.

Jim: You are a very lucky man.

Michael: I feel that.

Jim: And also to be part of a tremendous film called "Traffic," we were just talking, and I used to watch your Dad film some westerns in Tucson and for a good time a lot of the cast would go to a little town down on the border sixy miles away, called Nogales. You spent a little time making "Traffic" there.

Michael: We did. We did. My section of the picture wasn't there, but, Benecio's was...and they had a good time.

Jim: How, in your opinion...has drug trafficking affected little border towns.

Michael: ...I think the biggest concern lately, with the corruption and graft... the amount of money involved now is staggering. The millions of dollars we are putting into the drug war doesn't match the amount of money that they have to combat it. The cartels.

Jim: ...To hear...the drug czar of the United States. Just thinking that with technology we [must] be way ahead. And then, this [lieutenant says] "No"...the cartels are ahead of us when it comes to the technology.

Michael: One of the interesting scenes, is a sequence in El Paso...at the El Paso intelligence center which is basically a center where our government is trying to work with all the encryptions. Drug cartels have hired worldwide the best encryptors for code. [Ther're] trying to break down their codes to see where their smuggling links are.

Jim: What I like about this story with a strong plot, this is three powerful stories.

Michael: It's a wonderfully interwoven screenplay, three different situations. For me personally, one of the joys I had was that a number of the actors that I worked with were not actors, they were federal agents. They did a great job, both in San Diego, El Paso and in Washington D.C. we have a sequence where as the newly appointed drug czar, a cocktail party is given in my honor in which actual real life Senators and opinion makers came and spoke to me as if I was a drug czar, giving advice as to how I should conduct myself.

Jim: It's just a wonderful ensemble cast, too. You can't say enough. There's too many to mention.

Michael: Don Cheadle's wonderful, Catherine (Zeta-Jones], incredible, Benicio [Benicio Del Toro], it's a great ensemble cast, and a good director [Steven Soderbergh]... Having two films "Wonder Boys" and "Traffic"...and the personal life...

Jim: The audience is going to love about this film is how it the depicts the craziness of the whole drug war. How it affects society and your character really touches on that. If you are going to war on drugs, you're going to war perhaps on your own family.

Michael: You take a squeaky clean, conservative Supreme Court judge from Ohio. The last person to expect [to have] a daughter that is spiralling out of control on drugs. And that's the truth. You can [always take] a dysfunctional family, with a liberal family. There's alot of very clean families out there who are struggling with the disease, when it comes to peer group pressure, media, genes, and I don't think we are [trying to get] an answer in two hours of good entertainment, but there's definitely some food for thought.

Jim: I want to thank you so much.

Michael: My pleasure, thank you.