It’s here! Finally, with the release of its first trailer, we get to catch our first glimpse of Michael Douglas donning sequins and feathers to play famed, flamboyant musician Liberace in Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming biopic for HBO films, Behind the Candelabra, and—oh boy—it’s not a let down. Douglas looks like he had a great time with this one, and it should be a ton of fun watching him chew scenery for one of today’s greatest (non) working directors.
The tale being told is a twisted true story, that of an aging Liberace taking a young lover by the name of Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) and attempting to make him into a doppelgänger through the means of facial reconstructive surgery. As you can imagine, it would require deep-seated neuroses in order for someone to attempt to do this to another person, and a whole other slew of extreme codependency issues in order for someone to allow this to be done to themselves, and from the looks of the trailer, Soderbergh and his actors mean to dig into all of that messy drama, so prepare to have your skin feel all crawly.
Combine Behind the Candelabra’s fanciful costumes, its elaborate stage shows, and its cast, that also includes names like Debbie Reynolds, Dan Aykroyd, and Rob Lowe, and it’s looking like HBO could have a huge hit on their hands. If enough people tune in to the film’s airing on Friday, May 26 at 9PM Eastern, it could start a new trend of the channel coughing up money to hire top-notch talents to work on feature films, and that would be kind of awesome. They’ve already mastered the TV drama and the mini-series, so there’s no reason to believe that they wouldn’t also be great at tackling this new challenge. More movies = more happiness.