Douglas to voice Valenti memoir

The audio version of the forthcoming memoir by the late Jack Valenti will be read by Michael Douglas -- including a passage about ... Michael Douglas.

Valenti was supposed to narrate “This Time, This Place” himself, but he died before production started, so the Academy Award-winning actor stepped in. The project, from Harmony Books, is due for release June 12.

Valenti was close friends with Douglas’ father, Kirk Douglas, and wrote warmly of the entire Douglas family. Among the compliments from Valenti, known for his purplish turns of phrase: “Michael’s movie career soared on the thermals of his extraordinary talent.”

“Michael Douglas read this book in Jack Valenti’s honor,” said Dan Zitt, a senior producer at Random House Audio. (Harmony Books is an imprint of Random House, Inc.) “We wanted Michael to read it as Jack would have, in the first person. We didn’t feel that rewriting it was appropriate, and it would have detracted from the conversational tone of the writing.”