Robert Downey Jr. walks us through his legendary career, discussing his roles in 'Pound,' 'Less Than Zero,' 'Chaplin,' 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' 'Zodiac,' 'Iron Man,' 'The Judge,' 'Oppenheimer' and more.
OPPENHEIMER is in theaters July 21, 2023, https://www.oppenheimermovie.com/
SAG-AFTRA members are currently on strike; as part of the strike, union actors are not promoting their film and TV projects. This video was conducted prior to the strike.
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Brad Wickham
Editor: Cory Stevens
Guest: Robert Downey Jr.
Producer: Frank Cosgriff
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Rafael Vasquez
Production Manager: Natasha Soto-Albors
Production Coordinator: Jamal Colvin
Talent Booker: Meredith Judkins
Camera Operator: Chloe Ramos
Audio Engineer: Lily van Leeuwen
Production Assistant: Rowmel Findley
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Supervising Editor: Kameron Key
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
OPPENHEIMER is in theaters July 21, 2023, https://www.oppenheimermovie.com/
SAG-AFTRA members are currently on strike; as part of the strike, union actors are not promoting their film and TV projects. This video was conducted prior to the strike.
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Brad Wickham
Editor: Cory Stevens
Guest: Robert Downey Jr.
Producer: Frank Cosgriff
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Rafael Vasquez
Production Manager: Natasha Soto-Albors
Production Coordinator: Jamal Colvin
Talent Booker: Meredith Judkins
Camera Operator: Chloe Ramos
Audio Engineer: Lily van Leeuwen
Production Assistant: Rowmel Findley
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Supervising Editor: Kameron Key
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 I've been thinking about this recently.
00:01 If I could talk back to that 17-year-old
00:05 who was doing regional theater in Rochester,
00:07 I would say, guess what?
00:09 It's gonna go pretty well.
00:10 It's gonna be a lot of ups and downs.
00:11 I'm not gonna tell you the specifics
00:13 because you'd get too scared,
00:14 but it turns out in a good place,
00:16 and it never will get better than it is right now.
00:19 So just appreciate where you are.
00:21 Three, two, one.
00:24 (upbeat music)
00:26 (upbeat music)
00:29 I'm Robert Downey Jr.,
00:33 and this is the timeline of my career.
00:36 That tornado scared me so much,
00:42 it made my hair disappear.
00:44 Have any hair on your balls?
00:46 I'm afraid to look.
00:48 Pound is a film that my dad got the financing for.
00:51 I think the investors thought he was making a documentary
00:55 about pounds and animal shelters,
00:58 and then he said, "No, no, it's a live-action thing,
01:00 "and I'm casting people to play the dogs."
01:04 Next thing you know, we're shooting it,
01:05 and these character actors of all shapes and sizes
01:09 are playing various dogs, and then I played a puppy.
01:14 My earliest memories are of cameras being on sets,
01:18 being on stages, being on location,
01:21 to the point where it almost seemed like
01:23 life was kind of making a movie and kind of being a kid.
01:27 At the same time, because my folks were mostly
01:30 underground, kind of counterculture,
01:31 it was never like I saw later on,
01:34 like my friends, like Jason Bateman,
01:36 who literally grew up in the high-end,
01:39 you know, multi-camera TV show stuff.
01:41 Our stuff was really weird,
01:43 so there was always something that felt
01:44 a little bit outsiderish about it.
01:47 Remember the infamous coffee cup?
01:49 Oh, no, don't, please.
01:51 Oh, yes, I seduced Blair without really trying.
01:55 There it is, there's a smile.
01:56 It's nice to see it again.
01:58 I'm cast with Andrew McCarthy, James Spader, Jamie Gertz,
02:02 and there's a scene on a tennis court
02:03 where I'm asking my dad if I can come home,
02:06 and it was kind of an impactful,
02:07 bit of a challenging scene to do, my first day shooting,
02:10 and the director, Merrick Knievska,
02:12 who I argue is one of the greats I ever got to work with,
02:15 said, "Everybody be absolutely quiet.
02:18 "He's trying to concentrate,"
02:19 and I felt like he told everybody,
02:20 "Hey, this is important,"
02:22 and then I was like, "Oh my God,
02:23 "I guess I better concentrate,"
02:25 and I just thought for a quarter second
02:28 about what's it like for all fathers and sons,
02:30 mothers and daughters, are they ever gonna connect?
02:32 Can they ever understand each other?
02:34 And just having that thought in my head
02:35 gave me this springboard,
02:37 and it wound up being a kind of a pivotal day
02:40 where it was the first time I felt I was taken seriously
02:42 in a dramatic way.
02:43 I just needed to be my father for one goddamn day,
02:46 and just,
02:46 just help me.
02:50 [birds chirping]
02:53 I can't just tell when I'm telling the truth.
02:58 Nope.
03:02 If anything less than "Zero" showed me
03:05 that there was a cultural relevance to filmmaking,
03:09 I'd seen it in "The Breakfast Club"
03:12 and a bunch of other films,
03:13 and it was something about our generation
03:15 had some sort of valid statement to make,
03:18 and the filmmakers and artists of that period,
03:20 and you felt like, "God, maybe I could be
03:23 "one of those folks."
03:24 Very formal, everybody.
03:25 [upbeat music]
03:28 What the hell?
03:34 He's gone crazy.
03:34 Chaplin was a absolute gift
03:40 and a real bear of a challenge
03:43 for someone who's 25 when I started prepping to do it,
03:47 but there were all these people that were still around,
03:49 just barely still around,
03:51 like Johnny Hutch, who came from "The Benny Hill Show,"
03:55 and he knew the guy who'd really done these
03:58 choreographed things at the Carno Theater with Chaplin,
04:02 so he actually had access to some of the books
04:04 of really what the choreography was for some of this stuff,
04:07 and he drilled me incessantly
04:10 for months and months and months,
04:12 and then having Attenborough, Dickie Attenborough,
04:15 direct it, he was like the Yoda of cinema,
04:18 and just the fact that he cast me, obviously,
04:20 was the endorsement,
04:21 and then it was just this year process of shooting it.
04:23 At a certain point, I had a one-way mirror
04:26 with a TV playing VHS tapes of his old films,
04:31 and I would try to match up where his face was and mine
04:36 and literally just mimic him for hours and hours
04:39 over a course of weeks and months.
04:41 I employed every single way
04:44 I could try to show up for that role.
04:46 When you're 25 and you're given the keys to the kingdom,
05:12 you're going to probably come out of center,
05:16 maybe out of fear, maybe out of confidence,
05:18 and for me, I, at that point, not to boast,
05:22 but I was as much of a Chaplin expert
05:24 as anyone involved in the project,
05:26 and I was making corrections to the things
05:28 that were factually and historically inaccurate,
05:31 to which Attenborough said,
05:32 "But, Poppet, we're making a film.
05:35 "It's not a documentary."
05:36 I did learn at that point, though,
05:38 that it's hard to tell a story any more interestingly
05:41 than the way it actually occurred.
05:43 So I was saying, right before Chaplin did a film
05:46 called "The Kid" with Jackie Coogan,
05:48 his wife had had a miscarriage,
05:50 so that was his way of healing from the trauma of that loss.
05:54 He was like, "But, Rob, the audience."
05:56 I was like, "It's too episodic.
05:57 "We have to make this a moment."
05:59 Anyway, you realize you're not the director
06:02 when you're not directing,
06:04 but a great director will incorporate
06:06 all of your strong associations
06:10 and the things that you feel are really important
06:12 and find a way to help you get them into the character.
06:15 [thudding]
06:16 [screaming]
06:18 - I didn't want him to come in, and he insisted.
06:20 I said, "You gotta stay at home,"
06:22 but he doesn't listen to me.
06:22 He's such a stupid son of a bitch.
06:24 I killed him, didn't I?
06:28 Oh, fuck.
06:29 This is my fault.
06:30 I'm sorry.
06:30 [sobbing]
06:33 [thudding]
06:37 - Wow.
06:38 Sorry.
06:40 Hey, good luck.
06:42 "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang,"
06:43 that was a film shot entirely at night.
06:45 I think there was one day shoot and one split.
06:48 So the rest of the time, we're getting to work at sundown,
06:51 and we were working all through the night, every night.
06:54 So Shane Black is a night owl.
06:56 Shane Black is a legitimate genius,
06:59 and he'd written what I thought was almost a perfect script.
07:03 And then Val Kilmer and I had kind of fallen
07:06 into this good repartee,
07:07 and at that point, I'd never played a character
07:10 who was so overtly not intelligent, but lovable,
07:15 and I think it was very freeing for me
07:17 because I'd hitherto been associated
07:19 with these kind of fast-talking smart guys,
07:21 which I'm not necessarily.
07:23 I've just had some experience doing it.
07:25 And Harry Lockhart in "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang,"
07:28 he's kind of a dummy, and it was so freeing for me.
07:33 - What happens when they drag the lake?
07:35 You think they'll find my pistol?
07:37 - Jesus, look up "idiot" in the dictionary.
07:39 You know what you'll find?
07:40 - A picture of me?
07:41 - No, the definition of the word "idiot,"
07:43 which you fucking are.
07:45 - As far as working with Val on "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang,"
07:48 he's Val Kilmer.
07:49 It's vintage Val Kilmer.
07:51 He comes in with such an kind of off-center
07:54 point of view on things,
07:56 and yet he's playing the one who knows everything,
07:58 and he's smart, and he thinks that Harry
08:00 is kind of an idiot, but they become friends.
08:03 So I just found it so delightful
08:07 to be staying up all night with Val Kilmer,
08:09 shooting these ridiculous scenes
08:11 about these two oddballs that are chasing this
08:14 kind of a my case and your case, death sink case.
08:18 He's a really sophisticated artist,
08:21 and I have nothing but fond memories
08:23 about "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang."
08:25 - Hey, just one thing.
08:26 Is it true they got a print off the camp?
08:28 - Yeah, they got a portion in blood.
08:30 But that is not the publication.
08:33 - Hey, hey, come on.
08:34 Hey, it's me.
08:37 - Did he say they got a print?
08:38 - Partial.
08:41 - Working with David Fincher on "Zodiac"
08:44 was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
08:47 He is an absolute master of this art form,
08:51 and I remember also the subject matter
08:53 is really, really intense,
08:56 and so it wasn't like a fancy, free set,
09:01 and because I knew that this was something
09:03 that was really part of David's own history,
09:06 of his own kind of contemplation of evil,
09:08 you're trying to serve the director
09:12 and be respectful of that,
09:13 but I mean, I remember Ruffalo and Gyllenhaal and I
09:17 looking at each other,
09:18 knowing we're getting a real education
09:20 in doing things in an extremely disciplined way.
09:24 That said, when I watched the film,
09:26 there's a lot of kind of fun and lightness in it,
09:28 which David Fincher always knows how to capture.
09:31 It's just not, he doesn't lean into any sort of indulgence.
09:36 He's a really disciplined guy,
09:37 and then the crazy thing is,
09:38 David Fincher is your best lunch date you could ever have.
09:42 He's so fun, he's so witty,
09:44 and yet, when you look at his work,
09:48 he doesn't take himself seriously,
09:49 but boy, does he take his film seriously.
09:51 - That's the only place that word and that symbol
09:57 ever appear together before the letters.
10:00 They stole his logo off a watch.
10:01 - I've seen somebody who's killed 13 people.
10:03 - He claims he's killed 13 people,
10:04 but which ones can we actually confirm?
10:05 There's three in Vallejo, one in Berryessa.
10:07 Cabby, that's it.
10:08 Bobby, you almost look disappointed.
10:13 - Working with David Fincher,
10:15 you will learn that you're more durable than you thought.
10:18 A scene can devolve into where
10:19 it just feels really perfunctory,
10:21 and you're kind of almost on an automatonic mode,
10:24 but it doesn't matter because the craft
10:28 of trying to get things done,
10:30 like there was a scene where he was trying
10:31 to get it done in one shot,
10:32 and we had to have done 40 or 50 takes,
10:35 and people were a little bit exasperated.
10:38 He said, "Downey, come here, do we have it yet?"
10:40 And I watched the takes, and at the end of it,
10:41 I said, "You wanna use this in one?"
10:43 He goes, "Yeah," I go, "You know," he goes,
10:44 "Downey's right, we don't have it yet.
10:46 "Delete all 40 of those takes,
10:48 "and we'll start again after lunch."
10:49 And everyone looked at me, like, "What the fuck is..."
10:51 But, you know, right is right.
10:54 Truth is...
10:55 I am Iron Man.
11:02 No problem trusting Jon Favreau.
11:05 His films "Zathura" and "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang"
11:08 came out on the same weekend and tanked.
11:10 And I think we were both really hungry
11:13 to try to reestablish ourselves as a formidable duo,
11:18 albeit individually.
11:19 Again, just like Attenborough,
11:20 his endorsement of me to play that character,
11:23 and then Kevin Feige having the wherewithal to say,
11:26 "Okay, bit of a risk, let's do it, we like risk,"
11:30 wound up being a life-changing 15 years.
11:34 - Tony. - What?
11:35 - It's gonna be okay, okay?
11:36 It's gonna be okay.
11:37 I am gonna make this okay.
11:39 - Okay, you're gonna attach that to the base plate,
11:43 and make sure you...
11:44 [yells]
11:47 Is that so hard?
11:50 That was fun, right?
11:51 Anytime I was with Jeff Bridges,
11:53 and maybe even more so with Paltrow,
11:56 you just felt that there was this chemistry
11:58 where you always kind of got the definitive version
12:01 of a scene, whether it was loosely scripted
12:04 or a little bit more prepared.
12:07 But there's a scene where he's doing a weapons test,
12:09 and he says, "Is it better to be feared or respected?
12:11 Is it too much to ask for both?"
12:13 And Jon and I were literally writing that line for line
12:16 as we went along shooting it that day.
12:19 And I put on sunglasses because it was all on cue cards.
12:23 It was that kind of thing where you go,
12:25 "It's more important that we feel like
12:27 we're just coming up with this and we like it,
12:29 and there's no trick we can't employ to cover the fact
12:33 that we're kind of making it up as we go along."
12:36 But again, because you have that huge cluster bomb explosion
12:41 in back of him, because the air mover
12:42 kind of pushed me forward,
12:44 and it was just one of those days.
12:45 There was another moment where Tony has escaped the cave
12:48 and essentially become Iron Man,
12:50 and he lands in this kind of crater outside the cave
12:53 where he's being held.
12:54 And there was a windstorm that day,
12:56 and we were trying to get this take,
12:57 and it was very "Star Wars"-esque in a way.
12:59 It was very reminiscent of what Jon has wound up doing
13:02 since with "Mandalorian."
13:04 And there was just this moment where it's like the storm,
13:06 this storm kind of settled,
13:08 and everyone kind of looked at everyone.
13:10 We were like, "Let's get one more take,"
13:12 and that's the one that's in the film.
13:13 So it even felt like sometimes the elements themselves
13:16 were conspiring to help us do our best job.
13:19 Every film is an art film if you treat it that way,
13:22 and the most important films can be garbage,
13:26 but it's always about teams and leadership and partnership.
13:31 Also, that audiences evolve really quickly.
13:34 Like, they'll assimilate a new kind of version of a genre,
13:39 and then they'll phase out of it,
13:41 and you have to keep meeting and exceeding
13:43 their expectations.
13:44 And I think that's where, you know,
13:46 now we're in such an interesting spot
13:49 because it's kind of like anyone's game,
13:51 anticipating what audiences will respond to next,
13:55 and I think it has really put the cinematic
13:58 and TV community on point.
14:00 - I did what I thought was right.
14:04 You know, I didn't just graduate from law school.
14:05 I graduated first in my class.
14:08 I was first in my class.
14:09 - I did really well, Dad.
14:12 - You're welcome.
14:13 - Fuck.
14:15 David Dobkin, I wanted to be in "Fred Claus,"
14:18 and I had seen "The Wedding Crashers,"
14:19 and I was like, "I love this David Dobkin guy."
14:21 Turns out we kind of almost knew each other
14:24 back in upstate New York back in the day,
14:26 and he'd had this idea, kind of a dramatization
14:30 of a version of how he'd had this strained relationship
14:34 with his father, and then we started talking
14:37 about great movies like "The Verdict."
14:38 It's such a rich, fertile zone to try to dig in, you know?
14:43 - What was your reasoning?
14:46 180 days, that's solid.
14:50 Maybe it had cooled off.
14:52 Maybe he doesn't kill hope.
14:53 Maybe we're not here.
14:54 All the years you sat on that bench,
14:58 all the people that stood before you,
15:00 the leniency, the understanding,
15:03 the free ride goes to Mark Blackwell?
15:05 How do you explain that lapse in judgment?
15:08 - We were really fortunate in that I had such goodwill
15:10 from Warner Brothers with the,
15:12 having done several "Sherlock" films with them,
15:15 that they're like, "Yeah, we don't know
15:16 "if this one's really a fiscal win for us,
15:19 "but we love the script, go shoot it."
15:20 And those days are over.
15:23 - It's just 'cause the window's closing a bit, it seems.
15:26 Is there anything that you feel like you need to process
15:32 in relation to the possibility of not seeing him again?
15:38 - I just don't know.
15:40 "Senior," which is the documentary I did about my pops
15:44 with Chris Smith and my long-suffering Mrs. Susan Downey,
15:48 started off as kind of a pre-pandemic
15:51 and then into the pandemic.
15:53 For me, I'll just be honest,
15:54 it was a bit of an avoidance technique
15:57 in that I knew he was in the throes of Parkinson's,
16:00 which is a awful disease.
16:02 And I'm not great at confronting inevitabilities always,
16:06 but it's almost like it was this journey for me
16:09 to, in my mid-50s, kind of grow up
16:13 and take responsibility for framing
16:17 how I had experienced my childhood
16:19 and now how I related to that parent
16:23 as he was kind of, in the last years of his life.
16:28 - You two met before?
16:29 - You mean Junior and I?
16:36 - Yeah.
16:37 - Yeah, we're getting to know each other.
16:42 I think anyone who sees "Senior," it can be a tough watch,
16:47 but I would suggest that you find your way through it
16:50 because there was a certain point
16:51 where my dad made these very avant-garde movies
16:53 and they didn't always even seem like they had a plot.
16:56 And we had amassed all this footage in "Senior,"
16:58 and Susan came to me, she said,
17:00 "You can't make this documentary
17:02 "like one of your dad's movies.
17:03 "This has to have an act one, two, and three."
17:04 And I was like, "Well, what's act three?"
17:08 And then act three wound up being his passing
17:10 and us kind of figuring out a way to ingest that
17:15 and make sense of it.
17:16 I don't know that there was any one part that was difficult.
17:19 When we started watching "Senior,"
17:21 we saw it at the Telluride Film Festival,
17:24 we screened it in San Francisco
17:25 at the same theater, the Castro,
17:27 where I had been with my dad
17:29 when his films were coming out in the '70s.
17:32 And so for me, it was more like
17:34 I would be watching the film
17:36 and it was the story of my life with him and his death,
17:40 but it also wound up being this kind of thing of,
17:44 it brought me almost back to "Chaplin,"
17:46 where you make art of your life
17:48 and your life is kind of a movie, but it's not.
17:50 It was this very surreal experience.
17:52 And then there was just the grieving part of it,
17:54 where, and I think it's why some people say,
17:56 "I wish I'd been able to do something like this
17:58 "for one of my parents or a loved one,"
18:01 is that it becomes this kind of touchstone
18:03 and it's a way to have a mechanism
18:06 by which you can process a loss.
18:08 So I'm super fortunate to have it there
18:11 and I think it'll be something that I use
18:14 as a kind of a, you know,
18:16 a bit of a self-help tool for years to come.
18:20 - I can't believe it.
18:21 - Well, here we are.
18:24 - Catch me up.
18:25 - What do we know?
18:26 - One of our B-29s over the North Pacific
18:28 has detected radiation.
18:30 - Do we have the filter papers?
18:31 - There's no doubt what this is.
18:33 - White House says there's a doubt.
18:35 - Wishful thinking, I'm afraid.
18:36 - Are those the long-range detection filter papers?
18:39 - It's an atomic test.
18:41 - The Russians have a bomb.
18:46 - There's two Nolans.
18:47 There's the Nolan before you've worked for him,
18:49 where he's kind of this very distant Oz-like figure.
18:54 He's just held, as we all know,
18:55 in this very particular esteem
18:57 because his acumen and his mastery of this medium.
19:01 And then there's what happens as you approach
19:04 and get into the system that he uses.
19:08 It's so hard to explain,
19:10 but he's a very, very singular fella.
19:14 So even the screen tests felt important
19:18 and not important in a frou-frou high status way.
19:22 There's just an energy and an intensity to what he does.
19:25 So, and then take the subject matter.
19:27 And then the fact that he's asking me
19:29 to kind of transform into someone
19:31 who's extremely subtle and plotting,
19:34 who doesn't have any punchlines,
19:38 who's only charming when he's trying
19:41 to manipulate or undermine.
19:44 I found that to be a great challenge.
19:46 And Chris Nolan had said he was likening it a bit
19:50 to Amadeus, where there's a Mozart and that's not you.
19:54 Sometimes you're Mozart, usually you're Mozart.
19:56 This time you're Salieri.
19:58 And so I really took that to heart
20:00 as him kind of challenging the entirety
20:02 of my career trajectory and saying,
20:06 don't use any of those things that have served you well.
20:10 Find new resources.
20:11 - And now the race is against the Soviets.
20:14 - Not unless we start it.
20:15 - Robert, they just fired a starting gun.
20:19 What's the nature of the device they detonated?
20:21 - Data indicates it may have been
20:23 a plutonium implosion device.
20:24 - Like the one you built at Los Alamos.
20:28 - There's something about Strauss
20:29 that I find he's very conservative and very devoted
20:32 and very much lived a life of service.
20:34 It reminds me a little bit of my grandfather
20:37 who was a captain and did multiple tours in World War II
20:40 and then came back and had a glass company
20:42 and did all the glass for the Chrysler building.
20:44 I mean, those old American lives where you go like,
20:48 wow, that was a really exceptional generation.
20:50 But I also know this thing of comparison
20:54 of why don't I have what he or she or they have.
20:58 It's ugly.
21:00 And it's a preoccupation I think that is,
21:03 can be particular to a kind of American exceptionalism.
21:08 And so with all these forces that were at play
21:11 during the Cold War, it was great for me
21:15 to have held this position of kind of a righteous indignation
21:19 with what all these liberal geniuses were up to.
21:22 In a way, I felt like I got to be a critic
21:24 of what might be a perception of myself or others
21:28 throughout the entirety of my career.
21:30 And so I got to do that counterpoint.
21:32 It was almost like I was in a debate
21:34 with the aspects of myself that I have glorified
21:38 and I was able to look at each one of them and say,
21:41 that's not entirely right.
21:42 And maybe you don't deserve that.
21:43 And it's been a great dialogue.
21:46 And I have a feeling part of the reason Nolan
21:48 wanted me to do this was to give me
21:50 that kind of 180 perspective.
21:52 But I also, at the end of the day,
21:54 I truly believe that Louis Strasse did everything he did
21:59 for reasons that he thought were correct.
22:02 And I don't mean that like a superhero bad guy.
22:05 I mean that legitimately as a human being.
22:08 So I find it really kind of fascinating
22:10 that I'm still a little bit up in the air
22:13 about who was on the right side of history.
22:17 It's like a currency, the cultural significance
22:20 of cinema and films and TV.
22:22 And I think that part of my generation,
22:24 just like part of the Maverick generation,
22:26 part of it was kind of, yeah, this is nothing.
22:29 You know, we're so cool.
22:30 We're really like dark and brooding.
22:32 And honestly, it's a privilege.
22:35 It's a matter of precision and discipline and sacrifice
22:38 to be able to do it correctly.
22:40 And I think that's been the one lesson
22:43 that I've over a long period of time
22:45 been able to finally assimilate and accept.
22:47 (upbeat music)