Institute for Robert Downey Jr Studies > Required Reading

Ups and Downeys

Robert Downey Sr first met his interviewer Robert Downey Jr in 1965, when Senior was 28 and Junior was a little more than zero. Dad went on to write and direct Putney Swope, Pound, Greaser’s Palace, and other comedies which, in their aberrant social satire, have always bridged the Hollywood main stream. His latest, the screwy, infectious Too Much Sun, which stars Andrea Martin and Eric Idle as gay siblings desperate to produce a child in order to inherit their father’s fortune, features a hugely funny turn by Junior as the dissolute young hustler who almost fits the bill.

ROBERT DOWNEY JR: All right, let me ask you—

ROBERT DOWNEY SR: Let me ask you—

RDJ: Am I gonna get any questions in here?

SENIOR: All right, then I’ll shut up after this. My question to you is ... [gets up and walks]

RDJ: Why did I do that walk in the film? Kind of Notre Dame thing?

SENIOR: No, like a guy who thought he was leading some platoon. All you were doing was walking. It was funny.

RDJ: I’d like a new walk.

SENIOR: The greatest thing that’s happened is that Mike Kaplan, who’s a producer, said to me after he saw a rough cut of Too Much Sun, “Bob, it works in spite of the plot. I laughed in spite of the plot.” That was fun for me to hear.

RDJ: You’ve never had a plot as complicated as this one?

SENIOR: Well, that’s what we’ve been fixing lately, to make it look like it’s not a plot, even though it is. And the story and the plot seem not to be the same thing, by the way. Do you know what I’m saying?

RDJ: All right, I’ve got some more questions here now. Do you mind?

SENIOR: Did I answer that one?

RDJ: Yeah, that one’s really good.

SENIOR: You want to know why the plot and the story are really different?

RDJ: Yes.

SENIOR: The story is when the same actor shows up for the fourth time. The plot is what happens to him. Jack Nicholson is the story in most movies he’s in. The plot is what happens to him.

RDJ: Interesting. Okay, if I hadn’t been born into a family where you were a filmmaker and Mom was an actress, it would have been hard for me to get involved. How did you first get interested in films and theater?

SENIOR: Well, I was a baseball player. I was so thin that after five innings I had no fastball, I’d lose 10 pounds.

RDJ: How come I’m not tall? Do you think I stunted my growth?

SENIOR: Look at your mother. She’s short. But being tall has its advantages. Anyway, I worked as a waiter. I was nineteen years old and somebody told me about a playwrights’ or directors’ workshop. I got interested. I had already written a novel in the stockade.

RDJ: You were in the army for three years and spent two of them in the stockade?

SENIOR: Eighteen months.

RDJ: Half the time in the dark. What happened there?

SENIOR: I had a fight with the lieutenant. I used to drink then. I drank, got into a fight with the officer. Ended up in the stockade.

RDJ: And you abandoned your post, too?

SENIOR: I did that. I went to a dance in town in my civvies. About an hour after I left, the sergeant came up and yelled, “Downey, need any chow?” and I wasn’t there. And then he drove to the dance and walked in and saw me there. I got three months for that.

RDJ: Now the other thing. The one about the planes.

SENIOR: Drunk again. We had an outpost 90 miles north of Nome, Alaska, tracking the international date line with radarscopes. And we decided it would be fun to unplug the phones back to Anchorage and Fairbanks and plot a little attack with the Soviet Union. We woke them up with these little arrows.

RDJ: You threw 50 incoming planes?

SENIOR: About ten. It was only a joke. I got another six months. But when you’re in your teens and have no focus... but I loved being in the army, playing ball. Being in jail wasn’t so bad at that age. It was helpful as a writer to be in there with murderers and guys like that.

RDJ: What are some of your favorite films?

SENIOR: The Battle of Algiers. All lof Preston Sturges’ stuff. The Harder They Come, Pixote.

RDJ: I know you loved My Life as a Dog. That’s all you talk about.

SENIOR: Well, I like that and My Left Foot. I mean, that’s later, but all Fellini. The Servant, which I know you found slow, but I loved it.

RDJ: I remember going to films with you as a kid, and we never stayed past the opening credits. Can you tell whether or not you’re going to be able to stand something in the first 60 seconds?

SENIOR: No. Ten, fifteen minutes.

RDJ: You’re very critical.

SENIOR: I know. I wish I were as critical of my own stuff as I am about other people’s.

RDJ: What is the guy’s name, the little bearded European-looking guy that you always see at Hollywood Park? What do you call him?

SENIOR: Toulouse “LaTrack.” He carries a cane, little beard—fabulous. I wanted to put him in a movie as a live lawn jockey, but I couldn’t approach him.

RDJ: He’s really strange. You should have cast him. What do you think of me being an actor?

SENIOR: I think you’re great at it.

RDJ: What do you think about your son being in the public eye? Is it funny to you that I have a black German car and a house? What did you think I was going to do?

SENIOR: I know early on you acted in some of our films and you seemed to not want to do it. Maybe it’s because I’m your father and I asked you to do it. Like that time in Greaser’s Palace when your mother discovered you dead and you said, “That’s it, I’m not doing another one.”

RDJ: I didn’t understand why more than one take was necessary.

SENIOR: I know, and I said, “Please, there are thirty people here, and you’re embarrassing me.”

RDJ: I’ve opted you as saying, “Anyone can act, few can direct, and no one can write.”

SENIOR: No, that’s not right. Anyone can direct. That’s how I see it.

RDJ: Why?

SENIOR: Because it’s just a matter of learning the technology and the rules of keeping people moving and this and that. I think if you cast well or cast against type, or have a lot to do with the writing—which is why I like this film so much—it’s easy. I mean, I couldn’t be an actor. I’ve had to do it and I’m terrible. I know what you guys go through listening to the nitwtts of the world.

RDJ: To Live and Die in L.A., you were nervous in the first scene and great in the second scene where you said, “Who keeps stealing my fucking ashtrays?” That was a really good moment.

SENIOR: I didn’t know what I was doing. Plus, there was no second or third take. We didn’t have the time.

RDJ: So I’m wrong. You don’t think anyone can be an actor?

SENIOR: Well, I think anyone can be a film actor, but to be an actor ...

RDJ: A good actor. Right. But writing ...

SENIOR: That’s the toughest thing in the world, but I think it’s the most rewarding. Everybody should do it, because when you get it right, it’s great. I think it’s great therapy, too, because it’s so hard. When you’re working with someone else, like I did this time, it’s not so hard. But to sit alone ...

RDJ: You wrote alone. But you have a partner now, your best friend, Laura Ernst (co-writer of Too Much Sun). Is it great to collaborate?

SENIOR: Well, the tough part about that is one day she might want to work and I don’t. When I don’t want to work it’s kind of depressing, because her day is gone.

RDJ: But if you’re working with writers like myself, it’s like, “What inventive ways can we come up with to avoid work until 2pm?” Is it funny having me interviewing you?

SENIOR: It’s weird.

RDJ: We should do our interviews only with each other from now on. Save the middleman.

SENIOR: Well, I guess I could have asked you all about Air America.

RDJ: Fuck the middleman. Let’s go to the track.

SENIOR: I can’t—I got to work. I have one more answer for you. I want you to think more about reading and writing. You read the scripts, you write the scripts, and you’ll be a happy guy. You know why?

RDJ: Why?

SENIOR: Because when you got serious about the one thing you pursued, that was your best try. You know what that was?

RDJ: Less Than Zero?

SENIOR: Yeah, you went after it. You wanted it. When the project fell apart, you wouldn’t drop out. You knew that world and it was great. The sad part about it is—

RDJ: —Is iced tea with Sweet ‘n Low your favorite drink?

SENIOR: That’s the only drink. No Long Island. No man is a Long Island.

RDJ: Can you believe that Too Much Sun’s gonna make money?

SENIOR: I’ve never made money, so I don’t know what it’s like. But I’m about to find out, I hope.

RDJ: Your films, whether or not you know it, have had, pretty much without fail —I know you hate to hear this—moral and spiritual undertones. Putney Swope was about racism, it was about advertising, it was about selling out, about maintaining your personal beliefs. Greaser’s Palace was about a messiah, it was about how even God is an actor. Pound is about how everyone’s basically waiting to die. You take kind of a dark comedic attitude toward very real issues that some people don’t even touch on.

SENIOR: That’s great. I never thought of that.

RDJ: Is that what’s missing nowadays?

SENIOR: Maybe. I don’t think about that. I’m still trying to find out if I’m attractive or not. I really don’t know.

RDJ: Do I have any other questions?

SENIOR: No.

RDJ: Then we eat now.

SENIOR: You and I?

RDJ: Yeah, we love to eat now.