Institute for Robert Downey Jr Studies > Required Reading

Trampled

On a blustery morning in December 1991, Robert Downey Jr and Kevin Kline are clowning around on a partial replica of the HOLLYWOOD sign, erected about a half hour north of Burbank on a dusty hillside dotted with yucca and sage. Downey, portraying Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough’s $37M plus bio of the silent film pioneer, sports a rakish beret; Kline, as the dashing Douglas Fairbanks Sr, is fitted out in an ascot and riding togs. “Can you imagine the Tramp talking?” snorts Chaplin. “Not in my lifetime.”

In those days, the famous sign spelled out the name of a new housing development: HOLLYWOODLAND. The mock-up built for Chaplin re-creates only the bottom half of the H and the O. The rest will be added in postproduction. Leaning through the O, Kline hollers at the man who directed him in 1987’s Cry Freedom: “This will be the poster of the movie, right, Dickie?”

“What you don’t realize,” Attenborough teases, “is that [the letters] will be right across—HOLLYWOODLAND. You’ll be the size of a match.”

“But a lit match,” counters Kline.

“Robert, dear,” Attenborough continues, turning his attention to his star, “are you sure you want to play that scene with a cigarette in your mouth?”

“I’m not sure I do,” Downey replies.

“I rather don’t feel that you do.” Attenborough directs through a combination of almost impossibly courtly manners, a crowning aura of noblesse, and cajoling humor. Later in the scene, when Chaplin urinates into the bushes, he coaches Downey: “There we go, dahling, cover your ba-nah-na.”

With his brown cowboy hat—“a present from Robert”—fastened snugly under his chin, the 69-year-old producer-director is racing to get his shots before the sun slips behind the hill. The plan is to work straight through lunch, but this draws no complaint from the crew, who say they’re honored to be working with the man who made Gandhi (1982), winner of eight Academy Awards. Besides, the crew is well aware that Attenborough’s struggle against the clock pales beside the trouble he had with the film’s financing, which ultimately ensnared two studios and at least three foreign companies. And as only he knows, that saga is far from over.

At 11 AM, Attenborough calls the crew together. “You’ll be reading things in the trades tomorrow about big changes at Carolco Pictures—people getting let go and financial problems,” he says. He explains that Chaplin is not bankrolled by Carolco per se but through a separate “venture” created by Carolco, Le Studio Canal of France, and RCS Video of Italy, with additional funding from Japan Satellite Broadcasting. Even so, a few of the crew, on loan from Carolco, realize that they’ve probably just lost their jobs. “The money is on deposit at the bank,” Attenborough assures them. “The picture is 100% secure. The picture is not in jeopardy at all. Whatever happens with Carolco does not affect us.” He pauses a few seconds, then looks at his watch and deadpans, “My plane leaves in two hours.”

Charlie Chaplin is certainly one of the most influential artists in film history, but, as Attenborough spent the better part of a year discovering, it’s hard to find anyone in Hollywood willing to finance a movie about him. Ten months earlier, Chaplin had been just weeks away from shooting when Universal Pictures, the studio where Attenborough spent two years developing the project as part of his three picture deal, flummoxed the director by abruptly backing out. In moviedom, where last year’s date book is an ancient artifact, Chaplin is a particularly antiquated icon. The studios may have worried that young audiences would know Chaplin’s Little Tramp—if they knew him at all—solely from IBM computer commercials. One could also argue that, when he wasn’t working, Chaplin lacked the exalted character of Attenborough’s previous subjects, Stephen Biko and Mahatma Gandhi, and thus did not warrant such reverent treatment. But for Attenborough—who’d been a fan from the age of eleven, when his father took him to see The Gold Rush at the now-razed London Pavilion—Chaplin is the cultural equivalent of Gandhi. “In the world in which I lived,” he says, “nobody had a greater impact than Charlie.” And once Attenborough commits himself to a project, as his twenty-year crusade for Gandhi proved, he is singularly dogged.

The idea for the film sprang up in mid-1987, soon after Universal told Attenborough that his pet project, a biography of American patriot Thomas Paine, would be too expensive to make. The impetus behind Chaplin came from Diana Hawkins, who’d done publicity on Attenborough’s movies for 30 years; in return, he made her associate producer of the project. Universal eventually approved a script by William Boyd (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter), who drew a series of parallels between Chaplin’s life and scenes he later created in his films.

The story spans Chaplin’s life and work from the ages of 5 to 83, starting with his Dickensian boyhood in London. Chaplin’s daughter, Geraldine, plays his mentally ill mother. When he arrives in Hollywood to work with Keystone Kops producer Mack Sennett (portrayed by Dan Aykroyd), his early costars include Mabel Normand (Marisa Tomei) and Edna Purviance (Penelope Ann Miller). As his popularity soars, Chaplin irks J. Edgar Hoover with his politics and reveals a weakness for young women (Milla Jovovich appears as his first wife; Diane Lane plays number three, Paulette Goddard). After he’s smeared in a bogus paternity suit filed by actress Joan Barry (Nancy Travis), Chaplin is barred from the US—although he and fourth wife Oona (Moira Kelly) are allowed to return to L.A. in 1972 to pick up a special Oscar. Besides telling the story of his life, Chaplin recapitulates the history of Hollywood filmmaking, both factually and stylistically, with glimpses of such original Chaplin classics as The Kid, The Gold Rush, and Modern Times along the way.

At least half a dozen major actors approached Attenborough about playing Chaplin, including Dustin Hoffman, Billy Crystal, and Robin Williams. The director met with 30 contenders and then screen-tested five Yanks and two Brits. The 27-year-old Downey was not an obvious front-runner; until then he had merely done interesting work in mediocre movies. The first time Attenborough met the actor, about six months before auditions began, he may have been more puzzled than impressed. The director was visiting his agent, Martin Baum, at Creative Artists Agency, and Downey came in with his rep, Bryan Lourd, whose office is upstairs. “I went down with, like, some Matsuda shorts and an earring on, you know?” recalls Downey with a grimacing smile. “I thought I looked ‘period.’ I don’t know what I was thinking.” He imitates Attenborough sitting tight-lipped as the actor burbled, “I’d love to do this!” Even so, Attenborough says he eventually chose Downey for “the combination of his youth, his mimicry, his ability to play age, his balletic skills, his ear, his height, and his similarity to Chaplin.” After Downey’s test, he adds, “I was just devastated.”

As reproduction began, Attenborough bad every right to feel confident: this was his 50th year in the movie business, and be was surrounded by his battle tested core crew from Gandhi, all of whom he’d known for decades. He had no reason to suspect that Universal would scrap Chaplin. With production slated to start in mid-March ‘91, construction began on three large sets: a Victorian street scene in North London and replicas of the old Mack Sennett and Chaplin studios in rural Fillmore, about 60 miles northwest of L.A. (Chaplin’s actual studio, now the headquarters of A&M Records, still stands at 1416 North La Brea, but it’s no longer surrounded by orange groves, as the period scenes required.) Weeks slipped by, notes Hawkins, but the studio “never gave us a green light.” New conditions were set, met, and set again. Although Downey’s contract had been negotiated, Universal had not signed it.

Finally, on January 31, a mere six weeks before the cameras were to roll, Attenborough dropped his usual politesse and gave the studio an ultimatum: “I said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but if you do not commit to Robert by 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I’m going back to London, and you can put the picture in turnaround.’” Attenborough knew that Universal had a lot at stake: The elaborate Sennett and Chaplin sets were at least half-finished, and the London street set needed only a coat of paint. The studio had already spent $8.5 million on the movie. But before long, Universal chief Tom Pollock was on the phone, calling the director’s bluff. Attenborough professes not to know exactly why Universal dropped out, grumbling, “You don’t chuck a picture in because of a dispute about something after you’ve spent a couple of million bucks.” Unless, that is, you’re eager not to spend many millions more. “It was never about the script,” declares Pollock. “It was only about the cost.” As for the casting of Downey, he says, “We had approved it with Downey at a specific budget.”

Knowing the project would need alternative funding fast—and no doubt hoping to recoup some of his studio’s cash—Pollock suggested that Attenborough contact Carolco chairman Mario Kassar, who had offered to buy into the project from the beginning. Two days later, the Carolco boss met with Attenborough & Co. at Kassar’s Beverly Hills home and told them he needed a week to line up the funds. Asked why he was willing to gamble on the project, Kassar said in a prepared statement that he couldn’t resist the pairing of “one of the greatest directors of our time” and “one of the most brilliant and fascinating legends in Hollywood.” Attenborough offered to defer 60 percent of his salary. “We all did it for less,” says Downey. Carolco’s only condition on the deal was the trimming of the script. Attenborough called in William Goldman, a renowned script doctor with whom he’d worked on A Bridge Too Far. Goldman added scenes of Chaplin discussing his life with the editor of his autobiography (portrayed by Anthony Hopkins).

It soon became clear that filming would be stalled for months rather than weeks. The international contracts were taking longer than expected, and Universal was demanding payment for the project’s rights and assets. With the unit in a holding pattern, co producer Terry Clegg cut two weeks from the shooting schedule. “We had to bring the whole budget down by 15% to compensate for some of the money we’d lost,” he explains, Even with script cuts, that meant Attenborough would have to shoot faster than he ever had: almost 2 minutes of finished film a day, versus his usual 1:40. At the same time, the production had to spend precious funds to undo some of its earlier work. Clegg tried to persuade Carolco to finance one day of shooting on the Victorian street scene near London’s Kings Cross station; then that set could be struck for good. But because the shoot would have to be done on a Sunday, with an entire crew assembled for just that one day, the estimated cost was $200,000, Carolco said no. “It cost about $250,000 to build that stage,” says Clegg, “and then it cost about $60,000 to take it down. Fortunately, British Rail let us store the flat pieces in their yard, so that cost us very little.”

After months of dickering, Universal agreed to settle its Chaplin account for $4 million up front, with the other $4.5M to be paid back upon the film’s release. (The official $37M budget figure does not include the $4.5M, which was later reduced to $2.5M by another deal between Carolco and the studio.) Chaplin finally got the go-ahead from Carolco on July 24. In the intervening months, the child who’d been cast as young Charlie had grown several inches, so a new actor had to be found (the first was given a walk-on part as consolation), and some of the original ensemble cast now had scheduling conflicts. At last it was time to rebuild the Kings Cross set, which “cost about a third as much to put up again as it did in the first place,” notes Clegg. “So overall that one set will have cost maybe half a million dollars. And we shot on it for one day.”

The C stage of Shepperton Studios outside London has been transformed into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Oscar night, 1972. The hallways are jammed with extras in hippie-dippy costumes: men with Afros in gold lamé tux jackets, women in “granny gowns,” and, grooviest of all, a troupe of male dancers in gingham-yoked shirts, red bell bottoms, and black patent leather cowboy hats. In the scene, the wheelchair-bound Chaplin is having an attack of nerves, and Oona is trying to comfort him.

After seven hours in the makeup chair, Downey emerges for the first time as the 83-year-old Chaplin. He’s white-haired and thinning on top, with his face encased in large rubber jowls. His hands have been largely immobilized by layers of latex wrinkles. He can barely open his mouth. His assistant has to help him when he wants a cigarette, and he can drink only through a straw. David Robinson, the on-set consultant and Chaplin biographer who met the man several times at that stage of his life, pronounces the transformation authentic. “Remarkable,” he says. “It does look like Charlie.”

The camera rolls for the first time at 5:15 PM. On the first take with dialogue, there’s a technical problem. On the second, same thing. And the third. Attenborough remains calm. “Come on, guys,” urges first assistant director David Tomblin, “before rigor mortis sets in.” While the camera crew scurries to fix the problem—a video monitor that shows Jack Lemmon introducing Chaplin—Downey’s assistant feeds him tortellini, one by one. Takes five and six are also plagued by malfunctions. “The black box that syncs the camera shutter with the video is no good,” frets Attenborough. “The poor thing, he waits 7 hours and then we can’t do it.” In fact, Downey seems relatively unconcerned; having mysteriously recovered the use of his hands, he’s pounding away at the on-set piano. (“He couldn’t feed himself, but he can do that,” his assistant notes wryly.)

Director of photography Sven Nykvist later says he was amazed at Attenborough’s composure that night, especially since the breakdown put him a day over schedule for the first time. “I thought there would be a temperamental thing,” says Nykvist. “That is what I’m used to when technical things don’t work. He was very calm.” As Downey describes it, the mood on the set is “very, like, the Gentlemen are here, making an Epic.” His favorite among Attenborough’s myriad terms of endearment is “poppet,” invariably directed at “some guy who will never, ever be called poppet or darling again, you know?” Small, round, and ruddy-cheeked, Attenborough was knighted by the queen for his service to the arts in 1976 (one year after Chaplin). If he weren’t the Grand Old Man of the British film industry (as Empire magazine has dubbed him), he’d make a very good Care Hear. Downey says he’s grateful to the director for “not hanging up if you call at two in the morning in a panic: ‘But they say that was in 1916, not 1917! And it was April—then there couldn’t be snow on the ground!’ ‘Relax,’” he says, slipping into a flawless Attenborough. “‘We’ll talk about it in the morning. You want to come over?’” The director returns Downey’s compliment: “To play a creative genius on-screen is very, very difficult,” he observes. “I suppose I’ve been convinced by Paul Muni. Tony Hopkins has it, absolutely. And Robert has it, too.”

While Chaplin was in London, Attenborough invited the actor to Sunday lunch at Beaver Lodge, his majestic, art-filled home on Richmond Green. “It was just amazing to see somebody who’s been around for so long and done so much and you get to see them, like, at home,” Downey muses. “I think I demanded he show me his bedroom. It was like Chaplin’s, very simple and tasteful. And check this out: they had both designed their own cabinets and beds out of white wood. Isn’t that weird? They had the same set-up in their most defenseless place.”

Downey himself was largely defenseless for the duration of the shoot. To play Chaplin from the age of seventeen on, he had a movement coach, a dialect coach, and a tennis instructor (Chaplin played left-handed). He’d never had to do so much with a character. Indeed, Downey confesses, “I’ve never had to do much with a character.” Seven months later, smoking a Marlboro Light in the Palm Court of New York’s Plaza Hotel, he is visibly relieved. Though early reviews of the film were mixed, his performance was consistently lauded. “I’m just so happy I made it through without having a nervous breakdown or really disappointing everyone,” he says. “I’d never done anything that demanded that much of my energy and time. And I’d never done anything that I came to care about so much.” Downey had portrayed a real person only once before. In an NBC miniseries, he says, “I played Mussolini’s favorite son, Bruno. My preparation for that was ‘He flew planes? Great. Let me try on that hat.’”

There was extra pressure in knowing that Attenborough had fought to cast him. “I was, like, ‘God, he’s really gone to bat for me,” Downey says, laughing. “And at the same time, like, ‘Uh-oh, am I the right person to be going to bat for?’ Every self esteem issue possible came to a head.” The coaching, moreover, was “very humiliating. It was real frustrating to practice picking up a fork for half an hour.” He’d always thought himself a nimble mimic, but here he had to master thick Victorian cockney and classic Queen’s English—both fiendishly hard for an American. Watching film of Chaplin, Downey noticed “that he never sat back in a chair, which for me, somewhat lazy by nature, was a real drag.” In fact, he continues, “everything was a lesson in this film. The dialect was about discipline; the movement was about restructuring; and the makeup was about patience, a virtue I just didn’t possess in any way.” Sometimes he had to play three ages in a single day. “The last question I’d ask the script supervisor [before a take] was ‘How old am I now?’"

To keep his spirits up, he kept telling himself, “You’re doing this because it’s part of your greatest challenge and your greatest opportunity ever.” He went to dailies—a first for him—and he could see himself progressing. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a rough assemblage of anything and not felt suicidal afterwards,” he says. “But this time, I was, like, ‘Wow.’ By the time we were done with the London shoot, I felt like I could do anything.” Asked how he thinks the film will do, Downey says, “The most important thing to me is that people go see Chaplin movies. On a Saturday night with a couple invitations to go do some trendy or interesting things, I still opt to sit at home with my wife and watch The Kid. Now that it’s out of my system, I enjoy it even more. I feel like Charlie’s coming for Christmas.”

There is at least one favorable portent. When Attenborough first came to L.A. to visit old Chaplin sites, he was taken to see Chaplin’s old office. There, crowned by an L.A. Dodgers cap, was a bust of Gandhi. Recalls Attenborough, “It was extraordinary.”