Robert Downey Jr. is back using his talent to shine once again.
LOS ANGELES -- "I'm all over the map," Robert Downey Jr. cries in mock distress, his head in hands and his career - which has enjoyed more lives than a cat - once again confounding the odds. In a town where "disposable" is considered a virtue, Downey has become synonymous with durable.
A TiVo search the previous night turned up about a dozen Downey movies upcoming on the cable menu - more than, say, Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen combined. Is it because his new film, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, already enjoying good advance buzz, was about to open? "It's cyclical," Downey said, dismissing the connection. "But of course anytime there's a celebrity crisis" - he puts finger quotes around the word - "all of a sudden their stuff is all over TV."
A star is reborn
He should know. Long recognized as among his generation's best actors, Downey, 40, is equally notorious for his self-destructive behavior and a seemingly unconquerable appetite for controlled substances - "seemingly," because he seems to have licked it. Currently appearing in George Clooney's likely Oscar contender Good Night, and Good Luck, and with a six-pack of movies either filming or in post-production, Downey makes a big bid for renewed credibility with Kiss Kiss, Lethal Weapon writer Shane Black's directorial debut. The movie, which opened Friday and will expand to thousands of theaters in a few weeks, is a raucous, irreverent send-up of the buddy-action-comedy genre that Black himself helped to define.
A $15-million film with a 35-day shoot, two stars with reputations for uncertainty (Downey and Val Kilmer), an unknown leading lady (Michelle Monaghan) and the only producer in Hollywood willing to make the movie (Joel Silver), it sounds like a project with the potential for epic disaster - without the epic budget. What it will likely do is return Downey to the stardom that he has periodically ejected, like evidence from a speeding car.
"There's goodwill," he concedes, addressing his resurrection. "And then there's good pictures, as long as you're not too old to throw. And this, I think, is the problem for everybody: You've got to know what you need not to have your arm blow out. And I used to not care. I used to think I was like Yogi Berra trying to play in a steroid world. Kind of like an old-fashioned person - old-fashioned in a way that's detrimental.
"Now that that's not happening," he said of his erstwhile indulgences, "nothing's changed, except my inertia is going in a different way. And it's so simple. It's physics, isn't it? There's a spiritual aspect to it, of course. The cosmos, whatever. Whatevah..."
Despite the problems he retains not just his massive talent but an equal portion of enthusiasm. "The first day of shooting," said co-star Monaghan, "he came up and said, 'We're gonna have so much fun making this film. So just go for it, OK?'" She puts a dumbfounded look on her face. "I said, '...OK?' There's nothing else you can do in that case but go for it. And he makes it look so easy, it's disgusting."
Upcoming projects include supporting roles in the Tim Allen film The Shaggy Dog, Rick Linklater's animated A Scanner Darkly and Curtis Hanson's Lucky You. He will appear opposite Nicole Kidman in the Diane Arbus bio-pic, Fur, and could well be portraying Edgar Allan Poe - the casting seems perfect - in Sylvester Stallone's planned film on the tortured poet.
"Maybe," Downey says, rather emphatically about that last possibility. "I've been talking to Stallone about it. Could be great. He said, 'Let's see which one of your movies puts you at the next level, so we don't have to go to some arms dealer [for financing] who's going to say, Everything's taken care of' and then the cameras don't show up. We have to do this movie right.' He said, 'So it will be a while, 'cause you're not at the place that's best for us to do this movie yet.' And I said, 'All right.'"
Making movies, not pasta sauce
It seems a difficult admission that he has to prove himself, but of course he does. And he's trying.
"I never wanted to be this busy before," the actor says, glancing back at a filmography that includes Less Than Zero, Natural Born Killers and his Oscar-nominated performance in Chaplin. "I wanted one thing to do and have it be like 'WELL!!!' You know, you hear about these guys who, every couple of years, they make a movie and it's important, or this and that..."
What are they doing in between?
"I don't know," he says, slightly exasperated. "Wine tastings? Making pasta sauce? I've been a working stiff since I was 161/2 years old, whether it was in a shoe store or a Rodney Dangerfield movie. You know what I mean?"
We do. The son of independent filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., Downey was introduced early to the more libertine aspects of '60s America. And this has been well publicized. During our interview, Downey's own son, 13-year-old Indio, has made a brief appearance in soccer togs, then headed off to a game.
"He's an easy kid," he said, "but I think it's a tough space. It's kind of weird. I remember being a latchkey kid and getting booted across the front lawn for snapping the antenna off the VW... . I think there's something about these kids today where they feel so sheltered and at the same time so entirely unsafe. But I think it's an important generation. Either them, or these kids' grandchildren, are going to do a little bit of a revolution thing. Revolt!" he says, with a laugh.
No strange bedfellow
His call for an uprising begs the question of whether he considers himself a political animal.
"Nope," he answers quickly. "Let me put it this way: I'm so narcissistic I've even got Emerson beat. He said, you show me someone's political leanings, I'll tell you everything else about them. I think that it's such an inside game that there's nothing to do, nothing to say, and it's a huge ego trip to take a position on this stuff. It's a full-time job. It's kind of like the law - obscene from every angle and full of the darkest matter that people can engage themselves with."
This is as close as Downey comes to complaining. One senses that his regrets, if he has them, are projected inward, like a searchlight. Meanwhile, it seems you can't pass a moviehouse where Robert Downey Jr. isn't being projected in the dark.