How do you tell a guy determined for so long to cultivate an 'I'm a waste of DNA' image that he's actually looking like he's back on his game? If the self-abaser is Robert Downey Jr., you let him confirm that things are looking up. Which Downey sort of does, albeit reluctantly.
"I have every reason to be proud of this movie. I won't fight it," says Downey. "I'm proud of how it plays. I'm proud of the people sitting around me when I'm watching it."
Downey was attached to the project long before director Keith Gordon (Waking the Dead) came along. Producer Mel Gibson, a friend of Downey's since the two worked in Air America together, kept the option and even took a supporting role as a hospital psychiatrist.
On a recent Thursday, Downey - who also appears in the Halle Berry thriller Gothika, which comes out Nov. 21 - curled himself around a hotel suite sofa, and cut loose:
Q: An entire day of talking about yourself and a movie as twisted as The Singing Detective. Are you fried?
This is a happy fried. What do they say? 'Good friends, good work.' You know when you actually show up for something, it's so much better than when it's all for a movie that sucks! But that's not the case.
Q: Did you ever meet Potter?
I'm certain I didn't and it's really weird, too. When I was doing Chaplin, I had the opportunity to meet him and I didn't even get that it would have been an honor, but I feel like I've met him. I feel like I've somehow or other corresponded with him psychically. If nothing else, I've served his material to the best of my ability.
I didn't even really 'get' this movie until I saw it in Toronto. Dark's in the closet and then he comes out, in that flash. He comes out of the closet, he's in his worst nightmare of the disease and as a detective. I didn't understand what that meant. You know why I didn't get it? Because I hadn't gotten it yet personally that there's that fusion of denial and attachment and disease and expectation and (expletive) misery and all that (expletive). I've only recently made a departure from pessimism, so of course I was limited.
Q: And that departure happened... how, exactly?
I fell in love. I was wrong. That's my mantra. [Laughs] I mean I fell in love with this gal. I said, 'Listen, the optimist believes the future is uncertain. The pessimist is always right and derives no satisfaction from that. So you go and be an optimist if you like. I'm a pessimist because clearly the pessimist has more information.'
Q: Did she buy it?
No. She told me I was full of (expletive) and I had never really fallen in love. [Laughs] Three weeks later I was so optimistic she was alarmed.
Q: Back to The Singing Detective. Did you watch the miniseries?
I watched it and then I stayed away from it. It's like your first trip to Amsterdam when you go into a sex shop. It's not like you can ever get away from those images once you open up the sex magazine. In a slightly more creative way, seeing the series I was like, 'Wow, I can't believe this was 20 years ago.' It's kind of like my dad's movies, because I was looking at one of them the night before last, and it was still innovative, still really funny, still absurd.
Q: Can the nonpessimists in the audience 'get' the movie?
From the very beginning, it's like a (expletive) cathouse. They're like, 'Oh it's going to be this.' And then it's not this, it's that. I don't think that's strictly urban development. I think people are just wise. Three and half billion years of DNA and we're still acting like we've got to play to the dummies. What an insult, you know? I've seen your eyes. You're evolved, right?
Q: Trying to.
OK. Hope and effort. There it is. But you know what? There's got to be some payoff. I just never bought it. Every day the sun came up, it was some testament to God's wrath. Not true. But what was I doing from sunrise to sundown? What was I doing from sundown to sunrise? Wasn't sleeping. I was doing that (expletive) and loving it, chief! And that's where we are. The film's coming out now, and I'm not a pathetic waste of life presently. The audience likes it or gets it. Sometimes both. And I've never been in a film that necessarily worked where I was centrally located in its cast.
Q: Not Chaplin?
Chaplin didn't work as a film very well; it was too episodic. Robert Altman said it: 'God, the worst part is now nobody can go make a great Chaplin movie, because they already blew $40 million.' I said, 'You know what? (expletive) you. You think Short Cuts is some work of art?' He goes, 'No, I'm a dinosaur. I'll leave a puddle of oil on the floor in a couple of minutes. I'm just saying what I think.'
Q: Are you enough of a reformed pessimist to accept it when people say your movie's decent?
I don't know why I still feel duty-bound to err to the side of critical. It's a recent transition. Sometimes I'm always thinking more smoke, mirrors and pixie dust as opposed to content and trusting yourself.
Q: Who would you need to hear it from to believe it?
Other people. And beyond that, my ex. She's never lied to me. My gal. She's a super-creative person at a super-cool company and she understands story. There's like everything from the really organic shoot-from-the-hip people to the really organic shoot-from-the-4-point-0 people. Either side of that spectrum is going to get my attention.
Q: All that scrutiny for so long. All that sympathy and support from so many people within your industry. Did it feel like pity? How'd you deal with it?
If it's coming and I feel like it's charged with some of their own environmental toxins, then it's like, 'Ah, (expletive), not that again.' If it comes and it's real, that's even almost worse because I'm just trying to get real with myself. I don't want people behavioral-modeling rigorous honesty to me, I don't even understand the... principle.
But you know what? I'm acting like I know what I'm talking about, so let me just stop. I don't get it. I don't understand yet how I feel, how I react this way. I know sometimes I have an aberrant reaction to good will.