Actor makes spirited comeback in noir fantasy The Singing Detective.

He's back. Robert Downey Jr. returns to the big screen as the star of a film called The Singing Detective, a surreal wonder that showed here Monday night as part of the film festival. The ecstatic audience response afterward was likely equal parts appreciation for the movie and a show of support for Downey.

He didn't stick around after the movie. "Let me tell you three good reasons for that," says Downey later in an interview. "First, I hadn't had a cigarette in an hour and 40 minutes. And I was hungry. And I was a little self-conscious because I'd been weeping watching myself and I was going, 'Oh, my God when the actors are crying and you look over and they're crying, oh, what a joke! Oh my God, this sucks! Get out of Dodge, man! You're a cowboy!'"

Later, he says, "This festival has been an almost resurrective thing," and explains how it has been healing to just be in one place knowing exactly what he has to do and why.

In his first film role since 1999, Downey owns the screen. The Singing Detective is a film version of Dennis Potter's semi-autobiographical TV series. For the uninitiated, it's a mix of fantasy and reality involving the author, his heinous case of psoriasis, his noir writing, his rich fantasy life and a lot of singing and dancing. It's as difficult a film to describe as was The Orchid Thief, and it's just as demented and enjoyable.

Downey seems nervous and cheerful at the same time. His humor is manic and self-deprecating, as always, although his jokes are somewhat more introspective and 12-step-ish than in the past. He plays a character named Dan Dark in the movie (the character called Marlowe in the TV series) and his role involved complicated makeup for the serious psoriasis scenes - to show his face all scabrous and pitted. "I'm kind of like Dan Dark, kind of funny and charming, but pizza-faced and just kind of gross, and all about conspicuous consumption," he says.

Downey seems very aware that what he has right now is a major second chance at life. "Yeah - I got shot out of a cannon into a pinball machine, and when they said, 'Those who'd like to get shot out of a cannon into a pinball machine, register here!' I was like, 'That's my gig!'" Asked if he wishes he could rework his past movies, the actor says, seriously, "I'd love to go back and do them all, all over again," and then slips into joke mode to add, "Just to waste everyone's time in a new way! That's still my m.o. - deprive and depart."

Of doing the film, he says, "The good thing about doing The Singing Detective is that we didn't have enough time for me to ponder it and become precious about it. I had to go into this world, where they said I had three things to do: Be very still, be very cool, and you have to be a man's man. I had nothing to hold onto. I've done that tragic thing, that comic thing, but this was all new territory. These dance numbers, that singing detective stuff, scared the crap out of me." He adds, "That's my mantra when I'm working: 'I can't, I can't, I can't.'" He laughs again.

Actually - he can sing. Downey has been singing and composing work since he was 17. Would he make an album?

"Would I make an album? Right now that would be putting the cart before the horse, wouldn't it? How about an album called Toxic Mantras?" He gets up and throws himself on the floor, laughing madly. "Toxic mantras! That's the greatest oxymoron I've ever heard."

Allllrighty then: How about a book? A memoir, maybe?