While filming Air America in Thailand's notorious Golden Triangle region last year, Robert Downey Jr.
really got into his act. Along with co-star Mel Gibson and many other members of the cast, Downey avoided the copious amounts of narcotics the opium-growing/tourist center
had to offer and instead amused himself between shots with plentiful, cheap and legal fireworks."See, the Thais are great," Downey says of his hosts, who were letting their countryside stand in for neighboring Laos, where CIA ran a secret supply airline for pro-Western forces during the Vietnam War. "They do really crazy stuff, but then it's over. It's like, three days of craziness, then no more. But we're Americans. We were like, 'It ain't over 'til it's over.' The guy who ran the hotel we stayed at would cringe and say, 'Oh, they at it again.' Bunches of 40-year-old men out there, just throwing stuff around."
Fireworks provided enjoyable recreation. And in Downey's case, valuble experience as well. In the movie about the civilian piloted airline, which at the time was both officially non-existent and the world's largest, he plays the most pyrotechnically-oriented pilot. Incensed by the CIA's involvement in the Southeast Asian opium trade, he tries to blow up a clandestine drug processing lab.
Downey's character is the movie's conscience. In that way too, life resembled art. "There were all the darker aspects of our country in Thailand," notes the young actor, who played a drug addict in Less Than Zero and an idealistic lawyer in True Believer. "Only it's not hidden. Drugs, prostitution, crime, opression; it's like, in the entertainment guide."
Downey claims that he gave up his own vices two years ago. "This is the 90s. That whole scene is over, and I'm really glad I'm not over, too," he says. "I was at a party the other night where I saw a whole bunch of people on coke, and it was scary. It's dangerous. Drinking is dangerous. Drinking and driving is crazy. I have too much stuff to do to mess with dangerous chemicals. There is alcoholism in this country. There is drug dependency in this country. And I don't know anyone who hasn't lost someone to alcoholism or drugs."
So what's next for you Bob? "Now I'm going to stop eating," Downey, who spent a year in the cast of Saturday Night Live says with a mock gravity. "Eating is dangerous, it's too hard to digest. The air here in Los Angeles is so bad, I'm going to hold my breath. What am I going to do next? A film called Too Much Sun. My father (an avant garde filmmaker who gave his son his first acting job in a movie called Pound, when Junior was five) is directing it."
And no, it's not a cautionary tale about the dangers of ultra-violet rays.