Iron Man slams reporter
LOS ANGELES -- He's no Billy Bob Thornton, but Robert Downey Jr. can still give good snark.
Case in point: A recent exchange between the Iron Man actor and a reporter at a Beverly Hills hotel.
The event: A news conference for his new movie, The Soloist, in which Jamie Foxx, who was sitting alongside Downey, co-stars as a schizophrenic street musician.
The subject: Tropic Thunder, the Hollywood satire in which Downey's method thespian advised a colleague to never go "full retard" while portraying a mentally-challenged character.
You can probably see where this is going, but here's a recap anyway:
Reporter: "What do you think (Tropic Thunder's) Lincoln O'Siris would think of Jamie's performance in this?"
Robert Downey Jr.: "Next question. By the way I could just say that to all them."
Reporter: "Do you think he'd approve?"
Downey Jr.: "I have no idea how to even begin answering that question. And by the way, I want to have a good time. I want to have a great time because that one just tied my f---ing shoelaces together right off the bat. What else you got?"
Second Reporter: "So I'll kiss your ass and maybe it'll be good."
Foxx: "Wow. Wow."
Downey Jr.: "Yeah, I don't think that's the answer either. Yeah -- you do your thing and I'll do mine."
Source: edmontonsun.com
Posted on 04/25/09 by Devin
RDJ Drops A Few More Iron Man 2 Hints
Day one I’m doing a Senate hearing where the government is saying the Iron Man tech needs to be turned over to the Senator and the Senator is Gary Shandling,” said Downey in reference to recent rumors that Shandling had joined the production. “And we had this fantastic day that was somehow this controlled chaos of a Senate hearing where I keep interrupting them and dah dah dah.”
Downey also makes mention of a new Iron Man suit in the follow-up film, but notes that there are definite risks involved with Iron Man 2.
“The set pieces have to do with things that aren’t your typical, like, bad guy conflict,” Downey hinted. “The relationships are very complex and hilarious. The motivations Tony has and why he turns around and does things has completely to do with his own internal processes and it really is, I think, as much as we tried to in the first one really see behind the facade of this kind of storytelling. We really, I think, leaving ourselves open to…we’re kind of trying to tell a story about how a dysfunctional family saves life on Earth as we know it.”
And much like Downey is to Ol’ Shellhead, when the topic of Iron Man 2 comes up, it’s nearly just as difficult not to ask about Mickey Rourke’s role in the surefire blockbuster.
“I’ve seen his stuff and it is literally remarkable,” said Downey. “Literally remarkable. He’s so good. And he’s formidable and he’s very much reminding me of that kind of charming, confident guy that we know.”
Source: MTV:Splash Page
Posted on 04/22/09 by Mandy
The Soloist Interview From MoviesOnline
MoviesOnline recent interviewed Robert Downey Jr., Jamie Foxx, and Catherine Keener about their experiences on working on The Soloist below are sections that pertain to Robert and his questions and answers. Want to read the whole interview? Click here.
MoviesOnline: Robert, Steve Lopez said that you asked to go into his closet to see who he was...
RDJ: Where does it all end? [laughter].
MoviesOnline: How do you decide how much you want to get to know a person when you are portraying them? Where is that line for you? What did you find in his closet?
RDJ: Oh, well, you're supposing that he allowed me into his closet. He marvels at the idea that I asked. He never even dignified it with a response nor would he allow me to interview him at distance or at close range. We had a cigar together and we talked. He wanted to tell me that to impersonate him would be to do a disservice to the movie. But, it's different every time. I knew that the technical prowess and the degree of difficulty was going to fall on Jamie and that I was to observe and report on that as if I were an audience member and Joe Wright said it was really important that I do next to nothing and listen a lot which is very counterintuitive to my kind of ectomorphic disposition so it was an equal challenge for me in that way. I had a couple of ideas, thought maybe my hair should be short. Next thing you know Keener was shaving my head on her first day of rehearsal with this number two scissor blade.
CK: Yeah and the studio is knocking on the door, “Wait! What are you doing to his hair?”
RDJ: “We love his hair!” It was this kind of thing though. Next thing you knew we were in rehearsals and we had three weeks, I think, of rehearsals which was unheard of and Joe came on the heels of Atonement and all the buzz of that and I think he went and got his BAFTA in the middle while we were shooting. But, above that, we kind of represented the Hollywood -- I don't want to say establishment -- but like ”Great, and you're really good, and it's cool we’re making a movie in L.A. about L.A.” But I think he opened our eyes and we opened his eyes and we all wound up becoming this third thing which was centered around what Jamie was literally going through with what he was trying to communicate. So, it really was that thing of when do you just step back so you can hear the sax solo which was what he had to do. So, it was incredibly difficult to observe.
CK: I just want to add, because [of] how you described that experience for you, I remember, in our rehearsal process one woman, Teresa. We were going around the circle talking about meds, taking their medication. She's schizophrenic, one of the characters is the movie was Teresa. The way she put it was that she didn't take her medication because she was afraid of losing her, she said 'creative'. I thought about it a lot because she thought that taking her medication would kill her artistry. She preferred not to do that over feeling, supposedly better I guess.
RDJ: And that the voices were her friends and they were her only comfort and that by silencing them, she was going to lose the only sense of community she had.
MovieOnline: Q: Not to quote from Tropic Thunder out of context, but I can’t help but think of Kirk Lazarus's speech about “Don't go full retard.” [laughter]. How important is it not to get so involved in the character that you are indistinguishable from them?
RDJ: I think we would all agree that job one is aesthetic distance. Mr. Jellison, my theater arts teacher from Santa Monica High School, it's right there in the first three pages of the book on Theater Arts, you know. But then it's that thing of just because you've read the owner's manual doesn't mean you can use the machine that way. But I think it's really important. I guess the thing here was it was this journey. By the end, and Catherine and I were talking about it, because she was serving several functions different and separate from what they were in the story, we were literally talking about and writing this end scene with us in the house that we used to be married in, about what happened to this and that. I had this idea about likening it to the Northridge Earthquake which is something that I think every Angeleno could relate to and that having to do with when my own first marriage or things had started to tip up for me and what it was and all the promise of L.A. and what it really is so, to answer the question, you don't want to cross the line but what you want to do is bring as much of yourself to bear as you could.
The funny thing is I would see Jamie who essentially created a system of playing cello and violin. I played violin a little bit when I just did Sherlock Holmes. It is mind-numbing! Mind-numbingly insane and I utilized your system just to get a take or two down. We did it day by day by day. And then we would be at Disney Hall and he would go over, because it had been a particularly difficult day, and he was entertaining the hundred extras we had there while we were night-shooting during the scene that he had to have a melt-down in, so he would be out of character, cracking jokes going “I got twenty bucks for anyone who can tell me when Fred Willard was in a movie in 1979.” [laughter]. People were going “Isn't he about to go crazy.” It was like he was throwing a party in Miami for these people. Then they'd say “rolling” and you'd go in and you would have this complete psychotic break, literally. But, I think the way out was to be yourself. The way in was to bring as much of yourself to bear as you could. We were always trying to infuse it with a sense of “how can we be us, somehow in this movie?”
What did you take away from this experience?
RDJ: I took some of Jamie’s wardrobe. [laughter] I just remember, honestly, if I had to put it in a principle, there’s was just a sense of humility, of feeling kind of right-sized when it was done and it’s hard to feel right-sized when you’re done if you weren’t somehow out of balance with your own perception when you started. And hopefully we are self-correcting enough and we have enough support and we have enough whether it’s friends or the peripheral people that help make us okay, a sense of community or family or whatever it is we do to be okay. So, it’s not like I need a movie to help me get my head right, you know, and I would take umbrage at the idea that there was some lesson I had to learn from the thing and all that. It’s a way of infusing some Hollywood venture with profundity.
But, I do know that because of the process and the way that we did this and the close proximity we were to each other and the kind of stuff we wound up talking about and when you’re downtown at 4:30 in the morning and you’re seeing people who are extras and you’re seeing people who are literally going to be looking for where to sleep when the sun comes up when they’re done making whatever pittance they were given for playing extras in this movie or whatever, it was just this sense of how little direct contact I’d had with so many of the things I thought I was sure of. But really what I took away from it more than anything else was my God, sometimes you make a movie and sometimes the movie makes you and this was one of those type things.
MoviesOnline: Robert, can you give us anything on Iron Man or Sherlock Holmes?
RDJ: (points to his lunch box which he brought to the press conference) That’s my Iron Man lunch box. [laughter] It’s a long story. We start Iron Man 2 on Monday. We are going to make a kick ass follow-up to the movie that you all enjoyed. I got to see some footage from Sherlock at ShoWest when they were introducing it. It was really well received. We’re really excited about it. I can’t wait to come back and sell you some soap on Sherlock Holmes before Christmas time. I think that’s going to be something special too.
MoviesOnline: Robert, Steve Lopez said that you asked to go into his closet to see who he was...
RDJ: Where does it all end? [laughter].
MoviesOnline: How do you decide how much you want to get to know a person when you are portraying them? Where is that line for you? What did you find in his closet?
RDJ: Oh, well, you're supposing that he allowed me into his closet. He marvels at the idea that I asked. He never even dignified it with a response nor would he allow me to interview him at distance or at close range. We had a cigar together and we talked. He wanted to tell me that to impersonate him would be to do a disservice to the movie. But, it's different every time. I knew that the technical prowess and the degree of difficulty was going to fall on Jamie and that I was to observe and report on that as if I were an audience member and Joe Wright said it was really important that I do next to nothing and listen a lot which is very counterintuitive to my kind of ectomorphic disposition so it was an equal challenge for me in that way. I had a couple of ideas, thought maybe my hair should be short. Next thing you know Keener was shaving my head on her first day of rehearsal with this number two scissor blade.
CK: Yeah and the studio is knocking on the door, “Wait! What are you doing to his hair?”
RDJ: “We love his hair!” It was this kind of thing though. Next thing you knew we were in rehearsals and we had three weeks, I think, of rehearsals which was unheard of and Joe came on the heels of Atonement and all the buzz of that and I think he went and got his BAFTA in the middle while we were shooting. But, above that, we kind of represented the Hollywood -- I don't want to say establishment -- but like ”Great, and you're really good, and it's cool we’re making a movie in L.A. about L.A.” But I think he opened our eyes and we opened his eyes and we all wound up becoming this third thing which was centered around what Jamie was literally going through with what he was trying to communicate. So, it really was that thing of when do you just step back so you can hear the sax solo which was what he had to do. So, it was incredibly difficult to observe.
CK: I just want to add, because [of] how you described that experience for you, I remember, in our rehearsal process one woman, Teresa. We were going around the circle talking about meds, taking their medication. She's schizophrenic, one of the characters is the movie was Teresa. The way she put it was that she didn't take her medication because she was afraid of losing her, she said 'creative'. I thought about it a lot because she thought that taking her medication would kill her artistry. She preferred not to do that over feeling, supposedly better I guess.
RDJ: And that the voices were her friends and they were her only comfort and that by silencing them, she was going to lose the only sense of community she had.
MovieOnline: Q: Not to quote from Tropic Thunder out of context, but I can’t help but think of Kirk Lazarus's speech about “Don't go full retard.” [laughter]. How important is it not to get so involved in the character that you are indistinguishable from them?
RDJ: I think we would all agree that job one is aesthetic distance. Mr. Jellison, my theater arts teacher from Santa Monica High School, it's right there in the first three pages of the book on Theater Arts, you know. But then it's that thing of just because you've read the owner's manual doesn't mean you can use the machine that way. But I think it's really important. I guess the thing here was it was this journey. By the end, and Catherine and I were talking about it, because she was serving several functions different and separate from what they were in the story, we were literally talking about and writing this end scene with us in the house that we used to be married in, about what happened to this and that. I had this idea about likening it to the Northridge Earthquake which is something that I think every Angeleno could relate to and that having to do with when my own first marriage or things had started to tip up for me and what it was and all the promise of L.A. and what it really is so, to answer the question, you don't want to cross the line but what you want to do is bring as much of yourself to bear as you could.
The funny thing is I would see Jamie who essentially created a system of playing cello and violin. I played violin a little bit when I just did Sherlock Holmes. It is mind-numbing! Mind-numbingly insane and I utilized your system just to get a take or two down. We did it day by day by day. And then we would be at Disney Hall and he would go over, because it had been a particularly difficult day, and he was entertaining the hundred extras we had there while we were night-shooting during the scene that he had to have a melt-down in, so he would be out of character, cracking jokes going “I got twenty bucks for anyone who can tell me when Fred Willard was in a movie in 1979.” [laughter]. People were going “Isn't he about to go crazy.” It was like he was throwing a party in Miami for these people. Then they'd say “rolling” and you'd go in and you would have this complete psychotic break, literally. But, I think the way out was to be yourself. The way in was to bring as much of yourself to bear as you could. We were always trying to infuse it with a sense of “how can we be us, somehow in this movie?”
RDJ: I took some of Jamie’s wardrobe. [laughter] I just remember, honestly, if I had to put it in a principle, there’s was just a sense of humility, of feeling kind of right-sized when it was done and it’s hard to feel right-sized when you’re done if you weren’t somehow out of balance with your own perception when you started. And hopefully we are self-correcting enough and we have enough support and we have enough whether it’s friends or the peripheral people that help make us okay, a sense of community or family or whatever it is we do to be okay. So, it’s not like I need a movie to help me get my head right, you know, and I would take umbrage at the idea that there was some lesson I had to learn from the thing and all that. It’s a way of infusing some Hollywood venture with profundity.
But, I do know that because of the process and the way that we did this and the close proximity we were to each other and the kind of stuff we wound up talking about and when you’re downtown at 4:30 in the morning and you’re seeing people who are extras and you’re seeing people who are literally going to be looking for where to sleep when the sun comes up when they’re done making whatever pittance they were given for playing extras in this movie or whatever, it was just this sense of how little direct contact I’d had with so many of the things I thought I was sure of. But really what I took away from it more than anything else was my God, sometimes you make a movie and sometimes the movie makes you and this was one of those type things.
MoviesOnline: Robert, can you give us anything on Iron Man or Sherlock Holmes?
RDJ: (points to his lunch box which he brought to the press conference) That’s my Iron Man lunch box. [laughter] It’s a long story. We start Iron Man 2 on Monday. We are going to make a kick ass follow-up to the movie that you all enjoyed. I got to see some footage from Sherlock at ShoWest when they were introducing it. It was really well received. We’re really excited about it. I can’t wait to come back and sell you some soap on Sherlock Holmes before Christmas time. I think that’s going to be something special too.
Posted on 04/22/09 by Mandy
Video Chat Circuit
Below is a list to four videos of appearances that RDJ has made promoting mainly The Soloist from earlier this month. He also briefly touches on Iron Man 2 and Sherlock Holmes during these discussions:
Extra Raw! (4/4)
Access Hollywood (4/3)
Entertainment Tonight (4/3)
ComingSoon.Net's Soloist Featurette (4/3)
Extra Raw! (4/4)
Access Hollywood (4/3)
Entertainment Tonight (4/3)
ComingSoon.Net's Soloist Featurette (4/3)
Posted on 04/17/09 by Mandy
Soloist Stills
15 stills from The Soloist added to the gallery:
Don't forget to see the film...it opens 4/24.
Don't forget to see the film...it opens 4/24.
Posted on 04/17/09 by Mandy
Sherlock 2, Already?
Sherlock Holmes hasn't even opened (see it at Christmas time) but RDJ already has some ideas or what's to come and what he doesn't want to play a big part in the films:
Source: MTV
Robert Downey Jr, who plays Sherlock Holmes in the upcoming Guy Ritchie film, has revealed that the action movie could be the first in a franchise.
"I feel like there's going to be a Sherlock Holmes 2," Downey told MTV.
Downey Jr went on to say that Holmes's addiction to opium, explored in the original novels, will not play a prominent part, keeping the film suitable for family viewing.
The Iron Man star explained: "I actually petitioned the court and said, 'This is a PG-13 movie. Let's just refer to these peripherally.' So at one point, Watson says, 'What are you doing, that's for eye surgery!'"
Source: MTV
Posted on 04/17/09 by Mandy
Robert Downey Jr. Back For Less Than Zero 2?
We know what Robert Downey Jr. and James Spader are doing, and a quick trip to the IMDB indicates that Andrew McCarthy is still working, and Jami Gertz had a picture out as recently as ‘07. Perhaps the idea of rounding them all up for a Less than Zero sequel isn’t as crazy as I first assumed...
The idea comes from Brett Easton Ellis who is now finishing up said sequel, in novel form. He tells MTV that such a film “would be a great idea”.
The original Less than Zero revolves around Clay Easton, played in the picture by Andrew McCarthy, while Downey played his close-at-hand compadre in all manner of substance abuse and abandon. That Easton surname is not, I’m sure you’ve realised, a coincidence. The sequel is going to be called Imperial Bedrooms which, like the originals handle, comes from the Elvis Costello songbook.
Source: /Film
Posted on 04/15/09 by Devin
Is Robert Downey Jr. Out Of ‘Cowboys And Aliens’?
Word ran last September that “Cowboys and Aliens” seemed on the verge of casting Robert Downey Jr. as its lead, but now the star revealed to MTV News that he’s not certain he’ll be off to the Wild West anytime soon.
“I don’t know,” Downey responded to MTV News when asked whether the film was still on his radar. “I don’t know what I’ve got coming up.”
He went on to suggest that a potential “Sherlock Holmes 2” might fill his calendar, but where does that leave the Platinum Studios comic adaptation?
Though the “Cowboys and Aliens” comic was published in 2006, the concept has been in a state of pitch-flux in Hollywood for over a decade. The literally-minded plot involves an alien invasion happening in the Wild West with the Earth’s only defense being a group of cowboys and members of an Apache tribe.
If Downey’s enigmatic response comes off as a disappointment, fret not; you can still read the original comic in its entirety for free online. Granted, there’s no Robert Downey Jr. in it, but with the ever-increasing Marvel Universe and the potential “Holmes” franchise, we’ll be seeing quite a bit of him in the days to come.
Source: MTV
Posted on 04/09/09 by Devin
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