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.
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Posted on 04/22/09 by Mandy
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