About four years ago, when Robert Downey Jr. was uninsurable but trying to clean up his act (for the first time since he was seven), I used to see him all the time at our kids' soccer and baseball games at the park, living life in the slow lane. He long ago cleared out to a higher rent district, but I've been rooting for his comeback that began with
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang ever since. Rooting for any celebrity, especially one as privileged and untrustworthy as Downey, is pretty dumb, but I can't help it. It looks like his comeback will culminate on May 2 with his starring role in "Iron Man."
He tells the New York Times:
“I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since.”
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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21 comments:
Steve,
Who is Robert Downey Jr. [for a non-US citizen]?
Could you provide the link to the NY Times article?
I think you mean that "Tropic Thunder" will mark the high-water mark of his career. And it should be right up your alley since he plays "Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus, a Caucasian who is so committed to his craft that he medically alters the pigment of his skin to play an African-American army sergeant."
The trailer shows some hilarious (and potentially controversial) race exploration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l66QEEVoAhw
He also happens to be chums with the Surfin' Congressman, Dana Rohrabacher.
you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal.
Is it possible to really understand anything of relevance and come out a liberal?
"informed my proclivities": golly!
Can you post a link to the article?
Downey is a fine actor, no doubt, but forget "Iron Man": I want to see him play a black man(!) in "Tropic Thunder".
http://imdb.com/title/tt0942385/
Promotional celebrations of Jr.'s supposed magical acting skills to the contrary, he will probably never make a good movie because this would require a suspension of his self-conciousness and he has a clinical case of narcissistic personality disorder. I guess he could make a semi-autobiographical film about an actor struggling to lose his sense of self-consciousness, but what happens when a man travels through his own portal? Iron Man is apparently not the breakout vehicle, as it references Jr.'s personal life extensively in winking jokes to the audience.
Most people who have fallen that far would say the exact opposite of what downey did.
I find myself rooting for Robert Downey Jr. as well, for some reason, and was happy to see him do well with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The quote by him is interesting though, in that it's the opposite of the old cliche, "A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged; a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested".
- Fred
Steve notes that after his well publicized addiction and criminal problems, Downey couldn’t get any work as an actor as he wasn’t insurable. Downey’s friend Mel Gibson stepped up and helped post the money for Downey to get the lead role in the movie version of The Singing Detective, with Gibson talking a role as a bald analyst or something. Too bad for Gibson that he doesn’t have friends like himself.
A Conservative is a Liberal who has been prison raped?
Doesn't have quite the same timbre.
It's kind of a drawback that you can never watch him without being made aware of just how terminally hip he is.
"Steve notes that after his well publicized addiction and criminal problems, Downey couldn’t get any work as an actor as he wasn’t insurable. Downey’s friend Mel Gibson stepped up and helped post the money for Downey to get the lead role in the movie version of The Singing Detective, with Gibson talking a role as a bald analyst or something. Too bad for Gibson that he doesn’t have friends like himself."
He does. Jodie Foster, for one.
The article is at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/movies/20carr.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=movies&adxnnlx=1208697299-X/YncvuU63D2fmrfSu3q2g&oref=slogin
Downey's awesome. He can do more in five minutes' screen time than most actors can do with a whole film. I'm pulling for him, too.
The winks in Iron Man to Downey's life is because, Tony Stark, The Invincible Iron Man, is brilliant, charismatic and rich. However, he is also an alcaholic and a bit of an egomaniac. In a way, it is genius casting.
I remember really thinking he was excellent in Chaplin. The man has genuine talent and, who knows, maybe Downey's story will end better than one might have thought.
Maybe we should make all Hollywood liberals go to prison in order to get the stupid knocked out of them.
Anonymous writes: "[Downey] will probably never make a good movie because this would require a suspension of his self-conciousness and he has a clinical case of narcissistic personality disorder."
That may be a good point about his self-consciousness, but "narcissistic personality disorder"? Assuming it's true, how does that make him any different than 90% of professional actors? In my experience, it's often some degree of narcissism that enables people to be actors. Where acting goes, and where flourishing professionally as an actor goes (it takes an awful lot of self-belief to keep going as an actor, year after year), narcissism is anything but a disadvantage.
Mel Gibson is an interesting guy (didn't know he had posted Downey's insurance bond so he could work), he's had his own substance abuse and and mental problems (depression and bipolar disorder, apparently), but he isn't afraid to step up and help others.
I've read Courtney Love say that when she relapsed on drugs, it was Mel Gibson of all people (she didn't know him too well), who knocked on the door at the hotel where she was partying and dragged her away from her new drug buddies.
Or just last month, he and his wife met Britney Spears for a 2 hour dinner (internet rumors range from he offered her a role in his Joan Of Arc film to she wants the Gibsons to become her court-appointed conservators).
Mel Gibson and Downey have been good friends since they did a movie in 1990, Air America, about the CIA flying drug planes around Southeast Asia back in the Vietnam days. Downey claims that at that time, Gibson was a wild man and was just trying to control his boozing and hell raising. Later it was Downey who was out of control after Gibson had re-discovered his religion and calmed down some.
Downey was nice enough when he was on the Jay Leno show to defend Gibson after his last drunk driving bust.
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