Robert Downey Jr.’s Mind-Blowing Journey After Marvel – You Won’t Believe What He’s Up To!

“This summer,” says Robert Downey Jr., “is the battle for the soul of cinema.” Like many of the things said by the actor, who co-stars in the thriller “Oppenheimer,” directed by Christopher Nolan and set to open in theaters July 21, that statement was delivered with a hint of sarcasm, but there is some truth to it. it. In a movie season dominated by series, superheroes and pre-existing intellectual property, all aimed at the widest possible market, if there is still a large enough audience to sustain the work of a highly individualistic and ambitious director like Nolan, whose latest is an epic of three hours that focuses, among other weighty topics, on the moral dilemmas facing the title character, dubbed “the father of the atomic bomb”, remains an open question. (In the film, Downey plays lewis strauss, the former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and the main antagonist of J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy). in June he released “Downey’s Dream Cars,” a docuseries in which some of his classic cars were refitted to be more eco-friendly. It’s been a long time since the 58-year-old appeared in a big movie playing a major role that it was not Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) or other potential franchise material. “You start to wonder,” says Downey, a jovial and rambling talker, “if a muscle you have hasn’t atrophied.”

Although Christopher Nolan is a big name, a movie like “Oppenheimer” isn’t exactly a guaranteed blockbuster. Then consider that in light of a show like Perry Mason that your company co-produced and that everyone seemed to like, but that wasn’t enough to keep it from being cancelled. So from where you’re sitting, do you feel like you can understand the business right now? Since my boat arrived in 2008, when “Iron Man” had that great weekend, I have been a self-described expert in the ways of the world of creativity and commerce. It’s not that the playing field changes, it’s that it becomes something you can’t even call a playing field anymore. It’s kind of a mosaic of what it was moments before. If I’m running a major transmission, that sounds like a big number 1; How bad is it if the mind immediately goes to the pee? — anyway, you look at the budget, you look at the numbers, and it all comes down to a spreadsheet.

But how does knowing that affect your decisions about what to do? It simply says, “Welcome to Thunderdome.” I think it’s been great that we can all say that none of us can beat our butts with both hands right now, so let’s just keep doing what we think is the best course of action.

Is it correct that you are remaking “Vertigo”? We are certainly looking into it. You know why?

God bless you. I’ll tell you why. I’ve been rock climbing before and got stuck in that panic freeze, and if it wasn’t for the embarrassment, I would have asked to be lifted off that rock. I lost confidence in my positioning, the fall was too long, my body reacted. It wasn’t fight or flight; he was frozen and about to pass out. I’ll never forget it, and it made me think that there are cinematic devices that haven’t been fully utilized yet that I think would provide an experience trying to say, “What’s it like to be psychologically dumb in fear of something that should be manageable?” That could be entertaining.

As? That momentum he had built as the kid on the other side of the fence no longer had a purpose. The water broke in what had apparently been this unrequited thing. But what was reciprocated? You realize that you still have affliction for a, b or c, or a not particularly irrational fear that d, e or might happen. These external goals: there’s only so much hard drive space to run on, and everything was geared towards getting this, and then when you hit it, it just says, OK, big shot, can we go back to the process of unpacking a lifetime of experiences, fears, hopes, desires?

In that decade or so where you were doing mostly Marvel movies, were you worried about the effect that might have on your acting? I say this as someone who thought you did an amazing job with Tony Stark. But you played the same role for a long time. Yes. One hundred percent, and I knew there was a point where Chris Nolan endorsed, let’s work those other muscles, but let’s do it while stripping you of your usual stuff.

I respect that there are things you don’t talk about in interviews, but can you make the connection between Strauss’s sense of service and yours? I’m not following I’m saying that doing the right thing for the right reasons gives you a spiritual advantage. For example, my son is in the minor leagues. He also thinks I’m his personal PT masseuse. I’m like, “Dude, I love you, but do I really have to give you another foot massage?” Once I get over that and realize, yes, I’ve had a long day, but he’s probably had a longer day: there’s a sacred moment where he’s already fallen asleep and I’m still doing my shiatsu moves with him. and you feel good. -size. You are getting so much gratification from this process of putting yourself in this position of service, and no one is keeping track. That’s something I learned while digging my way back to being a functioning member of society, one teaspoon of dirt at a time. And looking at Strauss, I saw that he was a guy who had his nose in the grindstone and was a civil servant for decades. I have something I can identify with.

That line about tunneling your way back reminds me of something I wanted to ask you about: I saw this clip of you from 2004 on “Oprah,” about a year after you got clean, and the subtext of the interview is that you were bad and now you have to convince everyone that you’re good, which is a dynamic that showed up in so many old TV appearances and magazine articles about you. I’m curious how you understood the public’s expectations of how a celebrity is supposed to behave in order to earn redemption. I remember with great pride that I was even able to address something like that in a public forum. However, it would irritate me deeply. He felt strangely punitive and unnecessarily humiliating. However, the challenge is, yes, so what? [Expletive] what you’re going through. Can you introduce yourself for this? There’s a great story about this guy, this would never work nowadays, he was in one of his last Zen workouts and was told to go to the lingerie section at Lord & Taylor and stay there until the women felt uncomfortable. It’s this idea of ​​purposefully putting yourself in a situation where you’re going to feel judged. The only difference between me and that misguided would-be Zen master is that I didn’t sign up for that kind of experience. But once you’re there, you have to take a beating. I’m close to people right now who have gotten caught up in this iteration of the pendulum nature of culture that decides who’s okay and who’s not. it’s unnerving But yeah, shock, self-condemnation, feeling exposed, feeling disappointed in any progress I may have made: we’re also talking about me in my 40s and 30s, and there’s something great about reaching 60, which is that I still have so many of the old defects; I know them very well. They are like telemarketers. It’s like, “Come on. inguy.”

What advice do you give to people you are close with who the culture has decided are not okay? I feel a little fleeting when I try to apply metrics from the ’80s, ’90s, and early years to what’s happened in the last five or seven years, but I think there’s usually a two-year turnaround in sinking into the depths of the world. Mariana Trench back to the surface. You go up too fast, we know what happens. There are a lot of points in a comeback or being viewed favorably by your peers that, I’ll speak for myself, I wanted to happen before it did, and I felt victimized by the timeline. But humanity’s greatest challenge is to stand still. Stay on the bus. The landscape is changing. You can’t decide where you get off the bus. The driver will notify you when you have arrived at your stop. But that’s the intolerable part of how will I know when this nightmare is over?

How do you know? Because you wake up

At the beginning of the conversation, you referred to “Mr.” as “content”. I guess you wouldn’t use that word to describe “Oppenheimer”. So what is “content” and what is not? Pull out the list and I’ll tell you yes or no.

“Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”. Not happy.

“Avengers: Age of Ultron.” Content.

“US Marshals”. Debatable.

“Back to school.” Not happy.

Yeah. “Mr.” it’s so personal, but for everyone else it was a piece of content that they could have chosen to click and watch or not.

How is it different from anything else you do? Whether it’s a movie or “Downey’s Dream Cars” or your business ventures, you put things out there and people get involved with it or they don’t, right? Because it’s a way of letting me know that just because this is the most important thing I commit to with a data card in a camera doesn’t mean it isn’t. [expletive] content for everyone else. You know, there’s a part of me that thinks I should be a writer or an entrepreneur or that I could bla bla bla. But then I think about it and walk away, I’ve made peace with who I am at my core: there’s really only one thing I’ve ever been damn good at. So to keep imagining that I’m suddenly going to transform into this formidable multi-hyphenate? I’m starting to not buy my own hype. It’s about: Can I feel good about what I’m doing? Okay, yeah, then I’ll feel good about it.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and writes the Talk column. He recently interviewed Emma Chamberlain on leaving YouTube, Walter Mosley on a dumber America and Cal Newport on a new way of working.