The Family Business with Robert Downey Jr.
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The spotlight has certainly taken its toll on Robert Downey Jr. over the years. But much like his beloved MCU character Tony Stark, there’s an undeniably powerful force inside Robert that keeps him pushing forward. When we sat down over iced coffees, we found ourselves unpacking the fraught relationship Robert had with his father — the experimental, countercultural filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. — whose unconventional lifestyle created lasting ripples throughout the family. Their shared documentary, “Sr.”, stands as a powerful testament to the healing they found. Plus, we talk about sobriety, the belief it took to become Iron Man, and the full-circle moments spanning the decades since we first crossed paths on the set of Chaplin.
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Transcript
SPEAKERS
David Duchovny, Robert Downey Jr.
David Duchovny 00:01
I’m David Duchovny and this is Fail Better – a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Robert Downey Jr. is one of Hollywood’s most beloved and versatile actors whose influence extends far beyond his movie roles. He made his on screen debut at the age of five in the film “Pound” written and directed by his father. He’s since appeared in over 70 films, from his unforgettable portrayal of Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to his powerful performances in films like “Chaplin”, that I was in and “Oppenheimer”. Robert has grown to be one of the highest grossing actors of all time. But his story is about more than just fame. It’s about resilience, reinvention and finding redemption. We talk about recovery and why it’s important for him to help others within the industry. We also spent some time exploring the documentary he made about his dad called “Senior”, and the impact that’s had on his healing journey. Robert and I have known each other for over 30 years when I did Chaplin and we’re neighbors. I had a great time catching up with him. We started this conversation by drinking his seriously delicious Java, happy coffee.
Robert Downey Jr. 03:09
Let me settle for a second.
David Duchovny 03:11
Okay.
Robert Downey Jr. 03:14
I hope the sound of pouring this while we’re recording each other […].
David Duchovny 03:18
We have the sound of beautiful iced coffee pouring over ice.
Robert Downey Jr. 03:29
It’s happy coffee. It’s ready. Try it.
David Duchovny 03:35
Oh, it is good.
Robert Downey Jr. 03:37
Yeah. It’s so wild, man. We are literally a hop skip and a jump from each other.
David Duchovny 03:44
We are.
Robert Downey Jr. 03:47
Having known you forever and then been able to reunite on The Sympathizer, a couple clicks back down the road. It’s so funny. Any neighborhood you’re in, it can be the gift that keeps on giving. In most cases, strong fences make for goodneighbors. But dude, this is great.
David Duchovny 04:09
I know. We have to take advantage of it.
Robert Downey Jr. 04:12
Yeah.
David Duchovny 04:12
Well, we do go back a long ways because of Chaplin, which not many people know that Robert Downey was in chat. Now, they think of it as my movie.
Robert Downey Jr. 04:24
Raleigh tothero. You have the best line in the movie.
David Duchovny 04:28
Which is it?
Robert Downey Jr. 04:30
It is, “Hey, Raleigh, how’s the light?”. It’s better down at Barney’s bar.
David Duchovny 04:34
I said that?
Robert Downey Jr. 04:35
Yeah, it was supposed to be Barney’s Beanery, but I think we were worried.
David Duchovny 04:38
Worried about Barney’s Beanery.
Robert Downey Jr. 04:40
Might have just been called Barney’s […].
David Duchovny 04:44
What I remember, I don’t know if I’ve ever thanked you for this. When I got that job, I was on that set. That set was just chock full of big time actors. You were just coming up at that point. You were 25?
Robert Downey Jr. 05:01
Yeah, 26 or 25.
David Duchovny 05:04
For me, watching you work and watching the other guys work like Aykroyd and Kevin Kline, as I recall. This is going to sound oddly arrogant, but what I got out of that was like, “I think I can do what they’re doing”. Because before that, I was like, “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I don’t know. I just started, I don’t know. I don’t know. Am I fooling myself? Am I an idiot?”. Then I watched you guys, and it sounds like I’m saying you guys aren’t fantastic. Which you were. You were amazing. But I thought, “It’s human”. I see the work. I see what’s going on.
Robert Downey Jr. 05:43
Just to go back to that Kline, Aykroyd, these are guys who are in the middle of their sweet spot. They’re basically batting 500 every time. That said, I couldn’t agree with you more. If you want to lose the intimidation factor, go see the reality of anything. I to this day, am always amazed at how good everyone else is, considering the fact that we’re all only as good as the magic carpet that either appears underneath us or not, depending on the rest fill in the blanks, material, opportunity, preparedness, mood. Are you doing that 70% maintenance of self so you can show up? What I recall about you so distinctly was everybody was on this one kind of leaving the 80s, going into the 90s page, and you were hanging back in the pocket, being really subtle on film, which it took me until the end of the shoot to realize that the times that I was doing that, Attenborough was loving it. The times that I wasn’t approaching that, he was wishing I would just get back to it
David Duchovny 07:04
But you were also embodying a known figure. There was no real hanging back.
Robert Downey Jr. 07:10
Yeah.
David Duchovny 07:12
Legendary image to portray.
Robert Downey Jr. 07:17
Funnily enough, I think when you’re in your mid 20s. In some ways, you’ll never get better than those early experiences when you don’t know better than just say, “Well, this is my approach and I’m going all in”. At the same token, it’s just amazing to be sitting here with you. That was 33 years ago plus.
Robert Downey Jr. 07:46
It does.
David Duchovny 07:46
I was reading up on you. It’s weird to read up on someone you know, because we’re storytellers. We look for the story. We look for a pattern. We look to try and put it in a template. I look at you and I’m thinking, “Okay, this is a fatherson story, because I’m watching Senior again”, and I just have to say, “That is a beautiful movie. That is a work of art”. I don’t know if you haven’t seen it, it’s on Netflix. It’s a movie that Robert did about his dad. In fact, before I get into it, what you call the bullshit concept of the movie is you’re going to make a film and your dad’s going to make a film, which I love. It’s the perfect edible film. It’s like, “Who’s gonna win? The son or the dad?”. But does your dad’s version exist?
David Duchovny 07:54
Can I see it someday?
Robert Downey Jr. 08:47
A million percent. As matter of fact, my friend Kevin Ford, who was the one that dad co-opted into team Senior and Chris Smith was the facto director. The conceit was, it’s this documentary that really happened as an avoidance pattern between me dealing with my dad being terminal, then what happened along the way is I knew the only way to capture him was to get inside his avant-garde mind and tell him, “It’s just the project”. I never wanted to feel like I was duping my dad into doing what I thought he should do. Honestly, it was Susan. It was Mrs. Downey who kept locking in with Chris Smith and going, “Are we getting a story here? Does this have a beginning, middle, and an end?”. We always knew probably, and even said it to him at one point. I was like, “Dad, you don’t really have a third act until you kick it. What’s the trajectory here?”. At that point, he was very aware of the clock.
David Duchovny 10:10
Yeah.
Robert Downey Jr. 10:10
It wound up being this beautiful and extremely cathartic thing, which kicked off this little bit of a revolution I’ve had in the last five years.
David Duchovny 10:24
You draw a line directly to that.
Robert Downey Jr. 10:26
I have to, because it’s the first time I step out of the shadow of being part of my dad’s family and that story into telling my dad’s story, and our story, and the family story. It’s not being afraid to grab the steering wheel of the narrative and try to steer it in an honest direction.
David Duchovny 10:53
If you don’t mind.
David Duchovny 10:57
Talk about about this movie. Because when I was thinking, “What is the story that want Robert to tell, or enjoin Robert to tell today?”. It is that exactly. What is shocking, you say at one point of film, “I was known as Bob Downey’s son for a long time”. There is this kind of sense of entering into his arena as a director as well. For me, the most moving part of the whole thing, I don’t know if it’s you. I think it’s you. You’re talking about acting and starting acting. How old when you acted in your dad’s films?
Robert Downey Jr. 10:57
No, please.
Robert Downey Jr. 11:50
Five or six.
David Duchovny 11:51
You said you didn’t think of it as acting, you thought of it as spending time with your dad which is both heartbreaking and amazing. I wonder too if it’s still on that level, because you take a great joy in acting. That’s one of the things that I love about your work, aside from your technical expertise, is you enjoy your own spirit. You enjoy your own energy, and we all take part of that as well. I’m not talking about narcissistically. I’m not talking about exhibitionistically. I’m talking about enthusiasm is a word, it’s a Greek derived word that means to have God in you. I feel like you have that enthusiasm. Lowercase g (God), is what I’m talking about.
Robert Downey Jr. 12:41
I’ll take it.
David Duchovny 12:42
This is what I’m saying. When you complicate that with a boy just wanting to spend time with his father, I’m like, “Oh, this is a story”.
Robert Downey Jr. 12:51
It is my story and you’re dead on, because it’s that Russian dolls tripping of which doll is trauma, what dolls outside of that one? What’s the one that you got to take off right away, just so you can actually even do the job? I think in enthusiasm, when it’s not entirely exhibitionism. There was times when we were doing scenes, year before last, we were like, “Oh, my god, we’re out there doing that. This feels great”.
David Duchovny 13:15
Yes, but I got that from you. You put me back in touch, not that I’ve lost it completely. But working with you, there is thatsense. I learned that again with you, because I would like to bring that to other people when I work with them, the sense of play. Your father said, for the moment you were on film, you were possessed. That was the word he used. But it’sreally the sense of play that I think is the enthusiasm. I also think it’s hard to have a discussion about failure when you’r talking about play, because there is no failure or success in play.
Robert Downey Jr. 14:04
No, but there’s the redefining.
David Duchovny 14:08
Yes.
Robert Downey Jr. 14:09
What failure is and what it can lead to. Look, the whole story of my upbringing and my family is the failure of the family to capitulate to its own demise, indulgence, and self destruction. Under the auspices of being artistically pure, which really I think was co-opted by a genuine collective, narcissistic, addictive type of entity (speaking of possessed). But again, it was one of the spirits of the time was not just counter culture, but even like counter reality. Even in some recovery groups, when they’re talking about, “You have to find a power greater than yourself. Some of you may be agnostic, because in the past, due to organized religion”, I was like, “My religion were essentially a drug cult”. Although, I still had a work ethic, and I was doing the solo festival and singing madrigals. There was things about our bananas life that were as normal as you could imagine being an East Coast guy. There was something like Christmas. We had communities that were friends I went to school, often as not. There were all of the trappings of just being a kid, kind of growing up in the 60s, 70s.
David Duchovny 15:44
See, I grew up at the same time, same place as you. My father’s a writer, but he had nine to five jobs so he wasn’t quite as revolutionary as your dad. That’s one of the things my parents were much more afraid of falling through any kind of economic cracks. For me, it was like, “Get an education. Get a job. Make enough money to survive”. The gutter was always a possibility, because my mother grew up a small town in Scotland. “What did you get for Christmas, mom”,”Orange”, that kind of a thing. She had tumors in her feet because they couldn’t afford shoes that were big enough, so she had to wear. It was a lot of stuff, lot of Dickensian stuff. I was terrified of the kind of freedom that I see you exhibiting at a young age, or even as a young actor. Just fearlessly free and vulnerable. I was like, “How did he get that?”. I realize now, you were raised in it. You didn’t get the other part. You didn’t get the backstop or the structure part.
Robert Downey Jr. 17:02
Yeah, but you seek what’s missing pretty quickly. This is not untypical, there’s the crazy, eccentric family, then there’s one of the kids. Honestly, growing up, it was my sister. She was like, “They’re bananas. I’m going to private school. Send me to boarding school. I want to go to Woodstock Vermont, and I’m gonna just get a real education”, which she did. I wasn’t smart enough to have the Scholastic chops that my sister did. I really liked hanging out with all the grown ups, but I also knew that eventually I wasn’t just going to be a little Bobby Jr.. At a certain point, it did not seem my folks had much of a plan for me. All of a sudden, it was already just happening when they broke up.
David Duchovny 18:00
What age were you?
Robert Downey Jr. 18:01
I was 12.
David Duchovny 18:02
We were the same.
Robert Downey Jr. 18:03
Okay, 12. Upstate New York and Woodstock. I saw it, heard it all happened – the skirt, the suitcase, the affair that. And I was like, “Oh, my god. It’s over”. I also knew that I was going to be saddled with taking my mom’s side and hanging back in New York with her, where she immediately embarked on a “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” relationship with this British guy named Jonas, who I adore, that was the early days. All of a sudden I was like, “I’m in New York. I’m just trying to get work. I’m working at a shoe store”.
David Duchovny 18:42
You’re not going to school at 12?
Robert Downey Jr. 18:45
No. Well, 12, 13, 14, were in New York. Then after a while, I couldn’t hack it. I went out to California, I capitulated. With some guilt, I actually started having a bit of a real life, actually going to school, being in Theater Arts. I thank God for Mr. Jealous and my theater arts teacher. Thank God for having a teacher’s assistant credit. Thank God that I didn’t ever really finish high school, but I got so much out of it and really learned and grew. I was singing at the Santa Monica place mall, wearing a mohair suit, singing madrigals during Christmas. There was something like normalcy. But again, the failure to ever be able to sustain something like normalcy in a dysfunctional family, that’s the most expectable outcomes every three to five years. It’s all going to go to shit. But by then, I kind of knew I had to go back to New York and I had to start trying to do theater and make a living. Next thing, I was in Rochester doing Regional Theater, which isso weird, too, speaking of these massive circles and cycles cause I was just at Lincoln Center doing a play for the first time, a Broadway play for the first time in 40 years, six months ago. Sometimes these things that were either a way out of failure or trying to not capitulate to what seemed like this guaranteed entropy. Was like, “I’ve got to. I got to get off this train. I got to figure out a way”. As you know, it’s super lonely and isolating when you’re really kind of a stunted growth kid who maybe has some skills or some charm.
David Duchovny 20:42
To kind of base a life on enthusiasm as I see it in you, or charm (whatever you want to call it). It’s sand through your fingers, right? When I got into acting, it was really from the opposite point of view, which was I’m stunted emotionally.I’ve been structured to fucking death. There was a sense of play in me that just wasn’t being attended to. You’re coming at it kind of the opposite point of view because actually when you’re playing, that’s where your dad is involved. That’s where you get your structure. You said in the movie that you learned everything about acting from your mom as well. From the clips that I see, she’s very funny and very alive. Your dad is very kind of dry. You present more like your mom, she’s like the invisible heart of that movie.
Robert Downey Jr. 21:43
Thank you for saying that. Yeah, it’s LC, Downey mom. The other thing was her devotion to Him and her unwavering, blind commitment to whatever direction he was taking the circus in. It’s funny too, just to double back. It’s almost like I had to run away from home and join a new circus to find stability. That was regional theater. That was off Broadway and off Broadway. Eventually and thankfully, here’s a name from the past. Great actor, Craig Sheffer.
David Duchovny 22:27
Sure.
Robert Downey Jr. 22:28
Turns down a role in this film starring James Spader called “Tuff Turf”. Tuff Turf because he got a better offer to go do a film with Emilio Estevez called “That Was Then… This Is Now”, which was more of like a prestige project. This was like a new world, kind of weirdo rehash of a modern Romeo and Juliet. Thank God I had put myself, or I’d been put on tape to be whatever Milo is off beat, buddy. I’d forgotten about it and I was down on my last shekel. I was in New York. I was probably not going to be able to make my $140 half the rent for this Hell’s Kitchen apartment. They said, “Hey, short notice, but your cast and we need you to fly to L.A tomorrow”. I was like, “I can’t afford to fly to L.A”. They go, “No, they’re sending you a first class ticket on American”. I was like, “What?”, then I never look back.
David Duchovny 24:40
This is what you said. You say, “We’re here. We do some stuff, and then we die”. Again, this is true. It’s simple, but it’s deep. How do we get in touch with that every day? Because there’s a lot of noise on a daily basis coming to us. We have to somehow touch the truth to live right.
Robert Downey Jr. 27:28
Well, I’m looking over your shoulder at Bobby and Jack, the Kennedy brothers. They did some stuff, and they leave with an exclamation point, that’s the 60s. Then in the 70s, I was trying to figure out, do I even know how to become a teenager, let alone shape a life? Then in the 80s, as we both know, there was this really weird kind of Reagan era thing where the ultimate and kind of sustainable for a while, front kind of went up which is this influx of culture led by what are the kids think. The 80s was the time of the movies about youth being forefront on even the studio. The studios were like, “Well, we better do this. It’s what’s happening”. What a blessing that was. I probably need to check in with my shrink before we get into the 90s too much […]. It’s just the turns come. You know you’re here, and if you’re lucky, not only do you do stuff, but you get bites at the apple and swings at the ball and iterations. You start locking into. I consider it significant that we have gotten to know each other again over this last little while, because there’s some people. There’s not a lot of people who can talk about the context of 30, 40, 50 years of shared experience.
David Duchovny 29:01
Right. When you look back at that time, obviously the philosophy of the of AA is important to me as well.First of all, anonymity seems an impossibility anymore.
Robert Downey Jr. 29:19
Yeah, but you can act as if anonymous. You can act as if what’s really important is the anonymity of others. It’s okay for me to say what I am. It’s not okay for me to say anything about anyone else. Generally speaking, the truth be told is, It’shilarious. I’m one of three people who’s the first call for any Hollywood crisis having to do with drugs and alcohol or horrific misbehavior, which is both an honor and it’s kind of funny, because I did not think I would ever be part of any crisis team on the right side of history.
David Duchovny 30:08
You technical?
Robert Downey Jr. 30:08
One must. For no other reason, that it’s always interesting to have the there, but for the grace of God. We do stuff, and we die. Sometimes we’re here, we die, then we do stuff. Those deaths are critical and as long as they’re not entirely physical, they can wind up being what makes us.
David Duchovny 30:37
For me, what is rigorous in the AA stuff and what I got out of it. What I continue to get out of it, is the honesty. Is the responsibility and the honesty, because I was never honest before that. I was always kind of withholding something or afraid to be fully myself. The idea being, if I was fully myself, then I wouldn’t be lovable or acceptable or something. I also found interestingly before I was exposed to that, I was very kind of heady or psychological. I thought, “Okay, I’m gonna figure this out. I’m gonna figure me out. I’m gonna tell my story. I’m gonna figure out my Oedipus story, whatever it was to make my movie”, then I’ll be okay. I began to think that understanding is kind of the booby prize, and that right action actually was going to lead to right thinking. To me, that was so top […].
Robert Downey Jr. 31:58
It’s nuts, isn’t it?
David Duchovny 32:01
Nobody ever said that to me. Everybody tried to, you go to ethics, you go to Bible class. You learn what it is to be a good person, but you don’t learn how to be a good person.
Robert Downey Jr. 32:15
No. Nobody wants to do the next right thing every time.
David Duchovny 32:19
Yeah.
Robert Downey Jr. 32:21
Again, we come from, hopefully, the last vestige of a written. It’s a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for having a shit moral psychology. Actually, it’s back in a big way, but it’s more out there in the writ large way. I’m talking about from our generation, not to speak for our generation. It was the live, fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse came out of that mid-century, kind of Jimmy Dean thing we were seeing it happen. We kind of made light of it and act like, “Hey, maybe that’s the way, because it seemed like a lot of us were comporting ourselves”. That was definitely on the table. Now, it really does seem stick around, like slow down, do the next right thing. There’s a natural stoicism that descends upon every ounce of wisdom I have ever accumulated, whether I’ve been able to keep it all or not. But I’ve kept my nose clean, and I know how to suit up and show up. I do love just being able to be on what seems like a leveled playing field, because I’m not kicking myself in the nuts, and I like it. I like minded people and I am crazy for community.
David Duchovny 33:53
The community. You feel like that is your family?
Robert Downey Jr. 33:58
It’s this. It’s my recovery world. It’s definitely my family created family. It’s also this odd thing of just like, you wind up kind of like taking on a responsibility to put the best version of yourself.
David Duchovny 34:19
Were you afraid that your enthusiasm was somehow part and parcel?
Robert Downey Jr. 34:29
Air quotes.
David Duchovny 34:31
That it had to do with drug taking or drinking, that it was accessed that way?
Robert Downey Jr. 34:38
No, because I never found that I was doing great anything when I was in my disease. I always felt a little bit ashamed because “The Body Keeps the Score”, and history was there. I was also seeing. If you look at this in the contextof all the folks we lost in the 80s and 90s in cross culturally, it was kind of like, this is hugely irresponsible to not address this. I hadalso been one of those people who was trying to get sober forever. Like you said, I strangely was missing that critical component of rigorous honesty, and I also wasn’t aware that I was missing that critical component. Didn’t mean I was full of shit or pathological. It just meant that so many things were repressed and unconscious. Even back then, going back to when we first met. I remember, one of the first turns was prepping to play Chaplin and realizing this is anyand everything I ever could have asked for. I am now battling my own proclivities to self medicate and also completely obsessed with making dad. I mean, Sir Richard Attenborough, proud of me being able to portray this guy. By the time he had cast me, all the endorsement I ever could have wanted from this incredible, iconic writer, director, philanthropist guy, was already there. As we know, the best part of any job is the casting announcement. You’re like, “That looks good for us”, then you got to go do it.
David Duchovny 36:35
How long did you have to prepare?
Robert Downey Jr. 36:37
Well, they kept pulling the financing so it extended and extended every time. I think we’ve got to be like, “Robert, if you could just hold fast, I think we can get the other 11 million from it. Is it Carlo Co, who are the boys who did Total Recall?”. Mario Kassar, God bless him. I kept having more time to prep, and I went quite obsessive with it. The next time I got thatobsessive was when I had the Iron Man screen test. But again, it’s that thing of find a new obsession, find a new area to make new mistakes in that are falling forward.
David Duchovny 37:22
You got obsessed about the Iron Man screen test in the same way?
Robert Downey Jr. 37:25
You would not believe it.
David Duchovny 37:27
I would not believe it.
David Duchovny 37:30
How long was that process?
Robert Downey Jr. 37:30
At that point, thank God Disney had approved me playing a role in a Disney film. Thank God for Tim Allen too, called Shaggy Dog, that meant that Disney said I was hireable. If not for that piece, there’s no way that Favreau and Feige ever could have made a case to give me what was going to be $150 million swing at launching a cinematic universe, which sounded like kind of not really feasible anyway. Knowing that I was going to screen test and knowing that the odds might be stacked against me, but I refuse to capitulate. Even when John said, “I don’t think it’s going to happen”. I was like, “That’s all right, dude. I refuse to disbelieve. Let me know when it comes back around”. But like you said, I’m justgoing to train if I’d been clean long enough that I now just needed a reason to live, aside from my first born, my ex, and Susan, all that stuff.
Robert Downey Jr. 38:32
It was months. But, when you’re running things and you’re running it, then you’re off book, you go, “Fuck it, I’m running it again”. Then you think about it and make more notes. I was had a little guns of things, and this Korean energy healer I’d been to. I just started building up this almost prayer wheel of why not me. Honestly, it flew in the face of every failure I’d ever witnessed, participated in or brought upon myself.
David Duchovny 39:09
How so?
Robert Downey Jr. 39:10
Because it was a single mindedness of when I think about this. I only think about there is no way that I don’t deserve to have this opportunity, which always felt almost a little speaking spells in Latin, like bad people shouldn’t be able to do that or only bad people do that. Then it was just this growing sense of, “I am ready. I am prepared. I am well. I am sound of mind and body”. I see a way to not just me. I get mine. Look everybody, I’m on a different level. I would get to see what it’s like to operate at this level and try to be a good host of this experience throughout which is a lot harder getting the job. It’s funny too. I’d started really getting serious about martial arts a few years beforehand, and I was on the mat with my sifu in the middle of a lesson when he let me bow off the mat and take a break to take the call to have Brian Lord tell me that I got it.
David Duchovny 40:40
When you said in the in Senior that when you’re acting, you’re with your father, that’s made me realize that I get that through writing. My father was a writer, and I realized that I’m speaking to my ancestors or I’m joining the conversation. It made me think of you. Joining the conversation when you’re too young to know exactly what the fuck you’re really joining, then to go back to him at whatever age you were a few years ago.
Robert Downey Jr. 40:40
Yeah.
David Duchovny 41:23
And to start that conversation again, and to start it as a friendly competition in a way like two guys are going to make different movies. There’s so much in that film that is so personal. It’s so personal that it kind of goes by, because people are not accustomed to seeing that kind of unvarnished approach under the guise of art, because you’re still charming. There’s not a lot of just like you breaking down, it’s not like that. There is so much just in the setup, that’s what got me. When you say at the very end, forgive me for bringing up a difficult moment.
Robert Downey Jr. 43:22
No, please.
David Duchovny 43:22
But you say to your dad, “Get closer, then closer”. You’re talking about the camera. To me, it was like, “Oh my god, he’s managed to metaphorically put together the two poles of his life of a camera moving closer and him moving closer to his father at the same time”. Wonder if he’s aware of it in the moment or if you were ever aware of looking, but I certainly was aware.
Robert Downey Jr. 43:54
In the moment I was just daunted by the fact that that’s where I was at in my trajectory with him. It’s so easy for us, right? You’re a prolific writer. You write a bunch of great books. You look back on it and they go, “Well, how did you do that?” And when you did this and you’re gonna like, “Oh”, it’s the whole support staff, seen and unseen, living and deceased, and perhaps even as yet unborn. It was my missus saying, “You’ve got to finish this up. Don’t cheese out. You have to face this. Also, you can’t make this documentary seem like a senior movie. Chris Smith and I will not fucking allow it, because you need to make a clear narrative”. That’s how you take the mantle, just in personal responsibility. If you tell this in acts, the only way he wants to deal with his past, the artifacts of his own emotional truth, is by couching them and talking about the film he was doing at that time. You don’t need to be that, but there’s also something perfect about your dad’s refusal to capitulate to any kind of dialogue. Besides that, until the very end, I actually found it very brave of him. He did not die like a coward.
David Duchovny 43:55
No. Charlie Parkinson.
Robert Downey Jr. 44:18
Yeah. He did not go gently into that good night. I think he was spared that cruel fate of having to have the last image ofsomeone who’s been such an imprint in so many people now too. There’s some people who I will still only ever be Senior’s kid, Paul Thomas Anderson. Even our recently deceased icon, Norman Lear. I was only ever Bobby to him because he had such an attachment, a fascination, and appreciation for my dad that he just saw me grow up under that, then I just wound up in the industry and did pretty well for myself. I think he appreciated the fact that I’d kind of figured out how to stop the bleeding on the the family, propensity for drug dependency. But honestly, he was imperviousto that. He was just more like this artists, and there’s everybody else for Norman. Honestly, I’m so glad that this is where you wanted to hang for a bit, because it’s been a couple years. The great thing about Netflix, you are the belle of the ball, and everybody gets a chance to see it. The great thing about Netflix, it winds up like you’re in some drunk dude saddle bag, and there’s no way to find you again. You so maybe never even know it was ever done.
David Duchovny 46:50
Well, you did give it a title that’s hard. The algorithm doesn’t like, right? Because I was like, “Senior?”.
Robert Downey Jr. 46:58
Sr. Yes, quote. Capital S. Lowercase r. Period.
David Duchovny 47:03
Well, I just went through this with Bucky Fucking Dent. They made me call it reverse the curse. Nobody found it. You can have curse in the title, but you can’t have a curse in the title. Bucky Fucking Dent, no, but reverse the curse, okay. What want to say to you about you in that film is you’re so gentle with your dad. I know there’s got to be, there’s ambivalence.The movie is in the ambivalence of how I was raised in this chaos. My dad who gave me the gift of that chaos. Because you are a guy. You’re a magical being, Robert. Don’t look at me that way. Let me tell you the straight truth. You play with that chaos. You have it in you, and you have somehow been able to not only master it in certain performances, but also make a life. A life that is solid. Your dad kind of brought that to you, and to to honor that in him, but you didn’t giveme the other stuff.
Robert Downey Jr. 48:25
Yeah. You know, what he did? He had a moment not like mine, where he said, “I’m done” […].
David Duchovny 48:33
Without AA?
Robert Downey Jr. 48:35
Yeah. Definitely not the way I did it, but a way that was like a white lightning moment. Those things that you hear abou in the literature, but very seldom occur. Then he really did a Karma cleanup tour.
David Duchovny 48:51
That’s just mean drugs?
Robert Downey Jr. 48:52
Yeah.
David Duchovny 48:53
Like, revolutionary? Completely you have that spirit.
Robert Downey Jr. 48:58
Well, he was also just a absolute, accessible. Still him, but he settled, was accessible, and was consistent, was communicative and caring. Just very strangely dependable, which almost made it even fucking worse, because you go, “Wait a minute”.
David Duchovny 49:22
Nobody believes.
Robert Downey Jr. 49:23
Yeah.
David Duchovny 49:23
Robert, what are you talking about?
Robert Downey Jr. 49:25
Yeah.
David Duchovny 49:25
Your dad’s solid as hell.
Robert Downey Jr. 49:27
It’s weird too, because it’s the playing with extremes. Like, “Yes, I can thrive in chaos to this day, but I love organized Caboose. I love order. I love design”. There’s nothing more important to me than domestic bliss, because it’s the only environment that I can try to replicate wherever I go, whether I’m always getting to be with the family or not.
David Duchovny 49:55
Well, I see in your work. The preparation creates the order, at least the illusion of order, or the hope for order. You work your ass off, you prepare your ass off. You’ve got a strong work ethic and a very kind of good eye towards what needs to be done. I’ve not worked with you a lot, but I know that when I’m looking at you in a scene that all that stuff, you just let it wash over you. You don’t force it in the scene. Then you’re like, opening the door and saying, “Okay, Dionysus or Pan. Come on in. Let’s see what you want to do”.
Robert Downey Jr. 50:35
I hope so.
David Duchovny 50:36
Yeah. You can’t get it every day.
Robert Downey Jr. 50:40
No, we all have our tolerances too. Seeing that everybody only has the tolerance to manage so many things at once. For me, when the physical demands are too much, I will opt out of the whole thing of needing to be off book, and I will use whatever tricks I need to use to not be tripping on that when I know that the circumstance demands additional activity on top of being more off book. Hopefully anyone around me, because I have to carry a certain section of it so you gotta lead by example. I’ve seen you operate this way too. You just got to be flexible and you need different modes, you need different car, different manual, different tool kit.
David Duchovny 51:34
Can you read this for me?
Robert Downey Jr. 51:36
Yes. There’s a line missing.
David Duchovny 51:44
Yeah.
Robert Downey Jr. 51:45
Three miles west of skag mountain in the valley of pain that lives an evil devil monster. His name is Bingo gas station, motel, cheeseburger with a side of aircraft noise, you’ll be Gary Indiana, and he loves to hurt people. The last time I saw Bingo, gas station, motel cheeseburger with a side of aircraft noise, and you’ll be Gary Indiana, he told me what he wants to do. He wants to come down here and kill each and every one of you. But I said to him, “Bingo, wait a minute”. The reason I said that is because I believe in you people. I believe you can do the job, believe you can help each other, believe you can make the world a better place to live in. That’s it. I find that passage to be inspired.
David Duchovny 52:39
I agree. It’s the end of your movie.
Robert Downey Jr. 52:42
Yeah.
David Duchovny 52:43
It’s the last clip. I was like, “Fuck me, that’s a creed”, that’s something your dad wrote. It really moved me. I didn’t know. I haven’t seen the film.
Robert Downey Jr. 52:58
Just do check out groocers Palace. If you see one Senior film to me, it’s the one that’s the most senior. The most about our family is, believe it or not […]. Next lit by God, and then is resurrected.
David Duchovny 53:15
His mother finds him, couldn’t be much more autobiographical than that.
Robert Downey Jr. 53:21
Yeah. I know and this was 72. Speaking of which, almost 50 years later (almost to the month), I’m back in Santa Fe where we were living when he shot Greaser’s palace. There’s a place called the Dragonfly Club, where I remember a drug deal went bad between some of the Greaser’s Palace crew members and Dennis Hopper’s fucking Hollywood motorcycle gang. It like had to be squashed. I was like, “This is weird”. I was there 50 years later, staying about 40 steps away from this place doing Oppenheimer.
David Duchovny 54:05
Yeah.
Robert Downey Jr. 54:05
I was like, “I can’t believe I’m back here. I can’t believe that 50 years ago I was here as a kid, listening to the Sesame Street soundtracks on vinyl and participating in this weird kind of spiritual oddball comedy my dad was directing”.
David Duchovny 54:31
Will you direct again after Senior?
Robert Downey Jr. 54:35
That was really Chris Smith and Kevin Ford, and it was my invitation to start, taking the lead.
David Duchovny 54:42
But still it’s you’re creating the world, what a director is doing.
Robert Downey Jr. 54:45
Yes. I am both mortified to worst nightmare realize that I have no business doing it and I’m gonna have to fire myself. Also feel like I am still in an active denial of any and everything that would offer me freedom, feeling like I could complete my education as a human by doing that. I feel like I’ve had enough experiences, really honestly just lately in severe discipline, like doing a Broadway show, doing tech week, doing previews and rehearsing during the day. I was like, “All right, could I do this for something? This difficult, for months or maybe even two years with little breaks?”. Probably, would I crack up? I think I have the cojones to do it. The nice thing I know is, when I write and direct, I know my go to players. I know my snipers.
David Duchovny 55:54
So write it right as well.
Robert Downey Jr. 55:56
Sure.
David Duchovny 55:56
Write and direct.
Robert Downey Jr. 55:57
Sure. You heard it here first.
David Duchovny 56:00
I hope so.
Robert Downey Jr. 56:01
Thanks, dude.
David Duchovny 56:02
Thank you.
Robert Downey Jr. 56:05
Speaking of things to fail at, that’s the next one on the chopping block.
Robert Downey Jr. 56:09
Yeah. Again, it goes back to to Senior. It’s that thing. If the universe is saying anything to me, it’s that you shouldn’t be afraid to go fully into the family business and just because I revered him so much, and I don’t know where these inspirations came from, because I feel like he was touched with this.
David Duchovny 56:09
You’re saying he’s connected to some kind of creative deity?
David Duchovny 56:09
You talk about community, that’s what a director is doing, you’re building a community. It’s a temporary one, but that’s where your heart is. You are a soloist who longs to play in the orchestra or build the orchestra. I think it’s calling to you. Ialso think your sense of failure at this point, it’s cushioned. You’ve done okay. You’re Michael Jordan, going to play a little baseball, right? But I think it’s going to work out better. You know what I mean? It’s like, you’re still going to be.
Robert Downey Jr. 56:54
He really was. I don’t know if I’m a deity day player or if I really have that juice. But I do know that, like you said, if I just keep it simple and say, I want to create community, I want to tell a story, and I want to provide an experience, even if it’s a good hard time.
David Duchovny 57:45
Yeah.
Robert Downey Jr. 57:47
I think it’d be great.
Robert Downey Jr. 57:50
Do you kidding me? Thanks Duchovny.
David Duchovny 57:50
Thank you, Robert.
David Duchovny 58:07
Some thoughts about Robert Downey Jr. I think what’s so admirable about his journey is how he’s really threaded the needle between humility and humiliation. He could have felt humiliated. He could have felt defeated by certain failures in his life, but he took it as a lesson in humility, not humiliation. I think that’s a lot of what I’ve been seeking out in this podcast, Fail Better. It’s not about not failing. Fail Better is not failing. It’s not being humiliated and yet it’s not being delusional, like I didn’t fail. It’s like I did fail, but I’m still worthwhile. I may feel a little humiliated, but that’s just the growing of humility. Maybe a little humiliation is the seed of humility. Humility is a good. It’s a great good. It’s a master virtue, I think along with gratitude and patience. I’m working on it, all three. But, I think Robert has found a sweet spot that works for him, and that’s he wears it easily. He wears it gently. I think it’s easy to forget how hard won it must have been and I salute him for that.
David Duchovny 1:00:00
Thanks so much for listening to Fail Better. If you haven’t subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet, now’s the perfect time, because guess what? You can listen completely ad free. Plus you’ll unlock exclusive bonus content, like the full version ofmy post interview thoughts that you won’t hear anywhere else. That’s more of my recaps on interviews with guests like Cris Carter and Emily Deschanel. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple podcasts or head to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe on any other app that’s lemonadapremium.com. Don’t miss out. Fail Better is production of Lemonada Media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Kegan, Zema, Aria Bracci and Dani Matias. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Krupinsk, Brad Davidson and Jonathan Smith. The show is executive produced by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer and me, David Duchovny. The music is also by me and my band, the lovely Colin Lee, Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan, and Sebastian Modak. You can find us online at Lemonada Media and you can find me at David Duchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your prime membership.
