The best thing that happened at Comic Con this year was the unveiling of the Iron Man footage. If I was to compare this year to last year I would say Iron Man is this year’s 300 and if Paramount looks at it that way, they might now start seeing dollar signs. Because after buzz started up around 300 last year it ended up raking in $210 million at the box-office.
Wondering what 300 and Iron Man have in common outside of Comic Con success? Well, while Robert Downey Jr. is known he isn’t a fanboy goto guy very much in the way that Gerard Butler was known by only cinephiles before he took on the lead role in 300. However, Downey is a real actor, if you get my drift and along with Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jon Favreau I had a chance to sit down with Downey along with a few colleagues and chat about his upcoming turn as Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, and just as it was for Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang… it was entertaining to say the least.
Is Tony Stark the Man of Steel?
Robert Downey Jr. (RD): Darn betcha he’s not! Trick question – I’m ready.
How were you approached for the role?
RD: I went to Arad’s offices in Beverly Hills, a little intimidating. You see all the posters and you go “Oh wow! I wonder if I could get a job with these guys.” I was literally walking in for a general meeting. I walk in and there’s Jon and they basically interviewed me for a while and I thought I did okay and I left.
Then I get a call and Jon’s like, “I think you’d be great. I mean the board members and stuff back in New York won’t do it…”
Anyway, I said, “Nah I really think it is meant to be,” and Avi walked me out and said, “I really liked you.” Then a couple months later I screen tested and did well and here we are. Kind of like Chaplin, same deal, different decade. [smirking]
Now that you are here at Comic Con has it dawned on you just how big the expectation for this film is?
Nowadays the trailer is the film. If you don’t have a good trailer you have a shit film. If you have a great trailer you might have a good film. I’ll take any payoff I can get and nowadays it is so few and far between and it seems like the machine moves so fast.
You’ve had such a renaissance with your career, did you imagine when you went through those difficult periods that you would come back so big with films like Good Night, and Good Luck, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and now this…
RD: Well they say the bigger the set back the bigger the comeback. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that people take that to heart. It’s kind of one of those agnostic journeys. I don’t want to be a Joseph Campbell chapter, but most everyone’s life is one mythology or another and I guess that’s why it’s there, to let you know those stories mean something.
Like Tony [Stark], I took some hits mostly in my own making, but everyone transforms, some of it is just a function of age. I’m not in my twenties. I’m not in my thirties. I’m 42 and we wrapped this and I am on to the next thing. I’m in great shape and I have tons of energy and I just have more gratitude than I can even bear to express. You could say that’s because I have something to weigh it against or you could say it’s because I am a grateful guy nowadays, but when people ask me, “What made you want to do this?” I say to them, “What would make you not?”
Or, if you are going to be in your mid-forties by the time you maybe do the second installment and then in getting up to that age where 30 years ago – I always think, “Was that Cary Grant when he was like 50, 60 or 70?” Then it starts to get a little creepy and nowadays it is so easy to be creepy.
What about this film made it easy for you to invest yourself and feel comfortable and really be connected to the material?
RD: Well they were smart; I mean Avi and all the Marvel guys, to get Jon [Favreau] because Jon is a talent magnet of a certain kind. Then once I was in with him and Terrence [Howard] was cast, and he was in well before I was being considered, and then he was on my side and then we said we needed the greatest Pepper Potts we could think of. Suddenly I am on the phone and Chris Martin is answering saying, “Yeah?” I’m like, “Hey, it’s Robert Downey, is Gwyneth there?”
“What?”
“No really, it’s Robert Downey Jr. really…”
He goes, “Robert Downey fucking Jr. is on the phone.”
And then we really, really, really went after Jeff Bridges hard because he was definitely reticent, and he is, he’s a very, very picky guy. He’s the Dude.
So just turning this thing to where if you get all these folks together you can’t just call everyone in and show them a bunk time and some crap script and say, “Stand over there and scream and throw your arms around, we’ll fix it later.” They’d be like, “Character… I’d like to have a character too.”
“Okay, we’re on it!”
Will you keep Iron Man’s alcoholism?
RD: Truth be told, I had a lot of creative input and often days we’d come in and I would say, “Boy I’ve seen that in…” – I went in basically every day, even when we had a good script I would go in and take the pages and I threw them on the ground and Jon would be like, “Good morning!”
I would be like [he starts pounding the table], he would say, “Calm down, have a piece of Nicorette.” I stopped smoking; he was on a diet…
Truth be told, that tension between us really raised the bar a lot. But as far as that Demon In A Bottle story and all of that… I don’t know if it’s gonna be a bottle or if it’s his downfall… I really loved when he just got shot by one of the girls, to me that would be a great opener for a movie. Wouldn’t it?
[Terrence Howard walks over and shares Roberts chair]
Will you be making Weird Science 2?
Terrence Howard: Oh, Weird Science 2!
RD: Believe me, before this came along it was on my mind.
Iron Man hit theaters on May 2, 2008, click here for more pics and info.
