It was during the process of making the film and seeing his father's health begin to decline more rapidly that RDJ and his fellow filmmakers, as well as his wife Susan, realized what this film was really about. I got to do it with a generation of Downeys that are untouched by the ugliness of addiction "I have done so many things wrong and there's so many moments in my life I couldn't have been there, but just to get to do that is an enormous gift."Īgreeing "one hundred percent" in how impactful that moment was for him, RDJ said that with the perspective of distance from such an emotionally intimate project, he's come to understand that he went into it "kind of as a defense mechanism and an avoidance technique." "I can't believe I was there and I did it right," he shared. "So much of it reminded me of that experience," he told RDJ of the film, expressing how much "gratitude" he has that he was there at the end. He share that the scene of RDJ lying in the bed with his father at the end was particularly impactful as he remembers that experience almost exactly from his father's own death.Īfter a brief three-month battle with cancer, Dax's father succumbed to the disease in December 2012. Goodbye Is a Privilegeįor Dax, it was a palpable experience as he was able to relate directly to losing one's father. As his health declines, it's also a son attempting to reckon his complex relationship with his father and preparing to say goodbye. filming an avant-garde documentary about his own life. She saved my life and then lost hers.Robert Downey Jr. I wrote the script with my wife Laura who died of ALS at age 36. I wonder if they'll freak out.'" -Robert Downey Jr in Us, October 1996.ĭowney describes "Hugo Pool" as "the right kind of strange. He had to be ballsy to go out and say, 'No one's ever seen anything like this before. "My father was and still is my role model. babbling jerk, but if I knew then what I know now. I can't believe how we thought it was OK. I wouldn't do anything differently, except I wouldn't allow anyone to smoke marijuana. If Robert wanted to be wild, it was OK with me. Like his son, Robert Downey Sr battled drug addiction, describing it as "a horrible f-ing nightmare. His son Robert Downey Jr appeared in "Hugo Pool," the seventh of his father's films in which he has acted. He returned with "Hugo Pool" (1997), co-written with his late wife Laura, about a dedicated, beautiful and lonely Beverly Hills pool cleaner (Alyssa Milano) who becomes involved in the lives of her clients, particularly Floyd, an attractive man afflicted with ALS (the same disease that had felled Laura Downey). Downey wrote and directed "Too Much Sun" (1991), a weak farce about a competition between a brother and sister (both gay) to have a child first, so as to inherit a fortune from their father. Though his acting appearances have been few, he did play an ad agency head in "You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat" (1971), an NCAA investigator in "Johnny Be Good" (1988) and a recording studio manager in "Boogie Nights" (1997). With Chuck Barris, Downey co-wrote "The Gong Show Movie" (1980) and also directed "Rented Lips" (1988), scripted and produced by Martin Mull. A super-offbeat Jesus Christ parody with a Western setting, it offers some wonderful performances by Allan Arbus as a zoot-suited Jesus, Albert Henderson as head Greaser and Stan Gottlieb as the "wife" of a deformed Mexican with a lecherous yen for the Saviour, but despite the inspired hilarity, its 91 minute running time seems longer than that. Though his greatest success, "Putney Swope" appears dated today, and the richer-looking (Downey finally had some money to spend) "Greaser's Palace" (1972) may have withstood the test of time. Downey had worked in advertising and lampooned that business in the movie everyone associates with him, "Putney Swope" (1969), about the hilarious changes made by a token black member of an ad agency after he is accidentally elected Chairman of the Board. Described by an associate as "a big jovial bear," Robert Downey Sr translated his irreverent, mordant humor to the screen as the writer-director of several experimental cult classics of the late 1960s and early 70s.
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