Robert Downey Jr. on making one final movie along with his dad Downey Sr. in ‘Sr.’

By Associated Press

NEW YORK: Robert Downey Jr. got down to make an goal portrait, a tribute to his father, the underground filmmaking maverick Robert Downey Sr. His dad had different plans.

“The key point in this is when he goes, ‘OK, I think we should split into two camps: The (expletive) movie and the one I’m gonna make,’” recollects Downey Jr., laughing. “I just go, ’Man, hats off to you, Pops.”

“Sr.,” directed by Chris Smith, is a piece of father-son concord greater than is perhaps prompt by Downey Sr.’s sometimes brusque assertion of filmmaking independence. It’s a sort of residence film, largely made by Downey Jr. however along with his father’s personal insertions peppered all through. It’s a son’s loving reckoning along with his iconoclast father, a freewheeling cult filmmaker whose experimental movies gave Downey Jr. his entry into moviemaking and whose outsized character did a lot to tell his son, for higher and worse. As Downey Jr. places it, “My dad and I are pretty flawed dudes.”

“It was a way to put something between us in our own relationship and closure. I didn’t know that it would be the quickest way to the heart of things,” Downey Jr. mentioned in a current interview by telephone from Los Angeles alongside his spouse and producing companion Susan Downey. “It’s like a little string you pull at, you know. And it winds up pulling you into a rabbit hole that I kind of needed to go down in order to process and ingest the totality of our relationship.”

Downey Sr. died final 12 months on the age of 85 after having Parkinson’s. That’s a part of the movie; Downey Sr. wished it to be. “Sr,” which debuted Friday on Netflix, was made with the intention of capturing his final days: a final stab at gaining some understanding of him, wrestling with their shared demons and, as soon as once more, making a film collectively. Some 50 years in the past, Downey Jr. made his debut in his father’s antic 1970 canine pound comedy, “Pound,” on the age of 5.

“I have pretty good recall for the entirely of this incarnation, for better or worse,” says Downey Jr., 57. “Those films and projects, I have very clear memories of that. I can still see the Mounds bar that was being handed to me. It was my first prop I ever had to deal with.”

Years earlier than he was the Oscar-nominated actor of “Chaplin” or the star of “Iron Man,” Downey Jr. was, as he says within the movie, “just Bob Downey’s kid for a long time.” Absurdist, spontaneous movies like 1971’s “Putney Swope” and 1972’s “Greaser’s Palace” made the elder Downey a pivotal countercultural provocateur who outlined himself exterior of the mainstream.

In “Sr.,” Downey Jr.’s reverence for his father is simple to see, as is their mutual affection for each other. But that doesn’t imply the outdated man was at all times straightforward on his well-known son. Every movie Downey Jr. ever made, he puzzled: “What will Sr. think?” Every 15 years or so would he get a thumb’s up.

“I hate to say it, but he was a bit of a snob. Susan and I did a couple Sherlock movies. He was like, ‘Cute.’ I did a bunch of the Marvel stuff and he goes, ‘Uh uh. Yeah, bomb, bomb. Jokes. Funny robots. I get it.’ I went, ‘Hm. Wow. OK,’” Downey Jr. says. “I remember that he thought ‘Less Than Zero’ was good. He thought ‘Chaplin’ was too episodic. And he really liked that German song I sang when I was 15.”

Again taking his father’s course, Downey Jr. sings that tune, with panache, within the movie. Though it’s straightforward, as a viewer, to see how a lot alike they’re, Downey Jr. is extra hesitant to outline what he inherited from his dad.

“I did not get his wildly optimistic ongoing super-curiosity,” he says. “I would never necessarily marvel at the fact that a duck had baby ducks and those ducks got big.”

Susan Downey disagrees. “You absolutely have your observation of the world. You’re hyper-aware of what’s going on around you and comment on it, much as Sr. did,” she says. “And I think you deal with anything uncomfortable through humor. This is a secret power that you guys have. There’s wonderful things that come with that, and then there’s probably avoidance patterns that are kept up because of that.”

On these ’70s movies, Downey Sr.’s cocaine use was rampant, an surroundings that absolutely had an affect on Downey Jr.’s personal struggles later with drug habit. It’s a degree that Downey Jr. raises within the movie: “We would be remiss not to discuss its effect on me,” Downey Jr. tells his father. He replies: “I would sure love to miss that discussion.”

But “Sr.” is in some ways a portrait of how each Downeys recovered, stabilized and located peace via household. Downey Jr. ascribes a metamorphosis in his father to his second spouse, Laura Ernst, who died in 1994, and his third spouse, Rosemary Rogers.

“I can relate to that, too, up until this current administration, the never-ending Susan Downey empire,” says Downey Jr. “I just have a lot more gratitude.”

When Downey Sr.’s well being waned, they moved the movie’s enhancing suite into his bed room. Susan Downey, too, misplaced her father, in 2020, to Parkinson’s. “He was a saint compared to us Downey boys,” Downey Jr. says. Movies have been how they linked. The final movie Downey Jr. and his father watched collectively was the music biopic satire “Walk Hard.” They laughed their heads off.

Since premiering “Sr.” on the Telluride Film Festival, Downey Jr. has seen how the movie turns into a projection of others’ experiences shedding a mum or dad. Toward the tip of the movie, Downey Jr. goes into his father’s room, with the digicam trailing, to search out some last solutions. “I was going to get to the bottom of it for once and all,” he says. Like most sons searching for such definitude, Downey Jr. got here out, he felt, emptyhanded.

But in “Sr.,” the 2 movies every are making finally seamlessly meld into one, suggesting a deeper understanding between Jr. and Sr. than both may need readily admitted. There are additionally ongoing discoveries.

After such an unconventional indoctrination to cinema as a child, Downey Jr.’s real, live-wire performances absolutely owe one thing to the frenetic power he had recognized on his father’s units. “I think I had the advantage of it already feeling natural before I came into that quote-unquote industrialized version of entertainment,” Downey Jr. says.

He typically discovered with different administrators one thing simply as snug and rewarding. He calls Richard Attenborough (“Chaplin”) “a super wise loving grandfather.” Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”) was “like a brother.” Movies have been and nonetheless are, Susan Downey says, “the family business.”

“It’s very odd, too, because we’re doing this film with Director Park (Chan-wook) now called ‘The Sympathizer’ where I’m doing a lot of different characters. It’s not experimental at all. It’s very well-fleshed out. But it’s kind of reminding me of the Sr. experience,” says Downey Jr. “You get dressed up, you try a character and we’re going to film it.”

Stuck by that recent realization, Downey Jr. exclaims: “We’re finally figuring everything out in real time! Live from the Gestalt Therapy Epicenter of Southern California!”

Then he sighs. “So I’m still working for Dad.”

NEW YORK: Robert Downey Jr. got down to make an goal portrait, a tribute to his father, the underground filmmaking maverick Robert Downey Sr. His dad had different plans.

“The key point in this is when he goes, ‘OK, I think we should split into two camps: The (expletive) movie and the one I’m gonna make,’” recollects Downey Jr., laughing. “I just go, ’Man, hats off to you, Pops.”

“Sr.,” directed by Chris Smith, is a piece of father-son concord greater than is perhaps prompt by Downey Sr.’s sometimes brusque assertion of filmmaking independence. It’s a sort of residence film, largely made by Downey Jr. however along with his father’s personal insertions peppered all through. It’s a son’s loving reckoning along with his iconoclast father, a freewheeling cult filmmaker whose experimental movies gave Downey Jr. his entry into moviemaking and whose outsized character did a lot to tell his son, for higher and worse. As Downey Jr. places it, “My dad and I are pretty flawed dudes.”

“It was a way to put something between us in our own relationship and closure. I didn’t know that it would be the quickest way to the heart of things,” Downey Jr. mentioned in a current interview by telephone from Los Angeles alongside his spouse and producing companion Susan Downey. “It’s like a little string you pull at, you know. And it winds up pulling you into a rabbit hole that I kind of needed to go down in order to process and ingest the totality of our relationship.”

Downey Sr. died final 12 months on the age of 85 after having Parkinson’s. That’s a part of the movie; Downey Sr. wished it to be. “Sr,” which debuted Friday on Netflix, was made with the intention of capturing his final days: a final stab at gaining some understanding of him, wrestling with their shared demons and, as soon as once more, making a film collectively. Some 50 years in the past, Downey Jr. made his debut in his father’s antic 1970 canine pound comedy, “Pound,” on the age of 5.

“I have pretty good recall for the entirely of this incarnation, for better or worse,” says Downey Jr., 57. “Those films and projects, I have very clear memories of that. I can still see the Mounds bar that was being handed to me. It was my first prop I ever had to deal with.”

Years earlier than he was the Oscar-nominated actor of “Chaplin” or the star of “Iron Man,” Downey Jr. was, as he says within the movie, “just Bob Downey’s kid for a long time.” Absurdist, spontaneous movies like 1971’s “Putney Swope” and 1972’s “Greaser’s Palace” made the elder Downey a pivotal countercultural provocateur who outlined himself exterior of the mainstream.

In “Sr.,” Downey Jr.’s reverence for his father is simple to see, as is their mutual affection for each other. But that doesn’t imply the outdated man was at all times straightforward on his well-known son. Every movie Downey Jr. ever made, he puzzled: “What will Sr. think?” Every 15 years or so would he get a thumb’s up.

“I hate to say it, but he was a bit of a snob. Susan and I did a couple Sherlock movies. He was like, ‘Cute.’ I did a bunch of the Marvel stuff and he goes, ‘Uh uh. Yeah, bomb, bomb. Jokes. Funny robots. I get it.’ I went, ‘Hm. Wow. OK,’” Downey Jr. says. “I remember that he thought ‘Less Than Zero’ was good. He thought ‘Chaplin’ was too episodic. And he really liked that German song I sang when I was 15.”

Again taking his father’s course, Downey Jr. sings that tune, with panache, within the movie. Though it’s straightforward, as a viewer, to see how a lot alike they’re, Downey Jr. is extra hesitant to outline what he inherited from his dad.

“I did not get his wildly optimistic ongoing super-curiosity,” he says. “I would never necessarily marvel at the fact that a duck had baby ducks and those ducks got big.”

Susan Downey disagrees. “You absolutely have your observation of the world. You’re hyper-aware of what’s going on around you and comment on it, much as Sr. did,” she says. “And I think you deal with anything uncomfortable through humor. This is a secret power that you guys have. There’s wonderful things that come with that, and then there’s probably avoidance patterns that are kept up because of that.”

On these ’70s movies, Downey Sr.’s cocaine use was rampant, an surroundings that absolutely had an affect on Downey Jr.’s personal struggles later with drug habit. It’s a degree that Downey Jr. raises within the movie: “We would be remiss not to discuss its effect on me,” Downey Jr. tells his father. He replies: “I would sure love to miss that discussion.”

But “Sr.” is in some ways a portrait of how each Downeys recovered, stabilized and located peace via household. Downey Jr. ascribes a metamorphosis in his father to his second spouse, Laura Ernst, who died in 1994, and his third spouse, Rosemary Rogers.

“I can relate to that, too, up until this current administration, the never-ending Susan Downey empire,” says Downey Jr. “I just have a lot more gratitude.”

When Downey Sr.’s well being waned, they moved the movie’s enhancing suite into his bed room. Susan Downey, too, misplaced her father, in 2020, to Parkinson’s. “He was a saint compared to us Downey boys,” Downey Jr. says. Movies have been how they linked. The final movie Downey Jr. and his father watched collectively was the music biopic satire “Walk Hard.” They laughed their heads off.

Since premiering “Sr.” on the Telluride Film Festival, Downey Jr. has seen how the movie turns into a projection of others’ experiences shedding a mum or dad. Toward the tip of the movie, Downey Jr. goes into his father’s room, with the digicam trailing, to search out some last solutions. “I was going to get to the bottom of it for once and all,” he says. Like most sons searching for such definitude, Downey Jr. got here out, he felt, emptyhanded.

But in “Sr.,” the 2 movies every are making finally seamlessly meld into one, suggesting a deeper understanding between Jr. and Sr. than both may need readily admitted. There are additionally ongoing discoveries.

After such an unconventional indoctrination to cinema as a child, Downey Jr.’s real, live-wire performances absolutely owe one thing to the frenetic power he had recognized on his father’s units. “I think I had the advantage of it already feeling natural before I came into that quote-unquote industrialized version of entertainment,” Downey Jr. says.

He typically discovered with different administrators one thing simply as snug and rewarding. He calls Richard Attenborough (“Chaplin”) “a super wise loving grandfather.” Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”) was “like a brother.” Movies have been and nonetheless are, Susan Downey says, “the family business.”

“It’s very odd, too, because we’re doing this film with Director Park (Chan-wook) now called ‘The Sympathizer’ where I’m doing a lot of different characters. It’s not experimental at all. It’s very well-fleshed out. But it’s kind of reminding me of the Sr. experience,” says Downey Jr. “You get dressed up, you try a character and we’re going to film it.”

Stuck by that recent realization, Downey Jr. exclaims: “We’re finally figuring everything out in real time! Live from the Gestalt Therapy Epicenter of Southern California!”

Then he sighs. “So I’m still working for Dad.”