Robert Downey Jr.: Rockin' Robert

Now that he has been meeting producers and directors on new projects, he finds that even killer charm wears thin. "People are petrified of getting down in a room to where you can't just push a project around like a dog pushing poop on a sidewalk--nosing at it, potentially to eat it at any moment. People don't really want to jump into the process and see what comes up for them. What scares people about me more than anything else is that I don't care if the film actually comes out or not. I'm interested in the process."

Recently, Downey failed to land a movie project he really got up for, Three of Hearts, about a male escort who comes between a lesbian couple. Unpaid and unasked, Downey says he completely rewrote the script outline. "Look, I said, 'Let's be responsible to the gay community, but let's also shock them out of thinking that a lesbian would never sleep with this guy.' That's bullshit. Most lesbian women I know have a guy that they have slept with or sleep with now and then. I said, 'Let's go beyond the righteousness of "a gay woman would," to "a person would." Why not have the male escort and the lesbian have a kid together?' They said, 'Ohhhhh, that's another can of worms.' Well, call me crazy, guys, but I kind of like to open cans of worms when I'm doing a movie."

Apparently, Downey had been opening cans of worms on the project all along. During a production meeting, he confronted one of the producers by asking: " 'Are you gay? Do you like the idea of another man's hand on your penis? Can you accept the fact that everyone is bisexual?' And they go, 'Oh! OH!, OHHHHHHHH!!!,'--every six minutes, the table would like blow up!" Downey wanted to pattern his portrayal after Montgomery Clift; the producers were thinking more along the lines of James Dean. "I said, 'Well, Dean was kind of a speedy bisexual' And the producers went, 'Funny, Robert. More coffee?' "

If Downey's version of the movie would not have played anywhere but big cities, at least no one could have accused him of playing it safe. "Given the opportunity, there's nothing of myself that I won't expose," he says, rubbing his hands through his locks. "I think a lot of it is sexual. I don't have any hangups about 'guy' stuff, you know? It's a very homophobic business. I know gay people in positions of power. A: everybody knows. B: it shouldn't matter. I tell them, 'You're already where you want to be, it's not going to affect you one way or another."

Since Downey is handing out bromides like Dr. Ruth, what about rumors--despite liaisons with a female juggler studying circus at NYU and his present, long-time live-in relationship with Sarah Jessica Parker--that his own sexual predilections have run beyond the straight and narrow? "Although I guess, at least in my actions, I've been heterosexual, I think 'heterosexuality' and 'homosexuality' are overspecifications. A lot of my peer group think I'm an eccentric bisexual, like I may even have an ammonia-filled tentacle or something somewhere on my body. That's ok. Being relaxed about sexuality is something you're born with. It's just part of your personality before you show up. Sometimes I'll be with Parker and I'll just say, 'She's a girl and I'm a guy.' Those are just words. It's so funny because some parts of our relationship are so completely the opposite. In the kitchen, she's more masculine and I'm like, 'Show me how to do things.' I saw Shirley MacLaine's show and there's something about her that reminds me of a young boy scout and I said, 'Yeah, that's a well-rounded person.' Cary Grant was very feminine, even though he's completely charming." He adds in a booming, authoritatively macho voice: "And acceptable."

So Downey has never been with a guy? "Not sexually," he answers, then hisses, laughing: "How dare you? If I had, I wouldn't want to say it because I wouldn't want a studio head to think I sucked dick for beer money. Or to think that I was less capable of portraying someone who needed to be very masculine." Changing the subject, I ask Downey about the finger splint on his hand. "A friend of mine and I played racquetball and he was walking up the stairs in front of me-- speaking of if I'd ever been with a man--" Downey cocks his head, stares off, and rubs his chin, musing, "Did my cousin suck my dick when I was five? Shit, you know that therapy might be a better idea than I thought." Returning to his anecdote, he continues: "Anyway, my friend was walking up a flight of stairs in front of me--I had just beat him three games in a row, which I usually don't--and I wanted to literally put my fingers so far into his ass that they would need to be excavated. There would need to be a dig. As it turned out, he was probably wearing some Kevlar boxers or something because I fractured the shit out of my finger." Even Dr. Ruth would leave that one to Freud.

Will Downey and Parker, who keep a perfect house with lots of deco furniture, pink bedroom walls, and a red lacquered baby grand, get married? He shakes his head "no." "Relationships go through stuff. We've been together since we were so young, with a '],' that I think we're just starting to find ourselves. Part of everyone wants to live alone and then part of you says, 'Nothing better's going to happen than this.' We're both growing up a lot. We're sticking it out."

What Downey really wants to do now is develop. To help himself decide on whether he is "more of a character actor or a song-and-dance man, a writer, director," he is piecing together with a partner his own projects--on his own timetable. "Part of me is really lazy. A lot of my peers, whatever they're driven by--resentment, motivation, both--I can't be bothered with. Like, to get up at eight and read the trades? But, about a year ago, I realized that I'd been in enough films where the story didn't work to know why. I don't need to go to 'How to Make a Good Script Great' classes to know that it's simple: you set it up and pay it off and, like, make it interesting." Oh, so, that's what Robert Towne and Nicholas Kazan' spend months doing for about a zillion dollars a pop. Thanks, Robert. "Writing is probably what I want to wind up doing. My dad has always considered himself, primarily, a writer. It's really hard, except when it comes, it's like channeling."

Perhaps his meditations are to be held accountable for his choice of projects: a science fiction tale, and a "Chinatown meets The Sting," based on the true experiences of the guy who drove his car while Downey was making True Believer in San Francisco. He is already thinking about co-stars. Recently, after being "blown away" by watching Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success, the movie in which the Bronx-born, '50s glamour puss won industry respect, he tracked down the 66-year-old actor. If Downey were on the prowl for mentors, he could not have chosen more aptly. Curtis has survived being a reigning teen movie idol of the '50s, fighting for critical acclaim and fighting off emotional problems, bigtime substance abuse, and recovery. "People have said that I remind them of him," Downey explains. "The minute I talked with him, there was this understanding that, okay, there's going to be a transference thing here. I almost felt like saying, 'Hi, I'm the new you.' "

Having also recently spent time "doing Western saddles by day and Beluga by night" at the Utah ranch of his Air America producer Dan Melnick, another mentor, Downey allows that the common ground between him and Curtis that he feels comfortable discussing is Jewishness. "I'm really starting to get in touch with this Jewish thing," he explains. "I've always felt I'm not Italian, I'm not Irish, I'm not Jewish, I'm just me-- which is good in some ways. I looked at a picture of a friend's father, a Jewish guy around in the '50s, and I thought, 'My God, that looks like my grandfather,' who looks like my father, who I guess I look like."

Some would mark as a comedown (or is it a comeuppance?) Downey's next role, "a young prick producer in Armani suits," in Soapdish, an ensemble satire directed by Michael Hoffman (Some Girls) on the world of daytime TV sob stories. This time, the picture doesn't rise or fall on his charisma; he just has to steal it from such co-stars as Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Whoopi Goldberg, and Carrie Fisher. "I want to take a modern-day Mephistopheles kind of angle on it," he says of the role. "I want to make him more likeable than I am, which is pretty hefty. I make the mistake of stepping down to characters as opposed to shooting up. It's an ego thing to think, 'This character is a little faction of me, a little of that, but not endowed with any of the things that make me me.' This time, I want to make people uncomfortable liking this guy, knowing that, underneath, he really is still an asshole." Which is as perceptive a comment on his rakish appeal as Robert Downey, Jr. is ever likely to make.

To Downey, the future's so bright, he's got to wear shades. "I've just gotta show up. It would be really nice to be in a great film, but it's not time yet. If I ever wind up being in a great film, it'll mean so much more to me now. But I know this: I'm going to get much better."

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Stephen Rebello is the author of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho and a frequent contributor to these pages.

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