Robert Downey Jr Reflects On His Journey from Chaotic Upbringing to Iron Man

You got obsessed about the Iron Man screen test in the same way? You would not believe it. I would not believe it. Well, I mean, at that point, thank God Disney had approved me playing a role in a Disney film. And 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. And knowing that I was going to screen test and knowing that the odds might be stacked against me, but I refused 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. Which honestly, it flew in the face of every failure I'd ever witnessed, participated in, or brought upon myself. How so? 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. And then it was just this growing sense of I am ready. I am prepared. I am well. I am sound of mind and body. And I see a way to not just me, me, me. I get mine. Look at everybody. I'm on a different level, but more that 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. 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 spend 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, and I had a great time catching up with him. We started this conversation by drinking his seriously delicious java. Happy coffee. And you want to let it settle for a second. Okay. But we can, I hope the sound of pouring this, while we're probing each other. We have the sound of beautiful iced coffee pouring over ice. It's happy coffee. Happy coffee. Well, let me look. ****, it's ready. Try it. Cheers. Oh, that is good. Yeah. We don't **** around. Howdy, neighbor. It's so wild, man. We are literally a hop, skip, and a jump from each other. We are. And having known you literally forever, and then having been able to reunite on The Sympathizer a couple clicks back down the road. It's so funny. It's why any neighborhood you're in, it can be the gift that keeps on giving. In most cases, strong fences make for good neighbors. But dude, this is great. I know. We have to take advantage of it. Yeah. Well, we do go back a long ways because of Chaplin. Which not many people know that Robert Downey was in Chaplin. They think of it as my movie, really. It's a big time. As Raleigh Totherow. So you have the best line in the movie. Which is it? It is, hey, Raleigh, how's the light? It's better down at Barney's Bar. I said that? Yeah, it was supposed to be Barney's Beanery, but I think we were worried. Worried about Barney's Beanery. It might have just been called Barney's. Yeah. But what I remember, I don't know if I've ever thanked you for this, but when I got that job and when I was on that set, and that set was just chocked full of big time actors, and you were just coming up at that point. I mean, you were 25? Yeah, 26. 26. 25 and 26, yeah. And it was really, for me, watching you work and watching the other guys work, like Ackroyd and Kevin Kline, as I recall, and 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 **** I'm doing. I don't know. I just started. I don't know. Am I fooling myself? Am I an idiot? And 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. It's human. Yeah. I see the work. I see what's going on. Well, and just to go back to that, Kline, Ackroyd, these are guys who are in the middle of their sweet spot. Right. And 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. Right. And 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, you know, 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 and 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. And the times that I wasn't approaching that, he was wishing I would just get back to it. Well, but you were also embodying a known figure. I mean, there was no real hanging back. I mean, you had a legendary image to portray. And funnily enough, you know, 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 to just say, well, this is my approach and I'm going all in. And at the same token, it's just amazing to be sitting here with you. That was... 1990? 33 years ago plus. When I was reading up on you, it's weird to read up on someone you know, because what happens invariably is I, you know, we're storytellers. We look for the story. We look for a pattern. We look to try and put it in a template. And, you know, I look at you and I'm thinking, okay, this is a father-son story because I'm watching Senior again. And I just have to say, that is a beautiful movie. That is a work of art. And I don't know if you haven't seen it. It's on Netflix. It's a movie that Robert did about and with his dad. And in fact, I mean, 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. I mean, it's the perfect Oedipal film. It's like, who's going to win? The son or the dad? But does your dad's version exist? It does. Can I see it someday? A million percent. As a matter of fact, my friend Kevin Ford, who was the one that dad co-opted into Team Senior and Chris Smith, who was the de facto director, just to set it up a little bit, the conceit was it's this documentary that really happened as an avoidance pattern between me dealing with my dad being terminal. And 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 and what's the project and all that stuff. So I never wanted to feel like I was duping my dad into doing what I thought he should do. And 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? And I even said it to him at one point, I was like, dad, you don't really have a third act until you kick it, so what's the trajectory here? And at that point, he was very aware of the clock, and 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. You draw a line directly to that. 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, and into telling my dad's story and our story and the family story. So it's kind of like, it's not being afraid to grab the steering wheel of the narrative and try to steer it in an honest direction. Well, what I found, there's so many things that I, if you don't mind, that I'd love to talk about about this movie, because when I was thinking of what is the story that I would want Robert to tell or enjoin Robert to tell today, and it is that exactly. What is shocking is that you say at one point in the film, I was known as Bob Downey's son for a long time, and that there is this kind of sense of entering into his arena as a director as well. And for me, the most moving part of the whole thing is when it is said at some point, I don't know if it's you, I think it's you. You say, you're talking about acting and starting acting, because you were how old when you acted in your dad's films? Five. Five, six, seven, yeah. 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 when you think, 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. We all enjoy it with you. I'm not talking about narcissistically. I'm not talking about exhibitionistically. I'm talking about, you know what? Enthusiasm is a word, it's a Greek derived word that means to have God in you. And I feel like you have that enthusiasm. So lowercase g, God, is what I'm talking about. I'll take it. So this is what I'm saying. And when you complicate that with a boy just wanting to spend time with his father, then I'm like, oh, this is a story. Boy, it is. It is my story. And you're dead on because it's that Russian doll's trippy thing of which doll is trauma, what doll's outside of that one, what's the overall, well, what's the one that you got to take off right away just so you can actually even do the job. And I think in enthusiasm, when it's not entirely exhibitionism, but, and, you know, because we had those times when we were doing scenes just, you know, year before last, we were like, oh my God, we're out there doing that. This feels great. Yes, but I got that from you. Like you put me back in touch with, I mean, not that I've lost it completely, but working with you, there is that sense. And I learned that again with you, because I would like to bring that to other people when I work with them, you know, the sense of, well, it is really just play, really. So it's the sense of play. And your father said, you know, for the moment you were on film, you were possessed. That was the word he used. But it's really the sense of play that I think is the enthusiasm. And I also think it's hard to have a discussion about failure when you're talking about play, because there is no failure or success in play. No, but there's the redefining what failure is and what it can lead to. And look, the whole story of my upbringing and my family is the failure of the family to capitulate to its own demise and indulgence and self-destruction, you know, under the auspices of being artistically pure, which really, I think, was co-opted by a genuine collective narcissistic, addictive type of entity. So speaking of possessed, I mean, that is that's, you know, but again, it was the it was one of the spirits of the time was not just counterculture, but even like counter reality. And even in, you know, some recovery groups, when they're talking about you have to find a power greater than yourself. You know, some of you may be agnostic because in the past, you were to organize religion. I was like, my religion was we were essentially a drug cult. Although I still had a work ethic and I was doing the Kiwanis solo festival and singing madrigals. And there was things about our bananas life that were as normal as you could imagine. Being an East Coast guy, you know, there was something like Christmas, you know, we had communities that were friends. I went to school, often as not. And there were all of the trappings of just being a kid kind of growing up in the 60s, 70s. 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 wasn't quite as revolutionary as your dad. And that's one of the things my parents were much more afraid of falling through any kind of economic cracks. So, you know, for me, it was like, you know, get an education, get a job, you know, make enough money to survive. The gutter was always a possibility because my mother grew up in a small town in Scotland. You know, what did you get for Christmas mom as a kid? An orange, you know, that kind of a thing. So like it was she had tumors in her feet because they couldn't afford shoes that were big enough. Sure. It was a 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 so fearlessly free and vulnerable. And so I was like, oh, how did he get that? But, you know, I realize now, you know, you were raised in it and you didn't get the other part. You know, you didn't get the the backstop or the structure part, you know? Yeah. But, you know, you seek what's missing pretty quickly. And this is not untypical. You know, there's the crazy eccentric family. And then there's one of the kids. Honestly, growing up, it was my sister. She was like, they're bananas. Oh, I'm going to private school. Send me to boarding school. I want to go to Woodstock, Vermont, and I'm going to just get a real education. Which she did. And I wasn't smart enough to have the scholastic chops that my sister did. And I really liked hanging out with all the grownups. But I also knew that eventually I wasn't just going to be, you know, a little Bobby, Bobby Jr. And that at a certain point, it did not seem like my folks had much of a plan for me. And then all of a sudden it was already just happening when they broke up. And what age were you? I was 12. We were in the same. Okay. 12, upstate New York and Woodstock. I saw it, heard it all happen. The skirt and the suitcase, the affair, the this and that. And I was like, oh my God, it's over. And 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. And that was the early days. But 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. So you're not really going to school at 12? Well, 12, 13, 14, we're in New York. And then after a while, I couldn't hack it. And I went out to California. I capitulated. And with some guilt, I actually started having a bit of a real life, actually going to school, actually 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. And I was singing at the Santa Monica Place Mall, wearing a mohair suit, singing madrigals during Christmas. And 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 outcome. Every three to five years, it's all going to go to ----. 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. And next thing you know, I was in Rochester doing regional theater, which is so weird too, speaking of these massive circles and cycles, because I was just at Lincoln Center doing a play for the first time, let alone a Broadway play for the first time in 40 years, just six months ago. And 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 get off this train, I got to figure out a way. And 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. Well, to kind of base a life on enthusiasm, as I see it in you, or charm or whatever you want to call it, it's sand through your fingers, right? And 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 ******* death. There was a sense of play in me that just wasn't being attended to. So 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, and your dad is very kind of dry. You present more like your mom. She's like the invisible heart of that movie. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, it's all Elsie Ann Ford, Elsie Downey, mom. Yeah, for sure. And the other thing was her devotion to him and her unwavering blind commitment to whatever direction he was taking the circus in. And 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. And that was regional theater, and that was off-off Broadway and off-Broadway. And then eventually, and thankfully that was, here's a name from the past, great actor Craig Sheffer turns down a role in this film starring James Spader called Tough Turf. Tough 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 like weirdo rehash of like a modern Romeo and Juliet. And thank God, I've been put on tape to be whatever Milo is offbeat buddy, and 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. And they said, hey, short notice, but you're cast, and we need you to fly to LA tomorrow. And I was like, I can't, I can't, I don't, I can't afford to fly to LA. They go, no, no, no, no, no. They're sending you a first class ticket on American. I was like, what? And then I never looked back. This is what you said. You say, we're here, we do some stuff, and then we die. And again, this is true. And this is, it's simple, but it's deep. How do we get in touch with that every day, though? Because there's a lot of noise. On a daily basis coming to us, and we have to somehow touch the truth to live right. Well, I'm looking over your shoulder at Bobby and Jack there, the Kennedy brothers. They came, they did some stuff, and boy, did they leave with an exclamation point. And that's the 60s. And then in the 70s, I was trying to figure out, do I even know how to become a teenager, let alone shape a life? And 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 do 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. And so what a blessing that was. And then I probably need to check in with my shrink before we get into the 90s too much. But Jesus H. Crimney, it's just the turns come. So 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. And you start locking into, like, 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. Right. When you look back at that time, obviously the philosophy of AA or whatever that is, is important. It's important to me as well. I mean, because, well, first of all, anonymity seems an impossibility anymore. Yeah, but you can act as if. Act as if anonymous. Yeah, you can act as if. And what's really important is the anonymity of others. Right. It's okay for me to say what I am. It's not okay for me to say anything about anyone else. And generally speaking, the truth be told is, it's hilarious. I'm one of like 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. You take the call. One must. Yeah. If for no other reason that it's always interesting to have the there but for the grace of God and also the, you know what, the here we do stuff and we die. Sometimes we're here we die and then we do stuff and those deaths are critical. And as long as they're not entirely physical, they can wind up being what makes us. 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, you know, is the responsibility and the honesty. And because I was never honest before that. I was always kind of withholding something or afraid to be fully myself as the idea being if I was fully myself, then I wouldn't be lovable or acceptable or something. And I also found, interestingly, before I was exposed to that, I was very kind of heady or psychological and I thought, okay, I'm gonna figure this out. You know, I'm gonna figure me out. I'm gonna tell my story. I'm gonna figure out my edible story, whatever it was, make my movie and then I'll be okay, you know. And then I began to think that understanding is kind of the booby prize and that right action actually was going to lead to right thinking. And to me, that was so topsy-turvy. It's nuts, isn't it? Nobody ever said that to me. Everybody tried to, you know, you go to ethics, you go to Bible class, you know, you learn what it is to be a good person, but you don't learn how to be a good person. No, and you know, nobody wants to do the next right thing every time. Yeah. And again, we come from my, hopefully the last vestige of a written, whatchamacallit, it's a get-out-of-jail-free card for having a ---- moral psychology. I mean, 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. But you know, 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, so we kind of made light of it and act like, hey, maybe that's the way, because it seemed like the way a lot of us were comporting ourselves, that was definitely on the table. And now it really does seem like 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, you know, and I know how to suit up and show up. And I do love, 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, you know, and I like it. And I like like-minded people, and I am crazy for community. The community, you feel like that is your family? It's this, it's my recovery world, it's definitely my family, created family. But it's also this odd thing of just like, you know, you wind up kind of like taking on a responsibility to put the best version of yourself. Were you afraid that your enthusiasm was somehow part and parcel? Air quotes. That it had to do with drug taking or drinking? That it was accessed that way? No, because I never found, I never found that I was like doing great anything when I was, you know, in my disease. I always felt a little bit ashamed because, you know, everyone has a, you know, the body keeps the score, and you know, and history was there. And I was also seeing, you know, if you look at this in the context of all the folks we lost in the 80s and 90s, you know, cross-culturally, it was kind of like, this is hugely irresponsible to not address this. And I had also been one of those people who was like, you know, trying to get sober forever. But 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 ---- or pathological. It just meant that so many things were repressed and unconscious. And even back then, going back to like when we first met, I remember like one of the first turns was like prepping to play chaplain and realizing this is any and 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, which by the way, he, by the time he had cast me, all the endorsement I ever could have wanted from this incredible iconic writer, director, you know, philanthropist guy who was already there. But then as we know, you know, the best part of any job is the casting announcement. You're like, God, that looks good for us. And then you got to go do it. How long did you have to prepare? Well, they kept pulling the financing. So it extended and extended. So 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, is it, is it Carrico? Who are the boys who did Total Recall or, you know, whatever. Mario Kassar, God bless him. And so I kept having more time to prep and I went quite obsessive with it. The next time I got that obsessive 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. You got obsessed about the Iron Man screen test in the same way? You would not believe it. I would not believe it. Well, I mean, 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. And that meant that Disney said I was hireable. And 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. And knowing that I was going to screen test and knowing that the odds might be stacked against me unless, you know, 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. And so let me know if and when it comes back around. But like you said, I'm just going to train. I've been clean long enough that I now just needed a reason to live aside from my firstborn and my ex and Susan and, you know, all that stuff. Obsessed. How long was that process? It was months. But you know, when you're running things and you're running it and then you're off book and then you go, **** it, I'm running it again. And then you think about it and then you make more notes. And then I had like a little gahunzit of like things and like this Korean energy healer I'd been to. And I just started building up this almost prayer wheel of why not me? Which honestly, it flew in the face of every failure I'd ever witnessed, participated in, or brought upon myself. How so? 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 like speaking spells in Latin and like bad people shouldn't be able to do that. You know what I mean? Or only bad people do that. And then it was just this growing sense of I am ready, I am prepared, I am well, I am sound of mind and body. And I see a way to not just me, me, me, I get mine, look at everybody, I'm on a different level. But more that 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. You know, again, 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. When you spoke, or when you said in Senior that when you're acting, you're with your father, it made me realize that I get that through writing. My father was a writer. I do, of course. And I realized that I'm speaking to my ancestors, you know, or that I'm joining the conversation. And it made me think of you, you know, joining the conversation when you're too young to know exactly what the **** you're really joining. And then to go back to him at whatever age you were a few years ago, and to start that conversation again, and to start it as a friendly competition in a way, like two guys are gonna make different movies. There's so much in that film that is so personal. It's so personal that it kind of, it goes by, you know, because people are not accustomed to seeing that kind of unvarnished approach under the guise of art. Because you don't, you know, you're still charming. And, you know, there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of just like you breaking down. It's not like that. But there is so much just in the setup. That's what got me. And when you say at the very end, and forgive me for bringing up a difficult moment. No, please. But you say to your dad, I mean, I can't even like, you say, closer, get closer, get closer, and then closer. You're talking about the camera, but you're not 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. In the moment, I was just daunted by the fact that that's where I was at in my trajectory with him. And it's so easy for us, right? You're a prolific writer. You write a bunch of great books. You know, you look back on it and you go, well, how did you do that? And when you did this and you're gonna like, oh, I was. I don't know. And it's all these, 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. You can't make this documentary seem like a senior movie. Chris Smith and I will not ******* allow it, because you need to make a clear narrative. That's how you take the mantle, just in personal responsibility, is you tell this in acts. And 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. And 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, when I think, and I actually found it very brave of him, he did not die like a coward. No, Charlie Parkinson. Yeah, he did not go gently into that good night. He went, I think, he was spared that cruel fate of having to have the last image of someone who's been such an imprint on so many people now, too. I mean, gosh, there's some people who I will still only ever be senior's kid, Paul Thomas Anderson, and 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. And 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 family propensity for drug dependency. But honestly, he was impervious to that. He was just more like, there's artists and there's everybody else for Norman. But honestly, I'm so glad that this is where you wanted to hang for a bit because it's been a couple years and the great thing about Netflix is you are the bell of the ball and everybody gets a chance to see it. And the great thing about Netflix is then it winds up like you're in some ******* drunk dude's saddlebag and there's no way to find you again and you just maybe never even know it was ever done. Well, you did give it a title that's hard to, the algorithm doesn't like, right? Because I was like, senior, senior, SR, it's SR. Yes, quote, capital S, lowercase r, period. Well, I just went through this with Bucky ******* Dent. They made me call it Reverse the Curse. Nobody found it anyway. So you can have curse in the title, but you can't have a curse in the title. So Bucky ******* Dent, no, but Reverse the Curse, okay. But what I want to say to you about you in that film is you're so gentle with your dad. And I know there's got to be, there's ambivalence. I mean, the movie, it's in the ambivalence of how I was raised in this chaos. And here's my dad who gave me the gift of that chaos that I wouldn't, because you are a guy, you're a magical being, Robert. You are, you, no, don't look at me that way. I just, let me tell you the straight truth. You are, 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 and a life that is solid. But your dad kind of brought that to you, you know, and to honor that in him and to withhold the kind of, but you didn't give me the other stuff. Yeah. You know what he did do was he had a moment, not like mine, where he said, I'm done. And so for the last- Without AA, he just said done. Yeah, definitely not the way I did it, but a way that was like a white lightning moment. Those things that you hear about in the literature, but they very seldom occur. And then he really did a karma cleanup tour. I mean, he was on the- I don't just mean drugs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a revolutionary, right? Completely. And you have that spirit. But he was also just a absolute accessible, still him, but he settled and was accessible and was consistent and was communicative and caring and just very strangely dependable, which almost made it even ******* worse because you go, wait a minute, wait a minute. Nobody believes you. Yeah. Robert, what are you talking about? Your dad's solid as hell. And it's weird too because it's these, it's the playing with extremes. Like, yes, I can thrive in chaos to this day, but I love the organized caboose. I love order. I love design. I love, 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. Well, I see in your work, I see the preparation creates the order or at least the illusion of order or the hope for order. And 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. But I think once you, I've not worked with you a lot, but I know that when I'm looking at you in a scene, all that stuff, you just let it wash over you and you don't force it in the scene. And then you're like opening the door and saying, okay, Dionysius or Pan or whoever, come on in. Let's see what you want to do. And that's- I hope so. Yeah. I mean, that's- At best. And, but look, we all have- No, you can't get it every day. Nobody can get it every day. No, we all have our tolerances too. Like there's only so many, seeing that everybody only has the tolerance to manage so many things at once. And 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. Right. When I know that the circumstance demands additional activity on top of being more off book than hopefully anyone around me because I have to carry a certain section of it. So you've got to lead by example, this and that. So I'm also, and I've seen you operate this way too. You just got to be flexible and you need different modes and you need to, different car, different manual, different toolkit. Can you read this for me? Yes. There's a line missing. Yeah. Three miles west of Skag Mountain in the Valley of Pain- So I didn't know where that was. An evil devil monster. His name is Bingo Gas Station Motel Cheeseburger with a side of aircraft noise and 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. And 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. I agree. It's the end of your movie. Yeah. It's the last clip and I was like, **** me. That is, that's a creed. And that's something your dad wrote. And it really moved me. I didn't know. I haven't seen the film. And I just... Oh, do check out Groocer's Palace. If you see one senior film, to me, it's the one that's the most senior, the most about our family, believe it or not. And it's... You see, you play a kid who is killed by... Who gets his neck slit by God and then is resurrected. And his mother finds him. And is given back to his mother. Couldn't be much more autobiographical than that. I know. And this was 72. Speaking of which, almost 50 years later, 50 years later, almost to the month. I'm back in Santa Fe, where we were living when he shot Groocer's Palace. And it's a place called the Dragonfly Club. Where I remember a drug deal went bad between some of the Groocer's Palace crew members and Dennis Hopper's ******* Hollywood motorcycle gang. And it had to be squashed. And I was like, this is weird. And I was there 50 years later, staying about 40 steps away from this place doing Oppenheimer. And 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. And you, will you direct again after Senior? I mean, that was really Chris Smith and Kevin Ford. And it was my invitation to start taking the lead. But still, you're creating the world. That's what a director is doing. Yes, I am both mortified to worst nightmare, realize that I have no business doing it. And I'm going to have to fire myself. And also feel like I am still in an active denial of any and everything that would offer me freedom. And feeling like I could complete my education as a human by doing that. But 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? Like for something this difficult for months and months and months, or maybe even two years with little breaks? Probably, would I crack up? I don't know. I think I have the cojones to do it. And dude, you're someone, I mean, you know, the nice thing I know is if and when I write in direct, I know my go-to players. I know my snipers, I know my people. So write as well. Sure. Write and direct. You heard it here first. I hope so. Thanks, dude. Thank you. Speaking of things to fail at, that's the next one on the chopping block. Well, I think, I mean, you talk about community, and 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. So I think it's calling to you. I also 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. And so, but I think it's going to work out better. But you know what I mean? It's like, you're still going to be. Yeah. I mean, look, again, it goes back to senior, and it's that thing of, 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 story. He was connected to some kind of creative deity. He really was. And 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. Yeah. I think it'd be great. Thank you, Robert. Are you kidding me? Thanks to Covney. 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. You know, 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. And I think that's a lot of what I've been seeking out in this podcast, fail better. It's not about not failing. Failing better is not 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. And 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 he wears it easily. He wears it gently. So I think it's easy to forget how hard one it must have been. And I salute him for that. Thanks so much for listening to Fail Better. If you haven't subscribed to Lemonado 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 of my post-interview thoughts that you won't hear anywhere else. That's more of my recaps on interviews with guests like Chris Carter and Emily Deschanel. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or head to LemonadoPremium.com to subscribe on any other app. That's LemonadoPremium.com. Don't miss out. Fail Better is a production of Lemonado Media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Keegan Zemma, Ari Abraci, and Donny Matias. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Kopinski, Brad Davidson, and Jonathan Smith. The show is executive produced by Stephanie Whittles-Wax, 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 Lemonado 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.