100 Thoughts On the Drive Home: Robert Downey Jnr (3/100)
Robert Downey Jnr and the random things I learnt because of him
I don’t know about your guys, but I have a certain feeling of ownership for Robert Downey Jnr (hereafter referred to as RDJ). This is not a creepy, stalkerish ownership feeling *grins* but more of a sense of watching over, of care and consideration. I don’t usually have these feelings about actors/famous folks, as I think its weird, but I’ll share with you why I have these proprietary feelings for RDJ
The first movie I saw with RDJ in it was Only You (1994) a romcom with Marisa Tomei. I was still in highschool when I saw it, in our local cinema before its revamp a few years later. It was during the school holidays and a few girlfriends and I had elected to see it as we’d either seen everything else or couldn’t agree on another movie. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t see it on a date as experience has taught me that first dates and romcoms don’t work - too many potential awkward moments ;)
However, that movie gave birth to my desire to go to Italy, to see the coastal towns in the South, to visit Rome (which I eventually did, and had a lot of squee moments).
I didn’t fall in love with RDJ then per say, but I thought he was cute and funny and had hopes of seeing him in something else again. Christmas Day Eve a few years later I saw my next RDJ movie Heart and Souls, a comedy with a spiritual/ghostly twist. RDJ was ok in the movie, it was an odd mixed bag of a movie.
However, one of the songs on the sound track was Walk like a Man, by Frankie Vallie. As much as my parents did their duty and educated us on the classic soundtrack of the 60s and 70s, somehow that song had been missed and I loved it! Heck, I used it in one of my own stories years later.
RDJ appeared sporadically on my radar over the following years, with a memorable stint in US Marshalls, as the bad guy - all until Ally McBeal. I was not a huge fan of Ally McBeal, I liked the format of the show with the visual representations of the inner workings of her mind, but as a character, I disliked Ally (in much the same way as I dislike Meredith Grey). I watched the show for its quirkiness and supporting characters. Until Larry.
Oct 2000 and RDJ makes his appearance on Ally. Over the Larry arc, I fell in love with him. I had this wild thought that every woman deserved a Larry (little did I know what was to come). This was before Bridget Jones and my now revised opinion that every woman deserves a Darcy. Larry was a great tv-boyfriend IMO, and I enjoyed his episodes.
One of his last episodes, a Christmas one, RDJ/Larry is sitting at a piano playing a sad song. I seem to recall that RDJ can actually play the piano (I know he can sing). In the scene Larry plays and sings a song for Ally. At the time I did not know it was Joni Mitchell’s River but I loved it. It was soft and melancholy and just perfect. It also foreshadowed the end of the Larry arc. Poor ignorant younger me did not know the song or original artist, but I wanted it. I saw the final episodes of Larry in London and spent a good long while combing through Christmas song compilations looking for the ‘River’ song from Ally McBeal - thinking (logically) that it was a Christmas song because it referred to Christmas. I think my Dad eventually ended my search and he’d had the song on an LP/CD/Tape for years. I made a Veronica Mars fanvid to the song a few years ago and it remains a fav.
Larry ended up breaking Ally’s heart because of RDJ’s own personal life issues with drugs and rehab. I didn’t especially care about the state of Ally’s heart (alas) but I was sad for RDJ. I chalked his name in the ‘Could have been Good/Great’ column, with the hope that maybe he’d turn himself around.
On a side note, while still in London, I met my own Larry. He was my first ‘this could be serious’ boyfriend and just as things were getting to a stage of ‘interesting’, we had a serious talk and he told me he wanted to move back to NZ to try get custody of his son and make a life for himself there. I had done my usual ‘not get too emotionally attached’ thing which was probably a mitigating factor in his decision making, so the break up was mutually agreed upon as I felt he should indeed make an effort with his son. He did not break my heart, but he was certainly a ‘could have been’. I have dubbed him my Larry. I still hope to find a Darcy.
Elton John released his single I Want Love that year and the music vid was just RDJ walking through a house, lipsyncing. I thought it strangely apt, considering my recent Larry experience and his own RL at the time.
It took RDJ six years to return to full mainstream success (albeit greater success than he’d known pre 2002) and throughout that period I continued to hope he’d straighten himself out. Much to my delight - he did J
This was where the careful ‘he was mine before he was yours’ feeling was born. I had been rooting for him for years and when he finally got himself back on track, and the rest of world remembered how awesome he is, I beamed with paternal pride.
It is a rare, happy kismet when an actor finds a role he was born to play. For RDJ - he found two. First - Iron Man. I can’t think of very many actors who could embody the goofy, playboy exterior of a complicated, intelligent man who had made shallow, ill considered decisions before realising what changes he needed to make in his life and turns his life on its head and the starts to change the world. With the rest of the world, I cheered his return and hoped his success would not result in a Charlie-Sheen-like relapse (still holding thumbs). Also, the parallels with his own life and return to success was also quite apt.
Sherlock Holmes is also the perfect character for RDJ to play, a brilliant but flawed man with compulsion/obsessions issues and a tendency towards self-destructive behaviour. I now have to share RDJ with the rest of the world and while he has not completely over-exposed himself, his redemption/return to favour has been remarkable (and wonderful).
Love is too strong a word, but I have written in pen RDJ under the column ‘Comeback Kings’. The biggest thing RDJ has taught/shown me - never give up. Keep on trying. And that Charlie Sheen can still be your end result if you relapse