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Robert Downey Jr.'s not-so-wonderful life >> The actor bares all in James Toback's Two Girls and a Guy by MATTHEW HAYS
Now New York indie director James Toback has created what is perhaps the definitive Robert Downey Jr. movie. Though simply titled Two Girls and a Guy, Toback's vision (he wrote and directed) is an intricate character study of one deceitful man and the two women who confront him about his duplicity. The film is gaining publicity because Toback was forced to recut the film 16 times in order to downgrade the film to a Restricted rating from the less audience-inclusive NC-17. But raunchy sex scenes aside, the film will undoubtedly also be controversial because of the borderline-exploitative use of Downey Jr.--a man so clearly on the edge during several key scenes of the film. Toback is utterly and completely open about the fact that Downey Jr. was the inspiration for the film. "I had done this film with him 10 years ago, The Pickup Artist, which was ultimately unsatisfying--even though it was kind of cute and enjoyable, it didn't really do what I thought we were capable of doing. Over the years I thought there must be something we can do together that would go a bit farther. When I saw him after the first major bust, just over a year ago on TV, he looked quite distressed and forlorn. He was about to go into rehab, and I thought it would be a good time to try something really ambitious with him." Toback approached Downey Jr. at the cast party for Saturday Night Live after Downey Jr. had been the host. After the actor agreed to come on board, Toback wrote the screenplay, and says funding for the $1-million movie came together very quickly. At first, Toback's old friend and producer Ed Pressman was reluctant about the talky, offbeat story, all told in real time and set virtually entirely in one apartment. "I said, 'Look, we've got Downey Jr. and we'll get a couple of sexy women, it's a funny and sexy script--where the fuck can you go wrong?'" Once Pressman had agreed, Toback says financial backing came together within 24 hours. While Downey Jr. is clearly the backbone of the film, and many of his near-psychotic moments onscreen appear to be improvised (in fact they were all carefully scripted), Toback rejects the notion that this is a case of a director exploiting an actor. "It's always healthy to confront your problems and complexities to make something larger than yourself. I think if he could be doing just that he'd be fine, I think it's the in-betweens that get to him. The fact remains that for most addictive people there's a combination of things needed, one of which is an absolute relentless facing of the truth about themselves and then an ability to move beyond the confines of an addiction, and not just think of themselves as an addict. I think that's a much healthier way of working then if he went off and did some light fluff and pretended in his role that his inner reality wasn't there." You mean a movie like this is supposed to be therapy for a heroin addict like Downey Jr.? "No, it's not exactly therapy. But I think one of the really useful things about acting is that it gives an actor a chance to develop and explore and extend parts of himself into new dimensions. For someone like Downey Jr., it could be helpful. I don't think it's a cure, but doing a movie like this one is a good idea." Toback adds that he's glad Downey Jr. has been let out of prison just in time to attend premieres of Two Girls and a Guy. Toback, who is as renowned for his screenwriting as his directing, wrote the scripts for such critically successful films as Fingers and Bugsy. Having always favoured small budgets, is Toback upset over the potential repercussions of the current big-budget Titanic fever spreading through Hollywood? "The idea of needing to make movies that way, in which there's really a sense of competition about, is just not for me. I've always been outside of the main way of doing things. I basically just worry about how I'm going to do the next film the way I want to do it." Two Girls and a Guy opens this Friday, April 24
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Directors haven't had too much trouble putting Robert Downey Jr.'s offscreen woes to use. The messed-up actor's drug problem, which resulted in forced rehab and ultimately a several-month jail sentence (which ended just two weeks ago), have made tabloid headlines around the world. And the scandal started to seep into Downey's casting calls: in the sequel U.S. Marshals, he was cast as a duplicitous federal agent; in The Gingerbread Man, Robert Altman cast him as a drunk. In between shooting these two films, Downey's problems flared up again, thus the jail term.