Robert Downey Jr., left, plays a lawyer with a fractious relationship with his father, portrayed by Robert Duvall, right, in The Judge.Claire Folger
For Robert Downey Jr., the character of Hank Palmer, a troubled middle-aged lawyer with unresolved father issues, is a change of pace from his blockbuster roles of the past seven years. Which was very much the reason he and his wife, Susan Levin, produced the movie.
Levin, who has been with Downey since 2003 and helped him on his remarkable transition from post-rehab sobriety to becoming a major box-office star, said, at the recent Toronto International Film Festival where The Judge was the opening night film, she wanted to see her husband work on a human scale again.
"As entertaining as Sherlock Holmes and Iron Man were, they weren't grounded in reality in the same way he has to be here. As a fan, let alone as his wife and producer, I just wanted to see him go on that journey."
At the end of his wife's interview, Downey strode into the room and bent down to give her a kiss.
She admired his shirt and he apologized for being late, suggesting the festival should install zip-lines to allow people to get through the traffic between hotels. He quickly added:
"I've got no complaints about Toronto. As a matter of fact, I've distilled socialism in this box – it wasn't easy. I'm bringing it back to America."
Though he makes jokes, the truth is Downey is less a sound-bite guy so much as a sound-gush guy, with an accelerated thought-to-mouth speed that defies easy quotation. Here is an edited sampling of a portion of what he had to say in a round-table interview:
On developing The Judge:
When you're in development it's one thing. It's all, "This has promise!" And then you're in pre-production and it's, "This could be?" And then you're getting to know the characters that are going to be coming together and the department heads and [director] David [Dobkin] and [producer] Susan [Levin] and casting and all that.
Then you're on location and it's too late to attach your neuroses to anything. You're in action. I love that part of it! There's something extremely unpredictable to it, seeing the kind of movies I've been up to since about 2007 or so. Yet, it felt natural to me, which was a big surprise, that I just surrendered to something very naturally that's very much a part of my grosser ambition anyway. Meaning – bigger.
On his personal response to the script:
I found myself just crying all that time but not really out of my own "this is reminding me of …" I got caught up in the reality that the movie expresses. Hank's mom's funeral is every funeral. And Hank's cutoff with his dad is every cutoff that everyone has ever had. It's not particularly a father-son story because I could imagine the judge could have been the mom.
And I just kind of think of these family dynamics. They light up constellations that are very emotional.
On doing less, in the service of more:
It was really just about doing less and less and less and less and less and less and less and less. And I like being busy. And I like to talk and to be active and all that stuff and [his voice rises in a whimper] I had to literally sit on my hands.
And realizing that part of the surrendering was surrendering to the company I found myself in, and saying to myself, "These people are so good" and "It's their moment and I'm there sharing it with them."
On being a producer:
Some of it is a function of age, that it's a requirement you know, whether you're credited with being – I want to say pallbearers. And also, just kind of being one of the pillars of something that's kind of a difficult endeavour, with so many personalities, and you stick to the principle of being diligent and of service. It's just good medicine. It takes you out of your own head.
On a scene in which Hank has to shower his father, played by Robert Duvall:
First of all, I just have to tip my hat again to Bobby, because it's one of those things. Every time you take a role, there's that, "Argggh – do we have to do that?" We've all seen people take those risks. … It's too graphic or it doesn't have any balance to it. It's too in your face. It's like, "This is real." You know, realism is kind of the death of cinema in some ways. You just do your job. I'll bring the reality.
On the message of The Judge:
What is the judgement we project on to the World? Which really projects unto ourselves about how we're misunderstood and how we did it anyway. You know, we overcompensate for things.
On the film's non-Hollywood ending:
There's something about it. … This amazing … never-ending obstacle course. But I also do think there's a real awakening. I don't know. It just kicks me in the stomach in the nicest way.