tell you things you want to hear and if they're good at it you get excited yeah i think living in hollywood for all those years i definitely agree it is a lot of like if i called somebody back to them twenty four hours they were amazed he's like oh thank you for calling me back so quickly and why wouldn't i  we go home the end of it is a real marna pretty coming into that i don't know that's a real anyway ok it's beautiful and we're going to have a roundtable i guess are going to be here for that if you guys want to find out a fair time to make me feel better about my own are medical school or i don't know why jodi therapy and he's humble he likes james who doesn't say good things and no i'm not going to say anything about anybody tommy lee jones sam jackson they go whatever it is what it is we have a profession we have a job we just do our job if you're you know it's just put up on a pedestal because show business in hollywood is is what it is and has been for years i can sort any go ahead or get anybody better than anybody else to me it's just you you know that i was lucky and blessed to be able to make a few bucks call myself a working actor that's it and you ride horses with jesus i don't speak of the beautiful i don't feel free to interrogate me i'm just you know this for the popcorn is that that's a pretty cool name well that when it was it was it was interesting one thousand years ago it's not any point where you had i mean it's it was taken from those clint eastwood you know we had we were on and that is where our movie's going theaters going and adam i think it's worse this year than last year when we taught i noticed that the matinees do well in local theaters but the evening shows the years you might not really see anything that might just be like one theater like or i just feel terrible about in my era i mean i looked at the schedule for the tribe at the film festival which is on right now there are over ninety six new films they're showing i just came from a film festival in north carolina the winston salem were run film festival hundreds of films the ones we saw excellent every one of them so we have the people out there making these incredible films are greatest hope is to get them bought by netflix that's what they want and straight are not interested they not it's not that they're not interested they are not they're not there then they have no impact the theaters i mean it's you know if you know things change just like to happen in sports too i mean it's going to be like the bowling alley yeah you know how that sort of waned where everything robotics artificial intelligence left  precipitous and i know it's kind of scary but you know i think i'm a romantic the theater hop corn restaurant is something special about doing you know going out to the theater well that's the other thing that there's a tidal wave of not stubborn i think that hollywood is actually can be paralleled now to the american car manufacturers to when years ago when they were making only gas guzzlers and then look what happened we had a you know an oil  i'm talking about longer ago than twenty but we had an oil crisis there the sales plummeted yeah and i think that hollywood is guilty of sort of the same thing they keep making these blockbusters they spend one hundred forty million or more on these things and they excellent which is incredible x and you know it's probably was made because of denzel and still you know little you know films you see that just well a lot of the end of the year films this year were spectacular i mean they were beautifully made poignant moving interesting intriguing on usually like moonlight oh no but the masses don't watch of their own you know but fences did very well was so clever a very pulled it off with you with them but i wonder but what happened was a lot of people went to see it and said i don't think emma stone and ryan gosling sing and dance very well but that wasn't the point it just wasn't the point and because of that other people didn't go you know the word of mouth was negative so i mean it willy had spectacular reviews it was actually one movie the twelve dollars on here it's like twenty four bucks  mash when i get home it's been taking pictures of itself so i really like first of all i promise you i turn this off you know i never heard my next question and you guys can fight over the timing or what you want to say when did you know that you wanted to be like the movie critic ok it didn't happen that way at all my mother took me to foreign films when i was very young she's actually still alive and would like to still go to see them but she's ninety seven i don't hear them  but she took me to see foreign films when i was five six seven years old and all through my childhood my mother and i discussed movies i never thought of it as being critic my mother was very is was and he is very insightful i never thought of being critic however at my place of work princeton university press every time there was a press party when i was an adult that's what we talked about movies and so to people who worked gretchen and chuck who worked there is had just taken the course at t v thirty four you know producing shows has to be thirty it just started and they said we need a show to do in order to apply the skills we've learned so they said why don't we do a movie shell and that's how it happened because they would also hear our discussions it sort of you know you just can't translate the things we never thought of ourselves as critics and we're not critics we're not really that's more but we love movies and that probably isn't enough to be a bona more talent in that regard than the rest of us but we really don't and so we're not bona fide critics but we just love them and we are passionate about them and we just enjoy talking and i think you try to be fair which is i wish you wouldn't be you try to be objective and fair are you more supposed would say it was like the worst movie ever should say you know that's funny what was your favorite film i think i think i would have to say manchester by the sea really yeah i will m magister by the sea and lala land where ball and fences which i thought was spectacular they were all kind of up there but me just a by the sea and i like kenneth lonergan he's the writer and director and he's a playwright and he has his he does magnificent plays and so i just love the writing and i just found that i didn't know enough to care about the central character you didn't know enough about i didn't i didn't i didn't i didn't know what was bothering him and told more than halfway into the movie i was god like i don't really care about this guy i don't care what the problems were what happened and when you found out then did you care but of course my caring person i want to hear sooner yeah that's you know as an actor that's how i kind of look at the yeah well yeah i think he did help a heck of a job and you know it with a movie like manchester by the sea you have to ask yourself why is a movie called a town's name why is that the title do you like coming up let me ask you i mean i don't know it's hard to say you know it's i be i work with a lot of young actors in new york right now that are training aspiring to get there and there's some really no one kid i said this guy's going to do something and but he has done it so he or she have to maneuver the hollywood game that yeah that the course they will but i can't really you know young factors that are working now  and thank you for coming and take as much time with you mean you're most welcome and i really enjoy the fact that you were able to make the commitment to come here tonight you know robert you're kind of a renaissance artist you're an actor or you're a singer dancer primarily is the first time you felt like you were in a career like you you had a job that you you were acting or something you wanted to be good at well first of all the disclaimer is i'm not a dancer but i have had to dance and it's like anything particularly growing up in the eighty's like i did anybody who had a general knowledge of a bunch of different things stood a better chance of getting any job and that was a point to get any job but my my earliest memories on the subject are that it would be more lucrative and more soul soothing to get a job doing something in entertainment rather than say you know bussing tables and doing food prep or whatever and it happened i remember being in new york and there was this like group of guys and we were all trying to get work in theater or some of us were trying to work in a band get a job in a band or whatever and there was this musical called american passion and it ran at the joyce theater for one night before frank rich's revues close it down and i remember and then we got to go workshop it in boston well you know my mom and dad were really kind of squares who found themselves being and entrenched in this underground world underground filmmaking world so it was really like all the people you would expect to have around greenwich village around that time and to me it was just really natural you know for instance the other day me in the messes were and a few other people were sitting and spit balling about a project a big studio movie and x in our fourteen month old tunnels into the room and just sits there and we're all just talking and you know ideas are flowing back and forth then you know possibly talking smack about some potential casting choice or whatever and you know just kind of get bit seeing and heating up this project to two hundred eleven degrees and stirring it slowly and i look over at exton and in a sentence that was my childhood was absolutely natural and i took my satisfaction in the comfort that in the situation that i was around where my father was like weather was after hours and having a poker table with a poker game with like anybody name pick a name from someone in that in that era or our weather was him and my mom trying to beat each other with what a funny one liner was for a transitionary scene in the movie ok what was the last time you had auditioned for something the last time recently was for iron man so in two thousand and six i think  something the more you make out of it i mean everybody i think has or like five things that they're quietly resisting and a good day for them is when one of those recesses is coming directly confront them y know you want to do things you've never done before you know you know that makes perfect sense when you get to the point when you say yes to a project what is your work with the script wh price well it's also changed since working with john's father on the first iron man i have practically siro regard for what is printed the pages when i go to work and sometimes the better it is the more annoying it is because i'm more likely to not innovate within it so if it's a problem it's gotten to the now i think some of that is my own hubris my own ego and that i come from a family of writers and that i like to write and i think i can at least write for me and oftentimes if i take a stab at a scene all the characters can come off a little better or whatever then i'm wondering and on the question there's so many robert but as you're getting older you're the guy on the set that's been around the longest you're the you know you've done the most movies people would look at you maybe different maybe the shift that occurs you find that i find that nobody else cares because like me they're primarily concerned about themselves or the and should be so if they haven't made somebody hasn't made space for themselves yet there's no way they're going to make space for anybody else right now i appreciate certain platitudes or anything like that but there's also nothing alike more than when some like nine year old kids comes up to me and says you don't really know what you're doing do and i never had no one we start the scene over here instead of we're looking away from the camel of great here next to the matchbox and i'm going to stand off camera and say see three twenty things and you say them back three times in a row all right when we try that it's just it's just absorbing i think and i i just love projections i've never met someone who i was in awe of that after being in close proximity with them for a couple hours it wasn't smashed really so i like inviting people to realize that i am yes i'm just another schmuck standing here it's just a really good at being another schmuck standing here because i've done that a lot you ready to just kind of prepare for the magic to let the moment happen i've done it both ways but i found that you can't rely on god's grace you can't depend on it you need to know what you're doing when the sun is not shining i think of all the people i've ever been in proximity of warren beatty was my greatest teacher in that he was an honest new sleep producing this or at my movie called pick up artist wrong don't even know what you're doing in this scene and i know what i'm doing out and you know he's he's driving cars like no no no he's trying to get to work and he's getting distracted d it's great you know it's obvious it was so obvious that it took this kind of you know icon to come by and you know he knew that i didn't know what i was doing and i work really you have to shape some things sometimes or i find that you don't want to depend on god's grace you really need that you need well truth be told there's far more talented and capable actors in my generation and i am i'm just a very seasoned hustler and i think everybody you know that i think the best get that anybody can get t anyone is the billeted to develop their hustle and everybody has a different household you know everybody's game is different so i think the best you know gift that anybody can get everyone is just the billy to develop their hustle a very humble man you really are i mean your work is incredible now i don't want to go era but you know i think we should you had your low points you know you spent some time in jail and i know  dad your laundry several times but i wonder if not shied away is raising the positive that came out of that i mean did it broaden your horizons in any way it's like being grounded all right when when kids are grounded they sure think about it a lot but when they're not grounded they don't think about it anymore and the best so the best part of any experience where your freedom is taken away from you by an institution is to you and just kind of the way things work but i know you don't like talking about it i just i just felt that maybe there was something you could have learned as an actor is there anything that inspired you as an actor maybe i can use this in my work or you know i'm not trying to bust your balls here you know yeah it's like being grounded you know and i get it i understand lot of your time and so i'm wondering you know what do you think you might want to be doing with your time is now what do you have more time in your hand so what's next for robert downey jr well tr really tough you know you're simultaneously feel limited by something and also comforted by it but i'm looking forward to it but truth be told is the our new man trilogy and avengers and the sherlock series i mean none of that's none of that's been limiting as a matter of fact it's give me an immense amount of freedom but now but like you said you know time it takes time and contracts run for whatever and you know now is a nice time to be transitioning into this production company with the mrs and you know possibly alighting to greener pastures and doing different things and i think also you know you might be able to relate to this oftentimes you know when you're out there doing your job or your craft or you know however gnarly you want to get about it there's you know you're not really living the real life that other people or for did you're you know you're traveling somewhere to do a gig or you know you're going out saturday because i don't know you haven't been around for the past three weeks or whatever so i think you know there's just a lot a big part of me that has just such an incomplete education that i'd like to just improve you know bring a better mice me to bear for i don't know whatever you know whoever i'm with at a dinner party or however improving my own generalistic self helps when you're and to have you here tonight was just and maybe more tossing maybe we'll talk afterwards maybe larn i just think that forms like this where we're not trying to sell soap are you know we should happen more often and i just like to encourage it to sit around and shoot the shit you made me check into the boards and he starts going towards the blue jays the maple leaf bench not even his own that's why i start calling him over here over here over here while he went back and for that ten years ago when you could do th yeah well he can't mean that he you're friends with him he just you know he just hates talking about that time in his life and i'm telling you right now he's one of the very few that would have been able to be that but i'm also you can't sit there like if you and i have a scene i can stay in character in between takes why the director is talking to us and you know i ask questions i turn up like oh you want to step forward two  the father of the seventeen year old girl who had been murdered by this homeless african american grief stricken and yeah and you know that was one of the hardest role i play because i try i worked on that because i did i wanted to keep it fresh and i think it or not my daughter would be  but i'm just i use that sort of method just that one well that just that one time for that particular role to stay with it the whole time because it was such a grieving man that was going to hell it was being considered a racist and that the daughter was actually dating this guy and they think they tried to turn the whole story around him and i was just living that and but then i would turn i go get the car like the writer was talkative and i would stay yeah i did stay with that because i really feel the need to keep that everybody some are more unique than others too or we're talking like that returns immigration you know what i mean you know i know some of them and you know get to be because it's such a hard business you know did to make it really big and so they you know they're the successful ones and world of so and that's why i always said if i ever got the ball like that ball of hand to me and i have anything don't leave the show i always wonder why why these characters weave a show halfway through and it's like  for two three years then how i don't get to look up at the latest thing i would say would come any way comes in a money actor director or baseball player by your damn house because if the worst happens you never get work again at least your mortgage just go