Director James Toback Rips New and “Improved” Robert Downey Jr.

tobackWriter and director James Toback, who is always controversial, and always interesting has never been one to sugar coat his opinions on anything.  And he didn’t hold back his feelings about the film industry, or his old friend Robert Downey Jr.’s career in an interview with SiriusXM’s Ron Bennington on Friday.    Toback was in to talk about his new documentary, ‘Seduced and Abandoned.’ The documentary premiers on HBO this Monday, October 28th at 9pm Eastern time.

As always, Toback is a fantastic and insightful interview, whether he’s talking about the state of the movie industry or his relationship with Mike Tyson, but things really got interesting when he started talking about his old friend, Robert Downey Jr.

Toback, who gave Downey Jr. his first starring role in “The Pick-Up Artist” says Downey basically went from being a great artist, who did “spectacular”, “original” and “inventive” work to doing “cartoon formulai.”

“I hate to say something like this, but my hatred is not strong enough to stop me from saying it. I discovered and invented him. He was a reject when I met him. A junkie reject.  And I found something appealing in him – kind of cute and unassuming and devious and perverse. And I gave him the lead in “The Pick-up Artist” which was a huge film. He had had a bit part in “Back To School” and a bit part in “Tuff Turf” …but basically, Robert Downey was going nowhere fast.”

Toback liked Downey’s performance in “The Pick Up Artist” and had even higher  praise for  the work Downey Jr. did throughout the 90’s, using words like “spectacular”, “inventive”, and “great” when describing his roles in “Black and White”, “Natural Born Killers” and “Two Guys and a Girl” (which he called his best performance).  But then, he says, an interesting thing has happened.  According to Toback:

“He was bought – and I say that for avoidance of lawsuit purposes, figuratively, into a different world – where his wife and Joel Silver and Warner Bros. took him away from what admittedly was a life of ongoing drug addiction into a life of robotic cartoon performance. In which, he has been…I don’t want to say “amazingly successful”. I would say “uniquely successful”. Because he is the number one billion dollar face of robotic cartoon franchise success. You almost couldn’t invent a more perfect marriage of cartoon franchise projection into the consciousness of the world and Robert Downey Jr. That’s been the marriage – the big economic marriage of the last, probably, decade in movie history, if not all of movie history. And he’s reinvented salaries for actors – getting $50 million.”

He also questions Downey Jr.’s sobriety:

What medication would he, I would assume, be on, at this point? I have no idea. But it’s difficult for me to believe that he went from non-stop drug addiction for 20-odd years to no drug taking. I think whatever version of what it used to be – Lithium or whatever, flattening people out, getting them off in a way…something’s going on there. And the look in the eyes…something’s going on there.

But look, it’s Achilles’ mother’s choice. You want a short glorious life or do you want a long, kind of happy, flat, successful life? He’s rich. He’s going to be one of the richest guys in Hollywood. He’s internationally famous. He’s got a family. As long as his brain doesn’t say to him – Look what you gave up. You were a real artist. You were doing something original and great. And now, you’re doing cartoon formulai. That’s his choice and probably most people would make it.

You can hear the interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio. It will re-air on Ron Bennington Interviews this Sunday at 6pm eastern on the Indie Channel (104) and again at 10pm eastern on The Opie and Anthony Channel (xm103 sirius206).  Ron Bennington is the host of SiriusXM’s “Ron Bennington Interviews”, “Unmasked” and “The Ron and Fez Show”.