The “bullshit” movie Robert Downey Jr hated every second of making: “It’s just so tedious!”
There comes a time in every rising actor’s career where they’re presented with two choices: they either chance their arm at headlining a blockbuster, or they challenge themselves with a potential awards-baiting role. Robert Downey Jr did both in quick succession, and only one of them worked.
At the turn of the 1990s, the second-generation star was in a tricky spot. He’d appeared in almost 20 movies, and he’d even spent a year as a Saturday Night Live cast member, but as much as he was known to audiences and those within the industry, he was still on the hunt for the role that would take him to the next level.
On paper, teaming up with one of Hollywood’s most famous faces in a broad action comedy directed by an established filmmaker had the potential to nudge him over that plateau, but that’s not what happened. It was an age where buddy capers were being spat onto the screen so frequently that only the best managed to succeed, and Air America most definitely wasn’t that.
The exhausting production involved a 500-strong crew, weathered earthquakes and typhoons on location in Thailand, and a new ending was added six months after the end of principal photography. When the time came for the film to debut in cinemas, it became clear that all of that effort wasn’t worth it in the slightest.
While it didn’t flop, it was still far from a hit. It was also savaged by critics, and nobody cared about seeing Downey Jr and Mel Gibson pilots running clandestine operations for the CIA. “I did Air America for two reasons: to be in a movie with Mel Gibson, and to make a bunch of money,” he explained.
However, there was another reason, which was alluded to earlier: “Underneath, there was the hope that in doing this formulaic thing, I would be launched into a whole new realm of opportunity to do A-list movies.” As he discovered, that never materialised, and when all was said and done, “the only positive thing was meeting Mel Gibson.”
Downey Jr had been operating under the ‘one for them, one for me’ mindset, but he’d learned a harsh lesson. “Since Air America, which was one for them, I’ve decided that it’s bullshit,” he declared. “I’m not going to be doing a big action movie again for a long time, unless it’s something that really has something to say.”
He summed up the entire process thusly: “It’s just so tedious!,” describing the levels of acting required as “just bearing it, getting through all the technical shit, as opposed to interacting with someone.” Lesson learned, he ticked the other rising star box the very next year, which paid off handsomely when Chaplin accomplished everything that Air America could not, including an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’.
Ironically, it was a big action movie that transformed Downey Jr from an also-ran into a superstar when Iron Man strapped a rocket to his back, and if there was one positive he could draw from the experience, it was that he’d made a friend for life, even if that friend was Mel Gibson.
