Robert Downey Sr., left, and his son Robert Downey Jr. from the documentary “Sr.”
Robert Downey Jr. set out to make an objective portrait, a tribute to his father, the underground filmmaking maverick Robert Downey Sr. His dad had other plans.
“The key point in this is when he goes, ‘OK, I think we should split into two camps: The (expletive) movie and the one I’m gonna make,’” recalls Downey Jr., laughing. “I just go, ‘Man, hats off to you, Pops.”
“Sr.,” directed by Chris Smith, is a work of father-son harmony more than might be suggested by Downey Sr.’s typically brusque assertion of filmmaking independence. It’s a kind of home movie, mostly made by Downey Jr. but with his father’s own insertions peppered throughout. It’s a son’s loving reckoning with his iconoclast father, a freewheeling cult filmmaker whose experimental films gave Downey Jr. his entry into moviemaking and whose outsized personality did much to inform his son, for better and worse. As Downey Jr. puts it, “My dad and I are pretty flawed dudes.”
“It was a way to put something between us in our own relationship and closure. I didn’t know that it would be the quickest way to the heart of things,” Downey Jr. said in a recent interview by phone from Los Angeles alongside his wife and producing partner Susan Downey. “It’s like a little string you pull at, you know. And it winds up pulling you into a rabbit hole that I kind of needed to go down in order to process and ingest the totality of our relationship.”
Downey Sr. died last year at the age of 85 after having Parkinson’s. That’s part of the film; Downey Sr. wanted it to be. “Sr,” which debuted Friday on Netflix, was made with the intention of capturing his last days: a last stab at gaining some understanding of him, wrestling with their shared demons and, once again, making a movie together. Some 50 years ago, Downey Jr. made his debut in his father’s antic 1970 dog pound comedy, “Pound,” at the age of 5.
“I have pretty good recall for the entirely of this incarnation, for better or worse,” says Downey Jr., 57. “Those films and projects, I have very clear memories of that. I can still see the Mounds bar that was being handed to me. It was my first prop I ever had to deal with.”
Years before he was the Oscar-nominated actor of “Chaplin” or the star of “Iron Man,” Downey Jr. was, as he says in the film, “just Bob Downey’s kid for a long time.” Absurdist, spontaneous films like 1971’s “Putney Swope” and 1972’s “Greaser’s Palace” made the elder Downey a pivotal countercultural provocateur who defined himself outside of the mainstream.
In “Sr.,” Downey Jr.’s reverence for his father is easy to see, as is their mutual affection for one another. But that doesn’t mean the old man was always easy on his famous son. Every film Downey Jr. ever made, he wondered: “What will Sr. think?” Every 15 years or so would he get a thumb’s up. JAKE COYLE, NEW YORK, MDT/Ap
