Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 79

Robert Downey, Sr.

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directing a series of films he was unhappy with, for one reason or another. America
(shot in 1982, released in 1986) was “a disaster; it was the end of the drugs”;
Rented Lips (1988) was a bizarre comedy about two industrial filmmakers who get
hoodwinked into directing a Nazi-themed pom film ("‘I really did that for Martin
Mull”); and the improvisational Too Much Sun (1991), with Robert Downey, Jr.,
Eric Idle, Howard Duff and Andrea Martin failed to jell despite a promisingly
tasteless premise (sister and brother must produce offspring to inherit a fortune;
problem is, they’re both gay).
Most recently, however, Downey was able to find financing for Hugo
Pool (1997), his most aesthetically successful project since his salad days of the
60s and 70s. Starring Alyssa Milano, Sean Penn, Malcolm McDowell and ''my
kid,” the film deals with the plight of a responsible, straight-ahead young woman
(Milano, as the eponymous Hugo Pool) who must clean 45 swimming pools in one
day, while dealing with her addict/alcoholic father (McDowell) and her casinocrazed mother (Cathy Moriarty). The most satisfying part of the film is the
relationship between Hugo and Floyd Gaylen (Patrick Dempsey), one of Hugo’s
customers. Confined to a wheelchair with ALS [Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis],
or Lou Gehrig’s disease, Hugo and Floyd nevertheless manage to form an intensely
personal bond that transcends Floyd’s illness. The film was co-scripted by Downey’s
second wife, Laura Ernst, who was suffering from ALS herself Shortly after the
completion of Hugo Pool, she died.
To keep working, Downey has carved out a new career for himself as a
character actor in such films as Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1997), and To
Live and Die in L.A. (1995), while working on the script of his new film. Forest
Hills Bob, which Jonathan Demme will produce. Downey began turning more of
his attention to small-scale digital projects to help other ALS sufferers; nevertheless,
he still wanted to direct another 35mm feature. Interestingly, in the early 1980s, he
tried to get a production of The Talented Mr Ripley off the ground with Robert Jr.
in the role Matt Damon would eventually play, but nothing came of it.
Looking back on his older films, Downey professes not to care about
them, but a whole new generation of filmmakers clearly does. In a recent interview
in The Nation, director Kasi Lemmons noted that in the 1960s and 1970s 'there
were a lot of really fabulous movies made in those years.. .that were really, really
powerful and would be extremely difficult to make now. I’m thinking of films that
hardly get mentioned anymore,
Putney Swope'" (Seymour 14). Downey’s
low budget, combative feature films of the 60s and 70s would be lost in the current
theatrical marketplace. His more recent films have vanished from theatres in the
twinkling of a viewer’s eye, and surface late at night on the premium cable channels.
Downey’s key films, including Chafed Elbows, Putney Swope and Greaser's Palace,
belong not only to their time, but would be impossible to replicate in our time, and