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The disastrous Avengers: Age Of Ultron press tour has, we assume, come to a merciful end with the movie's release in the United States today, but it went out with a bang as Robert Downey, Jr. dumped on indie filmmaking.In an interview with Entertainment Weekly Radio earlier this week, the star (who plays Tony Stark/Iron Man, by the way—but you already knew that because everybody in the world has seen these movies) was asked if he ever had a craving to make a "$500,000-budget indie movie" to take a break from blockbusters. His answer was a resounding and succinct, "No."
When asked to elaborate, he went on, including an imagined conversation between him and a 'lame' indie filmmaker:
Because they're exhausting and sometimes they suck and then you just go, 'What was I thinking?' But I'm interested in doing all different kinds of movies. Sometimes the little movies are the ones that wind up taking the most out of you because they're like, 'Hey, man, we're just running a couple of days behind. Do you think you can stay through your birthday and then come back on the fourth of July. And, by the way, like, the crew—can you pay for the craft services? And, oh, by the way, man, when we go to Sundance, it's like, can we just sit you in a chair and you can sell this for six days in a row so that we’ll make 180 bucks when it opens in one theater?'
'God, this is so powerful what we're doing. What do you think of the movie? You see it last night?'
'I think it's mediocre.'
'Yeah, isn't it the greatest?! Man, everyone's an artist here.'
'Actually, most of you are kind of inexperienced and lame.'
He was obviously joking, but whenever Downey goes tongue-in-cheek it always comes with his patented barbs. What would your dad, one of the most acclaimed of all American indie filmmakers, think of that Robert?
There is probably some truth to what Downey said about low-budget filmmaking and its seat-of-your-pants scheduling and low returns. And it's true: those film sets definitely don't have Disney's money to pay for the catering. Besides, who wouldn't rather do an exhausting press tour for yet another superhero movie? Downey is obviously having a great time on this one, walking out of an interview that got "a little Diane Sawyer" and dropping racist barbs about a Mexican filmmaker in another.
