A version of this story about “Mr.” first appeared in the Guild & Critics Awards/Documentaries issue of awards magazine TheWrap.
Robert Downey Sr., who died in 2021 from complications of Parkinson’s disease, was a pioneering underground filmmaker long before his actor son, Robert Jr., made a name for himself. Toward the end of his life, the two Robertses teamed up for a documentary by director Chris Smith that got deeply personal.
THEWRAP: How did this project come about?
CHRIS SMITH: As documentary filmmakers, we’re always looking for a story, and I had a meeting at Robert’s (Downey Jr.) company and brought up the idea to see if Robert was interested in anything in the documentary space. And very quickly they told me no, no, but he thought someone should do something to his dad.
How did that turn into a movie about his father that Robert Jr. was also intimately involved with?
It was really organic. I don’t even remember a time where we sat down and said, “This is what we’re doing.” It was just something that started to happen. We started documenting Senior, and then Robert was coming to the Hamptons and he said, “Oh, we should shoot with me and my dad.” It just evolved. I think part of it was trying to stay open to not having a preconceived notion of what it should be.
How well did you know Robert Sr.’s work when you got into it?
At first it was just “Putney Swope” which I think I had seen in film school. And then obviously once the project started and we were doing our research, we caught up with the rest. It was very exciting to watch. When I first started making stuff in the ’90s, “Stranger Than Paradise” and “Down by Law” felt like early independent cinema. And to see that there was this whole wave 15 years before that was exciting and inspiring. And to think that they were doing that without a roadmap, getting a sense of the community that existed was a lot of fun.
Between that, COVID, and Senior’s deteriorating health, it amazes me that this is a movie that you ended up with probably very differently than you thought you were doing when you started it three years ago.
Yes. I think at first I was looking at an artist and his work and the life he had led. And then as it progressed, it became a story about a father and a son and their journey together, and how these movies reflected the story of life rather than just looking at it from a cinematic perspective.
How did what you were doing affect Robert Sr.’s health? He took a turn at some point in the process, didn’t he?
Yes. It was shocking because, just on a personal level, the person we started making the film with [about] he was still very active. We took a walk the first day and had lunch. I don’t think we went into this with any idea that this might be the final path that things would take. But I would say that Robert (Jr.) seemed to have an idea that this could happen early on. I remember when he first mentioned it, I didn’t see it because Senior was so full of life.
At a certain point, I guess you had to accept that that was going to be the plot of the last part of this movie.
Yes. That was definitely the case. But the good thing is that his spirit is manifested throughout the entire movie. Yes, it has a bittersweet, sad quality to it, but at the same time it also feels life-affirming.
Robert Sr. certainly seemed to enjoy it, even making his own version of the document.
Yes. Every time I was with him, he would point me to scenes or things to film. It’s had a lasting influence on me in terms of accepting chaos, which is difficult in documentaries. The other day, I was filming an interview in Portugal and people were walking past the frame. In a previous incarnation, it would be a distraction. But now I just think, “Oh, Robert Sr. I would just say that he makes the framework more interesting.”
Read more from the Guild & Critics/Documentary Awards edition here.