After being seated, the speaker began by asking how Favreau’s work on ‘Zarthura’ brought him to the attention of those in charge of ‘Iron Man’. Continuing to ask “can you perhaps tell us…” Favreau quickly interjected with “What Zarthura was?” in reference to the way the film was largely overlooked on its release.
“It’s interesting, the way that Hollywood works. ‘Zarthura’ was one of those movies that, as Mel Brooks once said – it wasn’t released, it escaped. It cost very little to make, and made even less than it cost, but it was received well critically, I’m very proud of it, it was a fine film geared towards kids and there were a lot of special effects in it. The thing that I think opened to the door for ‘Iron Man’ was the success that ‘Elf’ had back home. It was viewed as a good movie and it made a tremendous amount of money, and cost very little to make, and that opens a lot of doors for you as a director. You find your name on “The List” – every category has a list, and I was on the Director’s List.
I had known Avi Arad from working on ‘Daredevil’, I was a supporting character named Foggy Nelson, and when they formed their own studio I got a phonecall to stop by and they said that the first property that they were going to self-finance was ‘Iron Man.’ Being a comicbook fan, I of course knew about this character, he’s been around for 40 years, but most people who aren’t fans have never heard of him. I thought it was an interesting challenge and I knew that the technology of the day – and I’m not that big a fan of CGI – but the work that’s been done on hard surfaces and metal shading and lighting is very convincing right now, more so than when you work with organic heroes or figures, and I felt that the tone of the lead and tone of the film could be a lot of fun. In this landscape of dozens of superhero movies that are being made, I felt that this could be a unique opportunity.” “My brother wasn’t a comicbook maniac, but he had a few lying around. He definitely had Spider-Man underoos, I don’t know if you have those here in the UK. They’re kind of pants and t-shirt undershirt combo, so I was very familiar with the characters in the Marvel world.” Again, a jovial Favreau injerjected: “What, through your brother’s underwear!? Put that in the production notes!”
“I was more of a fairytale, Charlotte Bronte kind of youth, but when I was approached with this I actually had never heard of ‘Iron Man’, so it was a real education. I ended up reading quite a number of the comics.” When Paltrow had finished, Favreau again piped up:
“Just to point something out, and I’ll tell her in front of all you, she didn’t realise that the cameo role I play of Happy Hogan actually ends up marrying her character, and I’m not kidding, so look for a steamy love scene in ‘Iron Man 2’!” Turning to Terrence Howard, the speaker asked: Your character has a longing look at the extra Iron Man suit and says “next time” so clearly we’re setting up here for a franchise. Are you hoping that in the next movie you get to put on the suit and do some funky action stuff?
Howard responded with “well, just to be accurate, it was ‘next time, baby!’“ drawing more amused laughs from the audience, and went on, referring obliquely to classic ‘Iron Man’ storyline “Demon in a Bottle” which ends with his character, Rhodey, assuming the mantle of Iron Man before eventually donning his own suit as War Machine:
Lastly addressing Downey Jr. the speaker asked: “You play a genius, and it makes me wonder how you are in this world of high technology, are you adept at all these hi-tech things that your character can turn a hand to with great ease and aplomb?”
Downey replied joking despite his considered, intense style:
The questions then opened up to the floor, the first concerning the perception of the movie, asking: “Assuming the audience of this aren’t avid watchers of CNN or readers of newspapers, how conscious are you of the context in which you place a comicbook story in the real world?” directed at Favreau:
“Well, comicbooks have always been reflection of a certain aspect of the collective subconcious. I grew up during Cold War, and characters would pop up like Crimson Dynamo representing the Soviet Union, and Captain America would fight against people that represented red China and it was always done in a way where you removed it one generation, so you never felt like you were having your nose rubbed in the problems of the day, but it allowed you to have your sort of collective anxiety expressed. Then here comes this superhero to offer simple solutions to these complex problems, and I think it’s no coincidence that since September 11th, starting with ‘Spider-Man’, people have gravitated towards these simple good against evil stories, and now 5-6 years later, trying to capture some of the imagery and anxiety that I know we feel as Americans, and then have the fantasy of this guy who can come in and thoughtfully get rid of the bad guys, save the good guys, and solve all of our problems is part of the escapism that people are looking for as they go to the movies – to take their minds off their problems for a couple of hours.” In this film and also ‘Charlie Bartlett’ you say “I’m a guy with problems?” – is this you ad-libbing off the script at all?
Downey Jr. responded with mock outrage, asking “What’re you getting at?! What kind of answer do you want? Just tell me!” before adding “If I was Arnold Schwarzenegger, I would just start a sentence that ended ‘Iron Man’” before discussing his experiences with the character and opportunity ‘Iron Man’ offered:
Addressing their obvious displeasure with the Hollywood machine, one attendee asked Downey Jr. and Favreau: “You both seem cynical about Hollywood machine, even though you’ve involved with it, so what’s it like trying to get your story out?” Favreau was first to respond:
Remember Marvel isn’t a studio, we were answering to two or three people who were on the set and part of the collaboration. They had their own money from Wall Street, so we had tremendous freedom. The explosions had to be great, there had to be enough great action set pieces, we had to fulfil certain dynamic obligations to help make the film marketable so that it made its money back, but Marvel has seen which of bad movies and good movies that have good action make the money, so they gave us permission to make this movie as complex and as good as we wanted to. As this cast came together around Robert – Terrence we had talked to even before I came on board – but as everyone came together we saw we could really try to elevate this and make it something that stood out and at least played differently to what the expectations might be. I have very little complaint on this one. I feel like I’ve had more freedom on this film than any other I’ve worked on.” Favreau then passed the floor to Downey Jr. who continued to elaborate on the experience of making ‘Iron Man’:
Moving to the topic of video games, one jokester asked: “Robert, for the first time you’re voicing a character in the video game – was that a different experience to making a movie, and also have you played the game and if so, what was it like playing with yourself?”
Downey Jr. retorted “It only takes a minute!” to delayed laughs as both cast and audience slowly got the joke.
“I’m not really good at the videogame thing. Voicing it was kind of fun. Even that, at Sega, they were like “did he just ball up his script and throw it against a wall?”” Struggling to elaborate, he passed the question to Howard, addressing him as “Rhodey” which Howard replying:
Downey Jr. interrupted: “For the record, Terrence got paid more than I did for this movie” amidst protestation from Howard, leading Downey Jr. to point at the audience, commanding us to “Look it up!” A rambling questioner from the floor seemed to address the matter of whether a superhero movie is necessarily a valid role for a serious actor, suggesting to Downey Jr that “Your career has been very complex – you can’t really say there’s been a certain kind of Robert Downey movie, now suddenly you put on a tin suit and you’re ‘Iron Man’. Are you happy that, at least for some part of career, you’ll be known as ’Iron Man’ and a superhero, because people tend to forget how complex an actor you are.”
“I was looking at the merchandise for ‘Iron Man’ and amongst all this cool stuff, the nerf things, there was this little flip book for kids, I think it said ages four plus and at the end, it says “Iron Man defeated the evil Iron Monger. Obidiah Stane would never hurt anyone again.” and I got really choked up about that. I thought this is an opportunity to get back to a system that I remember really impacted me greatly when I was a kid and to some degree even nowadays.” Unprompted, Howard then took the floor to describe one specific instance of how he remembered working on the film:
With the speaker announcing that time was almost up, the final questioner asked. Downey Jr. how he found the physical preparation for the role. Before he could answer, he was distracted by Gwyneth Paltrow who was stifling laughter at something Favreau had just whispered in her ear, asking “What’re you guys laughing about?!”
Favreau then leant over to Paltrow’s microphone and offering the explanation that it was “Her shoes. Check online, her shoes are the star of the movie. Her shoes are making more headlines than any of these conversations.” Prompting amused laughs, before yielding focus back to Downey Jr:
Downey Jr. then invited any specific questions for Paltrow, but the speaker interrupted, and apologised that with that last answer the press conference was out of time, shortly over 20 minutes after it began. The cast thanked the audience and left the room – presumably for somewhere slightly warmer.