IRON MAN 2 WORLDWIDE PRESS CONFERENCE - Transcript - Part 2
April 23, 2010
Press Member: My question is for Robert and for Gwyneth: first question is you have played heroes lately, so what do you think the definition of hero is? And Gwyneth, you have given us some lifestyle advice lately through your website, would you like to give us some advice? Because I am having a hard time losing weight.
Robert Downey, Jr.: I think a hero is someone who if they’re abroad or traveling, they go to the Goop website to find out what restaurants to go to, what clothing shops they might enjoy, what sites they should see. And they do that, not fearlessly, but they do that in spite of their fear.
Gwyneth Paltrow: Actually not this coming week, but next week, the Goop Newsletter will be about my IRON MAN training regiment and how I lost weight and got in shape to play this part, so you can check it out.
Press Member: Actually, this question is for the two of you as well. There’s a real moonlighting thing going on between the two of you in the movie. The banter between the two of you is great. But the kiss, of course, was very highly anticipated. How was it shooting that scene and finally getting that over with?
Robert Downey, Jr.: I couldn’t get her off of me. It was embarrassing.
Gwyneth Paltrow: It was great because both my husband and his wife were right there.
Robert Downey, Jr.: She said to me that I didn’t know what I was doing. Like it didn’t feel good. And I’m like, you know what? First of all, we’re all friends, so what would be creepy is if I was coming off all sexy to you while we’re, by the way, I’ve done that in movies and it creeps them out. So why am I going to creep you out? What am I, I felt like I was going to swallow this mike cover for a moment. Despite what she said on set, she still thinks about it.
Press Member: Question for Robert and question for Jon. Jon: I notice that your glorified extra role from the first movie definitely got much more flushed out. I was wondering why you decided to move in on the action yourself. And Robert, I notice that your wife’s name was in the credits as a producer and she was not last time and I was wondering what that was like for you.
Robert Downey, Jr.: Do you wanna swap questions?
Jon Favreau: Ah do you mind if we swap? We swap answers? Can he talk about Happy Hogan and I will talk about Susan Downey?
Press Member: By all means.
Jon Favreau: That’d be great. We just get asked these questions a lot. Susan, ah, Susan is a great producer, who has, it’s not like she came on board and became a producer to, because, we’re making IRON MAN. Quite the contrary. We were funneling towards a start date and we had a lot of ideas spread out and we had bulletin boards and Justin was there and Robert was there and Kevin and myself and Jeremy Latcham, with index cards trying to figure out how to make the work flow through. And she has tremendous organization ability and she understands Robert’s creative process and she understands the first movie and lived through it with us. And so Susan, who has a very strong background in development and physical production, was able to come in and just help. It’s like one of those shows where they just organize all of your closets for you and make you throw out all of the clothes that you don’t need anymore. But is takes somebody who says, you’re never going to wear that again. They’re never going to fit in that. And they throw it away. Or give it away, or figure our where…
Robert Downey, Jr.: On a certain level, they might have thought that she was going to come in and tame me or put me in check or whatever, but I was completely out of my mind. Let’s talk about Happy Hogan. There’s three Happy Hogan’s in the movie. The Jon Favreau that was in excellent shape, he was boxing every day pre-production and made it into the ring for the scene where he gets his ass handed to him by Scarlett. It was originally a longer scene and maybe he was just too emasculated to let it be in the movie, but I think you laid the boots to him quite severely.
Gwyneth Paltrow: Is that not in the movie?
Jon Favreau: No that’s in there.
Gwyneth Paltrow: Oh.
Jon Favreau: He’s on a run, let him…it’s in the movie.
Robert Downey, Jr.: And then about midway, he’s struggling with a mega fast, occasionally bingeing with pizza, but I gotta get back in…
Jon Favreau: Can I have my question back?
Robert Downey, Jr.: By the time we were doing reshoots, they were framing him out of shots. Umm here’s the thing though. He’s, this is one of the things that I love about you.
Jon Favreau: Here we go. Now kiss me on my cheek and after you’re done with me.
Robert Downey, Jr.: Yeah, and so, that’s how we do it.
Jon Favreau: Give me a dollar and a towel. And cab fare and walk me to the lobby.
Robert Downey, Jr.: You know I don’t have the upbeat part. I forgot it. Pressing on…
Press Member: I saw the move last night. Everybody was fantastic, great performances. Really impressive. Loved it. Umm, you kind of side-stepped the Sam Rockwell question. And in the lead up to the movie, there’s been hundreds of stills, posters, Sam’s in none of it, and he’s noticeably absent today, is there a falling out? Was he…
Jon Favreau: Yes…
Press Member: Were you guys not happy with him?
Jon Favreau: You hit the mother load. No I love Sam. Sam’s doing a play. Umm, I hope to be working with him again.
Robert Downey, Jr.: I had that same question though. I was wondering. He must be doing a play or something.
Jon Favreau: Yeah, he’s on Broadway doing a play right now. He’s awesome. He’s going to be at the premiere. You can ask him your self then, he uh, ever since our first collaboration, when he was the gender unspecific concierge in ‘Made,’ I knew that he was an inspiring, inspired dude. I wish that he could be here selfishly, because he is a fun, funny guy and he was really always a fountain head of ideas and stuff and I wish he could have been here but he can’t. There’s no, unfortunately, there’s no fire where that smoke is.
Press Member: And you considered him for Tony Stark as well you said?
Jon Favreau: Well there was, we were putting lists together, long before Robert, I even met with Robert, and it was talked about.
Robert Downey, Jr.: Enough. This is embarrassing. You’re embarrassing yourself. Shut up.
Press Member: I don’t mind being embarrassed.
Jon Favreau: I thought he could be an, a sort of, untraditional interesting other way to go as we were listing a lot of younger actors that didn’t have a lot of experience. That were a little more, traditionally, what you’d think for a super hero role. Then when I met Robert, we pretty much clicked, and I knew that that was, that was the guy. But, as Justin Hammer, I think you see like a cool goofy image of what he…Justin Hammer wishes he was Tony Stark and he really embraced that aspect of the character. And I think it’s really fun, in a really fun way.
Press Member: Thank you, and finally Scarlett was fantastic as Black Widow. There was talk at one point of a spin-off movie for her. I think that anyone who sees the movie would love to see that. Is that still a possibility?
Kevin Feige: Hell yes.
Scarlett Johansson: Kevin?
Kevin Feige: Absolutely.
Press Member: My question is for Jon. We heard about a few of the scenes that might end up on the DVD. What other cool extras do you have planned for the DVD and Blue Ray release?
Jon Favreau: Well we have, there are a lot of featurettes. We were running cameras behind the scenes all the time. We don’t like to really like to show too much of it before the movie comes out to keep some surprises, but everything was very well documented. And as you can see, we have a very interesting group of people. And so, between the interviews, you get s really good sense, we’re fans of these movies. Kevin and I are always swapping back and forth books and things about the movies that we grew up loving. And so we documented very well so there is going to be pretty extensive featurettes and then commentary this time around and also deleted scenes that we thought would be interesting for people to see. So it’s more a movie fan set of extras, people who really want to immerse themselves.
Press Member: This question is for Gwyneth and Scarlett. If you could just tell us a little more about your specific roles and how in this movie you are strong intelligent women, you are not in the movie just as a sex symbol per se. Could you tell us a little more about that?
Scarlett Johansson: Well you know, I don’t think I have never really seen a film of this genre, where the female characters were, that they’re kind of this, that they’re sex appeal was sort of came second. I mean of course they’re sexy characters and they’re, when you have a sexy secretary, or a girl you know swinging around by her ankles in a cat suit, you know that’s innately sexy, but the fact is that these characters are intelligent. They’re ambitious. They’re motivated and calculated to some degree, and so it leaves…I probably would have, to be just a pawn in a story of a whole bunch of men kind of fighting it out and rolling around and getting down and dirty, there you are to sort of be like the vision in the tight cat suit is sort of a boring thing to me. And I think that Jon really made that very clear in the beginning, that he felt that as far as Black Widow was concerned or that Natalie was concerned, was that she was mysterious and nuanced and something to kind of peel back the layers to. That there was something there. That he wanted to do that and you know I think that is why this film is much more dynamic for me as an audience member. I have never really been a fan of this genre really and I think because it is really one note and kind of explosive, I think because Gwyneth and I can sort of be the brains behind the operation in some aspect, there’s kind of a happy medium there. I think it adds to the charm and the charisma of the film and the finished product.
Gwyneth Paltrow: I agree with Scarlett. Umm I think that it’s a very smart decision actually to have women that are capable and intelligent because it appeals to women. You know so it’s not only a film for fifteen year old boys. It’s a film that can relate to a lot of people on a lot of levels. And you know a lot of my girlfriends like it because of the romance or like Scarlett is in the trailer and it is appealing. Ooh who is she and you know it doesn’t look like you know, it doesn’t look gratuitous, it looks like there are interesting women in the movie and you know certainly from the first one too my character is quick and she’s articulate and she’s you know, I think it makes it, it makes it so that you know that when you take your kid when you’re a mom it’s really fun to watch as well. So it’s nice to see women who are kind of inspirational and smart, sexy, all at the same time.
Don Cheadle: I think fifteen year old boys are going to like it too.
Scarlett Johansson: It’s awfully kind of old fashioned actually, in the best sense of the word. There’s sort of that, these characters are sort of like these fabulous femme fatales of the golden age of Hollywood that Betty Davis more than the Jane Mansfield, you know, which I think is so much more dynamic to watch.
Press Member: My questions are for Ms. Paltrow again and for Mr. Downey, Jr. For Ms. Paltrow, I am wondering, sort of ripping off of that last question, if you had some kind of interior monologue or ideas about Pepper kind of beyond what we get through dialogue and she is quite plaintive and supportive but that’s mostly from what we see. And for Mr. Downey, Jr. I am wondering about the physical challenges, and perhaps emotional and intellectual as well for this whole and what the boundaries of that were for you.
Robert Downey, Jr.: Yeah they probably want to hear me first. Physically, I feel like Don and Scarlett and Mickey, actually, had a heavier load this time as far as just…
Gwyneth Paltrow: He made them do it all in CGI. He’s like CGI. CGI it! I am walking off.
Don Cheadle: Draw me.
Robert Downey, Jr.: But again, I think we all just labored really hard to say like ok we’re audience members who made the first IRON MAN successful and we’re smart which is kind of why we were drawn to it so what do we expect? We kept putting ourselves in audience seats and to me the mental and emotional aspects and development of Tony, were to me, a lot more, it’s strange to say personal, cause it’s not necessarily relating to my life, so to speak, but just the mythology of saying your something and being that thing or something is entirely different. And also, this whole idea of Howard Stark and the legacy and the shadow of that legacy that we always were talking about, Mickey and I, about being kind of two sides of the same coin. One who was able to ah escape that captivity and one who saw his father die in the ruins of improper recognition and having to reckon with that. And so really all of the characters you know, I mean Black Widow, Natalie in certain places, bringing me back to an extended family that I’ve always had. And Mickey as Anton is telling me that all is not well and people have vendettas for reasons that I might not understand but that I need to understand. And Rhodey is there saying, “Hey you’ve always had me kind of on your wing so why won’t you really let me help you?” And obviously the Pepper thing.
Jon Favreau: Alright thank you every body.
No comments:
Post a Comment