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Robert Downey Jr.’s talent was always obvious, but his appetite for drugs and alcohol made it easy for studios to deny him work throughout the first few decades of his career. The son of trailblazing independent filmmaker Robert Downey (whose “Putney Swope” is one of the most scabrous pieces of pop cultural satire you will ever see), Downey fils popped up on the periphery of 1980s favorites like “Weird Science” and “Back to School” before delivering his breakout performance as the redlining addict Julian Wells in Marek Kanievska’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ “Less Than Zero.”
Downey had the gift. He had it all. He was always the most exciting person on screen, which probably cheesed off some of his co-stars, but the kid couldn’t help it. Like Eddie Murphy or Robin Williams, you were primed to laugh whenever he stepped into the frame. Unlike those stars, you weren’t sure whether you could trust him. He could be a bully. He could be a cad. And he could be a killer.
Had Downey been able to resist the substances that landed him in prison more than once and nearly destroyed his career, I doubt he would’ve spent the entirety of the 1990s slugging it out in mostly supporting roles. Starring in “Chaplin” and earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in 1993 should’ve permanently placed him on the A-list. But his demons were not done with him.
And so, two years after he delivered an extraordinary lead performance in James Toback’s problematic “Two Girls and a Guy,” Downey found himself playing a child killer in Neil Jordan’s stylish thriller “In Dreams.” The actor was in and out of jail, rehab, and straight-up prison during this period, so he wasn’t really calling his tune as far as roles were concerned. Still, there was good reason to think the part might have a big upside. For starters, it was one of DreamWorks SKG’s first greenlights. Also, it was written for Steven Spielberg to potentially direct. So, what went wrong?
In Dreams was too nightmarish for Spielberg
In the very entertaining book “Smoking in Bed: Conversations with Bruce Robinson,” the delightfully prickly screenwriter of “Withnail & I” and “The Killing Fields” (for which he earned an Academy Award nomination) discussed how Spielberg hired him to write “a psychological drama of extreme darkness, not a thriller but what ‘The Shining’ should have been if it had been right, very much into relationship of characters.” This tracks because Spielberg was friends with Stanley Kubrick and is obsessed with the filmmaker’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel (to the point that he incorporated it into “Ready Player One”).
“In Dreams” was a primo Hollywood project, but, according to Robinson, Spielberg got cold feet when it came time to commit to making what would’ve easily been his darkest genre work. According to Robinson:
“It was very heavy, and something in his head, or someone like his wife, may have said, “Look, Steve, you’re the man who does ‘E.T.’ Do you really want to do a film about a child-killer? Your public may be very unhappy about you doing a subject like this.’ It doesn’t immediately lend itself to mainstream cinema, and that was the great problem of writing the bloody thing.”
Spielberg ultimately handed the project off to Jordan, the brilliant filmmaker responsible for such classics as “Mona Lisa,” “The Crying Game,” and “The End of the Affair.” He also had blockbuster cred due to directing “Interview with the Vampire.” This wasn’t a step down, but Jordan’s a tortured, lapsed Catholic who wears his religious agony on his sleeve. He made a beautiful looking movie (shot by master cinematographer Darius Khondji), but it’s one big mood in search of a compelling story. Had Jordan not rewritten Robinson, he might’ve been able to conjure the dark magic of Nicolas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now.” Instead, he made a neither-fish-nor-fowl studio art flick.
Downey is quite good in the movie, but it’s primarily a showcase for Annette Bening as the mother of the murdered child — and, shock of shocks, she aces the assignment. Had Spielberg made “In Dreams,” it would’ve been shot by Janusz Kaminski and probably lacked the terrifying beauty of Jordan’s rendition. Spielberg eventually scratched this itch with “Minority Report” in 2002, one year before Downey got clean. They just missed each other, but there’s still time for them to hook up.
