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`The Singing Detective'
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Directed by Keith Gordon, Robert Downey Jr. stars in the American movie
version of a 1980s six-part British television masterpiece.
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JOEY BERLIN
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ew film stars seem to be
composed of so much tal-
ent and trouble as Robert
Downey Jr. His every
career triumph is matched by some
personal catastrophe, usually involv-
ing drugs and the law, faithfully
reported on the evening news.
Happily for Downey, he is on a per-
sonal and career upswing as he essays the
lead role of crime novelist Dan Dark in
director Keith Gordon's big-screen adap-
tation of The Singing Detective. The off-
beat musical noir detective yarn co-stars
Robin Wright Penn as Dark's wife and
Mel Gibson as his shrink, with Adrien
Brody and Katie Holmes also featured in
the strong supporting cast.
Before switching careers, New York-
born director Gordon, 42, who is
Jewish, was an actor, playing a number
of adolescent/young adult roles in the
1980s. He is probably best remembered
as Rodney Dangerfield's son, Jason
Melon, in Back to Schooh and also had
the lead in Brian DePalma's Dressed to
Kilt His &rectorial efforts include A
Midnight Clear, Waking the Dead and
To
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11/14
2003
76
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To Be (Jewish)
NATE BLOOM
ibis is a smoke and Liquorjil,e environment
DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Mother Night.
In The Singing Detective, Downey stars
as a hospitalized and hallucinating writer
who re-imagines one of his novels about
a hard-boiled gumshoe investigating a
murder.
He tackles the widely admired teleplay
n an interesting example of "I'm. Jewish when I
want to be," Robert Downey Jr. has now declared
himself "half-Jewish."
In a recent interview, he pointed out that his father's
original last name was "Elias," and "he is Jewish."
In fact, his father, Robert Downey Sr., famous in the
'late 1960s and early 1970s as the director of the cult clas-
sics Putney Swope and Greaser's Palace, is "half-Jewish."
Downey Sr.'s father was Jewish, but his mother was Irish,
and not Jewish. (Downey Sr. adopted his non-Jewish
stepfather's name when he was 17.)
A few years ago, Downey Jr., while indicating his father
was "half-Jewish,"
made a point of
Nate Bloom is the editor
saying that he him-
ofJewhoo.corn.
DETECTIVE on page 78
elf was "not Jewish."
Why the change?
Well, Downey Jr. has been clean
for the last 18 months, after being
kicked off Ally McBeal for testing
positive yet again for cocaine.
However, it can be hard for him to get parts because
no film company will finance a film unless the leading
actors have an insurance bond that pays the company
back for its losses in case a leading actor is unable to
complete a film.
Insurance companies are demanding a very big pre-
mium for Downey Jr., although, to his credit, he has
never failed to complete a film.
It turns out Downey Jr. has long been friends with
Mel Gibson, who produced and has a small part in
Downey Jr.'s new film, The Singing Detective.
Gibson paid for Downey Jr.'s insurance bond for
Detective. Downey Jr., of course, has reason to be
grateful to Gibson.
Therefore, when reporters asked Downey Jr. about
Gibson's controversial film, The Passion of Christ,
Downey Jr. supported his buddy and declared the film
"not anti-Semitic," apparently adding to his credibility
by telling reporters that he is "half-Jewish." s
Why is Robert Downey Jr. "suddenly" Jewish?
Reservations now being
taken through 2004
www.Emeraldfood.com
Robert Downey Jr. in Keith Gordon's
"The Singing Detective"
by the late Dennis Potter (who penned
the film version before his death in
1994), playing a character who, like
Potter, was bedridden with a debilitating
skin disease.
"In the same way the original explored
English society post-war, this explores
America at the time McCarthyism was
coming in and America was developing
a sort of xenophobia about the rest of
the world," Gordon told BBC World.
"I think it's no accident that Potter
takes the character who in the English
version is in a ward full of people, and in
this version, he isolates him alone in a
private room.
"It's very much that American thing of
a man against the world, isolated and
paranoid about the world around him,
much the way America started to
become paranoid at that time."
The 38-year-old Downey likes to joke
that he has never been in a film that was
financially successful, but he may not be
able to say that much longer. He will
next be seen opposite Halle Berry in the
suspenseful thriller Gothika.
Here, he talks about his new film, his
past problems and his future.