When Christopher Nolan handed Robert Downey Jr. the script for Oppenheimer, it wasn’t simply one other Hollywood learn. It was virtually a magic trick. Printed on purple paper with black ink, the script was as elusive as secretive. This isn’t simply Nolan being Nolan; purple paper makes scripts practically unimaginable to photocopy and, apparently, much more difficult to recollect.
“You overlook it as quickly as you learn it,” Downey joked throughout Leisure Weekly’s Across the Desk chat with co-stars Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and Cillian Murphy. Hypnotized? Perhaps. Annoyed? Positively. “It’s type of tough, at finest,” he quipped, poking enjoyable on the visible gymnastics it took to decipher the traces.
However Nolan wasn’t simply teasing his Iron Man recruit with tough ink. The author-director is famously old fashioned, preferring bodily copies over digital ones. It’s not about secrecy, Nolan clarified – it’s about privateness. “It’s having the ability to strive issues, to make errors, to be as adventurous as potential,” he informed The Hollywood Reporter. And the purple paper added a splash of drama to the combo.
Convincing Robert Downey Jr. to play Lewis Strauss – a key antagonist within the J. Robert Oppenheimer saga—wasn’t a lot of a problem. “I don’t know why I can relate to Lewis Strauss a lot, however I felt like I used to be meant to play this position,” Downey informed The New York Occasions. Nonetheless, Nolan went all in, sending the actor “three dozen yellow roses” as a part of his pitch. Elegant transfer.
For Downey, the position was greater than a profession shift; it was a turning level. “Oppenheimer has been a little bit of a demarcation line for me,” he mentioned. “I knew there was a degree the place Chris Nolan was endorsing, let’s work these different muscle tissue.” And work them, he did. Gone had been Downey’s ordinary wisecracks and fast-talking charisma. What emerged was a efficiency that Nolan himself referred to as “utterly totally different.”
Nolan’s love affair with bodily scripts is famous. Neglect e-mail. Neglect PDFs. He hand-delivers his scripts like they’re state secrets and techniques. That face-to-face connection? Priceless. “To have the ability to sit with any individual who’s simply learn what you’ve written and get their tackle it, it’s a really human method to work,” Nolan defined.
And the purple paper? It would’ve been a problem for Downey, but it surely set the tone for the element Nolan pours into his tasks. No marvel Oppenheimer was certainly one of 2023’s most buzzed-about movies. For Downey, getting into Strauss’ sneakers meant shedding his Marvel pores and skin and embracing one thing extra nuanced. Enjoying the previous chairman of the Atomic Vitality Fee, who sparred with Oppenheimer, gave Downey an opportunity to flex his dramatic chops and show there’s life past Tony Stark.
Oppenheimer didn’t simply mark a shift for Robert Downey Jr. It bolstered Christopher Nolan’s popularity as a filmmaker who doesn’t simply inform tales; he crafts experiences proper all the way down to the ink on the web page. And if the red-paper script made it tougher to recollect, perhaps that was the purpose. In any case, it’s arduous to photocopy genius.
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