Robert Downey Jr.: The Huge Lesson I Learned from Warren Beatty

You need to know what to do when the sun is not shining. And I think of all the people I've ever been in proximity of, Warren Beatty was probably my greatest teacher in that because he kind of anonymously produced this movie, The Pickup Artist, and he would say, what's Jack Giacoco's action in this scene? And I was like, he's trying to pick up girls. He's telling a girl he's comparing girls to paintings. And he goes, wrong. You're so wrong. Don't you even know what you're doing in this scene? I was like, I know what I'm doing. I'm trying to drive a car. He goes, no, no, no. You're trying to get to work. But you keep getting distracted. So your action keeps changing. I was like, oh yeah. He goes, so your action is to go to work. I said, yes it is. He goes, right. But what happens? I go, well, I see a girl. He goes, and then what happens? I go, oh, my action changes. He goes, yeah. He goes, nobody's going to be inspired all the time, but everybody should know what they're doing if they're being paid to play a part in a movie. It's irresponsible not to. I was like, thank you. That's a huge lesson. It's great. And by the way, it's embarrassingly obvious that this kind of icon came by and knew what I was doing, and I was absolutely certain that I did, and I couldn't have been further from knowing what I was doing. It's funny how much of that... You can't expect any divine thing to happen to you if you don't prepare. It's almost like you have to prepare to throw it away. I only make a great accidental picture if I have four ideas already that I can fall back on. The accidents are in between. Although sometimes you could argue that you prepared so much, you didn't leave any room for accidents to happen. That to me is the great tragedy of any creative situation, where somebody's got it so dialed in that if you want to do anything spontaneous, you have to give them ten minutes notice.