I Realize Now That I Should’ve Been Stalking You Since I Was Two Years Old

And by “stalking”, I of course mean waiting silently in the wings, watching every move you make. Everyone you talk to. Everyone you’ve ever talked to, for that matter. Watching…

… everything.

And by “you”, I of course don’t mean you. Let’s not kid ourselves, here. You? You’re no fun. I could go as far as following you on Twitter, but, really, that’s as far as I’m willing to go.

No, by “you”, I mean Robert Downey jr. The actor, in case there was any doubt. I’ve liked the guy ever since I saw him on Ally McBeal, all though he was only a face at the time (me being a young tween & still learning all about Pokemons & why fire hurts when you touch it & so on), and it wasn’t until last year’s Iron Man that the guy really made his mark on my list of Stalk-worthy persons. That’s when he cemented himself in my psyche, and I silently made a pact with him that he was my guy & we would do well to have further encounters in front of the big screen. Me, sitting there silently & wide-eyed, him up there, blasting people away with both his wits & super-charged sonic devices.

All in all, it was quite the amicable relationship.

Then I watched Tropic Thunder, and my metaphorical photo-lens grew several inches right up till the point I re-watched it with the commentary on, where he -true to his scripted words – stayed in character until the credits rolled.

So I watched The Soloist. Re-watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for the fourth (?) time. Played the Sherlock Holmes trailer until it got old…

… and then I went trolling around his imdb page, looking for more stuff to obsess over. I knew the chances were  slim, seeing as I’d heard been a bit black listed in Hollywood because of a slight addiction to happy pills & snowy powder, so I wasn’t expecting to find much of note. Perhaps an art movie I could hunt down if the need struck me, or a pilot of some goofy 90’s drama?

I took my look-see, and concluded I hadn’t heard much of anything about anything on the list of credits. So I  shrugged & plotted my Christmas Day outing for Sherlock Holmes while I watched some other films.

This is where my list of Stalk-worthy persons plays a little game of Six Degrees of Seperation. What has Robert Redford in common with Inigo Montoya, and how does it connect with Charlie Chaplin & Robert Downey jr.?

Movie buffs wouldn’t have much trouble with this one, but for those of you who feel like IMDBing your way out of the riddle, please do so now. I’ll wait patiently in the next paragraph while you find the missing link. And no, it’s not “Inconceivable!”

Ready? That’s swell. The answer, of course, is William Goldman,the man who wrote the book & script of the Princess Bride, a genre classic if there ever was one. Goldman also wrote Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (starring Robert Redford), a movie that rates highly amongst most connoisseurs of cinema, and certainly one of my all-time favourites. Lastly, Goldman received a writing credit on “Chaplin”, a biopic on the moustached little fella with the queer hat, starring my very own Robert Downey jr.

This film was released in 1992, at which point my two year old toddler-self was having lots of fun in a diaper & presumably sucking merrily away on my thumb.

Fast forward to 2009. I no longer wear a diaper, and don’t plan to do so until I’m old & senile enough to not care if I do, and hopes are that the thumb-sucking thing has subsided all together. In other words, progress has been made, and I’ve also watched “Chaplin”, which turns out to be quite a long & fascinating look at one of the film industry’s pioneers.

It can also tempt you with some nice casting. Anthony Hopkins plays the editor of Charlie Chaplin’s biography, which sets up the framework for the movie. The two old men (RDjr sporting an old-man’s make-up that would make Benjamin Button proud) sit in his home in Switzerland, working through Chaplin’s manuscript, taking the viewer on a journey from poverty to world fame to infamous outcast.The movie also stars The Other Guy from Ghostbusters (i.e. not Bill Murray) as the legendary Mack Sennett.

I suppose many an argument can be made about the true virtue of this movie, and even if it’s really a good movie at all. The beginning is somewhat of a tangled-up mess, where younger versions of Chaplin depict an origin story that doesn’t help the audience get a good feel for the main character. It’s only until you get to end of the meaty second act that you finally get a sense of the man that’s pervaded so much of our culture right up till this day. And while the ending is terrific for a biopic, the entirety of it didn’t manage to strike just the right balance between the man, the artist & the icon.

But it was close. And it tried. It tried so very hard, which makes me love it all the more. And it had marvellous balls in casting RDjr as Charlie Chaplin. The guy never did make it big until Iron Man hit, so casting him as the leading man on what must’ve been an expensive movie shows great big, beautiful balls of glorious ballness.

And you know what? I thought he was great. Every inch of great that you could expect, at least, and then some more.

And I realize now that I should’ve been stalking Robert Downey jr. since I was two years old.