When Christopher Nolan handed Robert Downey Jr. the script for Oppenheimer, it wasn’t just another Hollywood read. It was practically a magic trick. Printed on red paper with black ink, the script was as elusive as secretive. This isn’t just Nolan being Nolan; red paper makes scripts nearly impossible to photocopy and, apparently, even more challenging to remember.
“You forget it as soon as you read it,” Downey joked during Entertainment Weekly’s Around the Table chat with co-stars Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and Cillian Murphy. Hypnotized? Maybe. Frustrated? Definitely. “It’s kind of difficult, at best,” he quipped, poking fun at the visual gymnastics it took to decipher the lines.
But Nolan wasn’t just teasing his Iron Man recruit with tricky ink. The writer-director is famously old school, preferring physical copies over digital ones. It’s not about secrecy, Nolan clarified – it’s about privacy. “It’s being able to try things, to make mistakes, to be as adventurous as possible,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. And the red paper added a splash of drama to the mix.
Convincing Robert Downey Jr. to play Lewis Strauss – a key antagonist in the J. Robert Oppenheimer saga—wasn’t much of a challenge. “I don’t know why I can relate to Lewis Strauss so much, but I felt like I was meant to play this role,” Downey told The New York Times. Still, Nolan went all in, sending the actor “three dozen yellow roses” as part of his pitch. Classy move.
For Downey, the role was more than a career shift; it was a turning point. “Oppenheimer has been a bit of a demarcation line for me,” he said. “I knew there was a point where Chris Nolan was endorsing, let’s work those other muscles.” And work them, he did. Gone were Downey’s usual wisecracks and fast-talking charisma. What emerged was a performance that Nolan himself called “completely different.”
Nolan’s love affair with physical scripts is legendary. Forget email. Forget PDFs. He hand-delivers his scripts like they’re state secrets. That face-to-face connection? Priceless. “To be able to sit with somebody who’s just read what you’ve written and get their take on it, it’s a very human way to work,” Nolan explained.
And the red paper? It might’ve been a hassle for Downey, but it set the tone for the detail Nolan pours into his projects. No wonder Oppenheimer was one of 2023’s most buzzed-about films. For Downey, stepping into Strauss’ shoes meant shedding his Marvel skin and embracing something more nuanced. Playing the former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who sparred with Oppenheimer, gave Downey a chance to flex his dramatic chops and prove there’s life beyond Tony Stark.
Oppenheimer didn’t just mark a shift for Robert Downey Jr. It reinforced Christopher Nolan’s reputation as a filmmaker who doesn’t just tell stories; he crafts experiences right down to the ink on the page. And if the red-paper script made it harder to remember, maybe that was the point. After all, it’s hard to photocopy genius.
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