Oliver Stone felt like he was between a rock and a hard place on the set of “Natural Born Killers.”
The 1994 film starred Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson as a couple who dabble in serial killing. Yet it was supporting actor Robert Downey Jr. who almost killed the tone of the film, according to Stone.
The auteur told Esquire for the 30th anniversary of the Quentin Tarantino-penned feature that Downey almost went “too far” with a reference to the Lorena Bobbitt scandal, which occurred during production. Bobbitt infamously cut off her husband’s penis, which Downey mocked in a scene.
“Oh come on — that’s too much! You’re going too far, Robert,” Stone told the actor as Downey simulated a bloody phallus. “You’re ruining my movie! Forget the dumb dick idea. This isn’t…This isn’t some slapstick bullshit.”
However, later Stone asked to “see the dick thing again.” Downey’s trick with his bloodied shirt being pulled through his pants fly made it into the final scene of the film.
“I have to say, it was a zoo in the sense the actors were all on different kind of trips,” Stone said of the ensemble cast. “I think Woody was the most sane.”
Downey, who struggled with addiction during that era, told Esquire that “the only time I was awake was between Action and Cut.” The Academy Award winner admitted that he had been “nine sheets to the wind” prior to filming a pivotal prison interview sequence.
“Everything on the schedule got moved up, and suddenly I needed to be there in two hours. To this day, it was one of the most mortifying notifications I’ve ever received,” Downey said, “because it was a seven-page scene. I got to set and I was absolutely useless. I was then given a therapeutic injection of ‘B12 vitamins’ — I’m just going to put that in quotes, italics, underlined, and question marks on either side. And I have never in my life experienced a more delightful nine hours. But! I looked at the pages left to right, spread out on the floor — only twice — and was off-book. And — it’s the only time this happened during that shoot: You know how sometimes there’s applause from the crew after takes when people are doing movies and really nail it? When I finally got through that day — and Woody nailed it, nailed it, nailed it — then they had to turn around on me. The entire crew applauded because I think intuitively they know that I should not have even been anywhere but an emergency room that morning.”
Downey added, “We were all young enough that our resilience factor was cubed compared to if we had been middle-aged guys.”
And the legacy of “Natural Born Killers” remains one of Downey’s most beloved projects.
“With this movie, Oliver Stone has got something that still bears reexamination,” Downey said, while admitting that the production was “like a precision-executed three-ring circus ballet.”
“Oliver Stone is a director who, barring [Christopher] Nolan and maybe a few others, is the highest embodiment of social commentary via cinema,” Downey summed up. “Oliver Stone has never made a movie that wasn’t saying something. Never.”
