He then told Monica about RDJ obsessively chewing gum, "just pulling them out and putting them in his mouth and putting more in." I think you're the most 'addict-y' motherf-er I have ever met in my life!" But I'll give you this credit, I think you're a 10. "And I got it pretty bad I think I'm probably an 8. "I don't know how we would evaluate it, but let's say that there's a spectrum, 0-10, for addiction," he said. Lena Dunham Celebrates Five Years of Sobriety: 'Happiest of My Time on Earth' And you try to laugh your way through it, you try to joke because it is a tragedy, but it catches up with us all the time. "And then in the scene I realized, 'No, it's a f-ing tragedy. "If I had to sum what he might have said - this is what made me cry - I think his point of view was, 'Life is a hundred year-long joke,'" Dax said. "I have no clue who I am and I'm not going to try to know," he said. when he admitted he didn't understand himself, either. You get to actually stand there for a second and see this thing, and you hold space and time and grief."ĭax said that watching RDJ try to understand his father in the film really connected with him, as did a line from Sr. "Because this is actually what life is if you're lucky. "Sometimes you have these on set, sometimes you have them in life where you have them at transitions of life where you just go, 'Just stand here, if you can understand this,'" he added. "I'm watching a screening of 'Sr.' from the back looking at it from the screen with these set pieces back there, and I had one of those definitive quantum moments," he said. He recalled being at one of his father's film screenings at the Castro Theater in San Francisco, and suddenly he was at the same place. He shared that his father could only speak "through the language of film," which is evident throughout the project, so it's appropriate this was where he found a moment of connection.ĭwayne Johnson Urges Fans to 'Reconcile' with Fathers After Failing to Do So Before Own Dad's Death One of the moments that helped him with his grief after filming the project was an unexpected juxtaposition with his father's own journey as a filmmaker. "And so, it's almost like I needed to be filmed, monitored, and graded doing it in order to do it." "I got to do it with a generation of Downeys that are untouched by the ugliness of addiction," he shared. He found that connection when his son wanted to join him for that last trip to New York to see his father. It won't make sense to anyone who ever watches it. RDJ said that his wife told him, "You have to think of this in a structure and you have to start thinking about your closure with your dad, whether it's monitored or not, otherwise, forget it. It was during the process of making the film and seeing his father's health begin to decline more rapidly that RDJ and his fellow filmmakers, as well as his wife Susan, realized what this film was really about. I got to do it with a generation of Downeys that are untouched by the ugliness of addiction "I have done so many things wrong and there's so many moments in my life I couldn't have been there, but just to get to do that is an enormous gift."Īgreeing "one hundred percent" in how impactful that moment was for him, RDJ said that with the perspective of distance from such an emotionally intimate project, he's come to understand that he went into it "kind of as a defense mechanism and an avoidance technique." "I can't believe I was there and I did it right," he shared. "So much of it reminded me of that experience," he told RDJ of the film, expressing how much "gratitude" he has that he was there at the end. He share that the scene of RDJ lying in the bed with his father at the end was particularly impactful as he remembers that experience almost exactly from his father's own death.Īfter a brief three-month battle with cancer, Dax's father succumbed to the disease in December 2012. Goodbye Is a Privilegeįor Dax, it was a palpable experience as he was able to relate directly to losing one's father. As his health declines, it's also a son attempting to reckon his complex relationship with his father and preparing to say goodbye. filming an avant-garde documentary about his own life.
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