Hollywood Dynasty

They’ve collaborated for more than two decades. Now they’re about to enter into their seventh film project, which is called “The Big Bang Theory.”

“He’s the only actor of his generation who takes serious risks,” observes writer-director Robert Downey Sr., whose films “Chafed Elbows,” “Putney Swope” and “Greaser’s Palace” embody the unique hip, satiric, nonconformist attitude of the ‘60s. “He plunges into roles head first. I can’t recall him ever balking at one of my directions.”

The actor, looking down his nose in mock horror, let the assessment pass. Of the film maker: “He’ll try anything. He pushes you into exploring every element of a character. It’s always a very freeing experience,” maintains Robert Downey Jr.

Downey Jr. has risen rapidly from second-banana roles in such films as “Back to School” to demonstrate equal skill in comic (“The Pick-Up Artist”) and dramatic (“Less Than Zero”) films. His debut was in his father’s wicked satire “Pound,” a literal dog’s life in which he played a puppy--the only canine lucky enough to be adopted in the story. In “Greaser’s Palace,” he was a youngster cavalierly murdered by desperadoes.

And in their most recent collaboration, “Rented Lips,” Downey Jr. portrayed Wolf Dangler, the foremost method actor working in adult movies. In “Big Bang,” which the father-son duo have recently completed financing, Downey Jr. will play Col. Leslie Groves in a comic spin on the development of the atomic bomb.

“The first roles (in my movies) were because he was family,” recalls Downey Sr. “I really didn’t have any idea he was serious about acting until he asked me to see him in a school play at Santa Monica High. He did Will Parker in ‘Oklahoma,’ and I knew he was going to do just fine.”

The two men have an unerring instinct for completing each other’s sentences and jokes and their mutual admiration is both visually palpable and touching. They view “Lips” as their first adult working experience though they felt production limitations dampened the ultimate artistic results.

But do any professional pitfalls persist in their relationship?

“He still brackets my emotions in the screenplay,” the younger Downey observes. “It drives me crazy. I don’t want to read something that has ‘defiantly’ or ‘whimsically’ beside my character’s name.”

Downey Sr. can only offer this fatherly advice: “I just do it to make sure he reads it.”