Robert Downy Jr. Killed in Auto Crash
The Los Angeles Times, June 14th, 1998
LA – Oscar nominated Superman actor Robert Downey Jr. was killed yesterday on the I-5 near the I-10 merge and downtown LA, the result of a traffic accident. Downey, who was sober according to toxicology reports, was deemed not at fault for the collision, which was blamed on a driver using their cellular phone. He was 33.
(Image source Amazon)
Downey, whose career had taken a major setback following arrests for substance possession and abuse, had been two years sober and by all accounts was turning his life around. “This is a truly tragic and utterly pointless death,” said friend and director Ron Howard. “The world has been robbed of a great man and a fantastic actor with so much ahead of him. He will be missed.” Downey’s current film, the drama
Sober, has been put into indefinite pause while Warner Brothers reassesses production.
Downey, the son of a Hollywood actor and filmmaker, rose to fame in the 1980s playing a variety of “teen comedy” roles before moving into dramatic roles, culminating in an Oscar nominated performance as Charlie Chaplin in the 1992 biopic. He went on to fame playing Superman, starting in
Man of Steel, where he…
Cont’d on A2.
Chapter 18: Chairman of the Board (Cont’d)
Excerpt from Jim Henson: Storyteller, an authorized biography by Jay O’Brian
On a Thursday night in February of 1998, Jim was alerted to a message by his personal assistant Javier. The LAPD had called. Bob Forrest was in recovery at Cedars Sinai, and under police custody. He’d been picked up off of the street, in the midst of a severe overdose, and in possession of heroin and drug paraphernalia. Jim was listed as his “Emergency Contact”.
Jim went to see him the next morning, finding him recovered for the most part, but still handcuffed to the bed rail. He was smiling, but his skin was pale and sunken and his voice shaky. He was reading a
People Magazine with actor Robert Downey Jr. on the cover. “Hey, Jim,” Bob said. “Just reading about RDJ here.”
“I never thought of you as a
People person,” Jim joked.
Forrest laughed, a croaking wheeze. “Yea, not my first choice, but RDJ’s really speakin’ to me. ‘Live life, don’t run from it.’ You know, I can’t even remember much of the last six months.”
Jim didn’t know what to say. Forrest was relaxed and smiling, but he looked like one of the zombies from
Kindred Spirits who’d lost the Angel Inside.
Bob Forrest c1998 (Image source YouTube)
Jim ultimately bailed out Forrest and hired a driver to take him to his court-mandated rehab. He didn’t expect much. How many times had Forrest been through rehab? Nurse Maria, who worked for John, considered him a lost cause. “I’ve seen folks that deep all my life. He ain’t the quitting type, no. Pray for recovery, but mostly pray for his soul because he’ll be seeing Jesus real soon.”
Jim was quite morose for the next few weeks, burying himself in his work as a distraction (in particular putting the finishing touches on the Studio Ghibli collaboration for
What Dreams May Come), and spending far too much time alone in his “Hotel California” manor. One of those nights he took the time to read the
People article. Yes, he could see why it was speaking to Forrest. It spoke to him too. The constant specter of mortality had always hung over him, and the ticking clock of time ever mocked him. But Downey had managed to push all of that aside and live in the moment, or was at least making of good show of doing so.
When Jim saw Forrest upon his return from rehab, he was shocked. Forrest was looking fairly healthy (he’d gained weight) and actually happy. And more than that, he looked
relieved, like a weight was lifted from his shoulders. He’s always been distracted when Jim met him, anxious and impatient as if he had somewhere else more important to be (i.e. on a nod). But this felt different.
The whole ride back to Hotel California, Bob spoke nearly non-stop, a mix of excitement, promise, second chances, and melancholy for the “days I lost”. He spoke more than once about Downey. “You know, it really takes a junkie to reach a junkie. No offense, Jim, but you ain’t had to carry the monkey, so you can’t really speak to it, right?”
Jim asked Bob if he’d like to meet Downey.
“Well, fuck yea! We crossed paths back in the day, on the set of
Less than Zero and all, but I never really got to know him.”
Jim called in some favors and set up a get-together, meeting Downey at a private beach club. Jim had briefly met Downey on the set of
Less than Zero as well, but he mostly sat back and let the two recovering addicts talk, even excusing himself on occasion to let them talk in private. The two found kindred spirits in one another. Bob even got a job doing the score and soundtrack for
Sober. The two soon became close and Jim felt glad to have arranged the introduction.
A couple of months later Robert Downey Jr. was killed in a car accident. Downey was clean and sober and driving responsibly. The accident was caused by an inattentive driver focusing on his phone. The sheer pointlessness of the death hit Jim like a punch to the gut. The man had overcome or at least tamed his demons, and a single, stupid jerk worrying more about his damned phone call than his driving killed him in an instant. The other driver survived and was facing manslaughter charges, but even this small “justice” felt hollow. Just another life destroyed for no point.
Jim also immediately feared for Bob Forrest. Downey was his, for lack of better words, idol and mentor and lifeline. Jim called up Bob and rushed to see him, half expecting him to already be on a nod or at least considering it. To Jim’s pleasant surprise, Bob was sober and actually in good spirits, if a bit melancholy, composing a song for Downey’s funeral.
“Yea, that’s life, Jim,” Bob told him. “Random as fuck. If there was a greater order or justice in life, I’d be dead in a ditch for my sins and Robert would be starring in his movie. Life is a meaningless abyss where the only point to life is living it. And I’m cool with that. No point to life but what you make for yourself.”
“But doesn’t it seem unfair?”
“Well, duh,” Bob laughed. “Life ain’t fair, and it’s unfair of us to expect it to be fair. What does the sun care about fairness? It ain’t shining for the trees’ sake and it don’t care that it’s giving the beach bunnies cancer. Rob’s dead. Ain’t no point. Just happens. Rob’s
death don’t mean shit, it’s his
life that matters, brother! What, I’m supposed to shoot a bunch of Turkish tar into my neck ‘cause he’s dead? Betray everything that he taught me ‘cause I’m fucking
sad? Fuck that, I’m living ‘cause he can’t!
“Like Rob said, it’s not when you
die that matters, brother, it’s how you’re
living, right?” Bob concluded.
Forrest later discovered that Downey had left him a substantial amount of money in his will with the stipulation that he spend it on helping addicts. Bob didn’t hesitate and, underwritten by Henson Arts Holdings for business and administrative matters, founded Addict 2 Addict Advocacy with Flea and John Frusciante from the former Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dead Kennedys drummer D.H. Peligro. The advocacy and recovery assistance charity was dedicated to confidentially helping addicts without judgement or condescension and became one of the premier and most successful addiction treatment and advocacy organizations on the west coast.
But the event also had a profound impact on Jim. Mortality and the tyranny of time had always hung over him. Part of what drove him was the need to “beat the clock” and pack in all of his ideas within his most certainly limited time on the planet. He’d felt profoundly each and every early death, from Slovak to the Coreys to Anthony Kiedis and most lately Downey. It had always seemed like an act of theft by the universe, good people stolen too early. But at the same time, he was watching as Downey’s and Kiedis’ tragic losses were paying forward, saving lives one addict at a time.
Jim refused to believe in Bob’s “happy nihilism” philosophy and chose to believe that there was a greater order to the universe. He chose to believe that people had control over their fate. He loved the ideas in
What Dreams May Come for “writing your own afterlife.”
But one thing that Downey and Forrest said kept resonating with him: “living life, not running from it.” He hadn’t exactly run
from life, but he was sure as sunrise running
through life. He’d been in such a hurry to pack it all in, even as each new idea spawned three more. He wouldn’t consider himself a math whiz, but he knew that his ideas were growing far faster than he had any hope of completing them. The chances of him accomplishing everything, even if he could live forever, were mathematically impossible for as long as his creativity inevitably spawned more creativity.
After several weeks of thinking about things, he called up Forrest. “Bob, you’re right. I need to live my life. Any advice on how to do it?”
“Brother,” Forrest replied, “you’ve already done the hard part: admitting that you have a problem. Carve a slot out of your big, important executive schedule and meet me on Catalina this Saturday. We’re going to start
living, no chemicals other than coffee required.”
