Exclusive Interview: Sherlock Holmes Writer on Robert Downey’s Kung Fu and the Delicate Issue of Holmes’ Coke Addiction (Part 3)

Share on Facebook posted 12-23-09 by John Freeman Gill

A-list action screenwriter Simon Kinberg gives 30 Ninjas Editor John Freeman Gill the inside story on the physical chess game of Robert Downey Jr.’s wing chun kung fu, how the actor authored his own fight scenes, and how the filmmakers handled the delicate issue of Sherlock’s cocaine addiction.

The Erudite Kung Fu of Robert Downey Jr.

30 NINJAS: With Mr. & Mrs. Smith, you were writing characters out of your own head before the movie was cast. By sharp contrast, on Sherlock Holmes, how did it affect your writing to know that you were specifically writing these characters for Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law?

SIMON KINBERG: I think as a writer have to have half your mind thinking about character — what’s right for the character, as on the page, as in the story. And then the other half of your mind has to be thinking about the voice of this particular actor. You know, I’ve done this a few times, because I come in and I do a fair amount of rewriting on production on movies. And also I’ve written a couple of sequels, like X-Men: The Last Stand, where all the all the roles are pretty much cast already, and they’ve been in a couple movies playing these parts. I try to watch every movie or as many movies as humanly possible that those actors have been in.

30 NINJAS: Is that to see what they’re capable of so far?

SK: Sometimes it’s that, but some of it is more just their voice. Actors have a specific voice; even the most chameleonlike character actors still have a specific voice. And trying to learn that voice so you can write toward it. Sometimes it’s very literal for the dialogue for me, it’s like, I talk very fast, so my sentences tend to be really long and have a lot of “ands” and “buts” in them. Some people speak in more staccato sentences, and some actors are clearly more comfortable when they’re quiet. So you adjust to the way they speak, the rhythms of their language. You can determine that if you watch five movies from somebody. You’ll start to see speech patterns, even if those movies are very different. So you try to learn that. But you know, in the case of someone like Robert [Downey Jr.] and Jude [Law], frankly, or in the case of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman in the X-Men movies, they’re such good actors that you’re never really thinking in terms of where there are limitations. You’re really thinking in terms of the opposite, almost like, How can I possibly challenge these people, given how good they are at acting?

30 NINJAS: How did you do that with Robert Downey Jr.?

SK: Honestly, Robert challenges himself. He’s so ambitious and so imaginative and creative as an actor that he really, he comes with — he’d actually be a great actor for Doug [Liman] because he comes with a hundred ideas for every moment in the movie. He’s just overflowing with ideas. Robert had very specific ideas about — you know, he’s trained in a specific martial art [wing chun kung fu]. He may even be a black belt. And he’s been training in it for a long time and he has a sensei that he trains with. And we thought it was sort of interesting for Sherlock to have been trained in some sort of martial art because it would imply a sort of worldliness to him. It wasn’t obviously something back then that was as popular.

30 NINJAS: You couldn’t go to the corner aikido place.

SK: No, exactly. And so really Robert had this specific sense of fighting style and a very unique fighting style that felt, again, worldly and erudite, in a way. And so that got integrated into his fighting style for the movie.

Elementary, My Dear Stunt Coordinator

30 NINJAS: That’s very interesting, because Holmes is someone who is always thinking as if everything’s a chess game and he’s thinking three moves ahead. And the martial arts are often like that, too. If I do this move, there are these three possible responses to it, and I’m anticipating he may do this, and what I will do then. Does this seem like something that was going on with this character?

SK: Completely. All I can say is, completely. His fighting style is about understanding his opponent’s weaknesses and playing it like a chess game.

30 NINJAS: There’s this great scene in [the 1976 Sherlock Holmes film] The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. Watson sees that [the villain] Moriarty doesn’t have a backhand in tennis, and then there’s the climactic swordfight between Holmes and Moriarty where Watson yells to him, “No backhand, Holmes! No backhand!”

SK: Yeah, it’s fantastic. I think it’s actually the best of the Holmes movies.

30 NINJAS: Did you feel that Downey played the action in a way that was consistent with how he played the dramatic scenes? How did that manifest itself?

SK: All I can say is that he’s an incredibly thoughtful actor. So there’s not a move he makes, whether it’s an action move or a move of dialogue, that isn’t thoughtfully approached and intentional. He’s not an actor who’s just sort of guessing. He has such a clear vision for the character — such a clear vision — that it’s like every moment is a moment where he is mining something about that character. And that’s true in the action sequences, and it’s in the fights, and little smiles he has in the movie, and everything in between.

30 NINJAS: And he has certainly turned himself into one hell of a physical specimen. How did that affect his ability to perform the physically demanding scenes that you wrote?

SK: Well, he’s in incredible shape and does all this exercise and martial arts, so the actual action sequences in the movie were not particularly challenging for him. And he really is as much the author of those fights as the stunt coordinator or anybody else, because of his experience and knowing his body.

30 NINJAS: Did you sit down with him and talk to him about the character?

SK: Yeah. When I was in London, he came to London for about — I want to say three days or so, four days. Just to spend time talking about the script. And we spent a lot of time talking about it there, about the character and about the whole thing, and we read through the script together with the other producers and Guy [Ritchie, the director], literally read it out loud and went through every scene, every line. You know, he and Guy and the producers were very hands-on in a good way. They really cared about the script.

Coke Classic or New Coke?

30 NINJAS: Just one last question on this subject. One of Holmes’s edgiest and most “modern” traits is his cocaine addiction, which The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was all about. And it’s such a great character trait for Holmes because Holmes is always all about control and about perceiving every single thing in a room and planning three moments in advance. And of course if he really has such an addiction he’s really not in control at all, so it’s a great inner conflict for the character. How is his addiction dealt with in the movie?

SK: I would say we tried to be as loyal to the books as possible.

30 NINJAS: Which means what?

SK: Which means we tried to allude to that in the movie. But I wouldn’t say that it’s a critical part of the movie.

30 NINJAS: Were there discussions about whether to hit that note a little harder?

SK: Yeah, there were discussions about it.

30 NINJAS: And then, of course, Robert Downey Jr. has had his own well-documented struggles with drug addiction in the past, and he could presumably bring a hell of a lot of power to a performance about that. But Downey told MTV that he personally asked that Holmes’s addiction only be alluded to.

SK: That’s right, it’s only alluded to.

30 NINJAS: How did that affect the way you wrote the characters?

SK: It wasn’t a huge part of the character for me. The struggle between control and losing control was a big part of his character, but it manifests in so many different ways. It manifests in his relationships with people, so it’s about losing control emotionally. It manifests in the physical action, so it’s about literally losing control, or somebody else having physical control over you. It manifests in so many different ways that it felt like [the cocaine addiction] was just another symptom of something much bigger — it wasn’t the thing.

In Part 1 of Our Exclusive Interview, Simon Kinberg Talks About X-Men Fundamentalism and Leaks Details About His Favorite New Sherlock Scene, the Superpowers of Sherlock Holmes, and Director Guy Ritchie’s Vision for the Film’s Action: Read it Now!

In Part 2, Kinberg Reveals Why He Personally Murdered Cyclops in Cold Blood, As Well as More on Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, an Over-the-Top Sherlock Action Sequence That Was Never Shot, and the Surprising Advice Legendary Action Director John Woo Gave Kinberg About Pacing an Action Film! Read it Now!