Robert Downey Jr, Zach Galifianakis, and Michelle Monaghan on 'Due Date'

Michelle Monaghan co-stars as Sarah, Peter's pregnant wife who's just days away from delivering their first child. Together for a press conference in LA to discuss the R-rated comedy, Downey Jr, Galifianakis, Monaghan and writer/director Todd Phillips talked about creating the characters and life on the set of Due Date.

Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan and Todd Phillips Due Date Press Conference

Michelle Monaghan: "Obviously I'm very, very excited and jumped at the opportunity to work with Robert again."

Robert Downey Jr: "She did us a favor."

Michelle Monaghan: "I adore Robert. I had such an amazing experience on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and so this was really exciting for me. And obviously I'm a huge fan of Todd, and Zach is all right. So I was very excited, and yes, I do get to see Robert occasionally and it's a nice mug to see."

Robert Downey Jr: "I got it pretty good. I don't want to offend our spouses but I'd love to have a baby with Michelle."

Zach, is this character closer to your standup persona than the other characters you've played?

Zach Galifianakis: "No. I don't think that Ethan Tremblay is anything like me. God, I hope not. My standup is more like how I am in real life. I don't really do a character thing in standup. It's just a bunch of sentences that are supposed to be funny. This Ethan guy is a lot more complicated, I think."

So there's a reason he says sentences that end up being funny? What's your take on your character's responses?

Zach Galifianakis: "Well, his reasons were not intentional. When you're doing standup, you're kind of doing, 'Hey. I thought of this. This may be funny.' But Ethan has no idea he's being funny, and I think people that are not self-aware and kind of a truck with no brakes are really kind of funny. He's saying things but he doesn't understand why they're funny, which I think is inherently funny."

Robert, your character punched a kid in the gut. What was it like working with kids in general?

Robert Downey Jr: "I love that we've actually gotten more push-back from spitting in a dog's face than punching a human child in the stomach. Those are the two things, Todd told me to do both of them. On one of them, on the day he said, 'You should spit in that dog's face.' I was like, 'Yeah, yeah. Anyway…’ He goes, 'I want you to spit in the dog's face.' I said, 'That's so definitive,' and he goes, 'I know, but I think that people like you enough. I don't know if they will. Just spit in it's face.' He loves dogs and I actually don't like dogs, so I felt kind of horrible and splendorous doing it."

"There was a question there somewhere but I'm sure whatever I said was far more entertaining."

Zach, did you have a problem with spitting in the dog's face?

Zach Galifianakis: "Maybe."

Robert Downey Jr: "Yes or no. That dog made you sick."

Zach Galifianakis: "Oh, I didn't like the dog. But I don't think...that doesn’t mean it's okay to spit. Robert spit in my face every morning. Plus, the dog and I have a certain bond."

This movie is about fatherhood, becoming one and losing one. Can you talk about fatherhood for a moment?

Todd Phillips: "Well, yeah. I think that’s exactly right. While it is a road movie and it is a comedy, at it's core it is a movie about Zach who's going through a drama - Zach's character, Ethan Tremblay, having just lost his father - and Robert who's just about to become a father for the first time and kind of why they needed to meet at this moment, and why Robert needed to travel with this kind of man-child who was going through this traumatic experience but really is a purely loving creature much like a child would be and just needed some adjustments, I guess."

Why did that story resonate with you?


 Robert Downey Jr: "Don't answer that, Todd."

Todd Phillips: "I refuse to answer that question."

Zach Galifianakis: "I'll tell you. No. It actually is very personal, maybe..."

Todd Phillips: "No, no. I think it's just an interesting take on it. For me personally it's an interesting movie to make. I tend to make films, I started making movies about college kids. I sort of grow with my movies. They're sort of always about my age range it feels. That's sort of the next step in life, having a kid or what have you and fatherhood. So it just seemed like an interesting thing to mine, both for emotion and for comedy."

Robert, were you channeling a bit of Todd in this, especially in the look of your character?

Robert Downey Jr: "Well, I'm actually glad that you asked that because I think that every time I feel that I really hit critical mass and I'm in the right place is when I feel like the director, and I become a third thing and that's the character. Even though the central subject of the movie is Ethan, the person who you're kind of seeing it through is Peter. Absolutely, and particularly when he said, 'There's just a lot of hostility and there's a lot of fear and his kind of attitude and his anger is covering that fear and stuff,' and we like to commiserate. We're genuinely pretty happy guys, but we love just getting crabby together. You remember that, don't you? And he is kind of like a hostage child that we've taken who's watching mom and dad or dad and dad just hash it out. But you're the first person who's asked that and I think it's absolutely true. I always feel like I'm playing an aspect of the director, particularly when he's an auteur. To me it's a way of almost making him a proud parent. I'm a bit of an appendage of some aspect of the director."

Guy Ritchie?

Robert Downey Jr: "Guy Ritchie. Yes. I just say yes to Guy Ritchie. Guy in a way a bit more of the kind of a British, smart, fighter-type thing."

The film evokes Planes, Trains and Automobiles in its pairing and its plot. What classic road films were you all thinking of as inspiration and or templates for the film?

Todd Phillips: "I'll go first. I'll just say that the movie that we talked about the most, oddly, was Rain Man. That to me is a road movie and a great road movie, and that was a movie that came up a lot as well as Midnight Run. Of course, there are comparisons to Midnight Run but there are comparisons to Planes, Trains and Tommy Boy and other things, but I think the movie that we talked about the most was Rain Man."

Robert Downey Jr: "Michelle was saying Wages of Fear quite a bit, too. Didn't you say something about that?"

Michelle Monaghan: "I did. I did that and Scooby Doo."

Robert Downey Jr: "'I hope you guys don't blow up the studio.'"

Can you talk about how you worked out or developed the scenes together on this? If it does resonate with audiences would you like to see a franchise out of this or are you dance cards full?

Todd Phillips: "Well, the way that we worked it out is the way that I've done it on all my movies, but this film in particular had an interesting process because Robert has a very producorial brain. He's basically another writer in the room. Zach is really an empty vessel. He just sits and waits. No. But Robert and I had lots of spirited discussions every morning about [it.] We had the pages and he'd go, 'Okay, what are we really doing?' Not to discredit the writing process which I was a part of, too."

Robert Downey Jr: "It was a great script, which just made me hate it all the more."

Todd Phillips: "Yeah. Robert has an aversion to things that are typed, I've learned. So even if we just rewrote the actual scene...if we just we rewrote it on a napkin, even if it was the same scene, he felt better about it. But no, we took it apart and the great thing about Robert, and I've said this before, he made me a better director and the reason for that is that he's constantly challenging what we're doing everyday in the larger, bigger picture. A lot of times you hear about actors and they're worried about their lines and their thing, and Robert thinks of the movie as a whole. He thinks of every character as the whole and that's what I mean by a producorial kind of approach to it. For me it was an unequaled experience. I've never experienced anything like it. I think that was the process. You witnessed a lot of it."

Zach Galifianakis: "Yeah. I think that each morning there was a meeting. I would read the minutes from the last meeting. 'Todd yells. Robert yells back. Let's get on with the new meeting.' No. There was a discussion for at least about an hour each morning it seemed like. Sometimes longer."

Todd Phillips: "Sometimes three."

Zach Galifianakis: "Yeah, and it really helped it. It really did. As far as the franchise stuff goes, we were kind of fantasizing on the last day certainly that I was working – I can't remember – and it was towards the last scene or it was the last scene at the hospital. There was a moment and I don't know if you recall it where Ethan says to Peter, 'Call me.'"

Robert Downey Jr: "Okay, yeah."

Zach Galifianakis: "Then I'm like, 'No. Call me tomorrow,’ whatever I say. We were fantasizing, like, I've never seen a movie jump genres. So the sequel would be more like a Cape Fear thing. My character is not actually dumb at all. It's just been an act."

Robert Downey Jr: "An elaborate ruse."

Zach Galifianakis: "...this whole time and I then stalk Robert's family."

Todd Phillips: "I thought what you were going to say and what would be interesting is if you just pick it up from a minute later. Instead of jumping a month or a year, that it's literally from that moment that you left. That would be fun."

Zach Galifianakis: "That would be great."

Todd Phillips: "There you go. That's how ideas are made."

Robert Downey Jr: "That's what I need is three franchises so that I can utterly have a personality meltdown and no real life, but I would do it with these guys. I have to say, too, that there was something so cathartic, and as we all know from the writers and Michelle peripherally and our involvement in it, but I think it was just the most healing project that I've ever worked on. And I've never come up against anyone who is so confident and so thoughtful and so spontaneous that it's not even daunting. He's just in a class by himself. I think Todd is the best director that I've ever worked with, bar none."

Todd Phillips: "Did you all get that?"

Was it refreshing to play someone with so many real and yet repellent moments in their arc?

Robert Downey Jr: "Absolutely, and I don't know why but it was an invitation to me to get in to touch with everything that annoys me about everyone and all the fear that I have about everything that everyone can relate to. So, in a way, I felt like I was a conduit to this. It wasn’t very pleasant. I’m sorry, by the way. I don't know why. I'm not a method guy. I can't be bothered to have a method. I just want to be a part of a good movie and I can't stand to be surrounded by morons, but we had such a great group of people in the whole thing. It's funny, yeah, because you could say this is a two dimensional commercial comedy. I feel that this is the second greatest story ever told."

The first being?

Robert Downey Jr: "Oh, come on! The Bible."

Can you talk about Juliette Lewis because she's had a great year of cameos. If you did do the Cape Fear thing would she be in it?

Todd Phillips: "She would, but I don't think that Zach could fit his finger in her mouth."

Robert Downey Jr: "You got to hand him the baton there. Do you want a piano?"

Zach Galifianakis: "At least my father didn't leave me. Okay? News is out. That's what the father issue is about. There it is."

Todd Phillips: "No, I love Juliette Lewis and she's been in three of my movies now, four, and she's one of those people and Michelle is the same way, quite honestly. This movie is about these two guys and the other parts in the film aren't a huge deal, aren't huge pieces and Robert said it best, Michelle did us a favor. She came in and she worked for those days and she brought what she brings and she's amazing, and Juliette the same thing. Jamie Foxx. Danny McBride. I like to think they're actors, they like to play. So if it's a two day part for Juliette or a one day part for Danny McBride you call them up and say, 'Hey, I'm doing this great thing with Robert and Zach, would you come down and just f*ck around for the day? We're going to have fun.' I think ultimately that's how it works. But Juliette in particular is just stupendous and she's just sunshine to me when I look at her. I think that she brings so much to small roles and large roles."

Continued on Page 2

• 1
• 2