April 2008: David Carr (a former drug addict turned respectable media reporter) publishes a massive profile of Robert Downey Jr (a former drug addict turned respectable media phenom) pegged to Downey’s upcoming film, Iron Man, in the New York Times. At the time, there is a whiff of bad buzz in the air about the film––that the feature can’t sustain the energy of the trailer, that one political party won’t appreciate messages inserted the film apparently to the delight of the other; that audiences won’t buy Downey as a superhero.
May 2008-July 2008: Iron Man opens huge and goes on to make a shit ton of money, even earning the respect of critics and, to some extent, the kind of person who reads long profiles in the Sunday New York Times.
Late July 2008: An excerpt from Carr’s memoir, The Night of the Gun, is printed in the New York Times Magazine, Reaction is insanely positive, and buzz starts to spread online like wildfire. (It lands in bookstores today.)
August 2008: Robert Downey Jr, who signed with HarperCollins last year to publish his own autobiography, returns his advance to the publisher. “Maybe he feels there are just too many of those “how I came back from addiction” memoirs out there,” whispers Liz Smith.
Are the above incidents related? Probably not! But maybe!
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth