Oliver Stone said filming Natural Born Killers definitely had its challenges and Robert Downey Jr. didn’t make it any easier.
Thirty years after the release of the 1994 crime romance, the Oscar-winning filmmaker looked back at the film for a recent oral history by Esquire. This included Downey’s improvisation in a scene, where his character dips the front tails of his white shirt in fake blood and pulls it through his pants zipper to simulate a bloody penis.
“Oh come on—that’s too much! You’re going too far, Robert,” Stone recalled yelling at the actor for the crude moment. “You’re ruining my movie! Forget the dumb dick idea. … This isn’t some slapstick bullshit.”
However, the director later reversed course, telling the Oppenheimer star, “Wait, wait—wait a second. Let me see the dick thing again.” Downey complied with the orders before Stone added, “Pull it back a half inch. All right. Let’s go.”
Natural Born Killers followed Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis’ characters, lovers and psychopathic serial killers, who become media sensations while on their cross-country killing spree. Downey played trashy TV journalist Wayne Gale.
Filming for the 1994 movie also came at a time when Downey was struggling with addiction. “The only time I was awake… was between Action and Cut,” the Iron Man star admitted.
However, it wasn’t just Downey. Stone told the outlet that production “was a zoo in the sense the actors were all on different kinds of trips. I think Woody was the most sane.” And that’s saying a lot, as Harrelson is known for his marijuana use.
“I will say this, and Oliver reassured me of this: I don’t want to say I was the moral center on this movie, but I was the one doing the least amount of drugs! Which is—it’s never happened in my career or my life,” Harrelson added. “And no one’s ever done more drugs than me, but I was Mother Teresa on this one.”
Aside from the craziness that ensued on set, which Downey also described as a “precision-executed three-ring circus ballet,” the actor still highly praised Stone for what he created with Natural Born Killers: “With this movie, Oliver Stone has got something that still bears reexamination.”
Downey later added, “Oliver Stone is a director who, barring [Christopher] Nolan and maybe a few others, is the highest embodiment of social commentary via cinema. Oliver Stone has never made a movie that wasn’t saying something. Never.”
