Names and faces
Robert Downey Jr. thinks courtrooms are dull. That didn’t stop the leading man of The Avengers f rom landing on The Judge as the inaugural film from his production company, Team Downey, which he formed with his wife, Susan. The 2010 buddy comedy Due Date is Downey’s only other movie in the past five years in which he isn’t in the role of Iron Man or Sherlock Holmes. In the film, conceived of and directed by Wedding Crashers filmmaker David Dobkin, Downey plays a Chicago lawyer who returns to his small Indiana hometown to attend his mother’s funeral. While there, Downey’s character becomes enmeshed in a criminal case involving his father, the town’s judge, portrayed by Robert Duvall. “I’ve done lawyers before and it’s like, ‘Dude, really? Courtrooms? So boring,’” Downey said. “The idea David [Dobkin] had was that a lawyer would be able to get his father — when he’s sworn in — to tell the truth. How could you not take advantage of that, with his life on the line and all the stuff that’s happened between them?” After starring as Tony Stark in four Marvel films, Downey said he wasn’t necessarily looking for a project like The Judge, which opens Friday.
Actress and comedian Carol Burnett was honored by a Pennsylvania museum dedicated to actor Jimmy Stewart, a Hollywood star she was smitten with as a toddler who went to the movies with her grandmother in San Antonio. “I saw this long, tall drink of water up there in black and white and I said, ‘He’s my friend. I know him,’” Burnett said before receiving the award. “And it came to pass.” The 81-year-old actress received the museum’s Harvey Award at a Friday night fundraiser for the James M. Stewart Museum Foundation, based in the actor’s hometown of Indiana, Pa., about 45 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The banquet was a few miles away in Blairsville.