When I went to see Iron Man, I remember my boyfriend turning to me asking what was up with the ‘cheseburger’ scene. It was shortly after Tony escaped his captors and was demanding cheeseburgers. My boyfriend figured there must have been something up with that, but we never discussed it again. Ends up it was loosely based on Robert Downey Jr.’s own personal experience with his drug addiction and credits Burger King for helping him beat the habit.
The fast food epiphany happened in 2003 when the “Iron Man” star was driving a car piled with “tons of f—ing dope,” Downey Jr. told Britain’s Empire magazine. The actor decided to pull over for a burger and everything changed.
“I have to thank Burger King,” he said. “It was such a disgusting burger I ordered. I had that, and this big soda, and I thought something really bad was going to happen.” Downey Jr. says he then tossed all of his drugs into the ocean, deciding right then and there to clean up his act.
Source: New York Daily News.
October 8th, 2008 at 9:12 am
To think, if he had stopped at an In-N-Out Burger, we’d of been robbed of Iron Man…but saved from Pirates 3.
October 8th, 2008 at 9:16 am
This line of reasoning confuses the hell out of me, but good for him.
October 8th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Burger King saves a man’s life. Take THAT Morgan Spurlock!
(Yeah I know, he did Mcdonalds, work with me here…)
October 8th, 2008 at 10:10 am
and here i thought it was just obvious product placement! seriously, i forgot this anecdote. i think it also ran in some sort of NYT pre-release interview.
October 8th, 2008 at 10:11 am
RDJ might be off whatever he was on but it doesn’t look like the King is.
October 8th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
The King is of course really just waiting for his moment as the star of V for Vendetta 2.
October 8th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
… this doesn’t make sense to anyone else?
seriously, his drug problems and product placement aside… go off into the wilderness for several weeks at a time. no civilization, no working toilets, no guaranteed access to water or food unless you brought it with you…
right around week two… all you can think about is a cheeseburger. you want it more than sex. more than electricity. more than indoor plumbing. more than a hot shower. more than ANYTHING…
every outdoor nut i’ve ever known… first thing they do when they come back to the civilized world, is get a dang cheeseburger.
October 8th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Fifteen years ago I traveled to China with a bunch of other librarians. By the third day, I kept overhearing comments about my fellow travelers craving hamburgers and steak. While in China, with all that magnificent cuisine! You don’t even have to go out to the wilderness to get a craving for a dang cheeseburger! That scene just rang true to me, it made me flash back to my China trip and hear my fellow travelers’ complaints all over again.
October 8th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
That line was so obvious! He had been deprived, while imprisoned, and now that he was back home, he wanted something that was familiar.
I can’t believe anyone had trouble getting that.
October 8th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
I don’t think its so much the cheeseburger itself as it is the fact that its a Burger King cheeseburger. That’s the point of the story. He was so desperate for a piece of home that he would settle for a bad cheeseburger from Burger King. That’s what I think Downey was saying.
(personally I don’t mind Burger King burgers, but I can’t eat Wendy’s anymore though thanks to the Hoff)