Los Angeles — LOS ANGELES (AP) — Robert Downey Jr. knows he has an impressive collection of classic cars — which he self-deprecatingly refers to as artifacts of his success.
Despite their expectations of “what stuff is supposed to be” when fame and money, trophies reach a certain level, it turns out for the actor, they’re not all they’re cracked up to be. It’s that discontent that helped inspire “Downey’s Dream Cars,” his latest project debuting Thursday on Max.
“Cash and prizes, it’s never been what motivated me. So, I shouldn’t be surprised that it still isn’t,” Downey said at the premiere of the show, held last week at the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.
While “Downey’s Dream Cars” is very much a show for gearheads, it isn’t just limited to viewers. Downey experiments with style in the one-of-a-kind eco-friendly “Pimp My Ride,” which is also a memoir and a documentary about the latest advances in clean technology.
“That was definitely the idea, to try to innovate a little bit in this kind of storytelling,” he said.
In each episode, Downey gives up control of his prized possessions, allowing the experts to make his classic cars more environmentally sustainable by electrifying them, converting them to run on biodiesel fuel or even Pastes them with mushroom leather. Downie hopes it will be a glimpse into the future of sustainability and what is now attainable as well as support optimism by promising technological advances.
It’s really a show about cars and technology, but Downey brings a surprising amount of tenderness and introspection to it. It’s a window into the ways he’s grown from very public struggles with drug addiction that informed his image before the advent of “Iron Man” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
He displays a self-awareness of the “mashimo” cinematic influences and capitalist values that inspired him to create such a collection. Throughout the show, Downey reflects on his life, family, and the changing priesthood in recent years, especially as they relate to the future of the planet.
Susan Downey, a producer who frequently collaborates with her husband, shares his commitment to environmental activism and serves as an executive producer for the show.
Although she said they both feel a personal responsibility in the fight against climate change, she praised her husband for his efforts to hold corporations accountable.
“This is not to absolve the everyday person of any responsibility they have, but to really recognize that in order to make significant change, they have to operate at a very high level,” she said.
The actor has become widely associated with his activism in recent years, especially after founding the Footprint Coalition, a venture capital fund that invests in climate technology and artificial intelligence.
In the series, Downey lamented society’s inability and lack of collective will to make progress on these fronts, a frustration that contributed to his decisions to create both the company and the series.
And despite many people’s concerns about the uncharted territory AI has already crossed, Downey remains confident in its ability to fight climate change and that skepticism of its capabilities may be somewhat unwarranted.
“Any time there’s a real emerging technology that was probably going to be important, there’s always a wellspring of fear and hope,” he said, arguing that both should be tempered, even if they think it’s likely to be used. can be done for good. “I’m not worried about it, but it’s something that I think we should have proper guidelines for.”
