未来主义者：走下银幕的《钢铁侠》

    它对你产生帮助了吗？

    当然。要知道，魅力这种东西，光靠我的能力、靠我自己的创造精神、靠我自己的努力甚至运气，是无法得到的。可以说它是我最宝贵的财富。因为财富也有分几种。有的财富是可以预见的，也有些财富或运气人们常说是史无前例的。但是每一笔财富，每一笔大买卖，每个重大的政治、工业和艺术上的行动，在成为常态之前都是史无前例的。

    所以这也很有意思。我通过不那么西方的眼光研究这种事也得出了一些心得，我发现事情经常就是“船到桥头自然直” 。

    要想参与某个成功的事情是一回事，但是要把它复制到另一个领域又是另一回事。在我周围的人里，我可以说是超级幸运的。当初导演乔恩•法夫罗和漫威影业（Marvel Studios）的总裁凯文•菲格刚刚推出《钢铁侠》的时候，这类片子对他们来说还是一个全新的领域，他们刚刚有足够的钱与其他已经做了几十年这类片子的制片公司进行竞争。如果我们失败了，没人会觉得意外。所以当时我们的心态就像刚刚搞创业的大学生一样，心里想着“我们一起来看看，能不能做起这家公司，把它搞红火。”拍完那部片子之后，很快我幸运地和一直跟我受苦的妻子（制片人苏珊•唐尼）以及盖•里奇、乔•西佛等人合作，拍了《大侦探福尔摩斯》（Sher¬lock Holmes），重新演绎了这位老牌超级英雄。他的超能力就是他的大脑，而且这部片子的反响也非常不错。

    一个人复制某些东西的时候，就想搞一种逆项工程。你会想，“这两个项目的过程之间有什么共同点？”但是有意思、甚至搞笑的是，当你这做的时候，这是非常难搞懂的。

    2004年你推出了一张名叫《未来主义者》（ The Futurist）的专辑，它的灵感是什么？

    当时我手里有点时间，在我选择的事业上没有投入太多工作。既然下雨了，就只好歇工干别的，对吧？我注意到不论是男人还是女人，人都是有多面性的。而且我发现，当我们每个人所做的事与我们期望做的事不一样，我们心里都会产生某种抑郁，某种存在感上的低落。但是西方人的看法往往会给自己打上一个标签，认为这就是我想要的，那就是我应该做的，但是往往在某方面积极提高自己就是善莫大焉，而且最终会有助于你实现那些其它的目标。

    我写下了“未来主义者知道”这句歌词，意思就是未来主义者知道我们未来会迎来什么。只不过我把它写成了“未来主义者闻到”，也就是用鼻子闻。这是我们的一种直觉，也就是当我们放松的时候，我们可以有种预感，预感到我们的生活会往哪个方向发展。

    有意思的是，就在写那首歌那阵子，以及在准备《钢铁侠I》那几年，我发现自己真的沉浸在这些思想和想法里。

    Was that empowering for you?

    Sure. You know, grace is something that by my own power, by my own spirit of invention, by my own work or even luck, I couldn't attain. That to me is kind of at the heart of fortune.

    Because there are several kinds of fortune. There's the fortune that is predictable, and then there's the kind that people love to say is unprecedented. But every fortune, every big business, every big political or industrial or artistic move is unprecedented before it becomes the norm.

    So, you know, it's so interesting too. And I make a bit of a point of studying the kind of less-Western [view of] this sort of thing, and I always find that it's kind of about, you know, "the way is the way is the way."

    It's one thing to participate in something that is a hit; it's another to replicate it in another realm. I was super-fortunate in the people I was surrounded with. When [director] Jon Favreau and [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige launched Iron Man it was this brand-new thing that had just enough money to try to compete with what the other studios had been doing well for ages, and our skin was really in it, and if we failed, no one would be surprised. So we felt like college kids who think, Let's see if we can do this startup and make it fly. Pretty soon after that, I was lucky to work with my long-suffering wife [producer Susan Downey] and Guy Ritchie and Joel Silver in taking Sher¬lock Holmes and reinterpreting this original superhero, whose superpower is his brain, and that turned out very nicely too.

    So, once you've replicated something, the onus is to -- then you want to go back and you want to kind of reverse-engineer and say, "What is it that was in common with the processes on both of those projects?" And the funny and hilarious and humiliating thing is you know it when you're in it, but it's incredibly elusive.

    In 2004 you released an album titled The Futurist, What was the inspiration?

    I had some time on my hands, I wasn't working much in my, ahem, chosen profession. An aspect of fortune is that, when it's raining, then you gotta work inside the barn, you know?

    And there is always something I've noticed with every person I know to a man, to a woman, they are always multifaceted. And I find that a certain sort of dysthymic, existential depression sets in on each and every one of us when we might not be doing what we wish, but we're not doing what we can. Because there's kind of a typically Western affixing to, you know, this is what I want, and this is what I should do, but oftentimes working on any part of yourself constructively is for the highest good and will help you ultimately achieve those other goals.

    I wrote a lyric "a futurist knows" -- like, a futurist knows what's coming for us. Except I said, "a futurist nose," like the nose on your face. It is that kind of intuitive part of us that, when we're relaxed, we can predict a felt sense of where our lives are going.

    The funny thing was around about the time of writing that song and then going into a year or two later prepping for the first Iron Man, I found myself really drawn to those thoughts and those ideas.