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Work/Life: Hey, Robert Downey, Jr...Wanna Play "Irony Man?"

• Okay, Mr. Downey, Jr., it’s clear that after the boffo box office on Iron Man that you have just landed yourself a sweet role in an ongoing franchise.  Well, this is America, bud, and you can’t have too much of a good thing, I always say.  Like every other unfulfilled sad sack in the business world, I have a screenplay languishing under the collection of dried-out stamp pads in the third drawer down on the right hand side of my office desk.  And, if I may be so bold, Robert, this one has your name on it.  It’s entitled “Irony Man.” 
• It’s the story of a wealthy industrialist who designs his own high-tech weaponry; a position which, as you might guess, keeps him both impossibly busy and emotionally unavailable to those who love him most.  Now, if you are sitting down, Bob, comes the irony so subtly implied by the film’s title: you see, every time our protagonist is put on the spot by his wife and children who feel the relationship slipping away because of his unhealthy obsession with financial success, he shoots back, “but why do you think I work so hard?  I do it for all of you!”  
• This is the engine of irony that drives the entire movie.  And it would be a good change of pace for you.  The big action sequences in this picture are about the actions of the human heart.  (Not literally.  No shots of a pumping heart or anything.  It’s a metaphor.  You’re an artist, Rob.  You “get” what I’m talking about, right?)  In the same vein, this is a film where the chase scenes are about a man trying to catch up to his own inner pain: the deep psychic wound that occurred in his childhood and has left him someone incapable of true feeling, siphoning all of his passion into his work.  I leave it up to you, as you “prepare” for the role, to decide exactly what the nature of that psychic wounding was for our protagonist.  However,  if you would like any guidance from me I would say (just off the top of my head of course) that you might think about what it was like to be raised by a domineering, hugely successful CEO who did not have enough insight into his driven nature to see how it was impacting his family, while at the same time being indulged by an over-protective mother against whom he could do no wrong, leaving him a hopeless bipolar mess with no internal guidance system to help him operate in the world.  Just a direction you might go, that’s all. 
• Mr. Downey, Jr., I’m sure you can relate to how many men out there would, if pressed, have to admit to being an “Irony Man.”  Taking on this role in my long-unproduced (and, yes, a bit overlong right now but I’m dong some judicious editing) screenplay would show the world that what’s important to you goes deeper than a titanium alloy suit and more distracting special effects than the Democratic primaries.  When you’re ready, call my agent.  Actually, if you could call someone who might be able to get me an agent, that would help, too.   Well, gotta go.  The extra time it has taken me to compose this letter has, ironically, further alienated me from my family.