THE JUDGE with Director David Dobkin

We’re showcasing the trailer and providing a preview of the upcoming Robert Downey Jr. drama ‘The Judge’ with writer/director David Dobkin.

In the movie, Downey Jr. plays a big city lawyer who returns to his childhood home where his father, a judge in the town, is suspected of murder. His character then embarks on a journey to find the truth about his father — played by Robert Duvall — and reconnects with his estranged family along the way.

Dobkin explains that in 2007, his mother passed away of lung cancer, and a week after her passing “the bones of the story came into my mind.” He recalled his own experience of a son going back home and reconnecting with his own father after being estranged.

The beginnings of the story actually entered his mind after he initially got the news that his mother was seriously ill. “I didn’t get along great with her a lot of my life. So immediately I was like, oh my God, how close do I have to be to this person that I have this caustic relationship with, this kind of explosive relationship.”

He said that out of this came the idea that he wanted to make a movie about parenting a parent, a topic that is not commonly discussed in American culture. “So you get to rescript a little bit of what your own experience was.”

The first response by Warner Bros after he pitched the film was that they didn’t think it sounded funny. “So of course I was like, well, it’s a drama,” said Dobkin, who is more famous for comedies like the hugely successful ‘Wedding Crashers.’

“I have a great love for drama, and that’s really where I began and where I started – believing I was going to make movies like ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ or ‘Apocalypse Now.’ And then I came to Hollywood and took a different path. But it was something that felt very comfortable to me, and kind of familiar and long forgotten.”

When Sebastian brings up the current state of movies and the fact that the big studios are reluctant to make a film like ‘The Judge,’ Dobkin reveals that he too was pleasantly surprised by the acceptance by Warner Bros.

“There’s no reason to pretend that it would be made if it wasn’t for Robert Downey Jr.” he admits. “Because he has the cachet and he has the weight to help get behind a movie like this and help it succeed in getting made and hopefully succeed at the box office.”

Dobkin also talks about attending NYU and doing a Sonic Youth spec music video for an MTV contest that the music network actually rejected for being “too professional.” But he explained that despite the MTV disappointment, the Sonic Youth video became part of an audition tape that helped get him his first job.

He goes on to explain that he actually “agented himself” by contacting record companies and posing as a fake agency rep to get noticed and was subsequently able to set up two very important meetings. “You needed someone to believe in you and I believed in myself.”

He also reveals that the idea for ‘Wedding Crashers’ came to him at the premiere of the movie ‘Shanghai Knights’ when he happened to glance over at his friend Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson and decided he just HAD to make an rated R comedy with the two stars.

Watch the video to also hear about the chemistry between Vince and Owen in ‘Wedding Crashers’ and to find out how Dobkin shifted genres once again to end up making the sci-fi/fantasy flicks ‘Jack the Giant Slayer’ and ‘R.I.P.D.’