How Robert Downey Jr. Led Dito Montiel to Riff Raff

Sept. 29, 2006 forever changed Dito Montiel and Robert Downey Jr.’s lives.

It was not only the day that Downey was officially cast as Tony Stark in Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, but it was also the theatrical release date of Montiel’s debut indie drama A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, starring Downey as a semi-autobiographical version of Montiel. The day cemented Downey’s return to industry prominence after a series of highly publicized personal struggles, and the random fall Friday had just as much meaning for Montiel after many of his own storybook ups and agonizing downs.

As a native of Queens in New York City, Montiel was something of a renaissance man before becoming a filmmaker. In the ’80s, he was a mainstay in NYC’s hardcore punk scene as the teenage frontman of Major Conflict. In 1989, his new band, Gutterboy, signed a then-record $1 million deal with Geffen Records. In case that résumé wasn’t enough, he was also a Golden Gloves boxer for a brief period of time, as well as a model for Versace and Calvin Klein.

However, in 1992, Montiel found himself in a position without employment or residence. Fortunately, Jonathan Elias, who produced Gutterboy’s debut LP for Geffen a couple years earlier, offered him a couch and a gig in the dubbing room at his Santa Monica recording studio. Montiel always had a knack for writing, so he also decided to document his eventful and often troubled youth in a memoir also titled A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. Eventually, a friend whom he once worked with at a New York City Tower Records opted to publish the book in 2003.

Around the same time, Elias happened to be co-producing Downey’s solo album, The Futurist, and that’s when he handed the actor a copy of Montiel’s memoir. Downey and Montiel had crossed paths years earlier during their own individual escapades in New York City, and seeing Montiel’s creativity on display at Elias’ studio and through his book, Downey recommended he adapt Saints into a full-fledged feature film.

Downey then set up a lunch with producer (and wife of musician Sting), Trudie Styler, to discuss adapting Montiel’s book, and together with Downey, Styler basically offered Montiel a golden ticket that he had to earn through writing, rewriting and workshopping a script, as well as the production of a short film/proof of concept with Downey as the fictional Montiel. It wasn’t a straight line, but the low-budget feature got made. Saints premiered at Sundance in January 2006, landing a directing award for Montiel and special jury prize for the ensemble of Downey, Shia LaBeouf, Channing Tatum, Rosario Dawson, Chazz Palminteri and Dianne Wiest.

“There was no bigger gamble on this earth than me at the time. [Downey] was just nuts enough to take a chance on me, and these things don’t align often, if ever,” Montiel tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Trudie [Styler] also took some crazy chances because she can, and I happened to be one of those crazy chances through Robert. This would not happen twice.”

Montiel has now made nine films in 19 years, including Boulevard (2014), Robin Williams’ final live-action release. The filmmaker’s latest film, Riff Raff, which is now in theaters, is a crime comedy that’s reminiscent of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Ed Harris’ Vincent attempts to lead a quiet East Coast life with his current wife (Gabrielle Union) and stepson (Miles J. Harvey) when his ex-wife (Jennifer Coolidge) and son (Lewis Pullman) show up in the middle of the night after the latter has committed murder. Similar to Saints, Montiel assembled another impressive ensemble that also boasts the likes of Bill Murray and Pete Davidson.

Coolidge’s casting was born out of Montiel’s appreciation for her HBO series, The White Lotus, and her involvement created a domino effect from there. Oddly enough, Montiel had Harris’ email for over two decades, but never used it until he decided to roll the dice on pitching him Riff Raff. He’d acquired Harris’ contact information when he was workshopping his Saints script at Sundance Institute’s Labs program in the mid-2000s.

“I wrote to [Harris] in the middle of the night, saying, ‘Hey man, I don’t know if you remember me, but I’ve got this script.’ He then wrote me back and said, ‘I like Jennifer Coolidge, and I remember you. I’ll give it a read,’” Montiel recalls. “He wrote back again the next day, and he was like, ‘This is pretty good. Let’s talk about it.’”

As was the case on Saints twenty years ago, Montiel remains impressed with how committed these name-brand actors are to smaller-scale productions like Riff Raff. “The level of care that Bill [Murray] and all of these actors gave to such a little movie was crazy,” Montiel says. “They don’t need me or this movie. I needed them and this movie; that’s for sure.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Montiel also discusses the unusually painless process of casting Murray, as well as his memories of Williams on the Boulevard set.

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You had an eventful childhood and adolescence in Astoria, Queens. In the ’80s, you were a fixture in the New York City hardcore scene, and you turned those dramatic experiences into a 2003 memoir called A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. 

Yeah, I used to write on napkins as a kid, and they’d usually end up in the garbage can. So my friend Eddie gave me those cosmopolitan black-and-white books, and I just kept on writing because it made me feel good. So I wrote this whole book in pen, back in the days of pen. I used to work at a Tower Records in New York with a guy named David Weemae, and I sent him a photocopy of the whole book. Somehow, the publishing company he worked at put it out, and that started a whole ridiculous trip.

Once you moved to California in the early ’90s, you started working at a recording studio where Robert Downey Jr. eventually tracked his solo album, The Futurist, in the early 2000s?

The Dito character that I wrote in the Guide to Recognizing Your Saints movie is this guy who wants to leave it all behind for California, but I was not that guy. I would’ve happily stayed in Astoria forever, but I was in a tough spot. I didn’t have anywhere to live, basically, and I needed a job. Jonathan Elias, who I recorded with years earlier in New York, opened a studio in Santa Monica called Elias. So he said I could live there and work in the dub room. We worked on Leprechaun 2 and a bunch of other fun, crazy movies. So our job was to put music to whatever came in at the time. 

Years later, we would mess around with iMovie all day, but I never imagined I’d have any shot in hell of being a part of the film industry. I just didn’t dare to dream something like that. But we’d cut together these little short films with Leprechaun footage and recordings of my friend’s prison phone calls and Tom Waits’ music.

Luckily, Robert Downey Jr. was also making a record there [in the early 2000s], and I already knew Robert from roaming around New York for many years. It was hard to not bump into one of us, and it was certainly not hard for us to bump into each other. So I knew him very slightly like that, and of course, I was a fan. He was always really talented, and he was always cool. So he’d always hang out in the dub room with us and crack up at our weird ideas in iMovie. We’d also look at early internet videos of people blowing themselves up with fireworks or whatever madness.

How did he get his hands on your book? And how soon did he connect you with producer Trudie Styler and her husband Sting?

Jonathan, my boss, gave him my book, and Downey said, “We should make a movie.” And it freaked me out that anybody would say that. I remember thinking, “Oh my God, now I have to actually know what I’m doing.” Then he said, “I’ve got this producer, Trudie Styler. She just made Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.” So I immediately went and saw it, and I was like, “Holy cow.” 

So we went to lunch with her during my hour off from the dub room. We went to Manny’s in Santa Monica when it was there, and she actually read the book. She said, “It’s got an interesting voice. I can get the two guys who wrote Sexy Beast to write this script.” And this crazy part of me was like, “Oh my God, maybe I can get a shot at writing it.” But to be honest, I was afraid to ask. Then Trudy said, “If we don’t like their script, then you can get a shot.” But, of course, their script was going to be good, so I’d never get a shot. And then she said, “Well, they can’t start the script for six or eight weeks.” And so all I heard was, “You have six to eight weeks to make this if you want a shot.”

I immediately got a hard copy of The United States of Leland’s script, and I started copying everything about its format. If I got my hands on my original script, it probably looks exactly like a worse version of The United States of Leland. At the time, I thought “EXT.” meant exiting, but it seemed odd that people would exit a street. So Robert gave me a lesson one day and said, “It’s exterior!” So I had no idea what I was doing other than trying to put my words into a new format. 

How did Sundance Institute get involved?

My 150-page script got passed around, and producer Leslie Urdang, who I still hope to thank in person one day, gave it to Michelle Satter who runs Sundance Labs. She called me up at my job in the dub room, and I said, “Sundance? Yeah, I’ve heard of you guys, but we didn’t make a movie yet.” And she was like, “No, it’s the Labs.” And I was like, “Well, how much is it? Where is it?” And she was like, “It’s free in Utah. We will fly you.”

I then asked Robert about it, and he was like, “You should call her back really quick.” So I took the trip, and I was roommates with Sterlin Harjo, who ended up making Reservation Dogs. On the first day, I was assigned some incredible writers to oversee my stuff. One was Frank Pierson, who wrote Dog Day Afternoon. Another was Carlos Cuarón, who co-wrote Y tu mamá también. And then there was novelist Walter Mosley, who wrote Devil in a Blue Dress. So you can’t ask for much better company than that, and it was quite the initiation into scriptwriting or writing, period. It was a miracle that I got to go to Sundance Labs.

So you rewrote and workshopped the script for a while. Trudie then had you make a short film with Downey playing you, and that paved the way for the feature adaptation of A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. Did Downey’s casting as the fictional Dito Montiel ever hit any insurance-related snags? That was one of the issues working against him during the casting process for Tony Stark.

There was no bigger gamble on this earth than me at the time. So I was in zero position to worry about anybody else, and I certainly wasn’t worried about a great actor like Robert. He was just nuts enough to take a chance on me, and these things don’t align often, if ever. So I understood the luck of the moment, but no, I didn’t deal with any of that. Trudie also took some crazy chances because she can, and I happened to be one of those crazy chances through Robert. This would not happen twice.

Downey was actually cast as Tony Stark on Sep. 29, 2006 — the same day that Saints was released in theaters. Were you privy to what was happening with him throughout that year? 

He mentioned to me that he got it, and I remember thinking, “Wow, how lucky are they to get you?” I know that the director of Iron Man [Jon Favreau] was a big champion for him. He knew — probably way more than I knew — that this guy is pretty good, and it turns out he made a good bet. 

Saints was also one of Shia LaBeouf’s first grown-up roles, as the younger Dito, and he once said that he was so desperate to change your perception of him as a Disney kid that he put a hole through a wall during his audition. Do you recall him doing that?

I don’t remember that, but Shia putting his hand through a wall is not far-fetched, so I’ll bet it’s correct. (Laughs.) We come from a similar madness. At the time, I was in love with a great young actor named Anton Yelchin, and he had the same agent as Shia. So she called and I said, “Oh my God, you represent Anton Yelchin.” And she said, “Well, you have to see Shia.” So I looked him up and I was like, “Wait, the Even Stevens guy? I don’t know.” And she said, “No, no, he’s really good. If you meet him, then you can meet Anton.” So she sent me a VHS tape that Shia had made himself. I was in a room with ten people in Queens when I played the videotape, and the whole room became dead quiet. I was like, “Holy cow.”

You’ve worked steadily ever since Saints, including Robin Williams’ final live-action film to be released in theaters. In hindsight, is Boulevard a bittersweet memory given what it represents? 

Yeah, I really loved Robin in the limited time we had together. I love that movie. I loved making it. I loved his performance. He was generous and a sweetheart. He would call me the “Fun Police.” It’s a very serious movie, and when you put him and Bob Odenkirk together, hijinks are going to happen to some degree. So he’d say, “Oh, here comes the Fun Police.” 

One day, I said to Robin, “In this scene, you’re coming home from being out all night.” And he said, “I’ve done the research, boss.” So I grew to love him; it’s impossible to not. With this circus life, you get intimately close for three or four months, and then you all disappear one day. But the exciting thing is you’ll be walking down the street in New Orleans one day, and you’ll see one of the actors or one of the crew members you got so close with for a few months several years ago. So there’s plenty of sad things about what happened with Robin, but for me, it’s a drag that I won’t be able to run into him again someday.

Similar to Boulevard’s staircase scene and Saints, your latest film Riff Raff has a number of chaotic scenes where characters are talking over each other and yelling back and forth in a very realistic way. Do you achieve this natural dynamic through the informality of your process?

Maybe it comes from a chaotic childhood. One of my favorite directors ever is Brian De Palma, and from what I understand of him, he tells you where to turn and when to speak. And it’s beautiful. It’s poetic. But I don’t have that knowledge, and my head doesn’t work like that. I don’t put marks down because I don’t quite understand them. I don’t mean to act like it doesn’t matter to me; it really does. I just obsessively plan scenes in my own way. I go to locations with a little iPhone, and my crew and I act out the scenes. It’s the worst acting you’ve ever seen, but it allows me to feel the scene.

So, yeah, I’ll tell the actors to talk all over each other. If I asked them to each wait for the other person to speak, it would take a long time. It would also probably be remarkably unnatural, at least under my direction. I grew up under a train on 31st Street in Astoria. And when it would go by, you’d just talk louder. So I took that with me, and it’s exciting when an actor can get into that pace. It feels real. It’s probably a nightmare for the sound people, but I don’t care if I lose a word or two. Who cares? 

Riff Raff has quite the ensemble. How’d you go from Dustin Hoffman and Brian Cox to Ed Harris and Bill Murray?

There isn’t a bad move there in my opinion, but it’s typical of independent film or any film. You sit at home with a dream, and if it comes true, it’s miraculous. If it comes true the way that you imagined it, then it’s even more miraculous. Actors fall out, and you think it’s the end of the world because it could be. But I was watching White Lotus one day, and I kept saying, “This lady is really good.” And my wife was like, “That’s Stifler’s mom!” Apparently, I was the last person on the planet to know who Jennifer Coolidge is. So she was the first person to sign on, and she’s a favorite of a lot of people. 

And then, because of Sundance Labs, I still had Ed Harris’ old email. So I said, “Maybe I’ll finally use this.” I then wrote to him in the middle of the night, saying, “Hey man, I don’t know if you remember me, but I’ve got this script.” He then wrote me back and said, “I like Jennifer Coolidge, and I remember you. I’ll give it a read.” And I was like, “Oh my God.” He wrote back again the next day, and he was like, “This is pretty good. Let’s talk about it.”

Then, producer Adam Paulson said to me one day, “You’re going to get a call from a famous phone number you may have heard about. It’s going to be Bill Murray.” And I was like, “Holy cow.” He was similar to my experience with Robin. He’s just such a good actor, and the level of care that Bill and all of these actors gave to such a little movie was crazy. They don’t need me or this movie. I needed them and this movie; that’s for sure.

We haven’t even mentioned the others yet.

Yeah, Pete Davidson and Gabrielle Union added to the embarrassment of riches. I also had no idea who Lewis Pullman was, and while I’m not trying to be a nice guy, I’m blown away when I meet really special actors like that. It goes all the way back to Shia’s VHS tape.

I’m glad you didn’t have to chase Bill through his well-documented 800-number, but apparently, you’ve had to do that before with him.

Yeah, I chase everybody, man. I’m that guy. I’ll also receive emails or messages at least twice a week on Instagram or Facebook. Somebody will send me a message that they murdered somebody and that they’ve got a great story. And I’m like, “Wow, I’m not the right guy.” (Laughs.) 

But, because I was watching White Lotus, I “stalked” DP Xavier Grobet. I also loved Before Night Falls, which he shot. So I found him on Facebook instead of going through agents. You know how that goes. It’s like, “Good luck with everything.” But I wrote to him, and the next thing I knew, he was doing it. So as much as I joke, I’m still that guy. I look for people wherever I can. It’s part of the gig. 

Gabrielle Union’s character’s son is an interesting teenage character named DJ. He feels like he’s 18 going on 48. He’s such an old soul. 

I’d been thinking, “Who the hell is going to do this? It could turn into Urkel really quickly. This could be a disaster.” Miles J. Harvey then walked into an open call, and it just flowed right out of him. Halfway through one scene, I was like, “We’re done. We got him.” And he was like, “I could do another scene if you want.” And being greedy, I said, “Sure.” So he did the whole freaking movie. It was insane. The guy is nuts, and I just fell in love with him. 

Great actors usually do something I didn’t think of, and that’s partially why I don’t do storyboards. I also don’t think of an actor too much when writing. I just put it on the page, and let the actors mess around with it during auditions. Channing Tatum was that for me on Saints. I had written an impossible-to-love guy that, in the real world, was not very good looking. He was kind of a disaster in real life. So Channing walked in and I thought, “Oh, I don’t know about this.” But he had this Of Mice and Men thing where he chokes you and he doesn’t mean to do it. Then he tries to put you back together, but it doesn’t work. So it was so much more exciting than what I had created at one in the morning. We can all dream of great lines that we’re so sure are good, but then they take a turn when the right actor shows up. I welcome that. 

You thanked Trudie in the credits of Riff Raff. Was she involved at a certain point? 

We fought like hell making Saints because I was terrified. I still have that feeling that I’m going to be kicked out of this club. I know I don’t come from this pedigree. But she gave me a shot that nobody else would give me, and I’ve been very lucky in my life. So I’m not necessarily paying her back for it, but every time I’m going to do a film, I send it to her. She really liked Riff Raff, and while we almost worked together on it, she had to do another film first. So for her and Charlie Corwin, who were both producers on Saints and are both good friends, I stick them in the thank yous.

As you touched on earlier, Saints’ Dito character has the ambition of becoming a musician in California, but you’ve never really depicted that part of your life on screen. (Montiel’s second band, Gutterboy, signed a then-record $1 million deal with Geffen in 1989.) Do you have any interest in dramatizing your music career someday?

Boulevard was written by a guy who had come out in his sixties after being married for forty years, but I saw my mother in that story. Whether or not she was gay, I’ll never know. In my mind, it’s always a selfish thing. I wish I could relate to Transformers and they would call me, because life would be a little better for me. But I try to relate to something before getting involved in it, and then I sneak myself or people I know into everything I do. But telling the music stories? I’m not Bob Dylan. That’s for damn sure.

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Riff Raff is now playing in movie theaters.