Jeff Bridges: Iron Man Was a $200m “Student Movie”

It may have cost a fortune and grossed over half a billion dollars, but ‘Iron Man’ was just a big “student movie”, according to star Jeff Bridges.

The 64-year-old veteran, who played Obadiah Stane in the 2008 blockbuster, spoke about his experience in an unusually candid AMA (Ask Me Anything) on link-sharing site Reddit.

He admitted the script was made up as they went along, with director Jon Favreau and Iron Man himself Robert Downey Jr. taking the lead in ensuring the cast had lines to read that day.

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“It was unusual because it was very expensive, close to $200 million or something, and you would think that a movie that had that high a budget, they would have had their script tighter,” he said.

“But that was not the case. And we would very often find ourselves, at the beginning of the day, going into our trailers with little tape recorders with the suits from Marvel & Jon & Robert, and we would try to come up with what we were going to shoot that day!

“We would trade parts, I would play his part, or he would play my part, Favreau would be calling up writer friends of his, and meanwhile the crew is tapping their foot, waiting for us to come back to work.

“That was very frustrating for me, because I like to be very prepared and let it go in front of the camera, so that you know your lines and stuff, and it was very frustrating for me, until I made a small inner adjustment that was: realizing we were making a $200 million student film.

"And just to relax and have fun, do your best, don’t worry too much, and I think that the film came out terrifically! And again, that’s largely because we had Robert and Jon on board.”

The last-minute script was in stark contrast to ‘The Big Lebowski’, probably his most-loved film and the role for which he’ll be remembered.

“The Coen brothers wrote such a brilliant script – I don’t watch many of my movies on TV, but whenever I’m flipping the channels, and I’m a big flipper when I watch TV, when Lebowski comes up, I think ‘Oh I’ll just watch a few scenes’ and then I get sucked in, because the scenes are so funny.”