Best Friends

Robert Downey, Jr., and Judd Nelson

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It’s not easy to get a straight answer out of Robert Downey, Jr., and Judd Nelson. Just try asking them a simple question, like how they met.

“Some musician was having a party,” Robert jumps in. “I wanted to leave, so I went into the back room to get my coat, and I say Judd rigling throught people’s jackets. I said, ‘Stop, thief!’ He got me in a bear hug, and when I woke up....”

“We were married,” Judd finishes.

“When I woke up,” Robert corrects, “he was nursing a bottle of Old Grand-Dad that he bought with the money he got from rifling through stranglers’ jackets.”

Now it’s Judd’s turn. “I worked at a collection agency and Robert owed a lot of money. When I went to go meet him, I recognized him from Greaser’s Palace [a low-budget film Robert did 17 years ago], so I was surprised that things had gotten so bad that he had to shoplift from a 7-Eleven. When he got busted, I pulled out one of my many guns and opened fire. We’ve been in hiding ever since.”

But seriously.

“The best way to describe our friendship,” Judd later explains, “would be to write down the bits of dialogue you overhear. Maybe when people read it they won’t understand it, but that’s too bad. Part of what friends experience is something that people who aren’t friends can’t know. It’s a code. It’s another language. Trying to write a paragraph that would explain our friendship would be saying that it’s simpler than it is.”

And no, we’re still not sure how they met.