Robert Downey Jr. reflects on his 12-year Iron Man journey, dismissing a return due to new priorities like Dr. Doolittle, inspired by William Price’s eccentric neo-Druidist philosophy. He links creative focus to Wing Chun’s "guarding the center" principle, trained for 15+ years under Eric Orem and Grand Master Chung, comparing its technical rigor to UFC’s open combat styles. Both he and Rogan discuss martial arts as a discipline—like Bourdain’s BJJ obsession—that refines chaos into skill, contrasting it with passive hobbies or restomods like Downey Jr.’s Speedcore Mustang. Ultimately, the episode reveals how mastery, humility, and adaptability shape both art and life, urging listeners to embrace challenges beyond their comfort zones. [Automatically generated summary]
But what I appreciate is you know where you're at by what you're able to retain if you fight for it and the things that are going no matter what you do.
Now I've heard there's some Israeli guy who's got this app, probably from Laird, got this app and you do it and you get your eyesight back.
Sometimes it's about I don't need to try to use something to hold on to everything.
I want to pick the five or seven things that I definitely want to hold on to and I want to watch the rest of it go in and out with the tides.
There's a guy named David Sinclair that I talked to.
He's a professor at Harvard.
Is it MIT? Where the fuck is he?
It's Harvard.
They're doing some work with people that have serious eye diseases and serious injuries, and they're actually injecting some form of bacteria that has been encoded with some miracle cure for degeneration, and they can detach retinas, fix things.
That thing that you're wearing around your neck, being as you are obviously known as being Iron Man, are you concerned with wearing a large thing in the exact same spot?
East Coaster, a dad of some renown, very different.
My dad was a kind of an underground filmmaker, auteur maverick.
I grew up definitely being Bob Downey Sr.'s kid.
Spent time on Long Island, which is I think where Tony was raised.
But when Stan Lee was really thinking that through, it was the Vietnam era and he was thinking about the military-industrial complex.
He was thinking about how about if I can throw a little bit of not politics in here but karma and he gets shrapnel by the own thing and it becomes – So – and then of course there was the whole demon in the bottle.
I think he was the first superhero who ever like had the – almost like hang up his jersey because he was hammered.
So I mean yeah, there was obviously – but again, once something goes your way, you can draw all the parallels you want and you can call it destiny.
But it was something that I definitely felt drawn to and I definitely fought for.
And looking back on it, I go, why was I fighting for that?
Because it turned out to be a pretty special thing.
I mean, this is a fun kids movie about a guy who talks to animals.
I mean, that's a great break.
Because if you're Iron Man, there's certain people that, for whatever reason, become a role and that is it.
That's what we will accept.
You are that guy.
And you're not doing that.
You're able to, through your talent and through your ability to take chances, you're able to be a bunch of different things as well as be the Iron Man.
If I'm noticing anything now, it's that we need to shift and we need new challenges and just like MMA and society and politics, things are moving and morphing and the information age is making things so – everything is learning and growing from everything so quickly and improving or disproving or discounting whatever is happening next.
But for me – I heard that this was on the table.
My missus, who's my creative partner in all things, said, Steve Gagin.
To me, I just thought, can Doolittle be like that?
He goes, does he have to be that way the whole way through?
I go, no, no, no.
When they find him, he's a recluse, and then the animals clean him up, and then he looks less unhandsome or less weird for the kids for the rest of the movie.
I'd say it's 70% maintenance of what can I do to do my part to stay out of the way.
And then the other part, I always think of it as like this little super thin, invisible thread.
But you can feel the tug and you just kind of, you have to be really gentle and you have to pause when agitated and you have to go for it when you're going to like, there's four walls in here, which one has the map behind it?
It's that one.
And you knock down the wall and it's there, you know.
It's great because it's the commodity that you can't capitalize on and yet if you don't show proof of its existence, you shouldn't even be qualified to speak on it.
And I really feel it's so funny at this point in my life and being, you know, kind of middle aged and all that.
Well, I know I'm going to fly around the world.
I'm going to sell some soap.
And I know I have a new project and I know I've just retired my jersey on this 12-year journey I've been on.
And how do I want to start?
And it came up.
Would you like to go, yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
I'm going to go have the Joe Rogan experience and kick off this year and this season and this new chapter by doing what I love, which is an interview as we're looking at each other.
You know, it's interesting watching Eddie Murphy in this last little period of time.
I was talking to Colin Jost last night who got to sit next to him at the Golden Globes and who was there on the show and writing for him with him when he hosted recently and I go, it's just incredible.
Our culture… Never encourages taking a break.
Never encourages saying, don't chase that thing because you've got it in your hands.
And I love the idea that if you're good at what you do, then it's not about time.
It's about it doesn't matter when You decide to pick up the mantle again.
It's just about – but it's scary, isn't it?
Could you imagine?
Like if they just said, hey, Joe, just don't do the show for four years and then come back and do it again.
Well, with Eddie, what's interesting is – He was arguably the greatest of his era and just stopped.
Just stopped for 30 years, and no one does that.
No one who's that good.
And then when you see him, I don't know if you ever saw him, he received some award, and he was on a panel, you know, sitting in front of a podium, rather, and he was talking about Bill Cosby, and he was doing this routine about them taking away Bill Cosby's awards.
And it was fucking brilliant.
And the timing was so good in all of us.
Comics were just sitting there going, he could do it tomorrow.
He could just get up there tomorrow and he'd be fucking murdering.
Anyway, I've been thinking about him lately in relation to a bunch of things, but also just that particularly nowadays, giving yourself permission to not have to Jump because, you know, strike the iron's hot, all that stuff.
And maybe it's just as a bit of an anxiety to the times, which I remember too, speaking of past generations.
I remember growing up, 1974, Nixon's black and white TV getting impeached.
unidentified
My dad and his buddies are whooping it up, but they're still pissed.
Yeah, what you're talking about, about Nixon and – People can lose themselves in current events.
And what I mean by that, it doesn't necessarily completely...
Your life is more than what's going on in Washington.
Hunter Thompson talked about that when he was running for sheriff in Aspen.
He was talking about how local politics, like your neighborhood, that's real.
This actually can affect your life.
What's going on in Washington, how much does that affect your day-to-day existence?
It's very little.
But for some people...
It becomes an enormous portion of the real state of their mind.
It takes over most of their day-to-day consciousness where they're consumed with it and it becomes a thing they're cheering for or they're rooting against and then, you know, your life revolves on something that you have very little power over.
Look, if you just hung back and just did nothing but watch TV for a year, the fucking ideas you would have, you'd probably have a really rock-solid idea of what's going on.
Because everyone has to accept that at one point in time you're going to have to get off the ride, but when you're doing great and you're kicking it, like, boxers are a perfect example.
They always last too long.
There's only been a small handful.
Like Andre Ward recently, Marvelous Marvin Hagler in his prime.
They just go, that's it.
I'm done.
And they actually are done.
Almost every one of them comes back and almost every one of them chases that dragon.
Look, it's just – first of all, it's 2020 and I'm not an OCD guy but I keep thinking see clearly.
See clearly even if your vision is going and it's difficult because I feel like we all just get buffeted by – Feelings and ego or fears or little chips of resentments or intuitions that are tied to something maybe higher but you think is out of your reach.
Whatever.
So it was a perfect time and I got to go have dinner with a bunch of the Marvel folks last night and kind of have just a little bit of extra closure because the movie came out and it was bananas and the directors were sending me pictures of like people flipping out in theaters when Tony snaps and I was like, whoa, this is kind of like a really big cultural thing.
But then like Victoria Alonzo, who's the head of VFX for all these movies, a literal super genius or – Kevin Feige or Favreau or Scarlett or some people that have just been there with it for a long time.
We were there experiencing it all when it came out and then we see each other on a red carpet and it's not intimate and then we kind of hadn't really had a chance just to – Do nothing.
Just hang out and have some crudités and kind of talk shit.
So it was really interesting being here today because yesterday was this kind of – last night was this kind of real – felt like closing the circle on things a bit.
But I like that you want to move on and I like that you're doing something like Dr. Doolittle because that's – You've done a lot of wild shit in your life.
You've done a lot of wild shit in your career.
You sort of embody every new chapter with the same kind of energy, although there's a different result and a different piece of art.
It's all the same you.
And that's one of the more interesting things about people, and particularly actors.
Because actors get to be a bunch of different things.
And it's one of the weirder things about that craft.
Like when you see a guy who's like Daniel Day-Lewis, who embodies these different humans, like literally becomes different humans.
It's...
But it's always Daniel Day-Lewis.
You know what I mean?
Even though he plays the There Will Be Blood guy and all these different psychopaths and various fascinating characters, you're pumped to see him do it.
I feel the same way with you.
I know you're an interesting guy.
There's a lot of shit going on in your head.
So when you dive into something, whatever it is, whether it's your character from Tropic Thunder or whatever it is, it's going to be Robert Downey Jr. diving into something.
So I would imagine it would be kind of annoying, even though you were brilliant at Iron Man, to stay Iron Man.
Well, fortunately, I don't have to find out, right?
It's just interesting, too.
You know, life is doing something.
And, you know, I'm at this place.
It's also...
It baffles me, confidence.
What does it really mean?
There was a period of time where I felt like I did the first Ironman and then I went and did Tropic Thunder and then I was doing the first Sherlock and I had my shirt off and I was doing Marshall.
I was all over the place and it just felt like I was hitting triples no matter what I did.
And then people are like, are you really as confident as you seem?
And I was like, I guess right now I am, yeah.
And then, and I think this goes, I mean, this reminds me, we were just talking about the McGregor-Cowboy fight coming up, you know?
Okay, and he was kind of the de facto producer of it, uncredited.
And he taught me a lot about just acting and what it was.
And he said, what's your action in this scene?
And I was like, oh no, he's asking me.
I was like, my action, I'm picking up girls.
He goes, what's your action in this scene?
And I was like, I'm driving a car and he asked me like, you know that thing sometimes when someone asks you a question and just – you get caught flat-footed and he goes, no, your action is you're trying to go to work but you're getting distracted by this addiction you have to trying to get laid.
So your action is you're trying to get to work and I was like, oh yeah, he's right.
And he said, always know what your action is because then when you come in in the morning confident or when you come in in the morning and you can't hit your ass with both hands, you know what to do.
So to me, one of the great lessons I learned from him was, oh yeah, Just boil down what it is you're doing, whether there's a camera around or just what am I doing today?
Today I'm showing up and I'm trying to be honest and also to listen and learn.
But really my action today is I'm beginning a process of promotion.
And again, like Eddie, you know, I look back to me...
That movie to me was a circle back to my dad's movie called Putney Swope, which I highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen to see about a black guy who takes over an ad agency in the 60s because everyone votes for him when the head of the company dies because they think no one else will.
And it's about what happens when someone who is free-spirited takes over an essentially corrupt endeavor.
And then he realizes and confronts his own corruption.
But I remember I was probably two or three when that was being shot and when it came out and it was so a part of my...
And I just remembered some of the folks that were around my dad at that time.
And so when Ben called and said, hey, I'm doing this thing and, you know, I think maybe Sean Penn had passed on it or something like that.
Possibly wisely.
And I thought, yeah, I'll do that and I'll do that after Iron Man.
And then I started thinking, this is a terrible idea.
Wait a minute.
And then I thought, well, hold on, dude.
Get real here.
Where is your heart?
And my heart is, A, I get to be black for a summer in my mind.
So there's something in it for me.
The other thing is I get to hold up to nature the insane self-involved hypocrisy of artists and what they think they're allowed to do on occasion.
Just my opinion.
And also Ben, who is a masterful artist and director, probably the closest thing to a Charlie Chaplin that I've experienced in my lifetime.
He writes, he directs, he acts.
If you had seen him when he was directing this movie, you would have been like, I'm watching David Lean, I'm watching Chaplin, I'm watching Coppola.
He knew exactly what the vision for this was.
He executed it.
It was impossible to not have it be an offensive nightmare of a movie.
And 90% of my black friends are like, dude, that was great.
I was all the night before and we were on Kauai and I was like, well, here we go.
And I was just running.
I think I had six lines that day.
But I knew that there was going to be choppers.
There was going to be squib fire.
There was going to be choreography.
There was going to be, you know, it was going to be cacophonous.
And the only thing that mattered to me Again, what's my action?
My action as an actor in this movie is to know what I'm doing even if what I'm doing is insane.
So I ran those six or eight lines I had a thousand times lying in bed over and over and over and over and over and over again so the next day.
I was free to enjoy myself and not be struggling to wonder what it was I was supposed to be doing.
And then that's what it is.
It was just, you know, it was one little mosaic after the next.
By the end of it, I had some pride that AI had made it through.
Forget that it was blackface.
It was special effects makeup day after day after day after day after day after day after day, except for the times when I would have my bleached hair and blue contacts in my eyes or other characters.
And it was just a piece of work I was doing.
And I cared about doing it as professionally and as honestly as I could.
I don't care if the people I'm with happen to not know what they're doing or don't know their lines or stepping on my lines or whatever or want to change their lines and my lines.
And it's always a different thing.
It's like reading the room.
It's like, you know, if I was a fighter, you go into the octagon and they go, you ready?
You go in but – so I've had it where I would try to be off book before everyone else.
I would get it down to an acronym.
So if there was a thousand words I had to remember, I would just remember the first letter of each and I would put it on a piece of poster board and then I would stand away from it.
Not as far as you and your archery setup over there but far enough away to where I can see it but kind of can't see it back when my vision was a little more clear.
And I would just run it and run it and run it.
When I did the first Sherlock, we were rewriting it so much and I would have pages and pages of stuff.
I was like, give me an earwig.
And it helped me with my accent.
And then I started getting into like, you know what's so great?
I can finish work, go home, hang out with my kids or do whatever I want to do, go train.
And in the morning, they can change it all they want.
I don't have to trip if at all.
Unless it's some monologue that you want to really be committed to that's not going to shift.
It just changes and I also know that I don't really know that much and it's different every time anyway.
But some – I really like when you have a loose concept of what you're doing.
There are certain parts that aren't going to change much and the rest you discover.
So the first Iron Man.
I mean John and I and the writers or John and I, we were – just would write – you write a line, I'll write a line and then we would – We were literally watching the puppies be born as we did it.
Frustrating for people who – not Gwyneth because she can look at a piece of paper and then go, OK, I get it and she's got it all memorized.
She's amazing.
But what's for the highest good?
Sometimes it's very self-indulgent to come in and like hand out new pages or say, oh, I'm not saying that so feed me that.
You know what I mean?
You need an environment of respect but I like discovering things.
How much of acting is managing those weird relationships that you have with these other people that you're acting with?
You've made some references to people changing other people's lines and not being prepared.
I got out of acting for that very reason.
That was the thing that I... I went from a world of stand-up comedy, which are just a bunch of crazy people, to actors, which are a bunch of crazy people but in a different way.
And managing all the different characters and all the different personalities, how hard is that?
My MO is always, let's mind meld, let's get together, let's work weekends, let's spend time together, because you can't replace that familiarity, so you have to try to build it.
And sometimes it happens very naturally.
Like, I adore Chris Evans.
I can't even tell you why.
He's a Boston guy.
He's technically such a brilliant actor but he also doesn't take himself seriously.
He's flaky but he's the first guy you would want to have your back if something went down.
And yet we're different enough where I feel like by being who we are and then both having those characters, we were able to – I thought Civil War was a special moment in the arc of the Marvel films about turning one against the other and what it meant.
And so sometimes you just get lucky.
As a matter of fact, the whole Marvel universe, possibly without exception, just happens to be a really well – what do you call that when you put together something curated group of souls?
And Keanu and I and Woody and Winona and it was this cool thing and we would shoot these scenes and he would say, you can just leave your body mic on the outside because we're just painting the whole thing.
So that rotoscoping is a great metaphor for essentially what the Marvel movies became when sometimes you would even go and I'm supposed to come in and like throw something.
It was off camera but everything else was great.
Oh, we'll just move your arm later and you go, wow.
So you never want to rest on your laurels and say – but after a certain while, I was like – Why am I wearing this football suit?
Just put some dots on my shoulders so I can move more freely.
And they'd be like, all right.
I go, honestly, what are you really using all this stuff I'm wearing for?
They go, for reference.
I go, great.
So I'll wear it for one take and then I'll take it off and I'll relax a little bit.
But then other people would be like, I'm stuck in this fucking thing, Don.
Paint it purple.
So everybody got to join in on the joys and the miseries of the technical challenge of doing it.
And speaking of Ruffalo, by the end, because he's a smart hulk, He literally – they were just making him big wherever he was and they put a little – a piece of PVC with a big Hulk head up about five feet over where his head was and he was just there in a green suit.
So in a tracking suit with like his package out, you know, and he'd be like, let me just at least tie like a little sarong around my, come on guys, whatever, you know.
And so I think Mark went about as far out into the ionosphere of CG as you can.
But after so many times – and again, this is the genius of the people who break and shape stories over there.
Feige and his team as they go, oh, he's Hulk and then he's not Hulk.
He's Hulk.
It's a big battle.
Oh, he's so conflicted.
What if he could meet himself in the middle?
And then what corner have we painted ourselves in by having him meet himself in the middle because then you can't – if that doesn't work, you can't go back to the way it was.
You've done it or you can go back to the way it was.
So I just think that the real genius of the Marvel creative team is they – and the Russo brothers who did the last few – Avengers Infinity War and Endgame is they go, we love writing ourselves into a corner.
We love it.
Because then it activates all of those, how do we get out of purgatory juices, and then you get the next right idea.
I think if you're one of the folks who has their standalone movies like Scarlet has Black Widow coming out, I think you take a – I would.
You take a bit of a different – I think the legal phrase for actors and studios is meaningful consultation, not script approval, because then anybody could hold a studio hostage because I don't approve this $30 million that you're trying to spend right now.
I've had my moments too because I'm so passionate about story.
But again, after more seat time with the same people and new people coming in and getting a pretty brutal education on what kind of process these movies require, you just start trusting more that they're thinking on your behalf.
And also, little things are easy to change.
Big things become an inconvenience to the higher good.
And at what point do you want to pull the air brake on something where the train's already leaving the station?
Yeah, and by the way, after I had my second round of kids with Susan, I became both artistically, I had a bit of a renaissance when I was doing the third Iron Man.
And then after that too, I was like, well, now I'm going to do this Avengers and there's so many moving parts and it's so difficult just to get all these schedules to coincide and get everyone together that I'm not going to be like, I'm not feeling it.
So again, it's that thing.
It's sometimes...
What do they say?
Faster or alone, further together?
Sometimes you can only think about further because you've got to get downfield.
Other times, you're thinking, hey, this is my moment to run and I need a little help and a little approval and I need a little leeway.
I would imagine when you're involved in something that's so epic, when it's actually over, it probably almost seems surreal.
Because the production is so massive, there's so many moving pieces, there's so many special effects, so many things that you have to sort of visualize while you're doing it.
Well, I mean it could be some part of 18 months to two years depending on how far out you are and then four to six months of principal photography and then additional photography and then post and then I always include promotion.
There's a good litmus, too, because you watch your show pretty quick.
And I just love it, too, because in your show, you literally, you just, you start, it's a rolling start with you every time.
You come into the show and you're already kind of thinking about stuff.
So it feels very organic.
And part of me even this morning was like, I hope he looks into my eyes and doesn't see a complete and utter foolish fraud because I would probably believe him if he mirrored that back to me.
I respect some people that are that because there's an ability to – maybe it's fear-based.
But I always appreciate people who – there's people like their icons are big shots or they hold a certain esteem and all of their texts are very simple.
Well, that's a beautiful perspective, and that shows in how you carry yourself, and it shows in the work that you do, that you do appreciate it.
One of the saddest things is someone who's in an amazing position who doesn't appreciate it.
And that drives other people crazy, too.
Like, prima donnas drive people crazy for a variety of reasons, but one of the big ones is you don't appreciate how fortunate you are And people love when people appreciate good fortune and appreciate a well-earned position and are engrossed in a beautiful life of something that they really enjoy and something that really inspires them.
Well, I need to be kept right-sized because I can easily fall into self-seeking and depression and self-pity and judgment and all that stuff.
It's kind of a...
It's a bit of a default, but I spend enough energy and I've had enough help over enough years to actually just say, oh, that's just awful, destructive behavior.
I'll be the first to tell you, like, you know, do certain movies, or we were doing Tropic Thunder, one of the first, you know, Iron Man movies, I was like, I'd go over to the monitor, I'd be like, play that back again.
For me, it's like the playback of the perfect Superman punch KO and just go, show me that again.
Or when we were shooting Tropic Thunder, I had a little teaser clip for Iron Man, but it wasn't coming out until the next year and we were going to go to Comic-Con.
So I got to see it and show it to people and they're like, oh, I think that movie's going to do pretty good.
And then when we went to Comic-Con, we saw it, but It used to be like that with music too.
I write music.
I haven't for some time, but you would write something and then you just listen to it on the loop because you go, wow.
I know that I was here and I did that, but it feels kind of inspired and you want to get all that stuff.
Yes, self-critical is important as long as it doesn't bleed out into and over the edges and just make everyone miserable.
Well, fighters talk about that all the time, especially a counter shot.
They land something, and they don't even have any idea they're going to do it, and they did it, and then it caused the knockout.
It's their training manifest itself in this one special beautiful moment where bang this thing happens and then they see the guy drop and like holy shit and then they walk away and it's the work it's it's there's so many things involved right there's so many moving pieces you have to be working on your own mind to learn how to get out of your own way you also have to be like really engrossed in whatever the activity is that you're doing like obsessed in love with it passionate about it And then you have to have the discipline to show up and actually do the
And honestly, particularly in the last 15 years when I started really taking martial arts seriously, half the stuff that I've been able to do right in my creative life are principles that I learned on the mat with my Sifu.
I got My ass kicked by a wooden dummy for about three years and then I finally understood the principle of don't fight force with force.
It's just nuts.
So anyway, half the time If I would be in a critical artistic situation, I would just say – because Wing Chun problems are life problems.
Life problems are Wing Chun problems and I would just go back to how did this kind of relate to – because I don't like getting clocked and getting my teeth knocked in because we tend to – sometimes we glove up but we're not wearing mouthpieces.
It's certainly not because he's very good at pulling his punches and he's also even better at making sure that I don't accidentally hit him.
But we get as close as we can to what the real experience would be.
But again, it's like everything.
I'm sure a few clicks back down the road, there's things that instructors were doing that would be considered illegal to do to a group of students nowadays.
And the two things just somehow or other seem to lock in and talk to you off the record and afterwards about any and everything to do with my recovery as far as – It locked in with this.
It was an apprenticeship, and it was an apprenticeship that was contingent on me being in a certain headspace.
Well, it's a good thing, too, because it's a very addictive thing.
People get very addicted to martial arts, and it's a good substitute for sometimes negative addictions.
Bourdain, before he died, he was obsessed with Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Yeah, became really obsessed with it at 58 and got really good.
He was training every day and he was training twice a day every day.
So he went from when I first met him, he was chubby, he was smoking cigarettes, he drank every night, still kind of still drank every night.
But, you know, he just did enough healthy things to keep his body together.
And then his ex-wife got really into jujitsu.
And then he decided to follow her one day to classes.
And he was kind of mocking it and laughing at it at first.
And then became obsessed.
And then really got good.
I mean, look at how he won in a tournament.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, he's fucking 60 years old.
Jesus H. What's really crazy is a picture of him walking down the street in, I think they were in Rome, and he has no shirt on, and he's fucking ripped.
Anthony Bourdain, full six-pack.
Yeah, dude, he was obsessed.
He would take a private every day.
Look at him.
Look at that photo.
That's crazy.
He's like 60-something years old there.
So he would take a private lesson every day, and then he would take a class.
So he would take a private lesson, sharpen up techniques, and then he would take group classes, too, which is very critical.
Yeah, my Taekwondo teacher said something to me when I was very young.
He said that it is a tool for developing your human potential.
Yeah, and I never forgot that because I'm like, yeah, it's because it's really difficult to do.
Like all martial arts are really – it's really difficult to get your body to move that way and to be able to be effective in a conflict situation.
And if you can do it and you can do it over and over again and you can overcome that difficult thing and you thought it was insurmountable and then you figured out how to do it, eventually you get to this point where you realize, well, everything in life is like that.
Everything in life is like something, it's a puzzle.
You have to figure out how am I approaching it wrong?
What can I do to make it better?
How do I get more competent at this particular skill or this particular discipline?
I mean if I've noticed anything in the last couple years just in In UFC, which by the way, I was doing a Robert Altman film called The Gingerbread Man back in the 90s and UFC had just started off and I was getting the VHS tapes and watching them.
And so when they go back on the 25 years ago, I was like, I've been there from jump.
And also, since I threw my hat in the ring with this kind of green technology initiatives, I... I'm probably going to wind up auctioning them all off, to be honest.