Oliver Stone says Robert Downey Jr. nearly ruined “Natural Born Killers” with bloody penis gag: 'Slapstick bulls‑‑‑'

“You're ruining my movie!" the filmmaker recalled saying on set. "Forget the dumb dick idea."

Shooting Natural Born Killers was no walk in the park — and the film's director says Robert Downey Jr. didn't help the vibe on set.

In an in-depth Esquire piece commemorating the 30th anniversary of the ultraviolent serial killer satire, filmmaker Oliver Stone looked back on how the Iron Man star got on his nerves with a crude improvisation.

"Oh come on — that's too much! You're going too far, Robert," Stone recalled saying as Downey dipped a shirttail into fake blood and shoved it through his fly to simulate a bloody penis.

"You're ruining my movie! Forget the dumb dick idea," Stone continued. "This isn't some slapstick bulls‑‑‑."

In the film, the future Oppenheimer Oscar winner played trashy Australian TV journalist Wayne Gale, who follows the central murderers Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory Wilson (Juliette Lewis) to create a madcap media circus.

The 1994 movie came at the height of Downey's struggles with addiction. "The only time I was awake… was between Action and Cut," the actor recalled.

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Case in point: The day they shot a pivotal scene in which Wayne conducts a live interview with Mickey inside a prison, Downey "had been out on the town, nine sheets in the wind" because he thought he'd have more time to recover from his escapades — until the schedule moved up.

"To this day, it was one of the most mortifying notifications I've ever received, because it was a seven-page scene. I got to set and I was absolutely useless," Downey said. "I was then given a therapeutic injection of 'B12 vitamins' — I'm just going to put that in quotes, italics, underlined, and question marks on either side. And I have never in my life experienced a more delightful nine hours. But! I looked at the pages left to right, spread out on the floor — only twice — and was off-book."

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Downey said the crew was floored that he made it through the scene. "You know how sometimes there's applause from the crew after takes when people are doing movies and really nail it?" the actor asked. "When I finally got through that day — and Woody nailed it, nailed it, nailed it — then they had to turn around on me. The entire crew applauded because I think intuitively they know that I should not have even been anywhere but an emergency room that morning."

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Stone said Downey wasn't alone in his drug use on set. "I have to say, it was a zoo in the sense the actors were all on different kind of trips," the director said. "I think Woody was the most sane."

Harrelson confirmed the filmmaker's claim. "Oliver reassured me of this: I don't want to say I was the moral center on this movie, but I was the one doing the least amount of drugs!" he said. "It's never happened in my career or my life. And no one's ever done more drugs than me, but I was Mother Teresa on this one."

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.