Andrew reviews Robert Downey, Sr.'s timelessly incendiary comedy, Putney Swope.
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Listening to an interview
with writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson recently, the subject of a then yet
to be discovered comic and technical filmmaking wunderkind known as the father
of Robert Downey, Jr. came into light.
Soon I happened upon the Sr.’s absurdist, incendiary and brilliantly
hilarious masterworks with The Criterion Collection’s Eclipse series Up All Night with Robert Downey, Sr.
with a handful of Downey, Sr.’s short films and his timelessly riotous,
outrageous and savage cult classic, Putney
Swope. The story of a Madison Avenue
advertising firm who inadvertently elects the only African American man on the
staff, the titular Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson from Shaft overdubbed by Downey, Sr. himself), after the abrupt death of
the chairman of the board. Within
minutes of being elected, Swope fires all but one of the white employees before
replacing them with black employees, renames the company Truth and Soul, Inc.,
produces and airs outlandish commercials before eventually finding boredom
being the head honcho. Shot in rough
black-and-white interspersed with color sequences of Swope’s radical
advertisements, the film is a take no prisoners free for all which pushes
topical buttons of race relations in the workplace, the portrayal of race in
film, group think and finally the inability to maintain control after the
attainment of absolute power.
Precluding Sidney Lumet’s
Network for its incisive critique of
the corporate dynamic and informing Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, right down to Don Cheadle’s pornographer Buck Swope
and the Chinese kid throwing firecrackers inside a building, Putney Swope remains Robert Downey, Sr.’s
breakthrough film for losing none of its polarizing comic power despite forty
seven years since its inception. When it
isn’t addressing racial stereotypes, it assails the viewer with wacky asides
including a dwarf CEO, a music video of topless women jumping around and a
motivational researcher who casually declares ‘beer is for men who doubt their
masculinity’. In short, Putney Swope is all over the map with
reckless comic countercultural abandon. Aside from the direct nods in Boogie Nights, Downey, Sr.’s freeform
narrative approach to editing and storytelling interspersed with random anecdotal
comic absurdities so bizarre the only healthy response is laughter, most
certainly informed the visual language Paul Thomas Anderson would employ in his
stab at Thomas Pynchon with Inherent Vice. Irrespective of the literary devotion to the
written word, many scenes in Inherent
Vice like the banana fellating gag play with the same sense of comic timing
pioneered by Downey, Sr.’s films. Sound
and editing are key in Downey, Sr.’s films with specific lines amplified or
redubbed for surreal comic effect as well as the use of music during montage. Most movies laden with ADR overdubbing are
regarded as exemplar of shoddiness but Downey, Sr. is among the few to
knowingly use it for comedy and the results are as effective as his early short
film work, Babo 73 being one of the
funniest.
While a critical and
commercial smash for an underground independent release in 1969, Robert Downey,
Sr. never again attained the same artistic or financial heights he did with Putney Swope. Downey, Sr. has gone on saying Putney Swope just happened to be a lucky
find with audiences whereas most of the rest of his work is either difficult to
obtain and funding for future projects (which he still hints at today) seems
remote at this juncture. Though still
active in film today including having directed his son Robert Downey, Jr. in a
number of films, Putney Swope remains
the cult auteur’s pinnacle which many number of artists today still consider to
be the work of an offbeat comedian and brilliantly incendiary filmmaker to learn
from and respect. Cited as Louis C.K.’s
favorite film, it’s a delightfully subversive and at times piercingly
incendiary romp of political incorrectness, corporate satire and gleefully
surreal sketch comedy with random vignettes so hilarious they rival most of the
so-called edgy comedies gracing cinemas today.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki
While a critical and
commercial smash for an underground independent release in 1969, Robert Downey,
Sr. never again attained the same artistic or financial heights he did with Putney Swope. Downey, Sr. has gone on saying Putney Swope just happened to be a lucky
find with audiences whereas most of the rest of his work is either difficult to
obtain and funding for future projects (which he still hints at today) seems
remote at this juncture. Though still
active in film today including having directed his son Robert Downey, Jr. in a
number of films, Putney Swope remains
the cult auteur’s pinnacle which many number of artists today still consider to
be the work of an offbeat comedian and brilliantly incendiary filmmaker to learn
from and respect. Cited as Louis C.K.’s
favorite film, it’s a delightfully subversive and at times piercingly
incendiary romp of political incorrectness, corporate satire and gleefully
surreal sketch comedy with random vignettes so hilarious they rival most of the
so-called edgy comedies gracing cinemas today. 