No, we don't really have anything to say about the life and career of the man who spawned Robert Downey Jr., but we thought that his death this month would be a good excuse to finally screen the cult classic that stamped his reputation.
PUTNEY SWOPE (1969) (C+) - Not much more than a curious artifact at this point, "Putney Swope" is quite a mess of a movie about an advertising firm turning from white to black control virtually overnight. Very much of its time -- the year of "Midnight Cowboy," "Easy Rider" and "Take the Money and Run" -- it comes across as a psychedelic mix of high-brow blaxploitation, "Laugh-In" lunacy, and blackout sketches from the "Carol Burnett Show."
Provocative for its time, I'm sure, the cheapness of the production magnifies the shortcomings of an incongruent script. It's not clear what the point was at the time, and there's no evident moral to this story. A bunch of militants with guns show up to protect Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson, whose voice Downey dubbed himself) who, in a fluke following the unexpected death of the firm's founder, is elected president of the agency. He immediately cracks down and refuses to advertise alcohol, cigarettes and war toys.
The new firm, Truth and Soul, draws attention from the president of the United States (Pepi Hermine), but it's not really clear why. Allan Arbus (TV's "MASH") provides some actual acting chops amid a gaggle of scene chewers. Antonio Fargas (TV's "Starsky and Hutch") also stands out with an energy that must have been later studied by Flavor Flav.
The film is shot in black and white, but it converts to color for the interspersed commercial parodies that are hit and miss on the comedy scale. One involves topless stewardesses jumping up and down in slow motion, if that helps you set a gauge. Some one-liners land better than others. When Swope is informed that a client was caught in bed with a 13-year-old, Swope deadpans, "Well, at least we know he's not superstitious." When confronted with a foul-smelling window cleaner, he barks out, "Put soybeans in it and market it as a soft drink in the ghetto. We'll put a picture of a rhythm and blues singer on the front and call it Victrola Cola."
In the end, the main disappointment is that this obviously was intended as a bold polemic about capitalism and race, but Downey lands nary a body blow on those fronts. OK, so it's a comedy. Eh. I've seen funnier, even back then.
BONUS TRACK
The trailer, and a random clip:
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