Putney Swope (1969)

Putney Swope (1969) was inspired by an incident that took place when Robert Downey Sr. was making off-beat commercials for an ad agency. A black man who did the same job noticed that Downey made much more money. The boss explained that if he gave the black man a raise, Downey would want one too, and they would be right back where they started. Starting with that, and the idea of reversing the racial roles, he wrote the screenplay for Putney Swope.

The head of an ad agency dies at a board meeting, and with him still dead on the table, they hold an election for a new chairman. All but two people vote for the agency's token black man, Putney Swope, who becomes the head of the agency. Cut to a boardroom full of radical black board members. Swope heads the company with outrageous ideas, and amasses a fortune. He is also courted by the president and the first lady, a couple of midgets. They are advised by an obvious Kissinger character.

Arnold Johnson was perfect for the role of Putney Swope, but there was a problem. He couldn't remember his lines. Then the cameraman noticed that his beard covered his mouth, and suggested that it would be easy to dub the lines in post production, so that's what they did, with Downey Sr. doing the dubbing! Downey had a great deal of trouble selling the concept, but finally found financing and distribution, and it did reasonably well. I found it terribly dated, not that biting as social satire, and only occasionally humorous. The film is in black and white, but all of the faux commercials are in color.

It's a C- on our scale, and is interesting only as a cultural artifact.

IMDb readers say 6.5.

 

Scoop's notes: That brings back some memories. I have only seen Putney Swope once, during its original run, in a Greenwich Village arthouse theater! It was quite the counter-culture rage back in the headiest anti-establishment days of the late 60s, and a "must see" for pseudo-intellectual university types in New York City. Hmm, I wonder what happened to the girl that went with me that night.

Anyway, I was disappointed. My reaction to the film was exactly the same as Tuna's is today, except for the "terribly dated" part. That Downey Senior was one messed-up dude. I thought the satire was clumsy, the comic timing was off, the production value was nil, and there was nothing very funny in it except for a couple of moments in the faux commercials.

The cult status it once enjoyed seems unaccountable today. It's basically an underground film, not much slicker than a home movie, one of those "ya hadda be dere" films. It was celebrated by the counter culture because it was both weird and angry and thus caught the zeitgeist by being doubly anti-establishment: it rejected establishment cultural values in a form that rejected establishment filmmaking values.

Laura Greene, as Mrs. Swope, shows a breast.

Four unknowns show breasts in an airline commercial.