Smith, director of 2017’s Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, has long shown a keen sensitivity and interest in people and how they interact with the world, and Sr. primer, enough to get you excited to see his masterpieces, Putney Swope (1971) and Greaser’s Palace (1972), both of which are streaming for free on Tubi. His movies are fabulously weird, full-on laugh riots, and Smith does a wonderful job of curating tasty cuts for us. Downey Sr., a true dees and dose mid-century New Yorker, forever quick with a remark and a mischievous look in his eye, was the kind of guy alive to the spontaneity of the moment. is also funny? Which makes the whole thing sing. It’s about what’s said and left unsaid, and, oh yeah, it’s also a beautiful, clear-eyed meditation on death.ĭid we mention Sr. grapples with fathers and sons and the distance between them, as well as addiction and its consequences. The film covers illness, too-Sr., who died in 2020, suffered from Parkinson’s. It’s both an appreciation of Sr.’s body of work and a document of him in action. is about a radical filmmaker who, for a generation, was part of any unsentimental cultural education that included Hubert Selby Jr., Melvin Van Peebles, and Penny Arcade, on through Jello Biafra. Which is just one of the stories in this enveloping pastiche of a filmmaker and his son, Robert Downey Jr.-maybe you’ve heard of him? She saved my life and then lost hers.How do you make a documentary about a man who doesn’t have the slightest interest in talking about himself? Well, in the case of Sr., the Netflix documentary directed by Chris Smith (streaming tomorrow), since the subject is the underground filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., you make a movie about a man making a movie. I wrote the script with my wife Laura who died of ALS at age 36. I wonder if they'll freak out.'" -Robert Downey Jr in Us, October 1996.ĭowney describes "Hugo Pool" as "the right kind of strange. He had to be ballsy to go out and say, 'No one's ever seen anything like this before. "My father was and still is my role model. babbling jerk, but if I knew then what I know now. I can't believe how we thought it was OK. I wouldn't do anything differently, except I wouldn't allow anyone to smoke marijuana. If Robert wanted to be wild, it was OK with me. Like his son, Robert Downey Sr battled drug addiction, describing it as "a horrible f-ing nightmare. His son Robert Downey Jr appeared in "Hugo Pool," the seventh of his father's films in which he has acted. He returned with "Hugo Pool" (1997), co-written with his late wife Laura, about a dedicated, beautiful and lonely Beverly Hills pool cleaner (Alyssa Milano) who becomes involved in the lives of her clients, particularly Floyd, an attractive man afflicted with ALS (the same disease that had felled Laura Downey). Downey wrote and directed "Too Much Sun" (1991), a weak farce about a competition between a brother and sister (both gay) to have a child first, so as to inherit a fortune from their father. Though his acting appearances have been few, he did play an ad agency head in "You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat" (1971), an NCAA investigator in "Johnny Be Good" (1988) and a recording studio manager in "Boogie Nights" (1997). With Chuck Barris, Downey co-wrote "The Gong Show Movie" (1980) and also directed "Rented Lips" (1988), scripted and produced by Martin Mull. A super-offbeat Jesus Christ parody with a Western setting, it offers some wonderful performances by Allan Arbus as a zoot-suited Jesus, Albert Henderson as head Greaser and Stan Gottlieb as the "wife" of a deformed Mexican with a lecherous yen for the Saviour, but despite the inspired hilarity, its 91 minute running time seems longer than that. Though his greatest success, "Putney Swope" appears dated today, and the richer-looking (Downey finally had some money to spend) "Greaser's Palace" (1972) may have withstood the test of time. Downey had worked in advertising and lampooned that business in the movie everyone associates with him, "Putney Swope" (1969), about the hilarious changes made by a token black member of an ad agency after he is accidentally elected Chairman of the Board. Described by an associate as "a big jovial bear," Robert Downey Sr translated his irreverent, mordant humor to the screen as the writer-director of several experimental cult classics of the late 1960s and early 70s.
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