Robert Downey Sr. is probably best known these days as the father of the biggest movie star in the world, Robert Downey Jr. But among cinefiles and filmmakers, the elder Downey is a hero, and his underground films inspired the likes of “Boogie Nights” director Paul Thomas Anderson.
Cinefamily is putting on a retrospective of Downey’s early films this weekend. It's part of the theater's first ever Friends of Cinefamily fundraiser. The movies are alternately called irreverent, uncommercial and mischievous. One such movie is "Putney Swope." The black-and-white 1969 film satirizes race and advertising.
We spoke with Downey about how New York inspired his filmmaking in the early '60s, what launched "Putney Swope" into a cult classic, and where his son got his sense of humor.
Interview Highlights:
What was the climate like back when you first started making movies?
There was a place called the Charles Theater, where anybody could bring a film and put it up in the projection booth in a rack of stuff. And you could sit there for two or three days before you saw your film, but it was great.
People also gave each other film and editing rooms, and lent stuff around [to] each other; that was a year or two later. And that was going on all the time. There was no organized thing, it was just that everybody knew everybody who was trying to do stuff.
Can you talk about how you went from that to getting "Putney Swope" made?
Well, when that film was done, nobody wanted it. So the money guy went to the last distributor to see the film who owned theaters in New York, and he was a famous guy named Don Rugoff. He owned all the art houses and he had a little distribution company. He came to a screening, and when he came out he came over to me and said, "I don't get it, but I like it. Let's open it."
And what saved the film is Jane Fonda, if you can believe this. She was on the [Johnny] Carson show and she was talking about "Easy Rider" when she said, "There's another film you should see: 'Putney Swope.'" And the next day the box office went up as theaters around the country felt that jolt from her statement.
We should talk a little bit about how you cast your films. Where did you find Stan Gottlieb for "Putney Swope?"
[laughs] I met him in a phone booth outside the Bleecker Street Cinema.
How do you meet somebody in a phone booth?
He was making a call and his face was so original that I said [to myself], When he gets off the phone, I'm going to ask him to be in the film. And that's what happened.
There's a sense of humor that your films have that in some ways mirrors the bizarre sense of humor of a certain actor that you might be related to. Do you think that Robert Downey Jr. inherited a part of your sense of humor? Were you telling the same jokes as you were growing up?
I think the biggest influence on him in that way was his mother. She was a free spirit and loved to laugh and have fun, so as he talks about that time, he always mentions that. He was a quiet kid, but he was watching and listening, so maybe that rubbed off. I don't know. I just know that he makes me laugh all the time.