Robert Downey Senior, the father of actor Robert Downey Jr., has died at the age of 85, leaving the legacy of a filmmaker unusual in the history of American culture.
Downey Sr. was, above all,
a movie troublemaker
, the author of nearly endless experimental, cheap and radical films about dysfunctional families, many of which were starred by his children, including Robert.
Closer to the Warhol Factory films than to the New Hollywood of his generation companions such as Scorsese or Coppola, Downey Senior began making films in the 1960s. The piece that synthesizes his cinema belongs to that time:
Putney Swope
(1969 ) is a parody of the world of advertising and television starring a black man who becomes, almost by mistake, a model of social and professional success. In his footage there was situationist humor, some anti-racist essay, and an image that was sometimes kitsch and sometimes brutal. The poster, which depicted a defiant hand in which
the outstretched middle finger became the body of a woman
, caused a scandal in its time.
In
Putney Swope
there were also references to Broadway culture, as in Downey Senior's other great film,
Pound,
a musical about cats and dogs played about human beings, at once comical and tragic. It is not difficult to imagine
Michel Gondry
taking note of
Pound
.
In the following years, Downey Senior tried to insert his sensibilities and his imagination in mainstream cinema.
He made comedies like
Up the Academy, in
the style of
The Last American Virgin
and left apparently conventional and commercial films for the tastes of the 80s but secretly unhinged, such as
Hugo Pool
, starring his son at
the height of his cocaine addiction
.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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