Putney Swope

United States

1969

84 Min

Color, Black and White

English

Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
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CAST Arnold Johnson, Joe Madden, Antonio Fargas, Allen Garfield

SOUND Michael Scott

Cannes (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs), Stockholm (Tribute)

Synopsis

When the chairman of the board of a lily white advertising firm drops dead at a meeting, the arcane voting rules to appoint his successor leads to the election of the firm’s sole African-American employee: Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson). Swope fires everybody immediately, hires an all black staff and refuses to produce ads for any company that sells tobacco, alcohol or war toys. The ads that the newly renamed Truth and Soul Inc. do produce are overtly sexual and barely contain any reference to the products being advertised. Still, the firm becomes insane successful until Swope’s tyrranical demands begin to put the business into jeopardy.

Director Robert Downey Sr. filmed the majority of the film in B&W, except for the outrageous ads produced by Truth and Soul Inc. that are in vibrant color. Also, star Arnold Johnson had severe difficulty remembering his lines, so Downey Sr. redubbed all of Swope’s dialogue himself in post-production. —Mike Everleth

Director

Robert Downey Sr.

Robert John Downey, Sr. (born 1937) is an American actor, writer, film director and father of actor Robert Downey, Jr. He is known as the director and writer of the cult classic feature film Putney Swope, a biting satire on the New York Madison Avenue advertising world.

By the age of 22, Downey had served in the Army, played minor league baseball, become a Golden Gloves champion and an Off-Off-Broadway playwright. In 1961, working with the film editor Fred von Bernewitz, he began writing and directing low-budget 16mm films which gained an underground following, beginning with Ball’s Bluff (1961), a fantasy short about a Civil War soldier who awakens in Central Park in 1961.

He moved into big-budget filmmaking with the surrealistic Greaser’s Palace (1972). His most recent film was Rittenhouse Square (2005), a documentary capturing life in a Philadelphia park. —wikipedia

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mina

3Feb10

Ethereal Cereal remains the best fake product placement in film history (Brawndo is a close second). A truly unique film that really changed my fledgling ideas about what film was and could be. This film is awesome on so many levels while being totally insane from beginning to end. A must-see for any indie filmmaker who wants to forget all the rules and start making movies with humour and meaning.