Rising up underground within the ’60s on the Decrease East Aspect, considered one of my frequent haunts was the Charles Theatre on twelfth Road and Avenue B—way back demolished. Within the slim auditorium, with a balcony that might maintain as many as 500 folks (however often didn’t), double and triple payments stuffed whole afternoons with Bergman, Truffaut and different uncommon overseas and unbiased movies. At evening there have been occasional reside performances of music, comedy and drama that includes East Village avant gardists. It was on the Charles that I used to be launched to considered one of my early counterculture heroes, the playwright and filmmaker Robert Downey Sr.
He directed a string of absurdist, surreal, comedic, taboo-busting movies that defied studio conventions and influenced a insurgent wing of American film making. Alongside one other insurgent, the documentarian Kenneth Anger, whose Scorpio Rising (which had an prolonged run on the Theater for the New Metropolis) revealed in 1964 an unprecedented cinematic view of homosexual and biker underbellies of the age. Downey produced unbridled comedy and satire; he made underground movie an alternative choice to the mainstream, which bled into the mainstream.
Till lately, I hadn’t seen a Downey Sr. movie for a few a long time. Then I discovered Downey’s masterpiece Putney Swope on-line (lately, Criterion started streaming a few of his greats). I additionally watched Netflix’s documentary “Sr.”, a candid telling of Downey Jr.’s loving relationship along with his dad and namesake, who died in 2021, three years after they started filming. The doc follows the progress of the movie’s gestation, in addition to the simultaneous making of an undefined new Downey Sr. film-within-the-documentary. It’s a praiseworthy endeavor that offers Downey Sr. his due as a pioneering satiric artist and humanist film maker whereas giving Downey Jr. a chance to bathe deserved heat and respect upon his pop (aka “a prince,” as he was recognized).
I’ve by no means met Jr., however Sr., who I did get to know some 20 years in the past, had impression on my life lengthy earlier than and after we have been launched. Having temporary alternatives to talk to him in individual and on the cellphone was such a present, and I’m upset that I didn’t embody our encounters in my latest memoir. I even interviewed him for Situation journal, revealed by PRINT. He taught me that comedy was born of the cuts and edits which might be endemic to nice movie. Once I final noticed him 10 years or extra in the past, he was making a movie about ALS, which took the lifetime of his second spouse, Laura Ernst. It was a robust assertion, with hints of wit shining by way of all of the unhappiness.
Earlier than assembly Sr., I noticed the aforementioned Putney Swope 4 occasions in a single week on the Charles. Sr. was the consummate New York underground film man, working at a time when movie (and to a lesser extent, video) have been the recent auteur media for the burgeoning beneath 14th avenue artwork scene. Putney Swope, which was chosen by the Nationwide Movie Registry of the Library of Congress in 2016 (Scorpio Rising was accepted in 2022), was among the many first undergrounds to get distribution outdoors of the underground ghetto, which enabled Downey Sr. to make extra—however no much less dangerous—movies with higher manufacturing values. Of those, Pound, his first colour movie that takes place in a canine pound, with human actors taking part in the roles of canine fated to be euthanized, was considered one of his most biting and funniest (and the place Downey Jr. makes his first onscreen look, as a pet). He adopted that with Greaser’s Palace, which was a twisted Christ story that includes Alan Arbus as a zoot-suited savoir.
I initially met Downey first after I was 17 years outdated. He had come by the New York Free Press workplace on West 72nd Road and Broadway, the place I used to be artwork director, to take a look at renting the house that we have been going to depart for an workplace downtown. Tall, imposing and heroic, I believed then that I needed to know him higher. A gathering didn’t occur for one more 10 years. Within the meantime, he saved an workplace atop the Bleecker Road Cinema within the West Village (now gone), given to him (rent-free) by its supervisor, Stan Gottlieb, who later turned a good friend of mine and ran the movie division of Screw journal, the place I used to be additionally artwork director. In return for his generosity, Stan was given key roles in numerous subsequent Downey movies—and bought roles in non-Downey tasks, just like the satiric Chilly Turkey and The Anderson Tapes. Stan’s consumptive physique was simply what Downey wanted in his repertory of misshapen characters for movies like Greaser’s Palace and Pound. Stan ultimately turned his bit roles right into a profession as a severe character actor, culminating in a community TV model of the Resort Baltimore. You possibly can decide Stan out, the cadaverous-looking one, in just a few clips proven within the doc.
“Sr.”, the movie, is an ideal evocation of Downey’s unbelievable expertise. Even within the throes of Parkinson’s illness, which we witness slowly consuming his bodily entity, he retains his sense of self, capability for irony, an artist’s ardour and basic humanity, which I used to be lucky sufficient to expertise. Generosity underscores this movie; the entry to Sr. that Jr., who’s producer, permits the viewer to have, lets us know the true man, not only a celluloid transparency. Avoiding sentimentality, the love between father and son is so palpable and true.
And I can vouch for that, too. Through the lunches Downey Sr. and I had, he typically talked proudly about how a lot respect he had for Jr. as an actor; how Sr. felt it was his fault for Jr.’s near-fatal addictions. Finally, the movie reveals how fortunate each have been (are) that their relationship stood the assessments of trial by human error with such grace, kindness and redemption.
