Word: swope
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...case the word hasn't reached you yet, this film (now at the Paris Cinema) is the story of what happens when a bunch of black militants take over an ad agency. But the film isn't really about advertising or blacks. Putney Swope is rather a monument to chaos, a plea for insanity, an adversisement for anarchy...
...hasn't happened and we must survive. Putney Swope -a film literally bursting at the seams with irrelevancies, obscenities, improvisations and illogical editing-tells us how. To avoid systems, we must act as if they don't exist; we must see how funny all that supposed logic is. We should wear lampshades on our heads, urinate in the kitchen, say "Fuck you" to any system that tries to encroach on our humanity. James Thurber would understand this kind of approach to life. And so would acid heads, people with good peripheral vision, and Lenny Bruce...
...PUTNEY SWOPE is a fantastic movie, but people who still believe in the alphabet and political movements are going to have a lot of trouble with it. While the film does have some moments of pure comic entertainment value (like a lot of obscene commercials made by the militants' "Truth and Soul" advertising agency), it is not enough of a comedy to hold an audience for laughs alone...
...Swope is a movie that literally disintegrates as you watch it-like Alka Seltzer. It defies all systems by not explaining its plot, its jokes or its characters. Most of the people in it are not only new to movies but new to acting...
Robert Downey, though, is not new to films. He is known to underground film audiences for such earlier, shorter works as Babo 73 and Chafed Elbows . He fought for the chance to do Swope for two years, carrying the script around to backers...