Putney Swope / Hi, Mom!
This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series Reel Politik: Seizing the Means of Projection With Nathan Gelgud. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
In-person: cartoonist and illustrator Nathan Gelgud.
Putney Swope (1969)
Anarchic trickster of American cinema, Robert Downey Sr. is another pillar in the canon of radicalized movie theater workers in Nathan Gelgud’s book Reel Politik, and Putney Swope stands at the zenith of Downey’s devilish, bomb-throwing career. After the corporate board of a Madison Avenue ad firm accidentally votes its only Black member to be chairman, Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson) transforms the company’s image-making apparatus into a machine for revolution and profit. Soon, a parade of CEOs and activists alike are beating a path to his door to pay respects (and cash) to get their piece of the action.
35mm, color and b&w, 85 min. Director/Screenwriter: Robert Downey Sr. With: Arnold Johnson, Stan Gottlieb, Allen Garfield.
Hi, Mom! (1970)
Raw and raucous, Brian De Palma’s early career dark comedy with Robert De Niro fuses underground aesthetics and Hitchcock homage on the streets and in the tenements of New York. De Niro reprises his character Jon Rubin from De Palma’s Greetings, now struggling to make a living, first with a voyeuristic pitch to a porn producer then as an actor in a political theater troupe looking to cash in on radical chic. Revolution is in the air and everyone seems in on the hustle as De Palma veers wildly from broad comedy to sexual farce to documentary-style realism and outright shock, deftly capturing the tumult of the times.
35mm, color and b&w, 87 min. Director/Screenwriter: Brian De Palma. With: Robert De Niro, Jennifer Salt, Allen Garfield.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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