Film buffs are rather conversant in the undeniable fact that Robert Downey Sr. was considered one of the most a success administrators to emerge from the underground movie scene. But mainstream audiences who're extra conversant in his multi-million dollar star son might now not know that RDS was so outstanding in the American counterculture.
With movies like Putney Swope, Chaffed Elbows, and Greaser's Palace to his name, Robert Downey Sr. was a loved icon among lovers of flicks that resisted the Hollywood mainstream and used guerilla film ways and extremely low budgets, very similar to those made by means of Brian De Palma and John Waters. There had been many causes why the overdue director was a beloved establishment of underground filmmaking.
8 He Was An Absurdist
Absurdism became massive among American arts in the Sixties and 1970s thanks to the explosion of the counterculture movement. Absurdism was a motion in arts and literature where the subject or primary personality may just now not find any goal or that means in life. The persona was usually too caught up in a sequence of meaningless occasions that reveal the futility of looking for which means when life is stuffed with so much trivial chaos. Famous examples of absurdism come with the works of Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Satre, Cormac McCarthy, and the films of Robert Downey Sr.
7 His Films Were Satirical
His films weren't just absurdist, they had been items of satire that lampooned what Downey, and many in his era, saw as the maximum trivial and shallow facets of society. For instance, Putney Swope, which many imagine Downey's maximum famous film, mocks the Madison Avenue sorts who labored in Nineteen Sixties promoting (think Mad Men meets National Lampoon). It additionally reflects on racism in Hollywood, corruption in trade, and materialistic elitism.
6 His Films Were Low Budget
Downey stayed out of the mainstream for many of his occupation, who prefer to cater his motion pictures to the rising demographic of those that had been not up to satisfied with Hollywood. In other phrases, he catered to hippies and beatniks. His motion pictures no longer simplest mirrored the values of his target market in their tales, but in how he produced the films. Robert Downey Sr.'s films opted for low budgets and unknown actors instead of the glitz and glamour that Hollywood was dependent upon. This low-key way endeared Downey to the underground.
5 He Gave His Son His Film Debut
This is more of a amusing truth than it's anything else, however Downey did arguably get his son's extremely lucrative acting career started. It is correct that Downey first turned into mainstream when he in short joined the forged of SNL, only to be fired after one season. However, his movie debut came in 1970 when at the age of 5 his father put him in his film Pound. The film is a live-action film the place the actors do the voices of animals who're ready to be euthanized at a shelter.
4 He Was Also An Actor
Downey bogged down his filmmaking as he got older, and as his son turned into a mainstream celebrity. But each whilst running on underground films and later in life, Downey was appearing here and there. He had several uncredited performing roles in several of his motion pictures, like Sweet Smell of Sex and Putney Swope, however would later do roles in motion pictures like Boogie Nights and Tower Heist, the latter being his last movie ever. He was also in television shows like 1st and Down and Andy Griffith's Matlock.
3 His Films Pushed Boundaries
Downey took advantage of the time he was in as a result of the Sixties was a tumultuous time in film. From the Thirties to the past due Fifties, Hollywood was shackled by means of a sequence of censorship laws that restricted the artistic skills of writers and administrators to the level it ruined a number of doubtlessly revolutionary movies. Those regulations, continuously referred to as the Hayes Code for their writer Senator Hayes, were slowly repealed all over the 1960s and 1970s. Downey took merit and filled his motion pictures with the sorts of intercourse, swearing, and violence that might another way never have been allowed sooner than this happened.
2 He Was A Contemporary Of Several Other Filmmakers
While he was in style in the underground, the reality his movies had been so heavy on satire and comedy put him nearer in rank with administrators like John Waters, who was also pushing the barriers with underground motion pictures. Most different underground filmmakers were keener to make art movies or films that paid homage to the French New Wave. Downey went in a special direction that put him closer with Waters and contemporaries like Brian De Palma, both who went directly to turn out to be mainstream administrators.
1 Why Did RDJ Take His Career In Such A Different Direction?
Now one might be questioning, if Downey Sr. was so into being rebellious and low budget, why did his son go in a fully other path? RDJ as an alternative become an enormous Hollywood star in Marvel films, and earlier than that, he was thought to be a teen heartthrob and member of "the brat pack" of the 1980s. Why he went mainstream is unknown, however the $300 million net worth RDJ enjoys might explain slightly bit. Either approach, RDJ at all times had a whole lot of admire for his father. "You are a saint," were the words he used to say goodbye to his father when he died from Parkinson's in 2021.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTErZ%2Bippeoe6S7zGiuobFdp7yjsdGtZJ2np6OyunnJq6pmnJGZerit0madmqWfqsButc1mq6GdXaq7pbHRoKmorZ6ZfA%3D%3D