Putney Swope / Hi, Mom!

In-person: cartoonist and illustrator Nathan Gelgud.

Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.

Putney Swope

U.S., 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!

U.S., 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.

—Senior Public Programmer Paul Malcolm