Reaction Shots

With the recent passing of Tony Stark’s father, I thought a lot of how Downey, Sr.’s genre of guerrilla filmmaking is pretty much gone. There was a time when agitprop films would sprout like mushrooms and while many were pretty ham-fisted and outright bad, you couldn’t say that about Downey’.   He will be known (and rightly so) for “Putney Swope” and “Greaser’s Palace”, but he kept a steady stream of sometimes on-the-nose, often off-kilter works that I hope will re-enter the public consciousness in his wake. When I read his son’s memorial tweet, I had to concur: Downey was a true “maverick”. I don’t know that he ever sold out and if the two films mentioned here remain his best known works, then I have to argue that he never did. I also thought about who his immediate descendants, cinematically, are. And oddly, no one comes to mind right away. Those that do are incredibly seriously minded and the only one of his younger contemporaries that had a similar approach to filming a ba...