Olde Moobies

This is for Howard.

I recently picked up two movies I vaguely remember from my youth: "Putney Swope" and "Medium Cool." I wonder if they'll live up to my memories?

I don't remember either of them. Don't know if I saw them.

Wow. You must have LIVED the Sixties, man.

I tried.
You were probably too young to get the whole experience.

Yep. Turned 16 in 1970 so I basically missed the sixties.

"Putney Swope" (1969) is a glorious mess -- an "experimental" ultra-low budget art film by Robert Downey (Sr.) about some militant Black Panther-types taking over an advertising agency. Lots of Afros, soul sisters, jive talk and long meaningless scenes. It has that "Let's roll camera and see what happens" feel of so many independent films of that era.

There are a couple of actors who later became famous, and a lot where this was their only film.

Certainly NOT a classic but very much of its time.

"Medium Cool" (1969) is higher budget than "Putney Swope" but not much.  It has Peter Bonerz (Bob Newhart's neighbor Jerry) and Peter Boyle in it.

Soundtrack was by Mike Bloomfield, with several songs of the Mothers of Invention dropped in unaccountably.

There is a lot of footage which appears to be filler -- long shots of scenery, crowd scenes, unconnected scenes -- and parts of it were actually shot at the 1968 Democratic Convention riots.  It alternates between news footage (some of it real) and movie footage.  The story is pretty much incomprehensible.

Not that it matters.

Apparently, editing wasn't invented until the '70s.

"Medium Cool" is a Criterion Blu-ray so it has a ton of extras, including two feature length commentaries, contemporary (2013) interviews with most of the surviving cast & crew, and a 4-hour "making of" documentary from 2001. Wow. More than I expected.