Robert Downey Sr.’s first feature film, Babo 73, is a time capsule glimpse at an era of American filmmaking that put a subversive spin on all those Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland “Let’s put on a show” musicals. “We were just out having fun doing this because we could,” Downey told NPR in 2008. “Here we were, writers, and cameramen and stuff saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got a script, I’ve got a camera, let’s go do something.’ That’s all it was.”
Babo 73 is really something. Cited as significant by undergroundfilmjournal.com, the film is, according to Paul Thomas Anderson, who cast Downey in Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999), “the most outlandish film” Downey has made, quite a statement considering Downey made such iconoclastic features as Chafed Elbows (1966), Putney Swope (1969) and Greaser’s Palace (1972).
Downey, who died in July 2021 at the age of 85, came to filmmaking the old-fashioned way: his dreams of being a professional ballplayer stalled at the semi-pro level. After his stint in the Army, he took a Greenwich Village writing and directing workshop. He was inspired by Lithuanian American filmmaker Jonas Mekas, who is considered “the godfather of American avant-garde cinema” and who said that anybody could make a movie.
And so, with cameraman William Waering, Downey made Babo 73. In an interview with director John A. Gallagher, Downey said that filming was trial and error, with an emphasis on error. “But it was exciting,” he said.
Babo 73 stars future Warhol veteran Taylor Mead as Sandy Studsbury, the newly elected President of the United Status (that’s not a typo). His left-hand advisor is Chester Kitty-Litter. His right-hand advisor is Lawrence Silver-Skye, who is known among his constituents as “the fascist gun in the west.” His private secretary is Philippe Green. He is a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks, where he majored in self-flagellation, and is currently having a breakdown.
From here, Babo 73 resists synopsizing. At his first meeting with a head of state and member of HATO (again, not a typo), a prime minister attempts to blackmail the president and is summarily shot. Then there are the matters of what to do about the Red Siamese and a white poet who was beaten at an all-Black university.
Babo 73’s budget was reported to be $3,000. Scenes that supposedly take place at the White House play out on a beach. In another scene, a rotting Victorian mansion that looks like something out of Grey Gardens (1975) stands in for the Executive Mansion. Downey and company did manage to shoot at the actual White House without bothering with securing press passes or permits. In an interview included in the 2004 book “Film Voices: Interviews From Post Script,” Downey said that at the time, President Kennedy was in Europe, so security was lax. In another scene, Mead wanders freely among real generals.
Mekas himself called Downey “a troubadour of our time.” But his comic worldview would seem to be closer to that of former National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live writer Michael O’Donoghue: “Snakes on everything.” Politics comes in for a heavy skewering in Babo 73, as does race and religion. The film’s roughly one-hour run time is a virtual non-stop trigger.
Writing for Grantland.com, Sean Witzke noted Downey has been cited as an influence by Eddie Murphy, Jim Jarmusch, the Cohen Brothers and Louis C.K. Babo 73 can be seen in the DNA of Steven Soderbergh’s experimental comedy Schizopolis (1996).
But perhaps Babo 73’s most important and lasting legacy is that it earned Downey a Guggenheim grant. As he told Gallagher, most of the critics at the film’s screening departed after 10 minutes. But New Yorker critic Brendan Gill considered it “the funniest movie I’ve seen in months.” He was on the Guggenheim selection committee and championed Downey.
This helped pave the way for Chafed Elbows, which The New York Times noted (in 2008, when several of Downey’s raw and rebellious early films were restored) became “a breakout hit for New York’s underground cinema.”
But it all started with Babo 73. It’s uneven, Downey acknowledged to The New York Times, “but I was uneven. So what?”
