Robert Downey Sr. was an American film director and film person, father of Robert Downey Jr. He is known for having written and directed underground films such as Chafed Elbows (1966), almost entirely consisting of film stills; Putney Swope (1969), a satire on the New York Madison Avenue advertising world; and Greaser’s Palace (1972), an acid Western based on the life of Jesus. The films are typical of 1960s counterculture.
Tag Archives: 1936
RIP Antonio Salines (1936 – 2021)
Antonio Salines was an Italian actor known for his parts in Monella, The Gamecock, and Senso ’45.
He is also the devil in Liebeskonzil (1982) which is available now in a German-only bad quality YouTube version.
Liebeskonzil (1982) is a film by Werner Schroeter, based on the scandal play The Love Council (1894) by Oskar Panizza.
The play [and the film] are set in 1495, during the first historically documented outbreak of syphilis.
It portrays the dreaded venereal disease as God’s vengeance on his sexually hyperactive human creatures, especially those surrounding Pope Alexander VI.
Panizza was charged with 93 counts of blasphemy and served his full 12-month sentence in prison.
RIP Harold Budd (1936 – 2020)
Harold Budd was an American composer working primarily in ambient music.
His two collaborations with Brian Eno, 1980’s The Plateaux of Mirror and 1984’s The Pearl, established his trademark atmospheric piano style.
Update: it took a Facebook comment of David Toop to bring Budd’s best work to my attention:”Bismillahi ‘Rrahman’ Rrahim” (1975):
Budd’s track on the Marion Brown Vista album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjNqksj0mkk&ab_channel=ishimats
and Budd’s own recording of that track on The Pavillion of Dreams.
RIP Fernando Solanas (1936 – 2020)
Fernando Solanas was an Argentine film director and politician, best-known for his film The Hour of the Furnaces (1968), which is a seminal document of the decolonization of the Americas.
RIP Reinhold Aman (1936 – 2019)
This happened in 2019 but I only found out today. How? Well, I consider writing a book, an anthology of haatspraak.
Haatspraak is Dutch for hate speech and the book would be something along the lines of Rants and Incendiary Tracts (1989).
For this purpose, I wanted to get Maledicta from my university library. They do not have it.
Who was Reinhold?
Reinhold Aman was the editor and founder of Maledicta. Incidentally, maledicta means male (bad) and dicta (things people say).
Reinhold appears to have been a colourful figure and spent some time in jail for sending what he called “prank” postcards to his ex-wife to be, but which the judge considered to be threats.
RIP Charlie Daniels (1936 – 2020)
Charlie Daniels was an American musician and composer best known for his number-one country hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” (1979), an instance of a cultural product of a deal with the Devil.
RIP Max Crook (1936 – 2020)
Max Crook was an American musician whose name is virtually unknown.
Some research yields his co-authorship of “Runaway” (1961), the Del Shannon song.
In that song he also plays the keyboard solo.
That solo was played on a self-invented electric keyboard called the “Maximillian” which was based the clavioline, which was in turn a variation on the Musitron.
RIP Shirley Knight (1936 – 2020)
Shirley Knight was an American actress known for her performances in 1960s American cinema.
Here she is in a scene from the film Dutchman (1967), an adaptation of the Amir Baraka play of the same name.
RIP Mal Sharpe (1936 – 2020)
Mal Sharpe was an American humorist.
His most notable work was done as part of the duo Coyle and Sharpe. They were active as street interviewers in the early 1960s and were simply hilarious.
The filmed sequence of “The Warbler” is hilarious. Sadly, it appears to be offline at the moment.
I give you “Maniacs In Living Hell”, collected on the album The Insane (But Hilarious) Minds Of Coyle & Sharpe (1964).
RIP José Mojica ‘Coffin Joe’ Marins (1936 – 2020)
José Mojica Marins was a Brazilian film director, best-known for his persona “Coffin Joe“.
I just finished watching At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964) and it’s actually quite good. I especially like the atheist bits, his materialist world view, his Nietzschean take on things.
For example, Coffin Joe eats meat on Holy Friday, just to taunt his catholic fellow townspeople.
And consider the opening oration of Coffin Joe:
“What is life?
It is the beggining of death.
What is death?
It is the end of life!
What is the existence?
It is the continuity of blood.
What is blood?
It is the reason of the existence!”
All this blasphemous discourse makes you wonder how this went down in Brasil. After all, it was 1964, another four years for 1968 to happen … and … did that even ‘happen’ in Brasil, the sexual revolution?
See atheism in Brazil, the sexual revolution in Brazil.