Robert Downey in Person Touted as the "Lenny Bruce of the new cinema," Robert Downey overwhelmed the underground with a clenched fistful of brilliant satires, culminating in Putney Swope and his pet project, Pound. Downey's earliest surviving effort Babo 73 is an absurdist romp through American politics with Taylor Mead as the "President of the United Status." This darkly comic day-in-the-life of the Prez brags the launch of a nuclear war aborted by God and an impending invasion by the Red Siamese. The riotously off-sync sound ensures a president who'll never say "read my lips." With Chafed Elbows, Downey is at the peak of his iconoclastic powers. Nothing is safe: not Warhol, nor psychiatry, not "Jesus Mekas," nor contemporary poetry. In the midst of the mockery, Walter Dinsmore is having an affair with his mother, played by Downey's wife, Elsie. When he's not wooing Mom, or one of her many manifestations (all Elsie), Walter participates in an underground film, becomes a work of art ("I call you 'Man On Street Near Warehouse'"), and leads a band, Walter and His Vacuums. Using a wiggy web of still images, text, and action footage, Chafed Elbows scoffs at sixties America with an original cinematic sneer.-Steve Seid