Antonio Fargas Movies
Black supporting actor Antonio Fargas first appeared onscreen in the '70s. ~ All Movie Guide- 1970
This allegorical film by Robert Downey finds humans all playing the role of animals in cages as they wait to be gassed. Flashbacks are used to tell the character's fantasies outside the cage. It is hard to tell if the characters are supposed to be animals, although a depressed prized fighter plays a boxer and a bald man is supposedly a Mexican hairless. Robert Downey Jr. makes an early film appearance as a puppy. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lawrence Wolf, Charles Dierkop, (more)
After several years working along the margins of the underground film scene in New York, director Robert Downey broke through to wider recognition with the arthouse hit Putney Swope, a wildly irreverent satire of race and advertising in America. Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson) is the token African-American executive at an otherwise all-white advertising agency when the chairman of the board unexpectedly drops dead. Through a fluke in the chain of command, Swope becomes the new head of the firm, and decides its time to do things his way. He fires nearly all the staff (except for his one token white employee), renames the agency Truth and Soul, Inc., and announces they'll no longer accept accounts advertising tobacco, alcohol, or war toys. The ads they do produce -- for acne remedies and breakfast cereal, among other things -- are wildly successful, and the iconoclastic ad agency (which only accepts payment in cash) is targeted by government operatives as a threat to the national security. Antonio Fargas and Allen Garfield lead the supporting cast; Mel Brooks makes a cameo appearance. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stanley Gottlieb, Allen Garfield, (more)
