The Robert Downey Jr Film Guide
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The Robert Downey Jr Film Guide |
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Pound (1970) |
Summary |
Dogs at the pound wait to be adopted. |
Direction |
Robert Downey Sr. |
Downey Factor |
Low. One line in one scene. |
Character |
Puppy |
Looks |
Five years old. |
Performance |
Full of childlike wonder. No really, it's sort of adorable. |
Line |
Got any hair on your balls? |
Other Actors |
Elsie Downey, Allyson Downey |
Connection |
Allyson Downey (sister) in Up the Academy. Elsie Downey (mother) in Greaser's Palace. Robert Downey Sr.'s Hugo Pool, Pound, Up the Academy, Rented Lips, America, Too Much Sun,Greaser's Palace, in The Last Party and Johnny Be Good. |
RDJ Says |
Dad got a grant to make a film about dogs. He said it would be more realistic if he could have actors interpret what the dogs were feeling. So one guy had on a silk robe, and he was a boxer. And another guy had short hair, and he was a Chihuahua. I was a puppy who gets adopted by this bald guy... I played a dog in a pound. We were all going to get gassed unless we got taken, so that was our motivation! It was a real art piece ... Pound is about how everyone's basically waiting to die. [My father takes] kind of a dark comedic attitude toward very real issues that some people don't even touch on ... [A crewmember on The Shaggy Dog] came up to me and said, 'I used to baby-sit you when your dad was making Pound. I know what it was like back then.' And he handed me the slate from Pound which was the first movie I ever made, and it said 3/17/70, so it was literally like 35 years ago. It looked like something the art department had come up with to look like a period collector's item, like Sotheby's from 'The Fortune.' So lately there's been a whole sense of closure. |
Availability |
Very hard to find. Not released on DVD. |
2 Reasons to See It |
1. You've always wanted to know what dogs were thinking. 2. The cutest little film debut ever. |
Overall |
A rare and obscure 70s art film that briefly features Downey as a small boy. |
If You Liked It |
You might also like Greaser's Palace (1972), Lethargy (2002) |
Photos |
Video |