If he were to steal from any filmmaker, Downey would take from Preston Sturges, the American director whose Sullivan's Travels and Hail, the Conquering Hero are full of the kind of zaniness that abounds in Swope . Other favorite movies of Downey's are Varda's Le Bouheur, Losey's Servant, Titicut Follies, Citizen Kane, the Marx Brothers/Sam Wood's Night at the Opera, Kazan's On the Waterfront, Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes, and Truffaut's Jules and Jim .

It is not surprising that Downey also likes nearly all of Stanley Kubrick's movies. Kubrick, like Downey, never travels in airplanes and does not believe in order. In Space Odyssey, where a cool-calm computer turns into a cool-calm homicidal maniac, Kubrick pulls the rug out from under seemingly sound systems in the same manner as Downey does in Swope. And the people who called 2001 plotless and pointless are bound to say the same thing about Downey's film.

THANKS to some big box-office grosses in New York, Putney Swope has made financing his next picture an easier chore for Downey than it has been in the past. His new film, Pound, is about a dozen dogs (played by actors) who try to find a way to avoid the inevitable needle that will put them to "sleep."

But whatever happens with Pound, Downey will stay out of the system and out of Hollywood. (He has had his share of lucrative offers to come to cop-out city in the past few months.) "I like to make movies," he says, " and I don't give a fuck if they're shown anywhere."

Putney Swope, at least, will be shown nearly everywhere. I hope everyone in the world goes to see it, too. It may just convince a few more crazies to stick with their craziness-and then we can all get together and go to the moon.