Brewster McCloud
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"Brewster McCloud " (1970)
After the commercial and financial success of M*A*S*H (1970), Robert Altman had enough carte blanche to pick his own next project. He chose Brewster McCloud, but completely overhauled the screenplay by way of total re-imaginings and on-the-fly conceptual improvisation during production; although Doran William Cannon (who had just previously written the notorious Otto Preminger star-studded baffler; Skidoo (1968)), retained sole writing credit due to a clause in his contract. Because of the nature of the film's particular free range, open conduit, happenstance, given up birth of creation, Altman has said that it was his favorite of his own films. It also marks the beginning of Altman’s perfect decade.
Brewster McCloud is a masterpiece of offbeat, borderline abstract, metaphorical and iconoclastic cinematic dexterity. Altman weaves multi-faceted, pan-dimensional characters, realties, chronologies, ideas, styles and techniques into a freewheeling comedy of abstraction and bird metaphors; set against his favorite 2.35:1 anamorphic true widescreen frame ratio. Bud Cort plays the title character, Brewster McCloud; a seemingly enigmatic, reclusive and obsessive young man who lives secretly in the fall-out shelter at the Houston Astrodome methodically working on plans to create a mechanical set of mock wings so that he can “fly away”. Sally Kellerman is his raincoat wearing, mystic guardian angel of sorts, right down to the tattooed wings on her back, who seems to be always, and unnaturally, in the right place at the right time, to protect him from any and all deterrence or pollution. Deterrence comes in the form of a citywide manhunt for the perpetrator of a string of unsolved strangulations, spearheaded by San Francisco ringer detective Frank ‘Shaft’ (Michael Murphy); and pollution comes in the form of ground bound, but certainly not of this Earth, stream-of-mundane-offhandedness tour guide girly; Shelly Duvall, in her debut performance. Throw in brilliantly hilarious sideshow tangents like; Rene Auberjonois as a interwoven fourth-wall breaking lecturing professorial ringmaster who is progressively changing into some fowl creature himself as he increasingly labors to teach us about all aspects of birds and flight, and Stacy Keach as the most callously grotesque, diabolical and physically hideous dirty old white greed fiend ever trouped in front of film, until maybe Dan Aykroyd’s Judge Alvin ‘J.P.” Valkenheiser in Nothing But Trouble (1991), and you have a cinematic circus; which fittingly ends in a literal procession of a real one, complete with the cast decked out in wild make-up and circus costumes getting on-screen vocalized credit for their roles.
1970 / 105mins. / Original Aspect Ratio (2.35:1 Widescreen) / English Language / Color / USA
Picture Quality: A (Source: Rare Television Broadcast)
After the commercial and financial success of M*A*S*H (1970), Robert Altman had enough carte blanche to pick his own next project. He chose Brewster McCloud, but completely overhauled the screenplay by way of total re-imaginings and on-the-fly conceptual improvisation during production; although Doran William Cannon (who had just previously written the notorious Otto Preminger star-studded baffler; Skidoo (1968)), retained sole writing credit due to a clause in his contract. Because of the nature of the film's particular free range, open conduit, happenstance, given up birth of creation, Altman has said that it was his favorite of his own films. It also marks the beginning of Altman’s perfect decade.
Brewster McCloud is a masterpiece of offbeat, borderline abstract, metaphorical and iconoclastic cinematic dexterity. Altman weaves multi-faceted, pan-dimensional characters, realties, chronologies, ideas, styles and techniques into a freewheeling comedy of abstraction and bird metaphors; set against his favorite 2.35:1 anamorphic true widescreen frame ratio. Bud Cort plays the title character, Brewster McCloud; a seemingly enigmatic, reclusive and obsessive young man who lives secretly in the fall-out shelter at the Houston Astrodome methodically working on plans to create a mechanical set of mock wings so that he can “fly away”. Sally Kellerman is his raincoat wearing, mystic guardian angel of sorts, right down to the tattooed wings on her back, who seems to be always, and unnaturally, in the right place at the right time, to protect him from any and all deterrence or pollution. Deterrence comes in the form of a citywide manhunt for the perpetrator of a string of unsolved strangulations, spearheaded by San Francisco ringer detective Frank ‘Shaft’ (Michael Murphy); and pollution comes in the form of ground bound, but certainly not of this Earth, stream-of-mundane-offhandedness tour guide girly; Shelly Duvall, in her debut performance. Throw in brilliantly hilarious sideshow tangents like; Rene Auberjonois as a interwoven fourth-wall breaking lecturing professorial ringmaster who is progressively changing into some fowl creature himself as he increasingly labors to teach us about all aspects of birds and flight, and Stacy Keach as the most callously grotesque, diabolical and physically hideous dirty old white greed fiend ever trouped in front of film, until maybe Dan Aykroyd’s Judge Alvin ‘J.P.” Valkenheiser in Nothing But Trouble (1991), and you have a cinematic circus; which fittingly ends in a literal procession of a real one, complete with the cast decked out in wild make-up and circus costumes getting on-screen vocalized credit for their roles.
1970 / 105mins. / Original Aspect Ratio (2.35:1 Widescreen) / English Language / Color / USA
Picture Quality: A (Source: Rare Television Broadcast)
