Brewster McCloud

I saw this film long ago, when it first came out in the theaters. One of the things you have to remember is that Altman's style (now copied so much it has become a cliché.. of the odd camera angles, the everyone-talking-at-once dialogue and such) was, at the time, quite new and much different than anything else out there. Thirty years later, this film is still amazing to watch. Brewter McCloud is more like a cartoon, something to be viewed for pure entertainment value, even the dark parts (and there are many of those). Bud Cort (Harold and Maude) is delightful, and the supporting cast (many of whom are Altman regulars) is great......I think that people with little or no sense of humor will not like this movie, but those raised in the post-South Park era will enjoy its wonderful portrayal of neurotic characters...as only Altman can deliver 'em.

This movie is a million things at once. Some may find that as a bit of a turn-off, but then that's what a cult classic film is really about, isn't it?

Brewster McCloud is a reclusive boy who lives in the basement of the Houston Astrodome. He has a short job as chauffeur for a miserly old man. He is looked down upon for his meek appearance and his quiet manner. He dreams of building himself a set of wings and using those to fly away from all this suffering.

That's how the film starts, anyway. There are three basic stories in the movie: (1) Brewster McCloud's coming-of-age story, (2) the parallel metaphor of Brewster McCloud's dream of flying away from worldly sorrow, and (3) the murders of people who mistreat Brewster and who all die with raven droppings on their faces.

The real irony of this film is how the character of the Lecturer keeps pointing out similarities between the characters and certain birds, and yet the ending comes around, and we learn how unlike birds we are. There is so much information about birds, you wonder if this was an adult remake of an after-school special.

Overall, I'll have to use the word most of the other reviewers have used: quirky. There are things which are very different. There is the Pythonesque beginning where, as a woman sings the National Anthem and the credits roll, she stops, tells the band to try again in the right key, and the credits restart as well as the singing. There are small bits such as when a police officer holds up a lighter when his partner says there's only one way to know for sure if there's marijuana in a cigarette. And there is my favorite character, the Lecturer, who lectures the audience about the behavior of birds while he himself starts making strange noises and begins pecking at seeds...

Here's an interesting story I read shortly after watching this oddball experiment of a black comedy. The conceiver of this film, Doran William Cannon, had written the film during the 1960s while trying to make his name as a unique filmmaker during said time. Fast forward to the tail end of said decade and after a lot of hustling to get his project off the ground, it gets bought by new rising director Robert Altman who took the source material lightly and revamped it into his own version. What follows is Cannon publicly discussing his frustrations with his vision being changed against his wishes and the tough realization he had to encounter when giving your babies away to someone else.

Why am I bringing this up? Because this is one of the strangest experiments of a motion picture I've seen in quite some time, even after watching a few of Altman's 70s works following the death of Shelley Duvall (who made her screen debut here). Imagine trying to tell the story of a reclusive bird obsessed human who wishes to fly all the while becoming the chief suspect in a series of bird-related murders. There's no way you could take the premise to heart unless it were in someway tongue in cheek, and fortunately Altman elevates Cannon's material into a bizarrely surreal meta commentary on bird related activity and human compulsion, blending reality with surreality. This is accompanied by the editing which is as bombastic and jumbled as the intentionally scattered events we're witnessing on display.

The best way to describe Brewster McCloud is part dark comedy, part experimental mystery, part human reflection, part romantic ingenuity and part musical nightmare. Considering that well known record / film producer Lou Alder was behind this, as well as John Phillips of Mamas & Papas fame, some internal American music is laced underneath the film's surface and the numerous actors on screen. Bud Cort in particular is as adorably intriguing as he is disturbingly odd playing Brewster, and seeing notable Altman collaborators Sally Kellerman, Michael Murphy, John Schuck, Bert Remsen, Duvall and more act in ordinance with one another so naturally keeps the film grounded in a believable Houston setting while still keeping the pacing brisk and cluttered all at once.

In all honesty, I can't not recommend checking this film out at least once. Regardless of your tolerance for experimental oddities in film, there's something so innately imaginative about this bizarre concoction that must be seen in order to be believed. It's not everyday that a film about a human being with the obsession of flying getting caught up in a crimewave can be so inspiring for all the right and wrong reasons. Whether or not Cannon's original material was better or worse than Altman's version, this kind of work is unlike anything out there and anyone curious enough to check it out will be pleasantly surprised in more ways than one.

Bud Cort is the title character, an eccentric oddball secretly living in the Houston Astrodome who believes he has figured out how to fly like a bird. He is protected by a guardian angel (Sally Kellerman) with clipped wings. He then becomes a suspect in a series of murders of people who are found strangled and covered in bird droppings.

An aggressively quirky counterculture time capsule, many modern viewers will be turned off by the bizarre story and outre characters. I happen to like it, and rank it among Altman's best. I enjoy the cast of weirdos, from Shelley Duvall (in her debut) as a stock-car driving tour guide who falls for McCloud, to Michael Murphy playing a San Francisco "supercop" named Shaft who sports turtlenecks and piercing blue eyes, to Margaret Hamilton as one of the murder victims who is found wearing ruby slippers. Stacy Keach is unrecognizable under heavy old age make-up, playing a miserly parody of Howard Hughes.

Brewster McCloud (Bud Cort), a young man with dreams of flying, lives in the fallout-shelter of the Houston Astrodome, where, with (perhaps) divine help, he is constructing a pair of wings. Meanwhile, a serial killer, whose victims are found strangled and covered in bird feces, stalks the city. The sometimes slapstick, sometimes subtle, comedy by Robert Altman has aged well (although it's now a showcase for the Texas city as it was in late-1960s). The cast, which is full of secondary players from Altman's breakthrough film MASH (1970) is excellent and there is a fun, self-referential cameo from Margret Hamilton (known to all as the Wicked Witch of the West). The film is dense with images (especially bird-themed) and dialogue as the strange, semi-mystical story plays out to an excellent ending. Probably not to everyone's taste (I was borderline for the first few particularly broad and crude minutes but then got caught up in the story and characters). An extra point is awarded for sexy Sally Kellerman's nude homage to her famously up-tight MASH character.