Brewster McCloud (1970)

 

Considering its place in the timeline of Robert Altman’s career, Brewster McCloud is a comparatively overlooked film. It was his next movie after MASH and similarly underperformed initially though its curiously vague publicity (“a different kind of film”) and odd poster probably didn’t help. Its not an easily pigeonholed movie and so little talked about that I only discovered it when I was writing about Harold and Maude, checking on Bud Cort’s other credits. The film has never really enjoyed a re-assessed critical appreciation while Altman’s subsequent illustrious career left Brewster McCloud as grounded as its protagonist ends up. While it never quite rises to the heights of the director’s best -known work it is interesting to view it from the considerable distance of fifty -six years as a bold endeavour that never quite fits any category.  In some ways its hard to see how it got made as it refuses to be confined.  Is it a murder mystery? Is it a comedy? Is it a fantastical allegory? Watching the movie does not necessarily answer these questions but I’m sure it created much post cinema debate in 1970. It’s not that it’s difficult to understand, more that the narrative chooses to be obtuse and vague, leaving it to the viewer to make up their mind.

Its set in Houston, where a series of unexplained strangling’s has caused the Mayor to call in renowned San Franciso based detective Frank Shaft much to the irritation of the local force. The victims in the case seem to share no connection other than all seeming rather unpleasant people while the only clue being that each of the bodies had a dollop of bird poo on them. Its presented largely in the company of strange teenager Brewster McCloud who has interactions with most of these people shortly before they are murdered. The implication that builds as more victims fall is that Brewster is the killer though how is not easily answered. Weak and owlish, he’s self absorbed and dedicated to his project of building a pair of mechanical wings on which he can escape somewhere.  

The title character is given a minimum of backstory and seems about nineteen or twenty. He dwells, for reasons that also go unexplained, in what seems to be a fallout shelter or power station underneath the massive Houston Astrodome. While he comes and goes as he pleases, he does have to keep one step ahead of the security guards who seem aware he is there but not where he lives. Otherwise only two other people seem aware of this unusual residence – Louise, a beautiful yet enigmatic woman who appears to be some sort of guardian and never wears any clothes under a long coat. . When they have an enigmatic talk I harboured a nation thye might be meant to be aliens. She dirones tom reveal what look like the outlines of wings on her back. Is this a tattoo? Or the remains of something real? Is she perhaps some sort of guardian angle?  When they fall out and she exits the film it is in a distant shot as she walks into overexposed daylight like something  from Close Encounters .There’s also Hope, a fellow teenager who clearly believes she and Brewster are in a relationship though he seems to ignore her.

When we first meet Brewster he seems to be working as a chauffeur for an eccentric landlord swindling care homes who is played by Stacey Keach in some impressive old age prosthetics that don’t betray their origin even in broad daylight. This opening portion uses fairly broad slapstick techniques  mixed with what was apparently entirely improvised dialogue by Keach whose character ends up trundling along a motorway in a wheelchair. As if this wasn’t all odd enough, the film has a sort of narrator in the form of an unnamed lecturer who initially seems to be giving us background information on birds yet as the film proceeds his interjections mirror the plot while he himself takes on increasingly avian characteristics. By the end he had a plumage!    

Brewster talks of being able to “fly away” and the construction he is making is based on a combination of Da Vinci and Orville Wright’s designs. While its initially unclear why he would want to abandon a carefree life as it starts to appear he is the killer the police are looking for, his somewhat bizarre hobby makes more sense. There is a naivety in the idea even though he practices pull ups to give him the stamina to move the wings. At the end, surrounded by police officers, he leaps off the auditorium seats into the space above yet the only thing he had overlooked is that the stadium is covered so he has no way out.

I dare say some people may find this a film that favours style over substance; the opening sequence for example starts with the traditional roaring MGM lion but instead of roaring, we get a voiceover saying “I forgot the opening line”. The next scene features none other than Margaret Hamilton (aka The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch) as the sharp tongued leader of a marching band attempting to play the US National Anthem. Its definitely a version you won’t forget but she’s unhappy with the music and gets the band to start again whereupon the opening credits are repeated. Incidentally when Hamilton’s character is found dead, she is wearing a pair of sparkly red shoes, alluding to the actress’ best known film.

This sets the tone for a film which hovers between serious and comedic, parody and serious drama with considerable ease. A slow chase across a railway viaduct shot from a distance works really well. This though is a short segment in the middle of a much longer car pursuit that seems to be a homage to the one in Bullitt, two years earlier.  The closing credits are equally eccentric taking place in the stadium with the cast dressed as clowns and the names appearing on the screen. It looks too as if Altman is sometimes `deliberately` careless allowing us to spot crowds of onlookers who are clearly watching the making of the film as much as they are looking at a crime scene. This is repeated later in the stadium. Beyond all that it sometimes seems like a film about film itself; Altman’s tracking shots and other directorial flourishes sometimes seem designed to draw attention to his presence further adding layers to an already busy scenario. He also emphasises the sheer size of the Astrodome and the area around it, shooting from as far away as he can to show wide roads and large urban sprawl.  Other sequences have a wholly different style- a lengthy car chase involving a quartet of vehicles is a template for many a Seventies urban car chase while some of Brewster’s mischievous scams are choreographed to perfection especially a sequence where he is pursued by a  somewhat overweight security guard. Another scene in which he manages to steal and expensive camera right in front of the staff is brilliantly done. The film even has fourth wall breaks, notably from Cort in a manner he will repeat in Harold and Maude.

Robert Altman’s own signatures, already developed in MASH, are present; notably his trademark of having more than one character delivering dialogue on top of another; this works especially well in a scene where the police are discussing the bird excrement. Frank Shaft seems to be a prototype for just about any Seventies cop show character, a loner and someone who wants to do things his own way.. . Fashion aside it never looks dated- the Huston Astrodome, since demolished ,looks like any number of modern stadia and must have seemed enormous to a 1970 audience.

Though dressed as a regular teenager Bud Cort cannot help but convey a strangeness with his offhand manner and owlish glasses though here is less sarcastic and cutting that he would be in Harold and Maude. Neither writers, director nor actor make any attempt to give Brewster a likeability; even when he is haggling with shop keepers he has distance. Its difficult to believe someone built as slightly would be able to strangle several larger people yet Cort is perfect for this role providing a disturbing though always interesting presence.

Making her screen debut as Suzanne, Shelley Duvall matches Cort’s eccentricity with a disarming quirkiness and carefree enthusiasm yet with an undercurrent that had me suspecting she might be the antagonist for a while. Their on-screen chemistry bubbles with possibilities, it’s a shame they didn’t get to act together again. As the sophisticated  detective Frank Shaft, Michael Murphy plays it straight, a clever contrast to the over excitable characters surrounding him. Sally Kellerman ‘s Louise is even more enigmatic than Brewster and seems to be almost permanently smirking. Rene Auberjonois’s lecturer starts off as eccentric and ends up outright crazy, but it’s a hugely entertaining turn.

I wonder if the intent of the film is to present Brewster as some kind of vigilante. All of the victims are portrayed as unpleasant or cruel people though it never shows us even a hint of Brewster committing the crimes. As the bodies are found in the locations close to where we meet the character, how has he managed to dispatch them in such busy environments? And being a relatively slight figure? Brewster’s own demise is a surprise too. In a more fanciful story, he would soar away because those wings actually work. It is claimed you can see the wires holding him up though I didn’t notice. Even if you can it’s still an impressively staged sequence. Because the dome is enclosed Brewster runs out of energy and crashes to the ground. His crumpled body is left where it drops in an impressively staged stunt and remains there during the closing credits, Cort being the only cast member who doesn’t get to dress up in a circus persona.

In fact the film never explicitly confirms he was the murderer nor or  how he undertook the crimes. Brewster confesses to Suzanne that he is the murderer but we don’t actually know that this is anything other than a teenage boast. There’s no real backstory at all to the character which helps Cort’s odd performance.  Brewster’s belief that a human can fly seems to mock the authorities and convention yet when he takes to the air, it is a brief flight thwarted by something matter of fact he had overlooked despite his otherwise thorough preparations. It’s the Icarus story reset in the heat of turn of the decade America.

So, is the film suggesting that society’s outliers are destined to be grounded in the end?  The director certainly seems to dislike police officers, each of the examples in the film are portrayed as being inefficient, stupid or otherwise incapable. We should of course also acknowledge Doan William Cannon who wrote the screenplay though accounts of the production suggest Altman rewrote much of the script while also enabling some improvisation from the cast much the chagrin of the writer.

Robert Altman himself said that the film was misinterpreted at the time. He saw it a as an allegorical movie with the Astrodome as a metaphor for a risk averse society. Perhaps surprisingly he also said, in 1976, “I wouldn’t say it was my best film…but  it was my favourite.” As for Bud Cort he carried on making films but his interviews are peppered with a wry bitterness at perceived snubs or slights whether poor promotion, editing, lost roles, stubbornness. He seemed to dislike the oddball tag pinned on him after this film and Harold and Maude yet he did little to encourage people not to pigeonhole him that way.  The interviews I found online were almost all reticent, moaning or in one case declining to speak about things on account of writing his autobiography. Reports from the making of this film (see below) suggest he could be difficult to work with.

Brewster McCloud isn’t perfect; its ragged and sometimes over reaches yet is rich with interesting scenes, characters and direction. I’m so glad I sought it out and also for it not being what I expected but so much more.

 

Behind the Scenes

This film is somewhat underrepresented in the career resumes of its participants many of whom went on to more successful acclaimed work. However I was surprised while researching Brewster McCloud to discover a whole book had been written about it. In 1970 C Kirk McClelland was a cinema student at the University of Southern California who lived in Houston where this movie was shot. Somehow, he managed to obtain permission to be on set every day of the two-month shoot and in 1971 his account was published. It’s a relatively rare behind the scenes account of film making from this time focussing more on the technical process and the filming schedule than the performances or story. Its level of access is rarely heard of especially from someone who was not part of the production team or film company. The book includes a day by day account of the shoot, a full film script plus Bill Cannon’s original script and a number of photos. Here’s just a handful of things I learned…

The original story was by Bill Cannon and it was re-written by Brian McKay.

The author reports that Cannon wasn’t happy to be excluded from the process though he did turn up on set and was pleased with Bud Cort’s casting.

The shoot took eight weeks between 22 May to 17 July 1970

The Director of Photography Jordan Cronenweth was fired in the third week of production having struggled to meet Robert Altman’s standards on several sequences taking too long to set up and prepare shots according to the director. He was replaced by Lamar Boren

A virus hit the crew during the interior filming.

The film’s opening sequence was original supposed to run the credits over the old man Wright’s death, but after watching footage of the `Star Spangled Banner` scene, Robert Altman decided to use this instead.

Robert Atman called Bud Cort “Brewster” throughout the shoot.

The author mentions that Bud Cort was “temperamental” behind the scenes even though this was one of his first films. He demanded a change of hotel as his room was `too small`.  Later he complained about scenes he had to film with an assistant director while Altman was sick with the virus.

Stacy Keach’s prosthetics kept melting in the humidity. The actor improvised all his lines during the scenes where he is visiting the care homes.

The film was allowed to use the Astrodome for free but the company benefitted from the crew staying in hotels they also owned.

Shelley Duvall was cast after trying to sell some paintings to one of the crew and this was her first acting role.

The book mentions concerns over Bud Cort’s driving etiquette, describing him running three red lights on one journey. This is interesting given that later in life the actor was involved in two serious car crashes.

Brewster’s wings were comprised of an aluminium body and saddle with the feathers made from white polyester. The idea was that it would resemble a dove.

The flying sequences took three days to complete. They were shot utilising a crane with a 250 foot arm, the weight of this vehicle concerned the dome’s officials.

A stuntman, Bill Couch (who had doubled for Stacey Keach earlier in the shoot) wore the wings for these scenes which were later interspersed with close up shots of Bud Cort in the saddle about twenty feet in the air. The stuntman was seventy five feet in the air travelling about twenty miles per hour.

The unusual ending with the circus characters came to Altman in a dream during the filming as he wanted to avoid any sentimentality creeping in after Brewster falls.

A number of scenes were cut including a fantasy sequence filmed at the Lost World ride at Astroworld and a protest outside the university.