An auteur and his flying machine: Brewster… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

An auteur and his fly­ing machine: Brew­ster McCloud at 50

05 Dec 2020

Words by Saffron Maeve

Mechanical insect-like creature with large wings and intricate details, displayed in a darkened room with warm lighting and a wooden roof structure.
Mechanical insect-like creature with large wings and intricate details, displayed in a darkened room with warm lighting and a wooden roof structure.
Robert Altman’s long-over­looked satire reflects the director’s frus­tra­tions with the Hol­ly­wood stu­dio system.

In the spring of 1970, Robert Alt­man want­ed to move to Cana­da. His black com­e­dy, MASH, had just been hailed a crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess, but his griev­ances with cor­po­rate Hol­ly­wood and the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment were pil­ing up. He and his wife filed the nec­es­sary paper­work and pre­pared to sell their house, but nev­er end­ed up emi­grat­ing. Alt­man instead stayed in Mal­ibu and estab­lished Lion’s Gate, an inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny that grant­ed him the cre­ative free­dom he need­ed. In the sum­mer of that year, he made Brew­ster McCloud.

When asked about Brew­ster McCloud in a 1976 Play­boy inter­view, Alt­man respond­ed: I wouldn’t say it’s my best film […] but it’s my favorite.” Of course, he would go on to make anoth­er two dozen fea­tures and a fist­ful of minis­eries, but he already had films like MASH, The Long Good­bye, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and Nashville under his belt. Brew­ster decid­ed­ly triumphed.

The film fol­lows a gan­g­ly Brew­ster (Bud Cort), the Icarus of coun­ter­cul­tur­al­ists, who lives in the fall­out shel­ter of the Hous­ton Astrodome. He’s build­ing a fly­ing con­trap­tion, equipped with enor­mous mechan­i­cal wings, pul­leys and har­ness­es; some­thing lift­ed from the pages of Da Vinci’s sketch­books. With no desire to prof­it off of his inven­tion and no real exis­tence out­side of the shel­ter, Brew­ster spends his days train­ing to take flight with help from an enig­mat­ic blonde, Louise (Sal­ly Keller­man), and vis­its from a ging­ham-wear­ing, bas­ket-tot­ing, pig-tailed Hope (Jen­nifer Salt).

A num­ber of sto­ry­lines then bleed into one anoth­er, rarely man­ag­ing to neat­ly con­verge. A slew of stran­glings punc­tu­at­ed by bird excre­ment; Brewster’s bizarre rela­tion­ship with an Astrodome tour guide (Shel­ley Duvall in her first role); bum­bling cops and slap­stick-ish car chas­es; an ornithol­o­gy lec­tur­er (René Auber­jonois) slow­ly devolv­ing into a bird. Fifty years on, these absur­di­ties still feel as fresh as they did when the film first pre­miered to a crowd of 23,000 at the Astrodome.

Altman’s anti-estab­lish­ment sen­si­bil­i­ty is spat onto the film’s every frame, with bat­shit crazy antics being out­weighed only by icon­o­clas­tic prods at Hol­ly­wood. The sto­ry itself can be under­stood as an alle­go­ry of the chang­ing Hol­ly­wood work­space of the late 60s, one that favoured auteurism as a sell­ing point – some­thing that Alt­man dis­put­ed but couldn’t help embody – and replic­a­bil­i­ty over cre­ative merit.

Begin­ning with the MGM logo, Alt­man mutes Leo the Lion’s famous roar and replaces it with the words I for­got the open­ing line’ – a bit­ing dis­junc­tion whose indict­ment of stu­dio tra­di­tion looms through­out. Next we see the Astrodome, a kind of con­sumerist epi­cen­tre, where adver­tise­ments line the inte­ri­or walls and rows of emp­ty sta­di­um seats denote a col­lec­tive need to be enter­tained. Like Alt­man to Hol­ly­wood, Brew­ster still lives with­in that are­na, but creeps along the periph­ery, dodg­ing secu­ri­ty to pur­sue his fan­tas­ti­cal project.

Two young people, a woman with long dark hair in a striped top and a bespectacled man in a striped shirt, appear to be conversing in an indoor setting with colourful decor.

While the prospect of flight is felt through­out, Brewster’s inven­tion doesn’t get any use pri­or to the film’s cli­mac­tic end­ing. While being chased by the police, who pinned him as the stran­gler, Brew­ster straps into his wings and furi­ous­ly flaps his arms until he’s soar­ing above them all, like a milk-and-water Super­man. But his body quick­ly begins to heavy and he plum­mets to his death, with Brewster’s shrieks cul­mi­nat­ing in a limp thud.

Seem­ing­ly appear­ing out of thin air, a crowd lets out a ring­ing applause from the stands. Cir­cus per­form­ers storm the field. Fire­works are ani­mat­ed onto the sta­di­um screens. Trom­bones flood our sens­es as men on small bicy­cles cir­cle Brewster’s body like vul­tures. Bal­loons fall, whips crack, and the ring­mas­ter roars into a mega­phone: Ladies and gen­tle­men, the great­est show on Earth proud­ly presents the cast of Brew­ster McCloud!” There’s a two-fold sig­nif­i­cance to the pageantry here: as a cri­tique of stu­dios’ indif­fer­ence to dream­ers and Old Hollywood’s empha­sis on show­man­ship, but also as a spir­it­ed cel­e­bra­tion of Altman’s rag­tag Lion’s Gate crew.

As far as explic­it ref­er­ences to Hol­ly­wood go, Brew­ster McCloud most con­spic­u­ous­ly par­o­dies The Wiz­ard of Oz, with Mar­garet Hamil­ton repris­ing her famil­iar witchy, bitchy per­sona and Hope fig­ur­ing as a visu­al stand-in for Dorothy. When Hamilton’s char­ac­ter is killed, the last thing we see of hers is a pair of ruby red slip­pers flecked with bird drop­pings, scored by a few notes from Over the Rain­bow” (a song that played over a scrapped alter­na­tive ending).

There’s anoth­er con­cus­sive moment where Brew­ster ignores Hope’s sex­u­al advances, prompt­ing her to recline on a tat­ty mat­tress and begin touch­ing her­self under a blan­ket. Here we’re giv­en a fig­ure of Old Hol­ly­wood iconog­ra­phy shame­less­ly mas­tur­bat­ing to a New Hol­ly­wood Boomer-cum-killer. It’s absurd, offen­sive, and just self-aware enough to stave off any angry Oz fans.

In his inter­view with Play­boy, Alt­man con­fessed that the per­fect response to his films would be some­one say­ing I don’t know what it is, but it’s right,” and that right comes from four or five lay­ers down; from the inside rather than the out­side.” For months now, Brew­ster McCloud has been writhing around my brain, dig­ging tiny gul­lies, splay­ing wings and dying on a loop. If that’s not right, I don’t know what is.

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