Shaft's Camaro Z28 changes from a Z28/Rally Sport (a.
Z28/RS) to a base Z28 during the chase.
A base 1970 Camaro Z28 has the parking lights below the headlights; the Z28/Rally Sport has the parking lights next to the headlights, as well as an open-aired grille.
The license plate "BRD SHT" would have been disallowed; Texas had a long list (in about five languages) of things you could not have on custom plates.
When the Road Runner makes a left turn on Old Spanish Trail heading west, Johnson's police cruiser switches from a 1970 Plymouth Fury to a 1968 Fury III.
In final scene, as Louise is leaving the Astrodome, and the large, roll-up door opens for her, revealing bright daylight, a stage-hand can be seen operating the door at the far right edge of the scene.
This is only visible on wide-screen format; probably only on the LaserDisc.
In the scene where Brewster and Suzanne are driving in the mango orange Road Runner, the windshield wipers are beating at a higher speed when the camera cuts to Brewster's shot than they are in Suzanne's shot.
In the scene where Brewster is supposed to have achieved independent flight while wearing birdlike apparatus, in a few places you can clearly see suspension cables attached to his bird costume.
In the car chase scene where Lt.
Shaft is pursuing the Roadrunner, the weather inexplicably alternates from clear, cloudless and sunny to completely overcast and gray between shots.
NYFCC Award |
| Best Director |
Robert Altman, the often hated and disliked director marked as a hit and miss finds a very special spot in my heart and why is that? Because no matter how low his films are rated they are always most excellent and this is no exceptions.
It's comforting to watch Altman's mad classic a second time knowing that you still don't have to make sense of it all. You can make wild stabs - 70's counterculture/surrealism/the souring of the American dream,staying true to one's dream in the face of amorous distractions, take your pick.
Altman was a genius? I don't see it.
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.
I saw this movie while I was in college and loved it then, and having seen it again recently can say that it has held up well. It is funny weird has a terrific cast and is one of my favorite Robert Altman films.
And bone Shelley Duvall. She was hot then, except for the eyelashes.
Altman's Brewster McCloud is somewhere between allegory and surreal, a whole trash can full of symbols,which are offered as untrue, with an urbane cynicism like Mephisto in Goethe's Faust. There's something inauthentic about everything, the color of falseness in our world, in our eyes, in our dreams.
The recently released remastered DVD edition looks good but strangely does not have captioning - perhaps not that strange because Altman's layered dialog is a nightmare to caption but much is missed by the absence of captioning.This has been on my list of top ten films since I first saw it 40+ years ago.
Robert Altman directs "Brewster McCloud". The plot?
