After belated commercial & critical success via M*A*S*H/’70, director Robert Altman made this self-indulgent oddity before running-the-table cinematically for a golden half-decade. Largely ignoring Doran William Cannon’s script (just off Otto Preminger’s disastrous SKIDOO and with little ahead for him*), Altman freely rewrote & improvised this hippie (or is it hipster?) Peter Pan rethink where young Bud Cort (looking like a prototype for WHERE’S WALDO and Harry Potter) learns to fly under the protection of Sally Kellerman’s fallen-angel Tinkerbell persona. (Get in his way and this Queen of Bird Poop is guano kill you. Yikes!) Naturally, the police investigate the serial murders, bringing in Michael Murphy’s faux Bullitt detective who’s undercut by William Windom’s local politico. (Windom as so often, astonishingly fine.) Meanwhile, a couple of good-time gals are Jonesing like mad over Cort’s perfect naïf who, unlike Peter Pan, has crossed over from puberty before losing his virginity to a debuting Shelley Duvall. Smelling semen in the air, Tinkerbell takes a hike and the boy is doomed. Served up with ironic Americana edges and meta-cinematic tricks, the cast outdoes themselves to gain Altman’s attention and approval thru grotesquerie. (One thing to watch pros like Rene Auberjonois and Stacey Keach fall on their asses, but must Altman make Duvall vomit before getting a kiss?) On the other hand, how many counter-culture films of the period come out against sex?
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Cannon pissed enough to write his complaint up as a NYTimes article. ALSO: Look fast in the police forensics lab to spot a poster for a British film called DECLINE AND FALL OF A BIRD WATCHER/’68. This is a real film!
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Cort’s next was the slow to catch on cult fave HAROLD AND MAUDE/’71. Altman’s next a masterpiece that sadly never caught on, MCCABE & MRS. MILLER/’71. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/05/mccabe-mrs-miller-1971.html
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