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.
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.