Wow. Many thanks to Mark Evanier's News From ME blog for posting a link to my defense of SKIDOO. As I type this, it's not even 2:30 in the afternoon, but thanks specifically to referrals from News from ME, Video WatchBlog has already received nearly as many hits as it usually accumulates in the course of an entire day. Which just goes to show that there's something about this movie that intrigues people. Maybe it's a sign of the fall of Western civilization or the crumbling of our educational standards, but if SKIDOO was just a bad movie, would hundreds of people (thousands before the day is out) be out there, chasing down information about it?
Also thanks to one of our frequent correspondents, B. Baker, who sent this informative communiqué:
"If BREWSTER McCLOUD is rather more respected [than SKIDOO] -- which I believe it to be -- it's because it was not only directed by Altman, but entirely re-written by the director and Brian McKay. According to C. Kirk McClelland's book about the making of the film, Cannon's deal with Altman and MGM guaranteed the writer sole screen credit. McClelland's book, published by Signet in 1971, interestingly includes both the final version of the Altman/McKay screenplay and Cannon's original script (titled "Brewster McLeod's Flying Machine") for comparison, and the two scripts have little in common. It has been years since I read the Cannon screenplay, but to my memory the only real similarities between it and the Altman/McKay version are the idea of a young man named Brewster who wants to fly away, and a mysterious mentor named Louise. The characters, setting, much of the story and nearly all of the comic situations -- in other words, almost everything -- are very different in the Altman film.
"I also recall [Cannon's script] as being extremely dark -- even bitter -- and I believe the story was set in New York. I think the script's climax involved Brewster being shot out of the sky by police. This idea almost survived in the Altman/McKay script -- Brewster was originally to be shot while flying around the Astrodome, with the film possibly ending with a freeze frame of a stricken Brewster in flight -- but shortly before the scene was shot, this idea was scrapped, partly because it seemed similar to the climax of the recent BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID. [Also, as the picture was constantly being re-written and re-imagined to take advantage of the Houston setting and locations, it was possibly inevitable that the Ringling Bros & Barnum & Bailey Circus, co-owned at the time by the Houston Astros organization, would figure into BREWSTER at some point.]"
Well, B., it's been decades since I saw BREWSTER McCLOUD so the auteur links I cited between it and SKIDOO were really nothing more than a nod to the broadest outlines of both projects: they're both wacky, eccentric pictures, wackier and more eccentric than other works in the filmographies of Preminger and Altman, POPEYE excepted. There's something about these two movies that is almost Thomas Pynchonean, or at least semi-Charles Griffithian, Robert Thomian, or T. Coraghessan Boylean. Hey, look at me -- I'm writing Harry Nilsson lyrics!
Speaking of which, as I noted on a favorite discussion board, the end credits of SKIDOO are like a musical remake of the opening credits of FAHRENHEIT 451. With subtitles.
