Raggedy Ann Eyelashes...

After a few weeks of nonstop house hunting and catching up on long overdue projects, we were super excited to set aside a leisurely weekend last week to run around town taking in all of our friends newer, bigger, better gallery spaces, and ringing in the month long Robert Altman fest at the Portland Art Museum NW Film Center with a screening of one of my favorite movies of all time:



Brewster McCloud! I've been toting around a decaying video store copy of this film for decades, eventually upgraded to the laserdisk, but have never, never seen it on the big screen!

With an original screenplay written by Doran William Cannon, who was also responsible for another top ten favorite, Otto Preminger's "Skidoo," and starring the always perfect Mister Bud Cort and the magical, elvin and otherworldly Miss Shelley Duvall (Probably my number one vintage muse - as you can probably tell by the girls that I paint! Spider lashes, bunny teeth and ears poking out of stick straight hair? Check, check and check!) in her first ever movie role, personally discovered by Altman, who had this to say about his first impression:

"When I first saw her, she had painted long eyelashes on her face, and I thought "Here is a girl who is trying to make me think she is a Raggedy Ann doll." It was only years later that I realised that she WAS a Raggedy Ann doll."







Images and quotes via the Shelley Duvall and Brewster McCloud fan sites, both of which are amazing resources for interviews, articles, and ephemera about the film.

Check out the NW Film Center website for the rest of the festival calendar, maybe we'll see you there!