Brewster McCloud: Robert Altman Takes Flight in the Astrodome

In 1970, fresh off the success of M*A*S*H, Robert Altman came to Houston to make a strange black comedy called Brewster McCloud — about a young recluse who lives in a fallout shelter under the Astrodome and is secretly building a pair of wings so he can fly. To make it, Altman pulled off a first: Judge Roy Hofheinz let him shoot inside the Houston Astrodome, and Brewster McCloud became the first feature film ever photographed within the "Eighth Wonder of the World." The movie is a time capsule of a vanished Houston, its opening credits sweeping across a downtown skyline where One Shell Plaza was still under construction, past landmarks since demolished or transformed. This short driving loop visits the surviving anchors of the film's geography — the Dome itself, the fairgrounds around it, and the downtown Altman put on screen. It's a cult movie's map of a city caught mid-transformation.