“[F]lapping his arms like Roddy McDowall”

A puzzling sentence:

Lane Dean imagines running out into the field in an enormous circle, flapping his arms like Roddy McDowall.

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (Boston: Little, Brown, 2011).

Such serendipity: the movie Elaine and I watched last night explains it. Alan “Mollymauk” Musgrave, McDowall’s character in Lord Love a Duck, flaps and squawks with abandon. His name? That of a bird.

Other Pale King passages
Deskwork : Dullness : Heroism