Robert Altman - Director
Nationality: American. Born: Kansas City, Missouri, 20 February 1925. Education: Attended University of Missouri, Columbia (three years). Military Service: Bomber pilot, U.S. Air Force, 1943–47. Family: Married La Vonne Elmer, 1946, one daughter; married Lotus Corelli, 1954, divorced 1957, two sons; married Kathryn Reed, two sons. Career: Directed industrial films for Calvin Company, Kansas City, 1947; wrote, produced, and directed first feature, The Delinquents , 1955; TV director, 1957–63; co-founder of TV production company, 1963; founder, Lion's Gate production company (named after his own 8-track sound system), 1970, Westwood Editorial Services, 1974, and Sandcastle 5 Productions; made Tanner '88 for TV during American presidential campaign, 1988; directed McTeague for Chicago Lyric Opera. Awards: Palme d'Or, Cannes Festival, and Academy Award nominations for Best Film and Best Director for M*A*S*H , 1970; New York Film Critics' Circle Award, D.W. Griffith Award (National Board of Review), and National Society of Film Critics Award, all for Best Director, for Nashville , 1975; Golden
Films as Director:
- 1954
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The Builders (medium length publicity film)
- 1955
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The Delinquents (+ pr, sc)
- 1957
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The James Dean Story (co-d, + co-pr, co-ed)
- 1964
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The Party (short); Nightmare in Chicago ( Once upon a Savage Night ) (for TV)
- 1965
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Pot au Feu (short); The Katherine Reed Story (short)
- 1967
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Countdown (moon-landing sequence uncred by William Conrad)
- 1969
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That Cold Day in the Park
- 1970
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M*A*S*H ; Brewster McCloud (+ pr)
- 1971
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McCabe and Mrs. Miller (+ co-sc)
- 1972
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Images (+ pr, sc)
- 1973
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The Long Goodbye
- 1974
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Thieves like Us (+ co-sc); California Split (+ co-pr)
- 1975
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Nashville (+ co-pr, co-songwriter: "The Day I Looked Jesus in the Eye")
- 1976
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Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (+ pr, co-sc)
- 1977
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Three Women (+pr, sc)
- 1978
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A Wedding (+ pr, co-sc)
- 1979
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Quintet (+ pr, co-sc); A Perfect Couple (+ pr, co-sc)
- 1979
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Health (+ pr, sc)
- 1980
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Popeye
- 1981
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The Easter Egg Hunt
- 1982
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Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean ; Two by South ("Rattlesnake in a Cooler" and "Precious Blood") (for TV) (+pr)
- 1983
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Streamers (+ pr); O.C. and Stiggs (+ pr) (released 1987)
- 1984
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Secret Honor ( Secret Honor: The Political Testament of Richard M. Nixon ; Secret Honor: A Political Myth ) (+ pr)
- 1985
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The Laundromat (for TV)
- 1986
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Fool for Love
- 1987
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"Les Boreades" in Aria ; Beyond Therapy (+ co-sc); The Room (for TV); The Dumb Waiter (for TV)
- 1988
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Tanner '88 ; The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (+ pr)
- 1990
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Vincent and Theo
- 1992
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The Player
- 1993
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Short Cuts (+ sc)
- 1994
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The Real McTeague (for TV, opera)
- 1995
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Ready to Wear ( Pret a Porter ) (+ sc)
- 1996
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Jazz—34 (+ pr); Kansas City (+ sc, pr)
- 1997
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Gun (series for TV) (+ pr)
- 1998
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The Gingerbread Man (+ sc, ro as Al Hayes)
- 1999
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Cookie's Fortune (+ pr); Another City, Not My Own
- 2000
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Dr. T and the Women (+ pr)
Other Films:
- 1948
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Bodyguard (co-story)
- 1951
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Corn's-a-Poppin' (co-sc)
- 1976
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Welcome to L.A. (Rudolph) (pr)
- 1977
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The Late Show (Benton) (pr)
- 1978
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Remember My Name (Rudolph) (pr)
- 1979
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Rich Kids (Young) (pr)
- 1993
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Luck, Trust & Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver County (Dorr, Kaplan) (doc)
- 1997
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Afterglow (Rudolph) (pr); Frank Capra's American Dream (Bowser—for TV) (as himself)
- 1998
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Liv
- 1999
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Trixie ; Hitchcock: Shadow of a Genius (Haimes—for TV) (as himself)
Publications
By ALTMAN: book—
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson , with Alan Rudolph, New York, 1976.
Short Cuts: The Screenplay , Santa Barbara, CA, 1993.
Robert Altman's Pret a Porter , New York, 1994.
Robert Altman, Interviews: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers) , with David Sterritt, University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
By ALTMAN: articles—
Interview with S. Rosenthal, in Focus on Film (London), Spring 1972.
Interview with Russell Auwerter, in Directors in Action , edited by Bob Thomas, New York, 1973.
Interview with Michel Ciment and Bertrand Tavernier, in Positif (Paris), February 1973.
"Robert Altman Speaking," interview with J. Dawson, in Film Comment (New York), March/April 1974.
"An Altman Sampler," interview with B.J. Demby, in Filmmakers Newsletter (Ward Hill, Massachusetts), October 1974.
Robert Altman Seminar, in Dialogue on Film (Beverly Hills), February 1975.
"The Artist and the Multitude Are Natural Enemies," interview with F.A. Macklin, in Film Heritage (Dayton, Ohio), Winter 1976/77.
Interview with Jean-André Fieschi, in Cinématographe (Paris), June 1977.
Interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum and Charles Michener, in Film Comment (New York), September/October 1978.
Interview and article by J.-P. Le Pavec and others, in Cinéma (Paris), November 1978.
"Jumping off the Cliff," in Monthly Film Bulletin (London), December 1978.
Interview with Michel Ciment and M. Henry, in Positif (Paris), March 1979.
"Robert Altman: Backgammon and Spinach," interview with Tom Milne and Richard Combs, in Sight and Sound (London), Summer 1981.
"Peripheral Vision," interview with A. Stuart, in Films (London), July 1981.
Interview with Leo Braudy and Robert Phillip Kolker, in Post Script (Jacksonville, Florida), Fall 1981 and Winter 1982.
"'A Foolish Optimist': Interview with Robert Altman," by H. Kloman, Lloyd Michaels, and Virginia Wright Wexman, in Film Criticism (Meadville, Pennsylvania), Spring 1983.
Interview with Michel Ciment, in Positif (Paris), June 1984.
Stills (London), November 1984.
Interview with Richard Combs, in Monthly Film Bulletin (London), January 1985.
"On the Road with Robert Altman," an interview with Nick Roddick, in Cinema Papers (Melbourne), September 1986.
Interview with Steven Aronson, in Architectural Digest , March 1990.
"Mrs. Miller's Tale," an interview with Sheila Johnston, in the Independent (London), 6 April 1990.
"How the Western Was Lost," an interview with Derek Malcolm, in the Guardian (London), 11 April 1990.
Interview with Richard Combs in Monthly Film Bulletin (London), July 1990.
"Robert Altman: The Rolling Stone Interview," interview with David Breskin, in Rolling Stone , 16 April 1992.
Interview with Graham Fuller, in Interview , May 1992.
Interview with Jean-Pierre Coursodon and M. Henry, "Hollywood n'est qu'une metaphore," in Positif , June 1992.
"Death and Hollywood," interview with P. Keogh, in Sight and Sound (London), June 1992.
Interview with Janice M. Richolson and others, "The Player," in Cineaste (Paris), no. 2/3, 1992.
Interview with David Breskin, InnerViews: Filmmakers in Conversation , Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992.
"Reimagining Raymond Carver on Film: A Talk with Robert Altman and Tess Gallagher," interview with R. Stewart, in New York Times , 12 September 1993.
Interview with Thomas Bourguignon and others, in Positif (Paris), January 1994.
Interview with Philippe Rouyer and Michael Henry, in Positif (Paris), May 1996.
"Reigning Blows," interview with Brian Case, in Time Out (London), 20 November 1996.
"The Sweet Hell of Success," interview with P. Beskind, in Premiere (Boulder), October 1997.
On ALTMAN: film—
"Robert Altman," for South Bank Show , London Weekend Television, April 1990.
On ALTMAN: books—
Hardin, Nancy, editor, On Making a Movie: Brewster McCloud , New York, 1971.
Feineman, Neil, Persistence of Vision: The Films of Robert Altman , New York, 1976.
Tewkesbury, Joan, Nashville , New York, 1976.
Kass, Judith M., Robert Altman: American Innovator , New York, 1978.
Terry, Bridget, The Popeye Story , New York, 1980.
Kolker, Robert Phillip, A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Kubrick, Coppola, Scorsese, Altman , Oxford, 1980, revised edition, 1988.
Bourget, Jean-Loup, Robert Altman , Paris, 1981.
Karp, Alan, The Films of Robert Altman , Metuchen, New Jersey, 1981.
Fink, Guido, I film Di Robert Altman , Rome, 1982.
Kagan, Norman, American Skeptic: Robert Altman's Genre-Commentary Films , Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1982.
Micciche, Lino, L'incubo americano: Il cinema di Robert Altman , Venice, 1984.
Wexman, Virginia Wright, and Gretchen Bisplinghoff, Robert Altman: A Guide to References and Resources , Boston, 1984.
Plecki, Gerard, Robert Altman , Boston, 1985.
Weis, Elisabeth, and John Belton, editors, Film Sound: Theory and Practice , New York, 1985.
Wood, Robin, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan , New York, 1986.
McGilligan, Patrick, Robert Altman: Jumping off the Cliff—A Biography , New York, 1988.
Keyssar, Helene, Robert Altman's America , New York, 1991.
Bourget, Jean-Loup, Robert Altman , Paris, 1994.
O'Brien, Daniel, Robert Altman: Hollywood Survivor , New York, 1995.
On ALTMAN: articles—
Cutts, John, " MASH, McCloud , and McCabe ," in Films and Filming (London), November 1971.
Dawson, J., "Altman's Images," in Sight and Sound (London), Spring 1972.
Engle, Gary, " McCabe and Mrs. Miller : Robert Altman's Anti-Western," in Journal of Popular Film (Bowling Green, Ohio), Fall 1972.
Baker, C.A., "The Theme of Structure in the Films of Robert Altman," in Journal of Popular Film (Bowling Green), Summer 1973.
Brackett, Leigh, "From The Big Sleep to the The Long Goodbye and More or Less How We Got There," in Take One (Montreal), January 1974.
Stewart, Garrett, " The Long Goodbye from Chinatown ," in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Winter 1974/75.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan, "Improvisations and Interactions in Altmanville," in Sight and Sound (London), Spring 1975.
Oliver, Bill, " The Long Goodbye and Chinatown : Debunking the Private Eye Tradition," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), Summer 1975.
"Altman Issue" of Film Heritage (Dayton, Ohio), Fall 1975.
Wood, Robin, "Smart-ass and Cutie-pie: Notes toward an Evaluation of Altman," in Movie , Fall 1975.
Benayoun, Robert, "Altman, U.S.A.," in Positif (Paris), December 1975.
Byrne, Connie, and William O. Lopez, " Nashville (An Interview Documentary)," in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Winter 1975/76.
Self, Robert, "Invention and Death: The Commodities of Media in Robert Altman's Nashville ," in Journal of Popular Film (Bowling Green, Ohio), no. 5, 1976.
Levine, R., "R. Altman & Co.," in Film Comment (New York), January/February 1977.
Canby, Vincent, "Film View: Altman—A Daring Filmmaker Falters," in The New York Times , 18 February 1979.
"Playing the Game, or Robert Altman and the Indians," in Sight and Sound (London), Summer 1979.
Bonnet, J.-C., and others, "Dossier: Robert Altman," in Cinématographe (Paris), January 1980.
Yacowar, Maurice, "Actors as Conventions in the Films of Robert Altman," in Cinema Journal (Evanston), Fall 1980.
Eyman, S., "Against Altman," in Focus on Film (London), October 1980.
Altman, D., "Building Sand Castles," in Cinema Papers (Melbourne), July/August 1981.
Self, Robert, "The Art Cinema and Robert Altman," in Velvet Light Trap (Madison, Wisconsin), no. 19, 1982.
Durgnat, Raymond, "Popeye Pops Up," in Films (London), April and May 1982.
Self, Robert, "The Perfect Couple: 'Two Are Halves of One,' in the Films of Robert Altman," in Wide Angle (Athens, Georgia), vol. 5, no. 4, 1983.
Edgerton, G., "Capra and Altman: Mythmaker and Mythologist," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), January 1983.
Jaehne, K., and P. Audferheide, "Secret Honor," in Cineaste (New York), vol. 14, no. 2, 1985.
Farber, Stephen, "Five Horsemen after the Apocalypse," in Film Comment (New York), July/August 1985.
Self, Robert, "Robert Altman and the Theory of Authorship," in Cinema Journal (Champaign, Illinois), Fall 1985.
"Altman Section" of Positif (Paris), January 1986.
White, A., "Play Time," in Film Comment (New York), January-February 1986.
Self, Robert, and Leland Poague, "Dialogue," in Cinema Journal (Champaign, Illinois), Spring 1986.
Combs, Richard, "A Trajectory Built for Two," in Monthly Film Bulletin (London), July 1986.
"Robert Altman," in Film Dope (London), March 1988.
Wolcott, James, "Jack Tanner, for Real," in Vanity Fair , July 1988.
Film Comment (New York), September/October 1989.
"Altman at Calvin," in Sight and Sound (London), no. 2, 1990.
McGilligan, Patrick, "Altman in Kansas City," in Sight and Sound (New York), no. 2, 1990.
Combs, R., "The World Is a Bad Painting," in Monthly Film Bulletin , July 1990.
Giddins, Gary, "Altman's Back," in Village Voice (New York), 6 November 1990.
Fisher, W., "Vincent and Theo and Bob," in Millimeter , September 1990.
Sanjek, David, "The Case for Robert Altman," in Literature/Film Quarterly , no. 1, 1991.
Walker, Beverly, "Altman '91" in Film Comment , January/February 1991.
Andersen, Kurt, "A Player Once Again," in Time , April 20, 1992.
Ansen, David, and others, "Hollywood Is Talking: The Player," in Newsweek , 2 March 1992.
Kasindorf, Jeanine, "Home Movies," in New York , 16 March 1992.
Kroll, Jack, "Robert Altman Gives Something Back," in Esquire , May 1992.
Myers, E., "Mining McTeague's Gold," in New York Times , 25 October 1992.
Pond, Steve, "Flushing the Locusts," in Premiere , May 1992.
Schiff, Stephen, "Auteur! Auteur!" in Vanity Fair , April 1992.
Smith, Gavin, and Richard T. Jameson, "The Movie You Saw Is the Movie We're Going to Make," in Film Comment (New York), May/June 1992.
Rico, Diana, "S*M*A*S*H," in Gentleman's Quarterly , May 1992.
Wilmington, Michael, "Robert Altman and The Player —Laughing and Killing: Death and Hollywood," in Sight and Sound (London), June 1992.
Hoberman, J., "Rerunning for President," in Village Voice (New York) , 14 July 1992.
Weinraub, B., "Robert Altman, Very Much a Player Again," in New York Times , 29 July 1993.
Henry, B., Gavin Smith, and F. Anthony Macklin, "Back/Roads to Short Cuts: Faultlines of a Daydream Nation," in Film Comment (New York), September/October 1993.
Sugg, Richard, "The Role of the Writer in The Player ," in Literature/ Film Quarterly , no. 1, 1994.
Murphy, Kathleen, "A Lion's Gate: The Cinema according to Robert Altman," in Film Comment (New York), 1994.
Romney, Jonathan, "In the Time of Earthquakes," in Sight and Sound (London), March 1994.
Wollen, Peter, "Strike a Pose," in Sight and Sound (London), March 1995.
Yaffe, D.M., "He Am What He Am," in Village Voice (New York), 20 August 1996.
Wyatt, Justin, "Economic Constraints/Economic Opportunities: Robert Altman as Auteur," in Velvet Light Trap (Austin), Fall 1996.
Golden, Mike, "A Robert Altman Film?" in Creative Screenwriting (Washington), Fall 1997.
Combs, R., "Kansas City," in Film Comment (New York), March/April 1997.
* * *
The American 1970s may have been dominated by a "New Wave" of younger, auteurist-inspired filmmakers including George Lucas, Peter Bogdanovich, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola, all contemporaries as well as sometime colleagues. It is, however, an outsider to this group, the older Robert Altman—perhaps that decade's most consistent chronicler of human behavior—who could be characterized as the artistic rebel most committed to an unswerving personal vision. If the generation of whiz kids tends to admire the American cinema as well as its structures of production, Altman tends to regard the American cinema critically and to view the production establishment more as an adversary to be cunningly exploited on the way to an almost European ambiguity.
Although Altman has worked consistently within American genres, his work can instructively be seen as anti-genre: McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a kind of anti-western, exposing the myth of the heroic westerner (as described by Robert Warshow and executed by John Wayne and John Ford) and replacing it with an almost Marxist view of the Westerner as financier, spreading capitalism and corruption with opportunism and good cheer. The Long Goodbye sets itself in opposition to certain aspects of the hard-boiled detective genre, as Elliott Gould's Philip Marlowe reflects a moral stance decidedly more ambiguous than that of Raymond Chandler's conventional lonely moralist. Similarly, Countdown can be seen in relationship to the science-fiction film; Thieves like Us (based on They Live by Night ) in relationship to the bandit-gangster film; That Cold Day in the Park in relationship to the psychological horror film inaugurated by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho ; and California Split in relationship to that generic phenomenon so common to the 1970s, the "buddy film." Even Nashville , Altman's complex bicentennial musical released in 1975, can be seen in relationship to a generic tradition with roots in Grand Hotel and branches in Earthquake , for it is a kind of disaster film about the American dream.
Aside from his generic preoccupations, Altman seems especially interested in people. His films characteristically contain perceptive observations, telling exchanges, and moments of crystal clear revelation of human folly. Altman's comments are made most persuasively in relationship to a grand social organization: that of the upper classes and nouveaux riches in A Wedding ; health faddists and, metaphorically, the American political process, in Health ; and so forth. Certainly, Altman's films offer a continuous critique of American society: people are constantly using and exploiting others, though often with the tacit permission of those being exploited. One thinks of the country-western singers' exploitation by the politician's P.R. man in Nashville , for instance, or the spinster in That Cold Day in the Park. Violence is often the climax of an Altman film—almost as if the tensions among the characters must ultimately explode. Notable examples include the fiery deaths and subsequent "surprise ending" in A Wedding , or the climactic assassination in Nashville. Another recurring interest for Altman in his preoccupation with the psychopathology of women: one thinks of the subtly encroaching madness of Sandy Dennis's sexually repressed spinster in That Cold Day in the Park , an underrated, early Altman film; the disturbing instability of Ronee Blakley in Nashville ; the relationships among the unbalanced subjects of Three Women , based on one of Altman's own dreams; and the real/surreal visions of Susannah York in the virtual horror film, Images. Because almost all of Altman's characters tend to be hypocritical, psychotic, weak, or morally flawed in some way, with very few coming to a happy end, Altman has often been attacked for a kind of trendy cynicism. The director's cynicism, however, seems a result of his genuine attempt to avoid the conventional myth-making of the American cinema. Altman imbues as many of his characters as possible with that sloppy imperfection associated with human beings as they are, with life as it is lived.
Performers enjoy working with Altman in part because he provides them with the freedom to develop their characters and often alter the script through improvisation and collaboration. Like Bergman, Altman has worked often with a stock company of performers who appear in one role after another, among them Elliott Gould, Sally Kellerman, Rene Auberjonois, Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, Michael Murphy, Bert Remsen, and Henry Gibson.
Altman's distinctive style transforms whatever subject he approaches. He often takes advantage of widescreen compositions in which the frame is filled with a number of subjects and details that compete for the spectator's attention. Working with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, he has achieved films that are visually distinguished and tend toward the atmospheric. Especially notable are the use of the zoom lens in the smoky cinematography of McCabe and Mrs. Miller ; the reds, whites, and blues of Nashville ; the constantly mobile camera, specially mounted, of The Long Goodbye , which so effortlessly reflects the hazy moral center of the world the film presents; and the pastel prettiness of A Wedding , particularly the first appearance of that icon of the American cinema, Lillian Gish, whose subsequent filmic death propels the narrative.
Altman's use of multi-track sound is also incredibly complex: sounds are layered upon one another, often emanating from different speakers in such a way that the audience member must also decide what to listen for. Indeed, watching and listening to an Altman film inevitably requires an active participant: events unroll with a Bazinian ambiguity. Altman's Korean War comedy M*A*S*H was the director's first public success with this kind of soundtrack. One of his more extreme uses of this technique can be found in McCabe and Mrs. Miller , generally thought to be among the director's finest achievements.
Nashville , Altman's most universally acclaimed work, provides a panoramic view of the American experience and society as it follows the interrelated experiences of twenty-four characters in the country-western music capital. In its almost three-hour length, Nashville accumulates a power of the whole even greater than the vivid individual parts which themselves resonate in the memory: the incredibly controlled debut performance of Lily Tomlin and the sensitive performances of at least a dozen others; the lesson on sexual politics Altman delivers when he photographs several women listening to a song by Keith Carradine; the vulnerability of Ronee Blakley, who suffers a painful breakdown in front of her surprisingly fickle fans; the expressions on the faces of the men who watch Gwen Welles's painfully humiliating striptease; and the final cathartic song of Barbara Harris, as Altman suddenly reveals the conventional "Star is Born" myth in his apparent anti-musical, like a magician stunning us with an unexpected trick.
Overall, Altman's career itself has been rather weird. His output since M*A*S*H has been prodigious indeed, especially in light of the fact that a great number of his films have been financial and/or critical failures. In fact, several of his films, among them A Perfect Couple and Quintet (with Paul Newman) barely got a national release; and Health (which starred Glenda Jackson, Carol Burnett, James Garner, and Lauren Bacall) languished on the shelf for years before achieving even a limited release in New York City. The most amazing thing about Altman's Popeye , which was relatively successful with critics and the public (though not the blockbuster that Hollywood had counted on), was that Altman managed to secure the assignment at all. The film that emerged was one of the most cynical and ultimately disturbing of children's films, in line with Altman's consistent vision of human beings and social organization.
Altman's career in the 1980s veered sharply away from mainstream film, dominated instead by a number of film adaptations of theatre pieces, including Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean ; Streamers ; The Laundromat ; Secret Honor ; Beyond Therapy ; and Fool for Love. Although many of these works are fascinating and contain incredibly modulated performances and surprisingly evocative cinematography (particularly Jimmy Dean ), these films have not been particularly influential or financially successful. But they allowed Altman to continue to make notable films in a Spielberg-dominated era that was otherwise largely hostile to his provocative filmmaking.
Vincent and Theo , one of the few Altman films in this period that did not start out as a play, received much positive notice. Altman's decision to preface his film with documentary footage of a present-day auction in which millions of dollars are offered for a single Van Gogh painting was particularly stunning in a Brechtian way. He then begins his narrative story of Van Gogh's lifetime financial failure, trying to remain true to his painter's vision. Certainly, it is the parallels between Van Gogh and Altman which incite the director's interest. Tanner '88 , a mock documentary about the 1988 American presidential campaign which many critics consider among Altman's master works, was even more amazing. It was a cult hit which marked Altman's return to the kind of satire with which he had already excelled. Unfortunately, its distribution on cable TV prevented this work from reaching a wide audience.
The most stunning development in Altman's career is the total critical and financial comeback he made with 1992's The Player , a film that appeared long after most Hollywood executives had written him off. The most insightful and scathing satire about Hollywood and filmmaking today, The Player hilariously skewered one target after another (the pitch, the Hollywood restaurant, the Hollywood party, the dispensable writer), in the process winning the New York Film Critics Circle awards for Best Film and Best Director. Contributing to the film's popular success were the dozens of stars who took cameos as themselves in order to support Altman, whom they have always admired.
The success of The Player allowed Robert Altman to go forward with his most ambitious project since Nashville. Another panoramic narrative featuring dozens of characters, a rich soundtrack, striking cinematography, and sensitive performances, this film is set in contemporary Los Angeles and based on short stories by Raymond Carver. The result, Short Cuts , is one of those rare contemporary American films which truly examines American values (or what passes for them) and dissects life as it is being lived today. The film is memorable from its opening images of helicopters sweeping over Los Angeles to spray for the Medfly infestation to its closing images of urban violence and earthquake; from its depiction of Angelenos struggling to connect with each other through phone sex and illicit liaisons to its presentation of bitterness, silence, and missed rapprochement as the standard American condition. Central to Short Cuts is the ubiquitousness of violence in American life, particularly against women, and the thesis that men's passive insensitivity often masks a profound hatred of women and a propensity for aggression. No act of violence in Short Cuts results in punishment, just in more apathy. A trader in ironies and social criticism, Altman emphasizes all the ways we deceive each other; and hardly any of the relationships presented—between parents and children, between husbands and wives—are marked by open, honest, useful exchanges; indeed, the jazz theme "I Don't Know You," which is sung by one character as her daughter is about to commit suicide, works as the film's most prescient theme. Notable, too, is how another character describes her own paintings as being "about seeing, and the responsibility that comes with that." From that message, Altman cuts to a group of men who've found the body of a raped woman, but choose to ignore it, lest it interrupt their fishing weekend. As a reaction against an eighties culture that championed special effects and mindless entertainment ( Star Wars , Indiana Jones , Conan , etc.), Altman's admonition to see the world and take responsibility emerges as the courageous stand of a visionary artist still viable and surprising. Like Nashville , Short Cuts is a key Altman film which will undoubtedly come to be regarded as a masterpiece of the American cinema. In fact, both films can be seen as providing the inspirational blueprint for many other filmmakers—particularly Paul Thomas Anderson (whose controversial 1999 Magnolia uses several cast members borrowed from the Altman films) and Todd Solondz (whose disturbing 1998 Happiness uses a similar interlocking narrative within a mode of ironic social criticism).
In 1994 Altman took on the fashion industry in Ready to Wear (Prêt-à -Porter). Critics and the public were less kind in their regard for this panoramic satire, but the film was nevertheless witty and controlled, more subtle and light-hearted than had been anticipated. The film's finale—whereby a group of models parade nude—marked the witty and appropriate conclusion of Altman's satire on the political/ideological implications of fashion and its capacity to demean our values. Unfortunately, three recent Altman films seems less impressive, if focused on the indigenous local color of their respective regional portraits. Kansas City , in 1996, presents a murky canvas of gangsterism, "dope" addiction, and black jazz in the early thirties Kansas City. The Gingerbread Man , in 1998, reportedly written by Altman pseudonymously, is a thriller about a lawyer involved with a troubled young woman. In contrast to the sharp visual and aural clarity of Hitchcock's thrillers, The Gingerbread Man is suffused with such stunningly atmospheric cinematography and overlapping sound (indeed, it virtually never stops raining in the film), that we feel like we are eavesdropping on real people, rather than watching a narrative work its way to a fairly predictable (if effective) conclusion. And finally, the 1999 Cookie's Fortune, set in Holly Springs, Mississippi, is a rather charming evocation of the genuine quirkiness of small-town life, using some of the typical Altman structures from Nashville , but within a much smaller framework.
As a postscript on Altman, one should add that he, more than any other director, should never be counted out as an important force in American film culture. If Altman's work is sometimes uneven, the fact that he continues to work on projects which are political, ideological, and personal—refusing to compromise his own artistic vision—is a sign that he remains, even in his late seventies, the United States' single most ambitious auteur . His future agenda is ambitious, including a film of Another City, Not My Own , the strange Dominick Dunne novel based on Dunne's experiences as a journalist covering the sensational murder trial in Los Angeles of O. J. Simpson. Although Altman might seem to be the perfect director, in a culminating masterpiece, to deal with the human circus of venality and opportunism which was the Simpson trial, Altman's peripatetic popularity with Hollywood backers suggests that this project is by no means a sure thing, no matter how eagerly anticipated the results.
—Charles Derry
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