Post by Andrew on Nov 21, 2006 22:50:32 GMT -5
www.usatoday.com/life/people/2006-11-21-altman-obit_x.htm?csp=27
Director Altman bucked studios, expectations
Updated 11/21/2006 9:53 PM ET
By Mike Clark, USA TODAY
"Maverick" was a word often used to describe director Robert Altman, who died Monday at 81.
You can bet the studio executives he often disdained (he called them "clowns" on a '70s talk show) had ruder alternatives skipping off their tongues.
Although moviemaking mavericks strive to work on their own terms and frequently napalm bridges, the maker of M*A*S*H, Nashville, The Player and Gosford Park outlasted enough critics to flourish in his twilight years.
He could claim one of the better movies of 2006, A Prairie Home Companion, on his half-century résumé. It was a movie about death, he said, and it opened in June, five months before his death of complications from cancer in Los Angeles.
Altman was a master of the ensemble film, known for using overlapping and seemingly overheard dialogue — conveying the way people really speak, if rarely in the movies. Though second to none in making a widescreen frame visually compelling, he also was an actor's director, beloved by the often improvising performers he viewed as true collaborators. Several of them (Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, Elliott Gould) returned to his movies again and again.
Born Feb. 20, 1925, in Kansas City, Mo., Altman did not hit it big until he was 45 — and only then after an army of directors had turned down the chance to direct the Korea-as-Vietnam political farce M*A*S*H.
Before that, Altman did industrial films and network TV fodder from Whirlybirds to Surfside 6 to Bonanza to Bus Stop. And before that, he co-directed the first James Dean documentary and made a 1957 Kansas-shot bargain basement cheapie called The Delinquents.
An uncomprehending 20th Century Fox had little clue that M*A*S*H would be a hit in January 1970. M*A*S*H's irreverence tapped perfectly into the mood of a country burned by Vietnam.
So MGM hustled to get his follow-up (the still not-on-DVD Brewster McCloud) into theaters in December. That movie was a bent, if frequently uproarious, fable about a young dweeb (Bud Cort) who constructs a flying machine to soar in Houston's Astrodome while half the movie's characters get killed by bird droppings. Merry Christmas.
Commercial success was never what Altman was about. He did amass five Oscar nominations over four decades and then an honorary award this year to suggest at least some respect by the non-maverick establishment.
He revealed on March's Academy Awards telecast that he had a heart transplant 10 years ago but feared that admitting it would have cost him work.
Altman's films often became classics in retrospect — though it didn't take long in the case of 1971's McCabe & Mrs. Miller. His beyond-quirky 1973 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye (try detective Philip Marlowe with a pet cat) was rescued by a Pauline Kael rave review after other critics had written it off. Even 1975's Oscar-nominated Nashville— one of the best from the movies' richest decade — failed to do much business despite making the cover of Newsweek.
In the late '70s and '80s, Altman may have started to read his own press clippings too much: Quintet, A Perfect Couple, O.C. and Stiggs and Beyond Therapy were not the paths to posterity. His theory seemed to be to keep working and the percentages would start to work in his favor. Even the '80s produced the one-man Nixon portrayal Secret Honor and TV's marvelous Tanner '88.
Altman came roaring back with 1992's inside-Hollywood The Player. Aside from a widely regarded stumble with 1994's Ready to Wear, you can make some kind of case for just about every feature he made after that, especially underappreciated delights such as Kansas City and Cookie's Fortune.
This may be among the saddest days for movie fans, but they can find some consolation in a most stimulating parlor game (speaking of Gosford Park): ranking favorites from this prolific filmmaker.
Director Altman bucked studios, expectations
Updated 11/21/2006 9:53 PM ET
By Mike Clark, USA TODAY
"Maverick" was a word often used to describe director Robert Altman, who died Monday at 81.
You can bet the studio executives he often disdained (he called them "clowns" on a '70s talk show) had ruder alternatives skipping off their tongues.
Although moviemaking mavericks strive to work on their own terms and frequently napalm bridges, the maker of M*A*S*H, Nashville, The Player and Gosford Park outlasted enough critics to flourish in his twilight years.
He could claim one of the better movies of 2006, A Prairie Home Companion, on his half-century résumé. It was a movie about death, he said, and it opened in June, five months before his death of complications from cancer in Los Angeles.
Altman was a master of the ensemble film, known for using overlapping and seemingly overheard dialogue — conveying the way people really speak, if rarely in the movies. Though second to none in making a widescreen frame visually compelling, he also was an actor's director, beloved by the often improvising performers he viewed as true collaborators. Several of them (Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, Elliott Gould) returned to his movies again and again.
Born Feb. 20, 1925, in Kansas City, Mo., Altman did not hit it big until he was 45 — and only then after an army of directors had turned down the chance to direct the Korea-as-Vietnam political farce M*A*S*H.
Before that, Altman did industrial films and network TV fodder from Whirlybirds to Surfside 6 to Bonanza to Bus Stop. And before that, he co-directed the first James Dean documentary and made a 1957 Kansas-shot bargain basement cheapie called The Delinquents.
An uncomprehending 20th Century Fox had little clue that M*A*S*H would be a hit in January 1970. M*A*S*H's irreverence tapped perfectly into the mood of a country burned by Vietnam.
So MGM hustled to get his follow-up (the still not-on-DVD Brewster McCloud) into theaters in December. That movie was a bent, if frequently uproarious, fable about a young dweeb (Bud Cort) who constructs a flying machine to soar in Houston's Astrodome while half the movie's characters get killed by bird droppings. Merry Christmas.
Commercial success was never what Altman was about. He did amass five Oscar nominations over four decades and then an honorary award this year to suggest at least some respect by the non-maverick establishment.
He revealed on March's Academy Awards telecast that he had a heart transplant 10 years ago but feared that admitting it would have cost him work.
Altman's films often became classics in retrospect — though it didn't take long in the case of 1971's McCabe & Mrs. Miller. His beyond-quirky 1973 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye (try detective Philip Marlowe with a pet cat) was rescued by a Pauline Kael rave review after other critics had written it off. Even 1975's Oscar-nominated Nashville— one of the best from the movies' richest decade — failed to do much business despite making the cover of Newsweek.
In the late '70s and '80s, Altman may have started to read his own press clippings too much: Quintet, A Perfect Couple, O.C. and Stiggs and Beyond Therapy were not the paths to posterity. His theory seemed to be to keep working and the percentages would start to work in his favor. Even the '80s produced the one-man Nixon portrayal Secret Honor and TV's marvelous Tanner '88.
Altman came roaring back with 1992's inside-Hollywood The Player. Aside from a widely regarded stumble with 1994's Ready to Wear, you can make some kind of case for just about every feature he made after that, especially underappreciated delights such as Kansas City and Cookie's Fortune.
This may be among the saddest days for movie fans, but they can find some consolation in a most stimulating parlor game (speaking of Gosford Park): ranking favorites from this prolific filmmaker.
