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http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-11-21-altman-obit_x.htm
By Mike Clark, USA TODAY
"Maverick" was a word often used to describe director Robert Altman, though you can bet the studio heads he often disdained had ruder alternatives rolling off their tongues.
But while movie-making mavericks scramble, work on their terms and frequently napalm bridges, the maker of M*A*S*H, Nashville, The Player and Gosford Park outlasted enough critics (including, in the '80s, even the critics) to flourish in twilight. Even this year, he could claim one of this year's better pictures on his half-century resume: A Prairie Home Companion. It opened just last June, five months before his death Monday at 81 in Los Angeles.
A master of overlapping and seemingly overheard dialogue (which conveyed the way people really speak, if rarely in the movies), he was a master of ensemble playing. Though second to none in making a widescreen frame visually compelling, he also was an actor's director mostly beloved by the performers he viewed as true collaborators several of whom returned to his movies again and again.
After years of grueling in industrial films, TV fodder (from Whirlybirds to Surfside 6 to Bonanza to Bus Stop) and even a 1957 low-budget cheapie called The Delinquents, Missouri-born Altman had, in some ways, the misfortune to hit the commercial ball out of the park with his first big studio picture. The irreverence of M*A*S*H (1970) tapped perfectly into mood of a country burned by Vietnam and likely set up expectations for prodigious box office follow-ups.
This was never in the cards. It was more likely for an Altman movie (like, say, 1971's McCabe and Mrs. Miller) to became a classic, though, in retrospect, though it never took very long. His beyond-quirky adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye (1973) is a perfect example: it was rescued by a Pauline Kael rave review after other critics had written it off. Yet even 1975's Nashville a peer with the first two Godfathers as screen cream from the movies' richest decade failed to do much business outside major cities 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, Beyond Therapy were not the paths to posterity, even with niche audiences. But his theory seemed to be "keep working and the percentages will start to work in your favor." Even the '80s produced the one-man Nixon show Secret Honor and TV's marvelous Tanner '88.
With 1992's inside-Hollywood The Player, Altman came roaring back at age 67 and aside from a widely regarded stumble with 1994's Ready to Wear, you can make a case for just about every feature he made after that, especially underappreciated delights like Kansas City and Cookie's Fortune.
Ask a movie lover of the past four decades to name their favorite Altmans but to eliminate the obvious choices: M*A*S*H, McCabe, Nashville, The Player and Gosford. You will get a slew of opposing picks from California Split to A Wedding to the capper Prairie Home Companion.
This is one of the saddest days movie fans will ever have to endure, but there'll be compensating fun in this most stimulating of parlor games: ranking favorites from the most prolific of all filmographies.
By Mike Clark, USA TODAY
"Maverick" was a word often used to describe director Robert Altman, though you can bet the studio heads he often disdained had ruder alternatives rolling off their tongues.
But while movie-making mavericks scramble, work on their terms and frequently napalm bridges, the maker of M*A*S*H, Nashville, The Player and Gosford Park outlasted enough critics (including, in the '80s, even the critics) to flourish in twilight. Even this year, he could claim one of this year's better pictures on his half-century resume: A Prairie Home Companion. It opened just last June, five months before his death Monday at 81 in Los Angeles.
A master of overlapping and seemingly overheard dialogue (which conveyed the way people really speak, if rarely in the movies), he was a master of ensemble playing. Though second to none in making a widescreen frame visually compelling, he also was an actor's director mostly beloved by the performers he viewed as true collaborators several of whom returned to his movies again and again.
After years of grueling in industrial films, TV fodder (from Whirlybirds to Surfside 6 to Bonanza to Bus Stop) and even a 1957 low-budget cheapie called The Delinquents, Missouri-born Altman had, in some ways, the misfortune to hit the commercial ball out of the park with his first big studio picture. The irreverence of M*A*S*H (1970) tapped perfectly into mood of a country burned by Vietnam and likely set up expectations for prodigious box office follow-ups.
This was never in the cards. It was more likely for an Altman movie (like, say, 1971's McCabe and Mrs. Miller) to became a classic, though, in retrospect, though it never took very long. His beyond-quirky adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye (1973) is a perfect example: it was rescued by a Pauline Kael rave review after other critics had written it off. Yet even 1975's Nashville a peer with the first two Godfathers as screen cream from the movies' richest decade failed to do much business outside major cities 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, Beyond Therapy were not the paths to posterity, even with niche audiences. But his theory seemed to be "keep working and the percentages will start to work in your favor." Even the '80s produced the one-man Nixon show Secret Honor and TV's marvelous Tanner '88.
With 1992's inside-Hollywood The Player, Altman came roaring back at age 67 and aside from a widely regarded stumble with 1994's Ready to Wear, you can make a case for just about every feature he made after that, especially underappreciated delights like Kansas City and Cookie's Fortune.
Ask a movie lover of the past four decades to name their favorite Altmans but to eliminate the obvious choices: M*A*S*H, McCabe, Nashville, The Player and Gosford. You will get a slew of opposing picks from California Split to A Wedding to the capper Prairie Home Companion.
This is one of the saddest days movie fans will ever have to endure, but there'll be compensating fun in this most stimulating of parlor games: ranking favorites from the most prolific of all filmographies.
