Bow down to Robert Altman...

But he's hip, daddy-o.

http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/archive_detail.html?id1=424

SS: Paul Thomas Anderson was brought on to be your back-up director. Did that work well?

RA: Yes. He was with me all the time. He's a good friend of mine. I'm 80 years old. So they don't insure me. On Gosford Park, which was the first time I did this, Stephen Frears was my stand-in. That's all an insurance issue.

SS: How did you and P.T. Anderson meet?

RA: I've known Paul since he started, and he's always been very generous about the origins of his work. Paul agreed to do it, which surprised and thrilled me. His girlfriend, Maya Rudolph, who was pregnant, was in the film as well. So that made things easier. It worked out well.

Robert Altman's Long Goodbye
By TERRENCE RAFFERTY

Robert Altman, who turns 81 tomorrow, will receive his very first Oscar in a couple of weeks: an honorary one, of the sort the academy so often employs to ease the bitterness of a veteran nonwinner's declining years. (And, of course, to square historical accounts and deflect the outrage of future generations of movie lovers, who might feel that the failure to honor an important filmmaker reflects sort of poorly on the awards' credibility.) Like King Vidor, who had to hang in for 85 years to cop a thanks-for-the memories statuette, Mr. Altman has five best-director nominations and zero Oscars to show for a long and prolific career, so he pretty emphatically qualifies as overdue. He has been overdue for 30 years.

Hollywood has in fact never known quite what to make of Mr. Altman, who seemed to come out of nowhere with "M*A*S*H" in 1970 and, despite the industry's best efforts to send him back there, wouldn't go away. With the kind of weird, inexplicable gambler's instinct he would explore, hilariously, in "California Split" (1974), Mr. Altman parlayed his winnings from "M*A*S*H" — which remains by far the biggest hit of his career — into an exhilarating half-decade run of high-stakes moviemaking: seven pictures in the next five years, of which five are, like "M*A*S*H," at least arguably masterpieces.

Those great films — "M*A*S*H," "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" (1971), "The Long Goodbye" (1973), "Thieves Like Us" (1974), "California Split" and "Nashville" (1975) — still look like the core of his achievement: to paraphrase Raymond Carver (whose work Mr. Altman adapted in his 1992 film "Short Cuts"), they are what we talk about when we talk about Robert Altman. That's not to say that the two dozen feature films he has managed to direct in the last 30 years are negligible (though there isn't a power on earth, or beyond, that could persuade me to sit through "Quintet," "Health," "Prêt-à-Porter" or "The Company" again), or that Mr. Altman's skill has in any way diminished with age: the silky command of "Gosford Park" (2001) is ample proof that it hasn't.

It's just that in the early 70's the conditions were right for Mr. Altman's loose-jointed, intuitive, risk-courting approach to making movies, and the planets over Hollywood haven't aligned themselves in that way since. The wondrous opportunity those years afforded adventurous filmmakers like him was that studio executives, for once in their ignoble history, actually knew that they had no idea what they were doing: a man who could deliver the elusive, mysterious (to them) youth market, as the 45-year-old director of "M*A*S*H" somehow did, became a mighty valuable commodity.

Mr. Altman, who had spent the previous couple of decades directing industrial films, episodic television ("Bonanza," "Combat") and the odd low-budget picture, seized his moment and set about the task of reimagining, with a little help from his friends, how American movies should look and sound and feel. The anti-authoritarian spirit, the caught-on-the-fly dialogue and the invigoratingly original blend of slapstick and casual naturalism that had made "M*A*S*H" seem so new mutated into something even stranger and headier in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" a year later.

That film, a western of an unusually lyrical kind, puts the controlled-chaos techniques of "M*A*S*H" to entirely different use: in "McCabe," the buzzing vitality of the frontier mining settlement called Presbyterian Church serves as counterpoint to an eccentric American tragedy. It's the only movie I know of in which you can watch a community come into existence, changing and growing before your eyes, and Mr. Altman's camera, seeming to catch the whole complex process unawares, is miraculously alert to both the pleasures and the melancholy ironies of growth.

It's among the greatest movies of its time, up there with Sam Peckinpah's "Wild Bunch" (1969) and the first two "Godfather" pictures (1972 and 1974). And like them it's the product of an era in which the nature of the American democratic experiment was being questioned constantly and, in the best of our films, unconventionally celebrated — celebrated, that is, not for our collective military and economic power but for our individual vigor and orneriness and goofy optimism. This was a cultural moment made for Mr. Altman, whose hopeful approach to making movies has always been to get a bunch of lively, interesting-looking actors together and watch what happens, see if they can make something grow.

Mr. Altman had, in the early 70's, assembled an unofficial repertory company around him, a group of performers he trusted to supply the quick jolts of energy — the funky humor and the wayward poignance — his lightning-in-a-bottle moviemaking required. Elliott Gould, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, Bert Remsen, John Schuck, Gwen Welles, Michael Murphy and Henry Gibson were, in shifting combinations, the faces of an Altman movie, people who seemed to exist (or, in the case of Mr. Gould, to exist vividly) only in his fictional world. And he gathered them all, along with a few more of their unpredictable ilk, for his epic "Nashville," a movie whose multiple threads of stray narrative are held together by nothing more than a spirit, a sensibility: the weird buoyancy of Mr. Altman's take-it-as-it-comes fatalism.

What strikes you, in fact, when you watch "Nashville" or its three immediate predecessors, "The Long Goodbye," "Thieves Like Us" and "California Split," is how fundamentally grim Mr. Altman's vision of American life is — and how little that persistent, deep-seated, unshakable disillusion actually affects the tone of the movies. All the characters in those pictures are in one way or another disappointed, but disappointment doesn't appear to be a big deal for Mr. Altman. Maybe because he had to wait so long to fulfill his artistic ambitions, because he arrived so late to the Hollywood party, he seems to know (every one of his movies says it) that disappointment never killed anybody. "It's O.K. with me" is the dopey mantra of Mr. Gould's Phillip Marlowe in "The Long Goodbye"; the crowd at the end of "Nashville," shocked by an act of sudden violence, gets over its horror by singing along to a tune called "It Don't Worry Me." And although in both pictures the effect is ironic, in neither case is it wholly ironic. On some level, Mr. Altman shrugs along with his characters.

He would need, as it turned out, every bit of that world-weary insouciance in the years that followed "Nashville," when it gradually became clear that the moment for his sort of exploratory filmmaking was passing, and then simply past. His stock company slowly dispersed, his college-age audience grew up and entered the so-called real world (which proved to be rather like the prosperous, company-run town that in the end no longer needs beautiful dreamers like John McCabe), and the studios became, I think it's fair to say, less tolerant of box-office failure.

You could almost feel the air leaking out of Mr. Altman's balloon in the late 70's. And by the 80's this profoundly American filmmaker had moved to Europe and largely reinvented himself as a less ambitious sort of artist: a master craftsman and a miniaturist, not a fresco painter dangling perilously from cathedral ceilings. He found work directing operas, plays and, television dramas, and for the big screen contented himself with a series of filmed theater pieces, most of which involved just one set and a limited number of characters. (The most memorable of them, 1984's "Secret Honor," is a one-man show about Nixon.)

In a way, the Robert Altman of this period is like one of the aging outlaws of "The Wild Bunch": "It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do." And although his 80's movies are less exciting, their very smallness allows you to appreciate the beauty and resourcefulness of Mr. Altman's technique: the slow zooms, the fluid tracking shots, the elegantly timed cuts (usually on movement), the extraordinary assurance with which he explores the confined spaces and controls the dramatic rhythm, are immensely satisfying even when his material is second-rate.

He kept his instrument in tune, and when a terrific script finally came his way — Julian Mitchell's "Vincent & Theo," about the van Gogh brothers — he was more than ready. The movie he made, which was released in 1990 as an art-house picture (and is now available, in a gorgeous transfer, on DVD), seems to me the best of his post-"Nashville" films: moving, powerful, scary and in love with light. Mr. Altman's direction is somber and almost classical, which may partly explain why the picture is so good: he's often at his sharpest when he's doing something he hasn't done before.

The movie that put him, briefly, back on the Hollywood map, though, was familiar territory — the darkly comic ensemble piece "The Player" (1992), whose setting is Hollywood itself and whose rampaging energy seems to derive from the glee of consummating a long-nursed revenge fantasy. "The Player" is his funniest movie, and, in the end, a prime example of the O.K.-with-me attitude that has enabled Mr. Altman to get by, and occasionally thrive, in the funhouse-mirror culture of studio filmmaking.

He seized that moment, too, to try to recapture a bit of the early-70's exuberance. But he couldn't quite locate it, either in "Short Cuts" (which is brilliant but sour-spirited) or in the 1996 "Kansas City" (in which the cast let him down). What got his juices flowing again, peculiarly enough, was the elaborate English murder-mystery trifle "Gosford Park," which revealed, to his evident delight, that there was a whole new world of Altman actors waiting for him in the old world.

If honorary Oscars are to some degree awards for longevity and brute persistence, then Mr. Altman qualifies on that score, too: he's the unlikeliest imaginable survivor of the Hollywood system. When he steps onto the stage of the Kodak Theater on March 5 as this year's distinguished geezer, he might feel a twinge of is-this-all-there-is? disappointment, but his movies tell us that he'll get over it. He might even reflect that Sam Peckinpah — his junior by one day, and 20 years dead — blew out his heart fighting the studios, and never got his vindication. And Robert Altman, I expect, will accept his statuette with (perhaps slightly mordant) good grace, because it'll do.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

odd that he doesn't mention "Three Women".

"He Needs Me"

"It Don't Worry Me"

"The Long Goodbye" theme (Jack Riley solo piano version)

"Suicide Is Painless (MASH theme)" (seems inevitable, don't it)

"Tapedeck in His Tractor"

that Leonard Cohen tune about some Joseph looking for a manger

xpost

But besides a couple of screenplays, it the closest he's ever come to an Oscar before.

Here Comes The Hotstepper.

http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2006/03/be-like-bob.html

It's taken a long time for ­Robert Altman to win an ­Oscar, but the 81-year-old director scoffs at the notion that he and Hollywood hate each other. "The press cooked this feud up," he tells us. "I've been nominated five times. That's one out of five films. So why should I be pissed off at Hollywood?" What about that time that a demanding studio exec invaded the set of "Nashville." Says Altman: "I did not punch him in the nose. I just pushed him in a pool. Why? I didn't like him. And I was drunk." Altman says he's currently having "the time of my life." His next film, "A Prairie Home Companion," based on Garrison Keillor's radio show, stars Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Lindsay Lohan, who all toasted him at a ­party hosted by HBO and Picturehouse. Despite her party-girl rep, Altman found Lohan, "wonderful. And she even sings great!"

http://movingimage.us/site/screenings/mainpage/robert_altman.html

Lindsey Lohan gets a laugh in the trailer, tho it may help if you're hermetically sealed enough from pop to have never heard or seen her, like me.

http://www.ifccenter.com/seriesh?seriesid=561

There are directors whose movies are just delivery systems for their self-confidence, in which self-confidence is really the thing that entertains, because it takes a bold confidence to successfully tell a stupid story, and for sure there are useful energies we suck from awful films that begin with the director’s amazing love of himself. The films of such directors are always the same, until they lose their confidence, and then their movies fail in every way—no fun for us, no money for them. Altman never told the same film twice.

http://www.artforum.com/inprint/id=12382

holy shit california split is amazing!!!!!!!!!

why is this not altman canon??

it is?

goldblum and gould ... two of my favorite jews.

wait, that came out wrong

it's not really in the canon, most ppl haven't even heard of it! probably because it had so many rights/release issues.

this, long goodbye, nashville, mccabe, short cuts, and brewster are my altman go-tos

I remember reading that C. Split was considered flop at the time mainly because it was castoff into syndication within two years, which I guess was pretty fast for the time. I actually saw it for the first time that way, on a local station one Saturday afternoon about 5 years ago.

it would be the best sat afternoon movie ever

Yeah it was. I'm glad I caught it that time because I'd missed it three months prior, and as it turned out, the screening I saw was the last time aired around here.

Now that I think about, I've seen California Split on TV, bootleg video, legit (yet edited) on DVD, and in a rep theatre. Probably the only movie I've seen in that many formats.

you need to put that on the wikipedia page for the movie STAT

Vincent & Theo is still v. v. awesome.

i can't stop thinking about this movie (c split). so good!!

agh, I need to watch this movie!!!

3 Sisters would place Altman in my all-time best-of, even if it were his only output.

3 Women, rather. Getting Depalma/Altman confusoes.

I thought Cali Split was totally in the Altman canon. Gould and Altman were really well matched.

nice article from '74 recently uploaded to Ebert's site.

wtf Jack Davis Long Goodbye ad!!! never seen that

That Jack Davis poster is featured pretty heavily in one of the Last Goodbye DVD special features.

i need that poster

Quintet is playing at BAM soon, should I see it?

I want to, just once! thx for reminder.

I hated that movie

milton parker liked it, iirc

i need to see it

It's hard to love.

In general.

it has one cinematography trick that quickly wears out its welcome, the plot (a murder mystery/conspiracy of sorts) is completely suspense-free, the actors don't have much to do, its painfully slow.

I say all these things as a big fan of sci fi and Altman in general, but this movie is just a failure.

still sounds better than OC & Stiggs.

Has a pretty awesome ancillary use of a folly location.

man OC & Stiggs is terrrrrrrrrible!

still sounds better than Dr T & the Women.

i just want to see the montreal stuff

? Most of its shot inside an abandoned building

[edit] Production

Quintet was filmed on the site of Montreal's Expo 67 world's fair.

You'll get to see that abandoned building they used to store cleaning stuff in for that World's Fair.

im stoked

Speaking as a huge Altman fan, Quintet and O.C. and Stiggs are the only two of his films I haven't been able to finish watching. Dr. T & The Women was a slog, though.

i'm watching california split on crackle right now! (i don't even know what crackle is!!)

so great

otm, even on this shitty little computer screen (thankfully i have seen it in a theater twice tho)

dvd release of CALIFORNIA SPLIT has a substantially altered soundtrack because of music rights issues, dunno if its the same on 'crackle' whatever that is

wow, i did not know this. the actress ann presntiss, who played barbara in california split, and is paula prentiss' sister (they look a lot alike), went nuts a while back

Displayed signs of emotional and mental problems in later years. In 1997 Prentiss was convicted in a Santa Monica, California court of terrorizing her family. She was convicted of making terrorist threats, assault with a firearm, battery, and solicitation to commit the murder of her brother-in-law Richard Benjamin and her father. She was sentenced to 19 years in jail for the crimes.

David Thomson on new bio:

http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/short-cuts

watched (most of) 3 Women again last night, got a kinda crappy copy from an in-law. so great, has a really sustained dremy/creepy quality that seems unique in Altman's ouevre. also struck me how rare it is for an American film to focus almost exclusively on women and their relationships with one another without turning into a weepy melodrama or a shitty romcom.

One of my four or five favorite Altman flicks, even when it's not working.

the music is practically horror movie score material, keep waiting for Sissy to stab somebody...

Also: Shelley Duvall is an ancestor of this person:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/images/200712/20071227ho_sandypink_500.jpg

I had been wanting to see Thieves Like Us for the longest time. A few nights ago I finally watched it. There aren't very many films that I've enjoyed watching as much as this one. Wow. I almost can't believe how well this guy made movies. The whole thing comes across as almost effortless, like it just sort of oozed out of him or something. I found the Shelly Duvall/Keith Carradine sequences to be almost inexplicably awesome.

I'll say it again, I almost can't believe how well this guy made movies.

anybody want to recommend to me any Altman bios?

http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Altman-Biography-Mitchell-Zuckoff/dp/0307387917/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303878694&sr=1-1

...it's a daunting doorstop tho. Jan Stuart's Nashville book is breezy and through look at him in the mid 70s, while Altman on Altman is a valuable set of extended interviews going over every film and sidetrip.

cool! thanx a lot!

doing this again!

i'm watching california split on crackle right now! (i don't even know what crackle is!!)

― velko, Thursday, June 18, 2009 10:44 PM (2 years ago)

That movie knocked the wind out of me.

hi buzza

;)

http://i.imgur.com/ipCFI.jpg

finally got around to seeing Brewster McCloud. What a strange entry in his ouevre...? I can't think of another film of his (that I've seen, yes I know there were a lot) that was quite so heavy-handed with the metaphors and allegories, or one that eschewed realism so wholeheartedly. Not that it was bad, it was just sort of unexpected. The final sequence with the flying contraption and then the circus is pretty great.

I have a copy of the tie-in book to Brewster, which contains (in addition to a shooting diary) both a transcript of the film and the original (and very different) screenplay. Basically Altman swapped out one set of metaphors and allegories for another collection which interested him more.

Fun Fact: The circus credits was added during shooting, and the costumes were genuine Barnum and Bailey outfits. The company had a summer residency performing in the AstroHall at the time (You can see a big top painted on its roof in the first shot of the AstroDome grounds).

Brewster's original screenplay was way darker comedy about a serial killer/sex addict who wanted to fly iirc?

Like his pursuit of flight was the ultimate extension of sociopathic narcissism, I mean?

Yeah, something like that. OTTOMH (don't have the book with me), here's some other differences:

• Set in the TWA building in New York. Altman changed it because he had long wanted to shoot at the AstroDome.
• Suzanne (Shelly Duvall's character) was a society chick who'd grown up with Brewster (who also came from money). I think his parents died in a planecrash.
• Brewster and Sally Kellerman's character had an actual sexual relationship. Altman glossed over this in the film.
• No detective subplot.

Ohhhhhh, how I want that book.

I would love to see the original screenplays for all of Altman's films, if only to get a sense of how much he deviated from the original source (which, as is my understanding, he did to various degrees with pretty much every film he made).

what was the deal with Kellerman's character...? is she his mom, or some figment of his imagination? symbolic muse?

I think the first time I saw an Altman film was Short Cuts, which I saw with a bunch of friends in Athens, GA. We Lol'd for most of the movie, it's hilarious in some weird way.

his educational film for high school football players discovered!

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2012/03/lost_robert_altman_movie_disco.php

lost_robert_altman_movie_disco.php

Momentary sense of elation.

Ha, awesome. I've been vaguely interested in seeing some of his early journeyman work.

On a similar note, has anyone seen his work on Combat!? I'm curious to know whether there's anything particularly Altmanesque about it or whether it was just perfunctory work-for-hire (as I'm sure most of his industrial films are, honestly).

lost_robert_altman_movie_disco.php

Momentary sense of elation.

ha! for real

prefer Leonard Cohen or Ronee Blakely

what was the deal with Kellerman's character...? is she his mom, or some figment of his imagination? symbolic muse?

I think she's supposed to be a guardian angel of some sort. I don't recall them really getting down to who she really was supposed to be, even in the original script.

According to the shooting diary, Kellerman had to miss a day because of a black eye she got during an altercation with a cab driver after the cast attended a concert by The Who.

it seems clear that she's supposed to be some sort of mythical/nonreal/angelic character (hence the wing scars) but yeah I wasn't sure... kinda unusual for Altman to have this kind of character ime

Deric, the Onion AV Club took a look at an Altman episode of Combat! here, and had high praise for it:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/combat-survival,40361/

Anyone else ever seen Nightmare in Chicago? I was lucky enough to catch it on late, late-night TV about 20 years ago--quite good.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058406/

there's a great picture in Altman On Altman of him directing that one while wearing a fez.

Brewster McCloud is gonna place v high on my comedy ballot:

(Police officers passing a joint around, asking each other if its marijuana)
Cop 1: I guess there's only one way to find out...
Cop 2: (pulls out lighter)
Cop 1: Take it to the lab and have them analyze it.
Cop 2: ...oh!

i would have sworn that c4lum r0bert w4ddell started this thread a decade ago.

Brewster McCloud is gonna place v high on my comedy ballot:

all the stuff with the out-of-town hardass detective was lol

Yes!

Almost everything you can learn about the making of The Player (and the cameo roles) from DVD:

http://eddieonfilm.blogspot.com/2011/04/secrets-of-player.html

That's great. The commentaries on Altman DVDs are among the few that I always made a point of listening to.

Yep – a total pleasure. This, 3 Women, and Thieves Like Us are the best commentaries.

I've got a bunch at home, but I've never taken the time to listen to any of them. Will make the effort.

I still remember this great exchange from Altman's Playboy interview the year after Nashville came out (i.e., when his every pronouncement was subject to deep analysis). This is a rough paraphrase.

Altman: Before that, I tatooed dogs for a living.
Playboy: Where did you that?
Altman: On the inside of the back left leg.
Playboy: Fascinating, but we meant where geographically...

I'd love to read that. Any links?

Bought and watched Secret Honor last week: first time I saw it since it played at the London Film Festival in 1984(?), and Altman did a Q&A after it.

Philip Baker Hall is great as Nixon, who he plays as a cross between Joe E. Ross and Muttley (with glints of Mussolini). "Fuck em! Fuck em! Fuck em!" He's not like Nixon especially -- not really the point -- but he's hypnotically watchable and entertaining, given that it's just a monologue.

The conspiracy theory that actually generates the secret honor concept seems a bit thin and jaded now though: far too much has changed.

Wish I remembered a single thing Altman had said at the Q&A.

Adam: it's a great interview that I've tried to find myself online, without any success. I remember that the two projects he was hyping were Buffalo Bill, and an adaptation of Breakfast of Champions that was supposed to star Ruth Gordon (as the world's richest man? long time since I read the novel). It was the absolute pinnacle of his celebrity, just before his career started to unravel.

Found it! Sort of--a Google-abridged version of the Playboy interview (12 pages deleted). The part about tattooing dogs isn't there, nor another part I remember, where he compliments Scorsese and Spielberg while badmouthing some then-popular film as emblematic of everything he hates. I think it may have been Richard Brooks' Bite the Bullet.

Ahhh, I knew I'd read that interview somewhere. In Robert Altman: Interviews, naturally. I've probably read easily half a dozen books about Altman, and they were all good value. That most recent "oral history" biography is great.

Read this a few years ago and liked it:

http://www2.citypaper.com/sb/49298/1950.jpg

Also this, from '78, which I'm guessing was the first book on Altman:

http://ia700808.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/1/items/olcovers664/olcovers664-L.zip&file=6640755-L.jpg

<i>holy shit california split is amazing!!!!!!!!!</i>

It is! I saw it for the first time late last night on tv.

Can you name all seven dwarfs?

"...like a gatling gun..."

http://www.criterion.com/films/28427-nashville

When I ask for Pig, I want Pig. Now you get me Pig, and then we'll be ready to record this here tune

(You get your hair cut--you don't belong here in Nashville.)

"Frog!? He plays like a frog!"

It would have been so great if Criterion had been able to unearth (if it even exists at this point--if it ever existed, maybe) the 10- or however-many-hour version that Altman was supposed to unveil on network TV in the late '70s. I remember him talking about it in a Playboy interview right after Buffalo Bill.

He later backtracked about that version, saying it really would have been 4 hours with some new footage, but most of the new runtime's girth would have come from repeated scenes in a recap sequence as it would have been cut into two pieces for broadcast.

Ah--he made it sound a lot better in the original interview, which I may be embellishing myself; he might have said a six-hour network version, I can't remember (and can't find it online). I guess I'll never see the scene where a young Haven Hamilton goes back to Italy to avenge his father's death.

You have issues.

From A 2000 interview w/the av club:

"O: The new DVD version, I noticed, didn't have any deleted scenes. There's said to be hours of footage from Nashville that weren't included. Did you want any of that to see the light?
RA: There weren't any deleted scenes. Almost everything we shot is in that film.
O: Just in shorter versions?
RA: No, that whole thing that has been said for 25 years—that we cut another two or three hours of film, that we could have cut another version—just isn't true. That all stemmed from when we went to network television, because the film was so long at that time. I said we could add footage and put it on two different nights: in other words, make two two-hour films out of it. Because if you're not seeing it all in one sitting, and it's going to be separated by a week, you can afford to do a little reprise and repeat some stuff a little bit.
O: But that never happened?
RA: No, they chose not to do that. Nashville... There's nothing I would do to change it. I'd probably cut it a little bit, but that isn't what it is. Most of the time trimmed is music.

Found the Playboy interview reprinted in a book available on Google Books. Memory faulty--it was E.L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel that he was going to direct, with plans to turn it into two 150-minute films, which would then be expanded to 10 hours of television. He talks about Nashville airing on TV too, in terms similar to what you've quoted above:

"(Nashville's) already done and reedited as two two-hour television programs, which will probably air on two Sunday nights to start the 1977 fall television season...there are really good sequences from Nashville, for example, that weren't in the movie because you cannot ask people to sit that long in a theater. Some movie buffs will gladly sit for five hours, but people generally won't do it. On television, that's not offensive."

Olive Films just announced that they've got a DVD/Blu of Come Back To The Five... on tap for 2014.

Nice! Been meaning to see for some 20 years and have never managed to find a copy.

A friend tells me that the Lightbox's spring schedule includes an Altman series. I assume it's in conjunction with Ron Mann's upcoming documentary, so I'm guessing nowhere near complete. Excited anyway--unless I've forgotten, I don't think they've ever done an Altman series of any kind since I started going in the early/mid-'90s

http://fuckyeahrobertaltman.tumblr.com

mixed views on this new doc

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-ron-manns-altman

Starting the big Altman series here with MASH tonight, which I haven't seen for at least 20 years. I missed the documentary because I assumed it was starting a short run, and it was actually only playing one night (Kathryn Altman was there). I'm sure it'll get some limited release here soon, though, being Mann.

Got to hear Vilmos Zsigmond introduce McCabe tonight, with a Q&A afterwards. He signed some autographs afterwards in the lobby. I brought DVDs of McCabe and The Sugarland Express. No problem with Sugarland, but the McCabe I have has a dark, burnished cover that needed something shiny. I'd brought a silver Sharpie I bought earlier at a dollar store, but it didn't work. (Important to remember: sometimes dollar-store stuff doesn't work.) I handed him back the blue Sharpie, and suggested he sign over Julie Christie's face, the one place it would show up. I sensed he thought that wouldn't be polite, so he opened up the case and signed inside. Such a gentleman. As he signed, I managed to gush that I show the last shot of McCabe to my students every year when we look at film grammar, and that Sugarland had one of my favourite images ever.

http://cinemasights.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/sugarland-mirror.png

(Just regular favourite, not pointlessly emphatic favourite.)

Never had much interest in seeing Images, and it turned out to be pretty much what I expected: a ponderous attempt to make something like Repulsion, completely wrong for Altman. (Not a fan of Three Women, either.) I've been waiting forever to see Puzzle of a Downfall Child, even though I bet that's in the same general vicinity.

yeah, altman's attempts to make out-and-out art movies don't usually turn out too well (see also: 3 women). puzzle is very much in the same bag; it wears its european influences a little too obviously.

i lose interest in altman's movies somewhere in the middle of "nashville" (which is 1/2 of a great movie, 1/2 of a crappy one). i recognize that there's decent stuff to be found after that point, but i can't help but think that his 71–74 run makes the later stuff redundant.

woody allen has the same problem; his capital-A Art movies are unbearable.

3 Women is amazing! I like the way that it tries to reconcile Altman's Californian new age stonerdom w/ Bergman's European asceticism - produces a very unique hybrid, a kind of split artistic consciousness that mirrors/doubles the way that identity is divided up in the film. The opening scene at the spa is as good as anything in Altman's filmography.

Ward otm.

3 Women gets spacy only in the rippling-shadows-in-the-pool/placenta stuff in the last ten minutes.

Whenever that "completely disgusting foods our parents ate" gets revived I think of Shelly Duvall and her clipped-out recipes from McCall's or Good Housekeeping.

And Nashville is 1/2 a crappy movie and 7/2 a masterpiece. I get not being into Altman, but if you have time for California Split and The Long Goodbye, you have time for Nashville.

(Well, maybe not literally. Nashville's about a half hour longer than either.)

i lose interest in altman's movies somewhere in the middle of "nashville"

lost interest in the middle of this post

Altman was a drunk as well as a stoner btw

I actually just ordered a replacement copy of Images earlier this week once I realized my original is lost to the wind (still deciding whether it's worth replacing my lost copy of Quintet...). It's been a number of years since I saw it, but I enjoy it on the same level as 3 Women, and might prefer it just slightly? It has a very proto-Lynchian feel to it, similar to The Tenant in its subjective presentation of a mind that may or may not be unraveling. It's gorgeous to look at, if nothing else.

The print they had last night was okay, but I'm sure it would look better digitally restored. When Vilmos Zsigmond was there for McCabe last week, the print was better--Zsigmond clearly wasn't a fan of anything digital, and I thought they might have been deferring to him by showing original prints. (Can't remember the Lightbox's policy on that. When I saw Dog Day Afternoon the other night at a different theatre, it was clearly a Blu-Ray.)

I remember the very fakey falling snow at the climax of McCabe

who are these purported Altman fans that don't like 3 Women wtf

Quintet otoh is terrible

To be fair, I think am was pointing out that he is *not* an Altman fan.

Even if you do love 3 Women, surely you can see how someone could love McCabe, The Long Goodbye, California Split, and Nashville, but be left cold by 3 Women (especially the latter three). They're hardly of a piece. Kael didn't care for 3 Women. She seemed to like Altman sometimes.

yr right, 3 Women is not totally brotastic like the others

The middle two, okay, but McCabe? Nashville? The most finely drawn characters in those are female. That's not really what I meant, though...style, mood, something along those lines.

I can completely understand why a fan of those other films wouldn't be so into 3 Women. It's quite a different thing.

It's difficult for me to imagine an Altman fan watching the first two thirds of 3 Women and not conclude it's one of his funniest and eeriest films. It should've been called 2 Women but still.

yr right, 3 Women is not totally brotastic like the others

I'd play this card pretty carefully. Altman has throngs of strong female characters. (Just not in California Split.)

The middle two, okay, but McCabe? Nashville? The most finely drawn characters in those are female.

yeah I was kinda joking but I think there is something to 3 Women's gender-focus producing a totally different feeling movie. There are well-done female characters in McCabe and Nashville but there are significant chunks of those films that center on Altman's sort of band-of-bros male camraderie motifs that appear from M.A.S.H. onwards and 3 Women has none of that. 3 Women has a completely different focus. Agree w Alfred about it being both really funny and strangely eerie.

a lot of his guys can't find other bros though: Marlowe and McCabe can't get along with other guys or are ignored. They get on best with women.

women, it should be clear, whose primary interest in them ain't sexual

I felt more positively towards 3 Women than Images--and maybe I should go see it again as part of this Altman series; I watched it on DVD a couple of years ago--but it still felt like that self-consciously artier side of Altman (throw in A Cold Day at the Park; haven't seen Quintet) where, even though he was probably working out stuff that he made better use of in other films, I don't think he's anywhere near his best.

band-of-bros male camraderie motifs

Nashville's political-backers strip show scene sort of helps set it apart from the earlier ones, I'd say.

yeah I do agree that 3 Women is second tier.

Actually, Nina van Pallandt's character in The Long Goodbye is well drawn. The neighboring group of hippychick space cadets, less so.

a lot of his guys can't find other bros though: Marlowe and McCabe can't get along with other guys or are ignored.

agree about both of these protagonists - even so the central relationship in Long Goodbye is Marlowe feeling betrayed by his bro (so much so that he ends up killing him). McCabe is always the outsider throughout the movie, iirc there is still plenty of evidence of this larger male community that he's excluded from. (altho I haven't watched McCabe in years tbf)

anyway my half-serious point was that in comparison to those other films 3 Women is the one that stands out as not being at all concerned with the relationships of men to other men.

3 Women is p great until that last 10 mins

xp Wonder what your thoughts are on Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean?

my thoughts are that the material isn't all that bad and Karen Black is good but as a film it's tiresome. That period where he was staging everything like a play was just ugh

I think the strategy pays off more or less in Secret Honor, but yeah the period after Popeye and before The Player is def filled with more valleys than peaks. (Never have managed to get thru Tanner '88 either, for that matter.)

as Nixon nut I feel like I should see Secret Honor but I've been avoiding it cuz of when it was made

I love Tanner '88. Definitely the peak of that era, and among my favorite Altman projects more generally.

Secret Honor is decent with the exception of some of Hall's excessive tics.

how is his jowl-waggling

I look for quality jowl-waggling in a Nixon performance

It's as if he's motorboating a stripper.

With a real motorboat.

I assume both were gifts from Bebe Robozo

They came with the pizza.

i am an altman fan, or rather i'm a big fan of a few of the movies he made in the 1970s. i actually don't necessarily think there's as much going on there as some, but he's so stylistically imaginative (for a time) that i don't much care. i guess i'm most fond of the films where he sought very self-consciously to "process" a number of established genres: mccabe, long goodbye, thieves like us. i also like a lot of brewster mccloud, though the forced whimsy can grate at times.

and i enjoy some of the later ones, but they're nothing special to me.

i dunno the mix in 3 women doesn't feel as heady to me as it does to some of you. it feels overheated to me, like it adopted some of the worst tendencies of bergman of the time. i don't like bergman btw.

i don't like the bombastic/thematically ambitious aspects of nashville, nor the hokey ending. the ending is the biggest concern for me, it's like altman is making his big masterpiece/statement move and it just emphasizes how pat his observations are.

there's a little of that the end of long goodbye, too.

bombastic
thematically ambitious
overheated

OK, you just described basically what I love about movies there.

if that's your definition of a great movie, then mephisto should be your favorite movie.

i guess it's not really ambitious as much as portentous

<--referring to nashville

Nashville is politically quite prescient, re the imminent Jimmy Carter/Ronald Reagan/Ross Perot 'populist outsider' bullshit.

i will never accept that film as any kind of masterpiece nor some kind of powerful/important/meaningful statement about America; i'm instantly wary of anyone who would assert otherwise (which is... most film critics, maybe?)

Nashville is politically quite prescient, re the imminent Jimmy Carter/Ronald Reagan/Ross Perot 'populist outsider' bullshit.

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, August 20, 2014 3:14 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

huh? that's a strain of american politics since forever.

xp Mark me down, then. I've already returned the favor.

though honestly why am i arguing with you? i forget who i'm arguing with sometimes.

It's not my favorite Altman; I fast forward through sequences.

xxpost

although it's still accurate

Nashville is politically quite prescient, re the imminent Jimmy Carter/Ronald Reagan/Ross Perot 'populist outsider' bullshit.

uh Morbs remember Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan?

xpost what am said

though honestly why am i arguing with you? i forget who i'm arguing with sometimes.

Yourself, mostly.

fast-fwding is accurate; some of it is really great, and i get a lump in my throat... then it cuts to something pretty dumb. but my biggest problem w/ it is the ending and how that retroactively kind of pollutes the whole thing

The big statement about America is there if you want it, or need it; the film is so great in a million other ways, I don't think you do.

think he meant Morbs, Eric

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism_in_American_Life

..published 1963, deals with populist strain of american sociopolitical discourse

if anything nashville's observations are cliched and tired (and were recognized as such at the time by many) rather than prescient

if you can watch the film and forget about the ending/overarching themes then that's good, you will enjoy it more than i do!

i don't mean to beat up on it, i guess it's ok, there are worse films for sure.

that's a strain of american politics since forever.

yeah, no fucking kidding. it was being re-bottled.

altman lowers the target so far as to make the satire too easy i think

that's my biggest problem with him in general, maybe

i'll take a stab at the sublime overarching themes of Die Hard

the sublime overaching strawmanning

I fast forward through sequences

at last an insight into "rescreenings"

i'll take a stab at the sublime overarching themes of Die Hard

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, August 20, 2014 3:20 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

morbs, i know you think you're the smartest man in the universe, but you're a dolt. you'll never believe this because anosognosia etc.

what you just wrote actually makes my point for me.

it'll do wonders for your temper!

xpost

i mean, if Big Themes and grand gestures were what made great art, it'd be the easiest thing in the world to make

and stanley kramer would be the greatest director ever

or maybe volker schlondorff

you'll never believe this because anosognosia etc

anosametoyou

well, sure

but you're the one you can't even imagine someone preferring an action film to a Canonical New Hollywood Classic

whose superiority seems self-evident to you because...

actually, who gives a shit.

"action film" is a marketing tem. I prefer Wages of Fear to Sorcerer.

DISPROVEN, IPSO FACTOID

i agree about wages of fear!

think he meant Morbs, Eric

Oh probably, and I bow to the master when it comes to goading.

suggesting that a cinema of big ideas and grand gestures automatically leads to stanley kramer is pretty facile, amateurist

that's not what i said

i was saying that if that was _all_ it took to make a good movie, stanley kramer would be the best director ever

fortunately there are other things in movies worth getting excited about

this is in response to morbs, who trolled with the idea that die hard didn't have "sublime" themes therefore was patently worthless

he brings out the worst in me, though, so i apologize for being catty on this thread

i assume it's a "he"

i was saying that if that was _all_ it took to make a good movie, stanley kramer would be the best director ever

fortunately there are other things in movies worth getting excited about

I think that's the exact point I'm making about Nashville--whether or not you believe it has anything to say, there's 150 minutes of other stuff worth getting excited about.

maybe 75 minutes :)

srsly though
i recognize that you're arguing that, and i agree w/ you to a point.

i wasn't saying that nashville was worthless, i was just responding to morbius's comment which suggested that if a film didn't have explicit (or implicit!) grand themes that it was self-evidently worthless

i'm not even sure he would argue that as a general point but that's what his snarky comment suggested

which just means i should ignore morbs, a good lesson for us all

If that's how much good stuff you get, then sure, you're not going to care for it. Don't agree, but that's fine. But I wouldn't place too much emphasis on the ending in trying to explain why you don't think much of the film.

One of the reasons I respond to Nashville is because its grand themes are also woven into the fabric of something raucus, irreverent and lively. The exact opposite of Kramer.

"Your miserable life is not worth the reversal of an amateurist decision." xxp

altman is several leagues beyond kramer as a director, but there's a didactic streak in altman that isn't completely un-kramer-esque, even if it comes out as sarcasm rather than high-mindedness

i mean ultimately nashville strikes me as pretty moralistic

moralistic, moralizing, i forget which word is more appropriate

something raucus, irreverent and lively

That's it exactly. And why I always have a hard time defending the film when people focus on the music or the alleged self-importance--I love most of the music, do think it has stuff to say (or at the very least reflects its moment in fascinating ways), but it's what Eric says that explains why I've watched it a zillion times, and you're either in sync with that or not. And if you're not, I can relate in terms of other films. I was as out of sync with Playtime as humanly possible.

morbsidizing

I was as out of sync with Playtime as humanly possible

:(

that said, i can totally understand tati as an acquired taste.

the weird thing about altman's "liveliness," and i don't mean this as a putdown, is that it feels held under glass. like he's set in motion something quasi-spontaneous but filmed it at a remove, in an almost anthropological way (at times). this is less true of mccabe & mrs miller which feels much more subjective to me.

xpost

i apologise for misrepresenting yr argument, amateurist, but i do find that yr often expressed hostility to the 'serious' (or the aspirationally serious) sometimes leads you to a very cramped, formally conservative ideal of what cinema can and should be. and really, you don't like bergman?

sometimes "self-important" is used as a synonym for "ambitious," it seems to me

you could say the same of tati, in fact, though i think his mise en scene is much more obviously and painstakingly "orchestrated"

xpost

ward, i wonder if that's just b/c of the positions i take in opposition to morbs and other folks here. certainly there are a lot of very intellectual forbidding films i admire, from eisenstein to straub/huillet. i just don't think seriousness in itself is necessarily a value.

i guess as a personal preference i like films that wear their ambitions lightly, but that's not always the case, viz. ivan the terrible / thin red line / etc.

I subscribe to the Raymond Durgnant theory. Movies that aim extremely high or movies that aim even more extremely low.

(Nashville probably doesn't exactly qualify on either count, tho it's trying for both.)

Durgnat

wait, what's his theory? i like durgnat a lot but i don't recall this.

Oops, I think I conflated something I once read Durgnat say about cinephiles (that they're constantly disappointed by cinema, or something similar to that) and a taxonomy by Adrian Martin, who wrote this in what still seems like a definitive article about canon-building:

Critics who are truly cinephiles, I believe, often champion extremes. They go for the highest and the lowest. They champion the most difficult, severe, rigorous, minimalist, experimental films; and, equally, they also champion the often despised, maligned and overlooked products of popular culture - like vulgar teenage comedies, gross horror, trashy exploitation, ultra-violent action, even pornography. At both extremes, cinephile critics look for excess and intensity. A piece of their aesthetic credo is summed up in the words of critic Paul Willemen, who once proposed "frenzy, madness, neurosis, extravaganza, monstrosity, etc" as "positive values" in a work of art. (2) What such critics usually do not like, on principle, is a certain middle-of-the-road, middlebrow cinema - or, more exactly, a middle-of-the-road taste in cinema, safe and predictable, between those two extremes of the highest and lowest.

The other Durgnat theory I subscribe to is, of course, that Hawks Isn't Good Enough.

everything but the blood hounds snappin' at your rear

Critics who are truly cinephiles

blech

i mean, good on adrian martin if that's his favored brand of criticism (and it's certainly an accurate description of a common-enough critical stance), but when he puts it like that--making it a litmus test for "true" cinephilia--he just sounds like a bully.

and jeez altman doesn't fit into either of those extremes; by martin's standards he'd be irredeemably middlebrow, stuck between straub and huillet and "massacre at central high."

Playtime feels like an excellent example of a film with a fairly banal 'big idea' - modern life is rubbish - that's transformed into something beautiful and profound by the originality of its mise en scene. The same is true of lots of Antonioni, imho.

the most obvious implicit meaning of playtime is /almost/ banal. it's not just that "modern architecture is dehumanizing and sterile," it's also that "human beings have the power to transcend the sterility of the modern built environment." but yeah it's not those ideas but rather the exhaustive/exhausting density of the mise en scene and the way the film teaches you how to watch it that makes playtime something unique and (to me anyway) joyous to experience.

re. martin's formula... one thing i like about dave kehr is that at one moment you think he's like one of martin's critics, favoring "body genre" films on the one hand, and poststructuralist art films on the other. but then you remember that he's also robert zemeckis's biggest fan. i'm wary of any formula for what makes the "best critics" (or the "best films" for that matter) but surely containing multitudes is a good bet...

i have to say that i like antonioni less and less as his films seem to get more and more portentous. i've always found "red desert" and "blow up" oppressive in their obvious desire to evoke matters of great significance while remaining coyly uncommunicative. and i think that just as he starts signalling his ambitions more obviously, antonioni's formal brilliance begins to abandon him (though not completely until after "the passenger"). it's not unidirectional though, of all his films i think i like the attenuated melodrama of "story of a love affair" and "l'avventura" the most.

i should add that i wouldn't be too quick though to posit playtime as "solely" a masterpiece of form since what tati is doing (and what a lot of terrific artists do) has some interesting implications for human perception/cognition. malcolm turvey is writing a book about this.

btw that should be invoke, not evoke

sorry for overposting. :(

Are you ever not in policing mode?

"policing mode"? what does that mean?

I think California Split is now my second-favourite Altman film--it has eclipsed McCabe and The Long Goodbye. There are a couple of parts that still bother me. Gould and Segal singing drunkenly as they leave the bar--that's a little too much of that word Οὖτις used above. The Bert Remsen shakedown is funny...but kind of mean, too easy, and obviously dated. And no, it's not a feminist landmark.

There's just so much amazing by-play, though. (My favourite line reading might be the way Gould says "They're playing pretty well, aren't they?" when Segal points out the Suns have won five in a row.) And if you like poker films, I can't think of anything except Roundersthat comes close.

I bet C. Grissom can answer this: when Segal shows up unannounced and Gwen Welles says she's "just reading my book," what's the book?

With Prentiss and Welles, especially Welles, I will say that--conceding that hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold was a tired cliche even 40 years ago--they have their moments. Welles' slow goodbye wave to Segal as she's up trimming the tree is nicely bittersweet.

i've heard that the version of california split (which i adore, forgot to mention it above) on DVD has some music cues changed from the original release b/c of rights issues. is that true?

re: California Split DVD edits (from dvdbeaver):

NOTE (as sent to us in email): Unfortunately, music rights problems have obliged Columbia to remove almost three minutes of footage and make several soundtrack alterations. Their end product is perhaps the most extreme home viewing travesty since those notorious early video transfers of The President's Analyst. The cut/rescored scenes are as follows:

1- 11m 42s. A 32-second shot has been cut during Bill and Charlie's initial conversation. This showed Bill scat singing while Charlie informed him that "I love to play poker with those redneck fish. Y'now, who think they're Nick the Greek. Love to get 'em steamed. Easy to beat. Suckers".

2- 31m 50s. A scene showing Bill and Charlie at the racetrack ends as Charlie says "Let's go see a man about a horse". This scene originally continued for an additional 8 seconds as the men walked off singing together.

3- 35m 30s. After Barbara (Ann Prentis) opens the door of her house, Bill and Charlie enter. Charlie then turns to a man standing in the doorway, gives him a coin, and says "Here you are, Mr Tenor". This will make no sense to anyone who has not seen the original version, which contained an additional 24 seconds of footage showing Barbara opening the door and finding 'Mr Tenor' singing 'Happy Birthday To You'. Bill and Charlie then appeared and joined him in the song (while Barbara insisted "It's not my birthday").

4- 52m 32s. As Bill enters the strip club where a poker game is taking place, we see a basketball-themed cartoon playing on a television. In the original version, we also heard the song ('Basketball Joe') that accompanied this cartoon. (Incidentally, this animated clip can also be seen - and heard - in Hal Ashby's Being There.)

5- 77m 20s to 79m 16s. The two Phyllis Shotwell songs - 'Goin' to Kansas City' and 'Me and My Shadow' - heard during Bill and Charlie's journey to Reno have been replaced with an instrumental piece. 'Me and My Shadow' provided one of the film's most striking moments. As Shotwell arrived at the line "We never knock, 'cause there's nobody there", Charlie gestured at a passing car and shouted "there ain't nobody there". Although this scene is visually unchanged on the DVD, Charlie's line has been removed from the soundtrack (at 79m 2s). Incredibly, Joseph Walsh can be heard describing this moment (which he refers to as "a miracle") on the commentary track!

6- 86m 46s to 88m 4s. As Charlie walks away from the poker table, the sound of Phyllis Shotwell singing 'You're Nobody 'til Somebody Loves You' has been replaced with Shotwell's rendition of 'The Lonesome Road' - a reprise of the song we'd already heard her singing a mere 85 seconds ago!

7- 90m 12s to 90m 53s. A shot of Bill playing poker no longer includes that Shotwell song heard dimly in the original.

8- 92m 9s. After Charlie leaves Bill at the blackjack table, a 1m 40s scene has been cut. This showed Phyllis Shotwell behind a piano singing 'Georgia On My Mind'. While Charlie struck up a conversation with a fellow gambler sitting near Shotwell's piano, Bill continued playing blackjack, and we saw that the woman dealing him cards was wearing a badge revealing her name to be Barbara (making her the last of this film's many Barbaras). Columbia's editing has Charlie return to the blackjack table only a few seconds after he left.
****
Here's what Altman said about the cuts (from an interview in StopSmiling magazine):

"And a lot of them weren't (released) because of music clearances, or certain copyright problems. We had to make adjustments. The cost of the music track on California Split was so high that Columbia just couldn't put it into video or DVD. That kept it out of circulation for years. Finally, Elliot Gould went in to find out why they weren't releasing it. When they told him it was because of music, he said "Isn't there something we can do about that?" So I made some cuts and took a couple of songs out. We got it into what they considered a reasonable budget. The picture wasn't hurt by it. And that's out now. It doesn't make any difference, the quality of these things. It's as good as anyone sees them..."

To be honest, IMO the cuts don't change the move that much. In fact, what most bothered me was the absence of "Basketball Jones".

As for Welles' book, I'm sad to say I'd have to check. On a related note, Prentiss always looking for her TV Guide was a nicely observed bit of relatively benign crazy person behavior.

That's a lot--I'll have to take a look at my DVD. All of it was there last night; meant to mention "Basketball Jones." Maybe more copyright issues, but Prentiss always refers to it as "the Guide." Jack Riley from Bob Newhart has a great line: "Any chance you could go back there?"

The book is Justine.

First time for Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Being a play, it's got the two obvious obstacles: visual staginess (which directors sometimes call attention to even more when they try to overcome it), and plot-revelations mechanically grinding away. But I liked it more as it went along, and really liked some of the performances. Best line--I'm sure many single the line out--is the best description of Facebook I've ever come across: "I'm happy, Goddammit!"

I love Tanner '88. Definitely the peak of that era, and among my favorite Altman projects more generally.

― The Ape In The Outhouse (Old Lunch)

As I've been going to all these Altmans at the Lightbox, I rewatched Tanner '88 at home. I liked it a whole lot five years ago, not as much this time. One problem, I think, is that the first viewing was on my old small TV, so the look of it didn't matter too much. Watching the Criterion on a big-screen TV, it really felt like what it is: a TV show, with the visual flatness of shows 25 years ago. Some of the photography wasn't very flattering--Veronica Cartwright got the worst of it.

One or two of the reporters seemed to disappear at some point, and certain subplots were elided or dropped. With the politics, I sometimes wasn't sure what was satirical and what wasn't (e.g., Bruce Babbitt).

It held my interest all the way, and there were great moments throughout. Pamela Reed's really good; Michael Murphy plays Michael Murphy, but that works out fine. I would move it down to Altman's second tier of films.

Going to try to force myself to watch Buffalo Bill, Quintet, and A Perfect Couple in the next couple of weeks, the last '70s films I haven't seen. I've got the first on VHS, the other two on DVD. At some point, I started and gave up on Quintet and A Perfect Couple within 15 minutes.

Geez, you can actually watch Health online (for now, anyway--was posted June 5).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnIuGroZpuc

Seems to be impossible to see otherwise.

http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/where-on-the-shelf-ishealth

From the wiki page on Health:

On June 12, 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan screened the film at Camp David during stormy weather. In his diaries that day, he called it "the world's worst movie".[33]

He disliked the pot smoking scene in 9 to 5 too -- said it would've been funnier if they'd been drunk instead.

(xpost) I can imagine Altman liking that quote so much he'd want it on his headstone.

obv RR never watched OC and Stiggs

or any of his own movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af0Yei2sAbE

reagan was in some pretty decent movies! he's by no means the best thing about them, though.

Short Cuts was as strong as ever for me; I'd probably rank it third along with McCabe. There are so many moments and scenes that are on the short-list of Altman's greatest. My favourite serious one is where Lyle Lovett softens when he learns of the boy's death. Best comedic, probably Buck Henry and Lili Taylor picking up their photos.

Kael and Marcus have both written about what they see as the film's weakest character: Lemmon for Kael, Annie Ross for Marcus. I don't mind Lemon. He's too Lemony, I agree, especially as he recounts his long story, but the character's credible. (I seem to remember that Kael singles out his exit as especially annoying--I think that's his best moment.)

More inclined to agree about Annie Ross. Her songs are shrill, and the scene of her on the floor drinking after her daughter's suicide is the film's worst, I think.

The rest of the performances are all uniformly good-to-great.

Only those who have watched an edit of the film that completely deletes Andie MacDowell get to pick anyone other cast member as the weakest link.

No...she plays that character perfectly.

So does Annie Ross iirc.

Knew next to nothing about the radio show going into A Prairie Home Companion, other than I knew what Garrison Keillor looked and sounded like. Anyway, I guess it was an honorable film for Altman to go out on, and I liked bits of it here and there, but I was on the outside looking in for the duration. Didn't like the Kevin Kline framing device; Virginia Madsen worked a little better for me, especially the resonance of the final shot when viewed in context. Harrelson and Reilly are pretty entertaining, and Lindsay Lohan, who I only know as a cultural joke, is quite good.

There wouldn't be any tragedy to Lohan's story if she weren't a good, sometimes even great actress.

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/08/robin-williams-popeye

Kino has Blurays of The Long Goodbye & Thieves Like Us out later this year

NYC MoMA to show everything

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1525

Wow--better than what we got here, which amounted to a dozen films. Make sure to see Nightmare in Chicago, which I was able to catch on TV once.

ive never seen Countdown, Quintet, A Perfect Couple... and prob go to a few more I've only seen once, I guess.

The Altman documentary is a conventional film-by-film overview, but I still recommend seeing it. Lots of interview voice-over with Altman; the narration's about half him and half his wife. The linking bit of having various Altman actors define "Altmanesque" didn't work so well for me. The filmography seemed complete, except for the omission of The James Dean Story and Nightmare in Chicago. Not sure where Mann got the audio of Kael reading her McCabe & Mrs. Miller review (I guess there's an audio book of one of her collections?). Sad at the end, of course.

MoMA NYC has announced its Altman retro offerings for December, and the curios are curious. Jukebox videos! That "Combat" episode! Fabian as a psycho killer! A 1956 industrial popcorn musical! Is any of the TV stuff on discs as supplements?

TELEVISION PROGRAM 2
“A Lion Walks Among Us” (from Bus Stop)
1961. Directed by Robert Altman. Teleplay by Ellis Kadison, from the novel The Judgment, by Tom Wicker. With Fabian, Diane Foster, Richard Anderson, Philip Abbott. The director’s presentation of pop star Fabian as a psychopathic murderer was so provocative in its day that it led to a Congressional Investigation of violence in broadcast television. 60 min.
“Together” (from Alfred Hitchcock Presents)
1958. Directed by Robert Altman. Teleplay by Robert C. Dennis. With Joseph Cotton, Christine White, Sam Buffington. This melodrama about a murderer trapped with his victim might be viewed as a rehearsal for the self-imposed containment of a President confronting his misdemeanors in Altman’s Secret Honor. 30 min.

Corn’s-A-Poppin’
1956. Directed by Robert Woodburn. Screenplay by Woodburn, Altman. Altman cowrote this independent musical comedy, directed and performed by colleagues from the Calvin Company in his hometown of Kansas City. This low-budget affair, about a popcorn executive, the ensemble cast of the show he sponsors, and a conniving competitor, is replete with the social satire and dramatic deadpan that would become Altman’s trademark. Restored by the Northwest Chicago Film Society, with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation. 58 min.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1525

Oh, fantastic. I just recently got the first five seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Didn't realize I had an Altman episode to look forward to.

well, don't expect overlapping dialogue.

^^That's one of the wonders of Secret Honor--Altman manages to Baker-Hall to overlap with himself.

Boo to the omission of Jazz '34, Kansas City, and Pret-a-Porter.

Can someone tell me about HealtH, Countdown, Corn's-a-Poppin', Buffalo Bill and the Indians, Quintet, That Cold Day in the Park, A Perfect Couple, and/or Fool for Love?

I feel like I've seen Buffalo Bill, but can't remember

corn's a poppin' looks unreal btw

Quintet is terrible, like a bad episode of battlestar galactica

Is that the sci-fi one with Paul Newman? If so, yeah, didn't even finish it.

Buffalo Bill is maybe his funniest film, sort of presents William Cody as the vainglorious Johnny Carson/Larry Sanders/opera diva of his milieu; Newman v wacky.

HealtH I remember being a watchable minor work; def not surprised it was beyond President Reagan's grasp.

Fool for Love I thought was meh at the time, dunno if it was botched as I'd never seen the Shepard play.

Boo to the omission of Jazz '34, Kansas City, and Pret-a-Porter.

The series continues through the first half of January, sched not yet posted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzejNljcss0

A Perfect Couple is this weird hybrid Romantic Comedy/Concert Film/Musical. You can get a good sense of it by looking at the trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doxVbo9Z9G8

complete NYC MoMA retro schedule now up, thru Jan 17

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1525

Holy cow. That'd comprise the next 1.5 months of my life if I lived in NYC. HealtH!

And another Altman biography. Do I need to read another Altman biography? I suspect I might.

Countdown gets much better when James Caan leaves for the moon. Duvall is good, but then he almost always is.

(The NASA press liaison is played by a pre-"Hi guys" Ted Knight, which retrospectively ruins all those scenes.)

Of course I can't make Jazz/KC. Maybe I'll take time off.

seeing Images and TLG over the weekend

Images was a chore. Lots of portentous shots of Susannah York through glass beads and shit.

sez you!

Images is no match for 3 Women.

John Simon called out Susannah Yorke for being in "an unfortunate period of pregnancy" (or something along those lines) in her Images nude scene.

Images is clearly a precursor to 3 Women though. Sure it's a half-failed variation on Repulsion, but I like York, and Ireland.

what was really annoying is that the principal characters have the names of other actors in the cast. cutesy.

Shared by Criterion on FB today...

https://scontent-a-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/10377540_10155004409535565_8755197253931025184_n.jpg?oh=860c321f19726ff9aee54f180ccbf6c2&oe=5508B0B9

My fancy friends invited me up/got me tickets for "Nashville" and "3 Women" at MoMA this weekend. "Nashville" was fine but "3 Women" which I haven't seen in years was so wonderful

I still like 3W .. up til those last 5 minutes.

went to The Long Goodbye w/ my friend and his teen son (it's his fave movie). It was my first time seeing it since hiking up to Marlowe's apartment in Hollywood Heights. There's only one real good shot of the lengthy stairs, when Gould runs down them after Mark Rydell leaves with his coterie and wounded girlfriend.

I had to bag A Perfect Couple when i got a late party invite, but it's on DVD.

I plan to watch The Long Goodbye and Inherent Vice back to back

Fortunately the MoMA print of TLG was excellent; Images had faded, brownishly.

Nashville and 3W both looked wonderful

Also, I learned that the MomA theatergoer is... a very particular type of theatergoer (blech! ptooh!)

They are legendary, you got off easy if no one punched you or was eating plums.

Saw Kansas City for the first time tonight; lovely print. My fave performance was Miranda Richardson's, with some blissfully dazed line readings; J J Leigh was committed but a little shticky, and Belafonte was an appropriately feral Mr Big. Production designed and jazzed up the wazoo, but a little wanting in the drama department.

Hal Willner spoke beforehand, admitting to serving as musical supervisor while totally "loaded -- the end of a 20-year run." He was sitting directly behind me with Altman's widow and Annie Ross.

Steve Buscemi also did an intro, mentioned Bob glowering at him because he was shooting video of him at work.

Annie Ross? Is she in it?

I forgot, she was in Short Cuts. Last time I went to see her at the Metropolitan Room she was in a terrible mood.

ah, i've never seen her live. She was dressed like an 84-year-old jazz star last night though. Colorful ensemble.

committed but schticky is JJL's MO.

Belafonte is v good in that role, idk his acting career v well, anything else of note?

But sometimes it adds up to more, like in Miami Blues. xp

I've only seen HB in about 4 other films, out of which I can recommend the whole package (singing and youthful beauty) in Preminger's Carmen Jones, and the noir he did with Robert Ryan, Odds Against Tomorrow. For laughs I liked his Godfather spoof in Uptown Saturday Night.

Belafonte also good the same year in the horrifying White Man's Burden.

I saw Three Women recently and it was one of the greatest things I've seen, a sort of mystical surrealist horror coming of age buddy movie - how on earth is this the same director who did Gosford Park

well GP was considered an anomaly (really, mostly on the surface). Don't be fooled by period and decor.

Three Women - written by Altman, inspired by Persona
Gosford Park - written by the man who gave us Downton Abbey

also directed by the man who gave us O.C. and Stiggs

3 Women, according to Altman, came to him in a dream. He and his son were sharing a bed while his wife was in the hospital when he said he saw the whole picture in his head, although not Millie's tuna salad recipe, unfortunately.

speaking of sharing a bed: the glimpse of Pinkie's parents (if they are her parents) in a clinch is one of the most unexpected and touching images I've ever seen in a movie.

the scene of them visiting her in hospital actually made me straight up cry

I saw two hourlong TV plays he did for cable in the '80s yesterday: Precious Blood, a two-hander he directed on the stage first, with a dual-narrator/protag format and good performances, one by Alfre Woodard; and a more filmic one with a contrived scenario, The Laundromat, with Carol Burnett and Amy Madigan. Both minor, both worth seeing once.

Finally watched Buffalo Bill. I was 15 when it came out, and I either saw Nashville that year or the next. It was probably in and out of theatres pretty quick. (Seems to have gotten a re-release of sorts in '79, although I'm sure I would have seen it then given the chance.)

Took a while to find its way, but in the end I liked it. Better than A Wedding, I'd say--it's very much in the Bicentennial moment, with lots of carry-over from Nashville in terms of its meditations on celebrity ("'the' show business") and hucksterism and, um, America. (Also some specific echoes: it begins with an American flag, and the one operatic interlude, with the camera taking in the reactions of everyone in the room, reminded me of Nashville's "I'm Easy" scene.) Newman and Lancaster are obviously having a great time, and Joel Grey's malapropisms (or whatever they are) are very inventive. (Among Altman regulars, the only guy who seemed lost was Allan Nicholls.) I've never seen Little Big Man, but Altman's treatment of Sitting Bull's end of the story seemed very empathetic.

Lester Bangs compared Newman's Buffalo Bill to Dylan on the '74 comeback tour w The Band, especially the acoustic set: presenting himself as a battered Americana show biz legend, in "full scraggle"(don't have his books at hand, but that last phrase was in there). Really comes across on Before The Flood's acoustic side, esp. the seedy speedy anxiety over the finish line of "It's Alright Ma".
Quintet, Newman's (only?) other movie with Altman, is worth seeing too: post-climate change community, filmed in Toronto (?) Winter Olympic Village, where an ultimately deadly game of Quintet is proceeding. *Something* of a Philip K. Dick The Man In The High Castle/Cronenberg existenz vibe, though sloggier than either: it is chilly, baby, and too reserved for most 70s viewers, but still worthy seeing for Altheads.

Full scraggle is apt.

I got 20 minutes into Quintet a few years ago, and it's still on the shelf. I've always intended to give it another try, just not sure when.

Newman and Altman were tight bros who apparently just weren't able to get another project together off the ground. In Altman On Altman, Bob mentions "a script about a bear" he had in development with the Weinstein's as a vehicle for Newman and Naomi Watts, but it got stalled because the Weinstein's didn't think Watts was bankable and wanted her off the project (obviously this was pre-Mulholland Drive). Altman wouldn't budge and told them if they wanted her out, they had to tell her themselves.

As I do with everything from the early-mid '70s, I was trying extract some meaning from Buffalo Bill through the prism of Nixon, missing the obvious--like Nashville, it looks towards Carter, the careful construction of folksy personas and myths. (Accidentally so, I would assume--Carter was probably still a blip when it was being filmed.)

When the film ends on the group shot of the entire Buffalo Bill troupe, I'm surprised Altman didn't underscore the film's dim view of American history by doing what one of the characters suggested: doctor the photo so that Sitting Bull and Halsey were moved over with the other "inujuns."

Finally got around to seeing the documentary. It was kinda not great. What a complete waste of access to so many of his collaborators ("Don't, like, tell us anything about actually working with Robert Altman. Just define 'Altmanesque' in five words or fewer and then stare knowingly into the camera for a few seconds."). I'm glad I've seen most of his films since they inexplicably decided to show the endings of so many of his films. The home movie footage and comentary from his wife were the only things that made it at all worthwhile. To the extent that a career-spanning retrospective might function as an enticement to those who might not be familiar with a particular artist, I doubt this thing netted many new Altman fans as it didn't really explore what made him special.

Yeah, that doc was super disappointing.

I kinda wish I'd followed my initial impulse to shut it off in the middle of the minutes-long initially contextless intro of two dudes building a sand castle...

I didn't hate it, but for sure it could have been a lot better. (I posted a somewhat tepid endorsement above.) It seemed like something that should have been in Ron Mann's comfort zone--rogue '60s guy--but it also felt like commissioned work. The one Mann film I like a lot is Dream Tower, about Toronto's Rochdale College.

Was just skimming the annual seniority list put out by the board I work for. We actually have a teacher with the surname McCabe-Miller (she seemingly gets a double listing, with another one under just her birth name above).

Clearly she married solely on the basis of surname.

So Brewster McCloud got a barebones Warner Archive blu-ray release this past week, and being a Houston kid I had to get it... Shelley Duvall is so awesome in it. Nothing but a trailer included, but the transfer is nice and this movie has been otherwise impossible for me to see!

does anyone have the Pret-a-Porter / Ready to Wear DVD? stretched so that the bottom third of the screen is black. authoring problem, issue with newer TVs? is this movie really any good anyway?

Deep Dive on O.C. & Stiggs...which was almost a Stallone or Mike Nichols film.

https://ocandstiggs.tumblr.com/

Just noticed that Netflix has California Split up (in what looks like the theatrical cut--Runtime 108 Minutes)

There was a rights issue with some of the songs, has that been solved?

That's hamstrung most home video releases (the DVD was recut by Altman himself) but apparently doesn't affect streaming, as the theatrical cut has also been available on Prime for a few years.

I haven't streamed it myself, but for whatever reason, Netflix was reportedly able to stream the theatrical version for years going back to 2009. More details here (as well as a list of the changes that had to be made and why):

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews21/california_split_dvd_review.htm

A quote from Altman in that link: "The cost of the music track on California Split was so high that Columbia just couldn't put it into video or DVD. That kept it out of circulation for years. Finally, Elliot Gould went in to find out why they weren't releasing it. When they told him it was because of music, he said "Isn't there something we can do about that?" So I made some cuts and took a couple of songs out. We got it into what they considered a reasonable budget. The picture wasn't hurt by it. And that's out now. It doesn't make any difference, the quality of these things. It's as good as anyone sees them..."

FWIW, Indicator (the UK label owned by Powerhouse) was going to do a deluxe Blu-ray edition for it, but they had to cancel the project long after announcing it due to the music rights issues. Basically it came down to the cost of licensing all the music (yet again), and they didn't have the budget for it - it would've been far more expensive than any title they've done and they didn't want to compromise by using the re-cut version that was put on the DVD.

I’m never sure if it’s bad luck or bad planning (or just premature announcement) that Indicator has but it feels like between that and Ishtar they’ve had some of the highest profile titles that just fell apart after a lot of legwork had already been put in

Haven't watched it for a few years, but what music is there in California Split? All I can remember is "Kansas City," done by the singer in Vegas (in flash-forward, I think--and Gould starts singing along with her as he crosses the street).

Fwiw, I c'n'p-d those notes from DVD Beaver upthread here: Bow down to Robert Altman...

Basically the problem is with the publishers of some of the songs Phyllis Shotwell sings, and a to lesser extent the rights holders for Cheech & Chong's "Basketball Jones" song and promo film.

Oddly enough, the latter appears in every edition of Ashby's Being There.

Phyllis Shotwell, right. And I forgot about "Basketball Jones" (off a TV, I think).

Self-xp

The song <and> video in Being There

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7Ainmmlvg

Of course, that animation is v.problematic.

From wiki:

"Basketball Jones" was originally seen in theaters in late 1973, before showings of Hal Ashby's The Last Detail at select screens. It can be seen during the 1974 film California Split, directed by Robert Altman, although its use in the film prevented California Split from being released on VHS or Laserdisc due to Columbia Pictures' refusal to pay royalties for the song. Altman later removed the song (but not the cartoon) from the film so it could be released on DVD.

Trying to find some record of whether Phyllis Shotwell is still alive. Highly doubtful, but can't find anything that says she isn't.

Detail from the wiki for A Perfect Couple:

The role of Sheila Shea was originally written for Sandy Dennis. Paul Dooley was seriously allergic to cats though, and when cat-lover Dennis would come to the script readings with up to five cats at a time, he was briefly hospitalized.

Dennis was phenomenal in both That Cold Day in the Park and Come Back to the Five and Dime…

She owned several dozen cats at the time of her death

And a joy in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Im thinking The Player might be the best movie about Hollywood. Now that's got a perfect Hollywood ending! Up!

Centennial yesterday.