Robert Altman dies

[bob_barron 0]

Film director Robert Altman dies By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer

9 minutes ago

 

 

 

LOS ANGELES - Robert Altman, the caustic and irreverent satirist behind "M-A-S-H," "Nashville" and "The Player" who made a career out of bucking Hollywood management and story conventions, died at a Los Angeles Hospital, his Sandcastle 5 Productions Company said Tuesday. He was 81.

 

The director died Monday night, Joshua Astrachan, a producer at Altman's Sandcastle 5 Productions in New York City, told The Associated Press.

 

The cause of death wasn't disclosed. A news release was expected later in the day, Astrachan said.

 

A five-time Academy Award nominee for best director, most recently for 2001's "Gosford Park," he finally won a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2006.

 

"No other filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have," Altman said while accepting the award. "I'm very fortunate in my career. I've never had to direct a film I didn't choose or develop. My love for filmmaking has given me an entree to the world and to the human condition."

 

Altman had one of the most distinctive styles among modern filmmakers. He often employed huge ensemble casts, encouraged improvisation and overlapping dialogue and filmed scenes in long tracking shots that would flit from character to character.

 

Perpetually in and out of favor with audiences and critics, Altman worked ceaselessly since his anti-war black comedy "M-A-S-H" established his reputation in 1970, but he would go for years at a time directing obscure movies before roaring back with a hit.

 

After a string of commercial duds including "The Gingerbread Man" in 1998, "Cookie's Fortune" in 1999 and "Dr. T & the Women" in 2000, Altman took his all-American cynicism to Britain for 2001's "Gosford Park."

 

A combination murder-mystery and class-war satire set among snobbish socialites and their servants on an English estate in the 1930s, "Gosford Park" was Altman's biggest box-office success since "M-A-S-H."

 

Besides best-director, "Gosford Park" earned six other Oscar nominations, including best picture and best supporting actress for both Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith. It won the original-screenplay Oscar, and Altman took the best-director prize at the Golden Globes for "Gosford Park."

 

Altman's other best-director Oscar nominations came for "M-A-S-H," the country-music saga "Nashville" from 1975, the movie-business satire "The Player" from 1992 and the ensemble character study "Short Cuts" from 1993. He also earned a best-picture nomination as producer of "Nashville."

 

No director ever got more best-director nominations without winning a regular Oscar, though four other men — Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Clarence Brown and King Vidor — tied with Altman at five.

 

In May, Altman brought out "A Prairie Home Companion," with Garrison Keillor starring as the announcer of a folksy musical show — with the same name as Keillor's own long-running show — about to be shut down by new owners. Among those in the cast were Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, Woody Harrelson and Tommy Lee Jones.

 

"This film is about death," Altman said at a May 3 news conference in St. Paul, Minn., also attended by Keillor and many of the movie's stars.

 

He often took on Hollywood genres with a revisionist's eye, de-romanticizing the Western hero in 1971's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and 1976's "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson," the film-noir gumshoe in 1973's "The Long Goodbye" and outlaw gangsters in "Thieves Like Us."

 

"M-A-S-H" was Altman's first big success after years of directing television, commercials, industrial films and generally unremarkable feature films. The film starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould was set during the Korean War but was Altman's thinly veiled attack on U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

 

"That was my intention entirely. If you look at that film, there's no mention of what war it is," Altman said in an Associated Press interview in 2001, adding that the studio made him put a disclaimer at the beginning to identify the setting as Korea.

 

"Our mandate was bad taste. If anybody had a joke in the worst taste, it had a better chance of getting into the film, because nothing was in worse taste than that war itself," Altman said.

 

The film spawned the long-running TV sitcom starring Alan Alda, a show Altman would refer to with distaste as "that series." Unlike the social message of the film, the series was prompted by greed, Altman said.

 

"They made millions and millions of dollars by bringing an Asian war into Americans' homes every Sunday night," Altman said in 2001. "I thought that was the worst taste."

 

Altman never minced words about reproaching Hollywood. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he said Hollywood served as a source of inspiration for the terrorists by making violent action movies that amounted to training films for such attacks.

 

"Nobody would have thought to commit an atrocity like that unless they'd seen it in a movie," Altman said.

 

Altman was written off repeatedly by the Hollywood establishment, and his reputation for arrogance and hard drinking — a habit he eventually gave up — hindered his efforts to raise money for his idiosyncratic films.

 

While critical of studio executives, Altman held actors in the highest esteem. He joked that on "Gosford Park," he was there mainly to turn the lights on and off for the performers.

 

The respect was mutual. Top-name actors would clamor for even bit parts in his films. Altman generally worked on shoestring budgets, yet he continually landed marquee performers who signed on for a fraction of their normal salaries.

 

After the mid-1970s, the quality of Altman's films became increasingly erratic. His 1980 musical "Popeye," with Robin Williams, was trashed by critics, and Altman took some time off from film.

 

He directed the Broadway production of "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean," following it with a movie adaptation in 1982. Altman went back and forth from TV to theatrical films over the next decade, but even when his films earned critical praise, such as 1990's "Vincent & Theo," they remained largely unseen.

 

"The Player" and "Short Cuts" re-established Altman's reputation and commercial viability. But other 1990s films — including his fashion-industry farce "Ready to Wear" and "Kansas City," his reverie on the 1930s jazz and gangster scene of his hometown — fell flat.

 

Born Feb. 20, 1925, Altman hung out in his teen years at the jazz clubs of Kansas City, Mo., where his father was an insurance salesman.

 

Altman was a bomber pilot in World War II and studied engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia before taking a job making industrial films in Kansas City. He moved into feature films with "The Delinquents" in 1957, then worked largely in television through the mid 1960s, directing episodes of such series as "Bonanza" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."

 

Altman and his wife, Kathryn, had two sons, Robert and Matthew, and he had a daughter, Christine, and two other sons, Michael and Stephen, from two previous marriages.

 

When he received his honorary Oscar in 2006, Altman revealed he had a heart transplant a decade earlier.

 

"I didn't make a big secret out of it, but I thought nobody would hire me again," he said after the ceremony. "You know, there's such a stigma about heart transplants, and there's a lot of us out there."

[Guest NYankees]

RIP Altman. It looks like Martin Scorcese is turning into the Next Altman in terms of Academy Award Nominations for best director and no wins.

[Ravenbomb 0]

Bummer. MASH is one of my favorite movies and I really liked Gosford Park

[Gary Floyd 0]

Well, there goes my good day. I always liked Altman (not all of his movies, but many of them), so R.I.P. man.

[King Kamala 0]

Aw man, I just started getting into his work. I watched Short Cuts for the first time about two weeks ago and what a great movie.

 

 

 

At least he lived a long fulfilling life, making movies on his own terms.

 

 

RIP

[DMann2003 0]

I've said it before, and it bears repeating, Nashville may be the best film made about American culture in relation to men, women, religion, music, fame, love, death, politics. If he made no more films that reached what that film did, Robert Altman would still be greatly remembered. But he also did M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Popeye (a very underrated musical comedy), The Player, Short Cuts, Cookie's Fortune, and Gosford Park. Last year he was rightfully recognized by the Academy, and next year he desrve to be again in memorium.

 

I haven't felt this taken aback by a filmmaker's death since Kubrick. The great one's are soon to be leaving us. RIP Mr. Altman.

 

Robert Altman had one of the great tales about how he made movies- he used to say he'd stick in an out of nowhere moment of cursing (f-words) to get an R-rating in order to keep potentially noisy and distracting teenagers out of his films.

[Henry Spencer 0]

Nashville may be the best film made about American culture in relation to men, women, religion, music, fame, love, death, politics.

 

Quoted in enthusiastic agreement.

 

One of the top ten American directors to ever make a film. Even recently, he was going as strong as ever (Prarie Home Companion). The art culture's most significant loss yet this century.

[Guest Vitamin X]

I aim to one day be like Robert Altman. Dude was a bad ass. Shame he decided not to work outside of Hollywood, he would have been much more successful and far less restricted.

[spiny norman 0]

The art culture's most significant loss yet this century.

 

Billy Wilder?

[Henry Spencer 0]

Billy Wilder licks the shit from the bottom of Robert Altman's boots.

 

Sunset Boulevard is really good, though. Not Nashville, Short Cuts, or McCabe & Mrs. Miller good, mind you.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I'm uninterested in having an Altman vs. Wilder debate, but Altman's passing is arguably a bigger loss, as the guy was still making movies—good ones, too—up until his death. Wilder hadn't directed for 20 years prior to his death.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Prairie Home Companion was awful, but yeah, Altman was a hustler. I was bored more often than not by his recent films, but he's got some absolute gems in there.

[Hank Kingsley 0]

Aww don't spoil it for me, Edwin. I was hoping John C. Reilly as a cowboy would make everything better.

 

I checked his catalog and was saddened to find that I've only seen Short Cuts (which I really liked). I need to catch up.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I liked PHC.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Aww don't spoil it for me, Edwin. I was hoping John C. Reilly as a cowboy would make everything better.

Actually, he and Woody Harrelson are probably the most enjoyable parts of the movie. The two of them manage to capture the whole folksy/out-of-time thing without going overboard. The pacing of the film is dreadful, though, and all the most interesting parts are merely just glimpsed while everything about Virginia Madsen being the angel of death dominates the film while never really taking off. She is pretty hot, though.

[spiny norman 0]

I haven't seen Prairie Home Companion, but truth be told Altman hasn't really done it for me since the 70s, where I think you'll find all of his great films (MASH, McCabe & Mrs Miller, The Long Goodbye, Nashville, 3 Women). The Player and Short Cuts were hints at a return to form, but really I've found everything quite middle of the road otherwise.

 

In that sense, to me Altman is much like Woody Allen or Scorsese - a great director, if not slightly overrated and inconsistent, but is capable of making truly fantastic films when at his best.