Word: altmans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Robert Altman couldn't believe it. before him sat two talented actors, Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott, with a script for a movie they wanted to direct together. "We'd talk for a while, and then he'd suddenly say, 'Now, you guys have never directed anything before, right?' And we'd say, 'Nope, nothing on film.' And we'd talk for 10 minutes, and he'd say, 'You never directed anything?'" recalls Scott, who worked with Altman on Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. "But in the end, he said, 'Oh well, it's not too damn hard anyway...
...Night the virgin directors made it look positively easy, even though Altman ultimately had to back out as producer. Tucci, best known as billionaire Richard Cross on the TV series Murder One, co-wrote the screenplay for Big Night "out of frustration with the films I was making." (Among his movies: Beethoven and Jury Duty.) Big Night's theme, making money vs. staying true to one's talents, will no doubt touch a chord in many of his peers. But the setting, a down-on-its-luck Italian restaurant, is all Tucci--a devotee of Italian food as well...
...there was illicit gambling and who knew what else. But up on the bandstands, the jazz musicians of Kansas City swung through it all. Absorbed, imperturbable, they played within a sort of bubble of purity: theirs were the only disinterested passions in town. Or so it seems in Robert Altman's new film, Kansas City, set in the 1930s heyday of "Boss" Tom Pendergast, when an extraordinary concentration of jazz talent flourished in the city (and a wide-eyed Altman was growing up there...
...Altman's movie won't be released for two months, but the sound track is already here, on a just released Verve CD. As the jazzmen of yore might've said, it's a gas. The mix of 21 musicians includes veteran players whose stylistic roots go back to Kansas City and beyond--alto saxophonist David ("Fathead") Newman Jr., drummer Victor Lewis--and younger stars who actually seem to enjoy paying their respects to tradition--tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman, guitarist Mark Whitfield, bassist Christian McBride. On track after track, soloists of different generations find a common groove. On Froggy Bottom...
...Daniel Altman '96 was editorial chair of The Crimson...