Word: altmans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Given that he depends on the Hollywood establishment to help make and sell his movies, his undisguised contempt for certain Hollywood big shots is also something to behold. Earlier this year, when The Player was being shown to prospective distributors, Altman got in a public spat with two top studio executives over what he considered their disrespectful attitude. Ask Altman innocently about his 1985 movie that Sam Shepard wrote and starred in, and he cannot stop himself. "Fool for Love . . . I mean, I can't abide Sam Shepard." As an actor? "As a person. I just...
...Altman says that beginning last winter, "about the time all the studios saw ((The Player))," he started being courted by the unlikeliest of people. "Even Disney wants to do something with me," he marvels. Of course, being Robert Altman, he only wants to make the not-obviously-commercial films that interest him. For most of the past decade, he tried and failed to develop a script about the Paris haute couture scene, and now "I'll probably get it done next year -- I imagine directly as a result of the heat on The Player." He is negotiating a development deal...
...recent afternoon in New York City the director, dressed all in black, sat at his desk in his all-black production office, hustling deals. It is a Robert Altman sort of place. Just behind him is the neon onstage logo from his production of Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, giving him a perfect glitzy-tacky roadhouse penumbra. An old cheese and some scraps of baguette sit on the coffee table, and beyond the table sits his William Morris agent, listening in on a phone extension as Altman assures someone else's agents that...
Still, better to be accused of being a sellout than a has-been. And while Altman gleefully nurses some particular grudges -- against certain producers, certain executives, certain critics, Sam Shepard -- he seems free of general bitterness. Sure, he feels a little gypped out of M*A*S*H money ("I never got paid anything ((from the TV series)) -- anything"), but for all his visceral mistrust of Hollywood, he doesn't seem sour about his decade of reputation shrinkage and quasi-exile. After all, every few years he has been lucky enough to turn out something great. So what...
Thanks to a witty new film, Robert Altman is a player again...