Word: altmans
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...time with all the multi-media possibilities of the Loeb exploited. This part is wholly the creation of director Peter Sellars '80, Harvard's own artist-huckster Christo who as a freshman has foisted this crazy unorthodox production on the mainstage. His concept is a chic one A la Altman and Chorus Line, the director and actors got together during rehearsal in a dance studio filled with mirrors and spent a month improvising, trying to squeeze characters out of the Sitwell poetry, while a photographer snapped glamourous pictures of the cast which are projected on the huge screens during...
Rudolph's debut feature Welcome to L.A. deserves a couple of critics' stars on guts alone: he has consciously borrowed the impressionistic slice-of-life framework of Nashville and made it work with even less of a plot than Robert Altman's cinematic paradigm. Granted that the basically uncommercial quality of the format has been somewhat offset by the presence of a galaxy of New Hollywood actors; but from a strictly critical standpoint, Rudolph has effectively invited comparisons with his famous mentor that would seem to place his first major work at an almost fatal disadvantage. Yet Welcome...
...film a genuine offshoot of Nashville is its structure, not its theme: Rudolph's script is indeed relating Carroll's story but it is not focusing on him. No real overriding social commentary can be gleaned from Welcome to L.A. that compares with the heavy-handed moralism of Altman's Nashville vision. Instead, the state of the American psyche is Rudolph's primary preoccupation. He dubbed the genre of Welcome to L.A. "emotional science-fiction--it shows what will happen if we don't watch out." And his own words capture the essence of the theme well: "Romance...
Some cineastes have problems dealing with Altman's distinctive technique of mixing several reels of simultaneously spoken dialogue together, a trademark that captures the actual quality of everyday conversation far better than any previous method used. The dialogue often sounds garbled however, a built-in hazard that has dismayed actors as well as viewers (e.g. Warren Beatty's post-production grumblings about the sound in McCabe & Mrs. Miller). When I first screened Welcome, I listened closely for this technique and failed to notice it. Rudolph subsequently told me that the method in fact was used; if true, then...
...again needlessly pigeonholed himself in choosing a role that requires an actor who is long on looks but short on just about everything else. His Carroll Barber invites analogies to regrettably similar roles in recent years (Lumiere, Nashville), and the acting potential first suggested by his stunning performance in Altman's Thieves Like Us remains undeveloped...