Word: altmans
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...Then, as if ordained by some law of pop thermodynamics, came a very long rough patch: beginning with Buffalo Bill in 1976, Altman movie after Altman movie failed at the box office and displeased the tastemaking establishment. The director even tried his hand at an expensive high-concept movie -- the $22 million Popeye, starring Robin Williams -- and it seemed only to certify his career death. During the '80s Altman lived mainly in Paris, returning to the States to direct small movies (Streamers, Beyond Therapy) that did little to rekindle the passion of his erstwhile devotees. Not many people saw Tanner...
...comes The Player, a dark comedy with heart, a movie about the movie business as thrilling as M *A *S *H, already as beloved by the screening-room cognoscenti as Nashville. Altman agrees with a chuckle that it probably represents his third comeback, and at 67 he is wise enough to know that a fourth or fifth may lie ahead. "Talk to me after my next movie," he says, half-assuming that this latest up means, in short order, the inevitable down. He smiles and gives a que sera shrug...
...McDowell and Whoopi Goldberg saw The Player together at a private screening. After the final credit roll, Gallagher recalls, "we were sitting with our heads down, looking at our feet and just kind of saying, 'It's so cool to be involved with this movie.' " Yet the huzzahs worry Altman a bit -- he remembers that Nashville "got overhyped by the press." And the gush that greeted M *A *S *H and Nashville, he says, was "nothing like the response to this. This is just . . . weird. I've already got more mail than I had total on all the other films...
...Player is both very good and a quintessential Altman movie -- meaning smart, hip, satirical, charming, ironic but not callow, rich with telling offhand incident. "What's unique about The Player," says Trudeau, "is that he brings all this signature observational detail to a picture that Hollywood completely understands. In many ways it's a very traditional Hollywood movie, but he's given up nothing. That's why people are so astonished." It is, in a word, crypto-conventional, self-consciously including all the obligatory elements of commercial moviemaking -- stars, violence, unclothed women, lockstep plotting -- but messing with them. The really...
...film's clean, hard edge and people-playing-themselves verisimilitude come, Altman says, from his collaboration with Trudeau. Without Tanner, Altman says, "I don't think I could have made this film." It probably also helped that he stopped drinking, though Altman bridles at the suggestion. "I stopped drinking for health reasons. I've never jeopardized anything by either the drinking or the gambling" -- he plays poker, backgammon and the horses -- "or the pot smoking. I do smoke pot. I sit on the front porch like a grandpa and try to enjoy the weather...