Word: altmans
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EVERYBODY HAS HIS PROFESSIONAL UPS and downs, and the ups and downs in show business tend to be extreme. But even by the standards of the movie industry, Robert Altman's ups and downs have been both numerous and extravagant. After making his first feature at 30, Altman slid back into yeoman Hollywood anonymity for a decade, directing episodic TV. Then in 1970 there was M *A *S *H, a commercial blockbuster and generational lodestar. Within a year came the dense, dreamy, elegiac western McCabe and Mrs. Miller, then other sly, quirky dramas (The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, California...
...PLAYER Directed by Robert Altman; Screenplay by Michael Tolkin...
...executive will go to A.A. meetings not because he is an alcoholic but because "that's where all the deals are being made." Michael Tolkin's script abounds in such cynical wisdom, but it never loses an appreciation for the grace with which these snakes consume their victims. Robert Altman, whom Hollywood has both favored (in his M*A*S*H days) and dismissed (over the past decade), directs the bright carnage with an assurance that only a hard-hided survivor can provide. He is like St. Sebastian, plucking the arrows from his body and flinging them back, like gentle...
...speculate on whether Altman's movie will be a hit is to surrender to the players' game: to judge a film's success by its grosses. It is this fascination with the B.O. bull's-eye that strikes timidity in so many directors. In every frame of their work you can smell the fear of failure, the anxiety of losing for even a moment the rooting interest of the moviegoing...
...Altman is beyond all that. His view is Olympian. His camera, prowling like a house dick on roller skates, challenges you to find the crucial detail in each corner of an eight-minute opening shot. Pay attention, he says; be an adult. Watch the gorgeous gargoyles in the fun-house mirror, and you'll see more than the people who make movies stink. You might catch a glimpse of your own compromised self. Hey, babe, these days we're all players...