Word: hollywood
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...make feel-good movies or boys'-life adventures or simple melodramas - simple anything. For more than 35 years, Robert Altman, who died Monday night in Los Angeles at 81, was the truth-telling leper outside the film-industry cathedral, and the most cunning chiseler at the staid monument Hollywood has made of movie...
...Hollywood decides to love its rebels when they've either died or outlasted most of their enemies. Altman managed to stick around long enough, and return investments to enough small businesses in Tinseltown, to get his tribute at the Academy Awards ceremony this March. Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin introduced him with a beautifully executed double monologue, overlapping their lines in the fashion Altman had made famous in most of his 42 feature films - most notably MASH, the 1970 war comedy that spawned the (much more domesticated and liberal) TV series M*A*S*H, and remains the film that...
...frame. The murmur of overlapping blarney isn't a carpet of sound; rather, it's swatches, hundreds of gorgeous samples to choose from. This blend of image and voice, meticulously designed, may seem like a glorious mess. But that is Altman's way of upending the hierarchy Hollywood lives by: star over extra, story over atmosphere, emotion over all. This is movie democracy; you the viewer vote with your eyes and ears. Keep them open, there'll be a quiz before the fade...
...Altman's grandfather had been a boss at the Calvin Film Company, which over the decades produced more than 3,000 educational and industrial films; and young Bob got his start directing some 60 shorts for companies like General Motors and DuPont. He had tried Hollywood right after his war service (during which he co-piloted B-24 bombers), but his only official work was an uncredited story gig on the 1947 Christmas Eve. "I'd go to California and try to write scripts," he told Tibbetts, "but then return, broke, to Calvin. Each time they'd drop me another...
...Glod incident undermines all of that. Cohen and his crew seem to have behaved with all of the arrogant ignorance of the people they are meant to satirize. They arrived with a fully fledged Hollywood entourage, made little effort to explain their terms, took what they wanted, and went on their merry...