Director Robert Altman Dies at 81

Oh dear, I thought Robert Altman would keep making movies forever. Long in frail health, he seemed to have the will and drive to let moviemaking keep him alive. So last year's collaboration with Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion, becomes the last Robert Altman film. I will treasure my last memory of him, at Picturehouse's Oscar party at the Four Seasons: Meryl Streep, John C. Reilly and Jennifer Jason Leigh all sat at the same table, leaning in to listen to Altman. Actors always did adore him. The 81-year-old director of M-A-S-H, Nashville and The Player died at a Los Angeles Hospital, according to The Associated Press:

Robert Altman, the caustic and irreverent satirist behind "M-A-S-H," "Nashville" and "The Player" who made a career out of bucking Hollywood management and story conventions, died at a Los Angeles Hospital, his Sandcastle 5 Productions Company said Tuesday. He was 81.

The director died Monday night, Joshua Astrachan, a producer at Altman's Sandcastle 5 Productions in New York City, told The Associated Press.

The cause of death wasn't disclosed. A news release was expected later in the day, Astrachan said.

A five-time Academy Award nominee for best director, most recently for 2001's "Gosford Park," he finally won a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2006.

"No other filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have," Altman said while accepting the award. "I'm very fortunate in my career. I've never had to direct a film I didn't choose or develop. My love for filmmaking has given me an entree to the world and to the human condition."

Altman had one of the most distinctive styles among modern filmmakers. He often employed huge ensemble casts, encouraged improvisation and overlapping dialogue and filmed scenes in long tracking shots that would flit from character to character.

Perpetually in and out of favor with audiences and critics, Altman worked ceaselessly since his anti-war black comedy "M-A-S-H" established his reputation in 1970, but he would go for years at a time directing obscure movies before roaring back with a hit.

After a string of commercial duds including "The Gingerbread Man" in 1998, "Cookie's Fortune" in 1999 and "Dr. T & the Women" in 2000, Altman took his all-American cynicism to Britain for 2001's "Gosford Park."

A combination murder-mystery and class-war satire set among snobbish socialites and their servants on an English estate in the 1930s, "Gosford Park" was Altman's biggest box-office success since "M-A-S-H."

Besides best-director, "Gosford Park" earned six other Oscar nominations, including best picture and best supporting actress for both Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith. It won the original-screenplay Oscar, and Altman took the best-director prize at the Golden Globes for "Gosford Park."

Altman's other best-director Oscar nominations came for "M-A-S-H," the country-music saga "Nashville" from 1975, the movie-business satire "The Player" from 1992 and the ensemble character study "Short Cuts" from 1993. He also earned a best-picture nomination as producer of "Nashville."

No director ever got more best-director nominations without winning a regular Oscar, though four other men -- Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Clarence Brown and King Vidor -- tied with Altman at five.

In May, Altman brought out "A Prairie Home Companion," with Garrison Keillor starring as the announcer of a folksy musical show -- with the same name as Keillor's own long-running show -- about to be shut down by new owners. Among those in the cast were Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, Woody Harrelson and Tommy Lee Jones.

"This film is about death," Altman said at a May 3 news conference in St. Paul, Minn., also attended by Keillor and many of the movie's stars.

He often took on Hollywood genres with a revisionist's eye, de-romanticizing the Western hero in 1971's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and 1976's "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson," the film-noir gumshoe in 1973's "The Long Goodbye" and outlaw gangsters in "Thieves Like Us."

"M-A-S-H" was Altman's first big success after years of directing television, commercials, industrial films and generally unremarkable feature films. The film starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould was set during the Korean War but was Altman's thinly veiled attack on U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

"That was my intention entirely. If you look at that film, there's no mention of what war it is," Altman said in an Associated Press interview in 2001, adding that the studio made him put a disclaimer at the beginning to identify the setting as Korea.

"Our mandate was bad taste. If anybody had a joke in the worst taste, it had a better chance of getting into the film, because nothing was in worse taste than that war itself," Altman said.

The film spawned the long-running TV sitcom starring Alan Alda, a show Altman would refer to with distaste as "that series." Unlike the social message of the film, the series was prompted by greed, Altman said.

"They made millions and millions of dollars by bringing an Asian war into Americans' homes every Sunday night," Altman said in 2001. "I thought that was the worst taste."

Altman never minced words about reproaching Hollywood. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he said Hollywood served as a source of inspiration for the terrorists by making violent action movies that amounted to training films for such attacks.

"Nobody would have thought to commit an atrocity like that unless they'd seen it in a movie," Altman said.

Altman was written off repeatedly by the Hollywood establishment, and his reputation for arrogance and hard drinking -- a habit he eventually gave up -- hindered his efforts to raise money for his idiosyncratic films.

While critical of studio executives, Altman held actors in the highest esteem. He joked that on "Gosford Park," he was there mainly to turn the lights on and off for the performers.

The respect was mutual. Top-name actors would clamor for even bit parts in his films. Altman generally worked on shoestring budgets, yet he continually landed marquee performers who signed on for a fraction of their normal salaries.

After the mid-1970s, the quality of Altman's films became increasingly erratic. His 1980 musical "Popeye," with Robin Williams, was trashed by critics, and Altman took some time off from film.

He directed the Broadway production of "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean," following it with a movie adaptation in 1982. Altman went back and forth from TV to theatrical films over the next decade, but even when his films earned critical praise, such as 1990's "Vincent & Theo," they remained largely unseen.

"The Player" and "Short Cuts" re-established Altman's reputation and commercial viability. But other 1990s films -- including his fashion-industry farce "Ready to Wear" and "Kansas City," his reverie on the 1930s jazz and gangster scene of his hometown -- fell flat.

Born Feb. 20, 1925, Altman hung out in his teen years at the jazz clubs of Kansas City, Mo., where his father was an insurance salesman.

Altman was a bomber pilot in World War II and studied engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia before taking a job making industrial films in Kansas City. He moved into feature films with "The Delinquents" in 1957, then worked largely in television through the mid 1960s, directing episodes of such series as "Bonanza" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."

Altman and his wife, Kathryn, had two sons, Robert and Matthew, and he had a daughter, Christine, and two other sons, Michael and Stephen, from two previous marriages.

When he received his honorary Oscar in 2006, Altman revealed he had a heart transplant a decade earlier.

"I didn't make a big secret out of it, but I thought nobody would hire me again," he said after the ceremony. "You know, there's such a stigma about heart transplants, and there's a lot of us out there."

Hnre's Edward Copeland's post on Altman. And Indiewire invites folks to comment in their Salute to Altman.

Comments

[Mark Rutland]

A true one, always modern, never trying to look just "à la page". He was one of the last mavericks.

[Sergio]

You're so right Anne. Even despite his obviously failing health, it seemed that Altman would just go on making films one after the other. I believe he was set to start a new film in Feb.

I have to be totally honest. Altman wasn't my favorite director, but he's was a geniune original which is an extremely rare thing nowadays. He could be good, bad or indifferent, but when he was "on" as in Gosford Park or Short Cuts (my favorite Altman film) he was second to none.

[Anne Thompson]

I loved Gosford Park. The extended sequence when Navarro is playing and singing at the piano as the upstairs folks listen in the gorgeously lit main rooms and the downstairs folks listen in the dark hallways--while a murder is being committed—is a great example of his ability to fluidly cut across several unfolding stories in different spaces, while building a mood and conveying information...nobody could do multiple story strands and sprawling ensembles better. He will be missed. He was a Master. My other favorite Altman films are The Player, The Wedding, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and the underappreciated Vincent and Theo, which the critics ignored in Toronto when Altman wasn't considered cool. Like John Huston, Altman seemed to gain some focus in his later years. I interviewed him several times, mostly in Sundance and Cannes, and always enjoyed our talks. Any memories, stories, favorite moments, films you liked best?

[Sergio]

Nope, I never met Altman, though I did see him once in person (I can't remember why now I didn't talk to him. My misfortune)

The Wedding - I agree with you, a wonderful movie.

Popeye - The most underrated and wrongfully misunderstood. A film which totally captures the choatic, whimsical feel of the comic book. Incorrectly always listed as a box office flop when actually it did very well at the box office and was the biggest b.o. success in Altman's entire career.

Most overlooked or least known - the short film (Rameau's Les Boreades) made for the compilation opera film Aria. Instead of recreating some scene from an opera with singers lip sinqing their arias, Altman turned his cameras around and concentrated entirely on the faces and actions of the audience (mid 17th century ) watching the performance, joking around, being bored, drinking, having sex and among other things. Wonderfully original. (Altman also directed some opera stage productions as well)

[Toby Lewis]

Earlier today I launched my blog with a brief homage to Altman. I try to make the case for the Player as his best film - http://reasonssword.blogspot.com - Although I think many of them could be reasonably chosen.

[Michael Blowhard]

Thanks for the bouquet of links. Lots of brainy and heartfelt regret out there. I added to the pile-on myself back at my blog.