Robert Altman's Long Goodbye
Few other directors did such good work for so many decades
By Andy Klein
By the time you read this, Robert Altman's death at 81 will be, in newspaper terms, old news; maybe it all will have been said by then. But the director's impact was so great that it's simply impossible to let him pass without comment.
Just last week, reviewing the new box set of Preston Sturges films, I referred to "one of the most astounding bursts of creative energy in Hollywood history," in which Sturges made eight films in a five-year stretch (1940-1944). There was the temptation not to hedge and just say "the most astounding burst," but then I thought of Altman's similar record in the early '70s: M*A*S*H (1970), Brewster McCloud (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Images (1972), The Long Goodbye (1973), Thieves Like Us (1974), California Split (1974), and Nashville (1975) - eight films in six years, including just as many masterpieces.
It's hard to begrudge Altman that extra year: Sturges was working steadily at Paramount, with all the resources of a studio at his disposal, while Altman had to expend a good portion of his time setting up projects wherever he could. Indeed, when Sturges tried to work outside of the studio, he managed only four films in the next 14 years. Altman, in his remaining 30 years, directed another 23 features, along with HBO's Tanner '88 series, numerous other TV productions, stage work, and an opera.
Altman went from virtual unknown to major filmmaker at an unusually late age, having toiled in industrial films and television for nearly two decades. He was 45 when M*A*S*H became a huge commercial and critical hit. It was as though deep reserves of ideas and ambitions, building over the years, were suddenly released.
None of this really hints at his historical importance. The '70s are generally regarded as a golden decade for American film, and Altman was only one of several brilliant filmmakers to emerge in that era - Francis Coppola, Woody Allen, Peter Bogdanovich, and Martin Scorsese leap to mind. But more than the others, Altman represented the indie spirit, before "indie" was even a word. M*A*S*H came out shortly after Easy Rider, just as the old Hollywood bosses were being revealed as hopelessly out of touch. It's a cliché to call Altman a maverick, but it's hard not to: Most of the time, he managed to negotiate Hollywood on his own terms; and, when he couldn't, he worked elsewhere.
For 36 more years, he kept working, and not all the projects turned out brilliantly; a few were simply bad. But, as Ernst Lubitsch, one of the greatest directors of all time, once answered the charge that he sometimes made pictures that were not up to his standard, "It can only be said about a mediocrity that all his works live up to his standard."
If Altman never again had a streak quite as amazing as those years in the '70s, he still could turn out a masterpiece. It's gratifying that his third-to-last feature, Gosford Park, was one of his greatest aesthetically and commercially ... his third highest grossing, after M*A*S*H and Popeye.
Altman survived a heart transplant, as he revealed when he accepted his honorary Oscar last year, and presumably knew he had cancer while he was shooting A Prairie Home Companion, his final film - which may explain why the project, which could have gone any number of ways, ended up being all about death.
Only a few months ago, before the release of A Prairie Home Companion, I had hoped to do a huge, career-scope interview with Altman; but it was impossible to schedule. I'll just have to be satisfied with my one encounter with him, a few years back, when he was remarkably kind and gracious as I fumbled, starstruck, in his presence.
Published: 11/30/2006
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