Altman, 16.10.14

Ron Mann’s fond and classy tribute to Hollywood’s rebel-director Robert Altman (1925-2006), showing at the BFI in the London Film Festival, exceeded all expectations.  Made with the support of Altman’s widow Kathryn (his third and longest-lasting wife), it convincingly located him in time and place. 

Originally a hack TV director from Kansas, Altman cut his teeth on advertising promos and series like “Bonanza” in the Sixties. After a long apprenticeship, he got his big break with the original movie version of “M*A*S*H” in 1970 which, though set in the Korean War, was an ironic commentary on the war in Vietnam.  (The studio tried and failed to get him to excise a particularly gorey scene in an operating theatre.) 

Tim Robbins' callow producer receives yet
another death threat in 1992's "The Player"

A virulently anti-Nixon child of the late Sixties (he tore up a signed bio the ex-President later sent him in jest), Altman managed to get himself fired by almost every major Hollywood Studio.  His commitment to film as artistry and his determination to show gritty reality and l'Amerique profonde in the flesh made him the darling of the European festival set, which rewarded him with two BAFTAs (for “The Player” and “Gosford Park”), two Palmes d’Ors (for “MASH” and “The Player) and two Golden Bears.  In contrast Hollywood managed only a belated and merely honorary Oscar. 

Donald Sutherland, Sally Kellerman and Elliott Gould on manoeuvres
in Altman's 1970 breakthrough movie "MASH" 

The early-to-mid-Seventies (“Nashville”, “The Long Goodbye”, “McCabe and Mrs Miller” – alas none of which Motley has actually seen) were his signature period, but he had a late flowering with masterpieces like “The Player” (a 1992 satire on Hollywood, which he described as being “nothing like as bad as reality”, and which included the longest (8 minute +) opening tracking shot in film history), “Short Cuts” (which completely bowled Motley over in 1994), "Kansas City" (a moody 1996 film about jazz's early days), “Gosford Park” (a fresh take on the English country house murder mystery) and “The Prairie Home Companion” (his last film, a collaboration with Garrison Keillor, filled with intimations of mortality, in which Streep and Tomlin excelled). 

The doc didn’t shy away from the fact that Altman’s career included a long fallow period in the Eighties (when he was completely out-of-tune with the zeitgeist) and a fair few turkeys (such as “Popeye” – Robin Williams’ debut feature from 1980, "Pret-a-Porter", a 1994 take on the fashion industry, and “Cookie’s Fortune” – a 1999 Southern yarn with Glenn Close).
 

Lily Tomlin and Tom Waits live it large on the San Andreas Fault
waiting for 'the big one' in Altman's seminal 1994 "Short Cuts",
an adaptation of multiple Raymond Carver short stories

Mann's film pinpointed what was most distinctive about Altman's work (stylised satirical naturalism, overlapping dialogue, blurred sound, masterly choice of music, a willingness to tell the truth about the kind of issues Hollywood normally avoids, a fondness for large baggy ensemble pieces, and recurring actors like Lily Tomlin, Elliott Gould and Shelley Duvall).  It benefitted from the inclusion of family videos which really gave a sense of the man's lumbering paternal good-nature, while gently acknowledging he may have put more effort into film-making than raising his six children. 



Altman and wife Kathryn in the director's last years

A series of Hollywood “A-listers”, filmed in black-and-white close-up profile, offered multiple definitions of what “Altmanesque” meant to them:  "makin' your own rules", "kicking Hollywood's ass", "creating a family" and "expect the unexpected" were some of the snappier offerings from the likes of PT Anderson, Julianne Moore, Lily Tomlin, Bruce Willis and the late Robin Williams.  Altman himself believed it was 'all about the actors'.
 
Altman lived long and drank hard, throwing party after party. After several brushes with near-penury, he ended up in an enormous beach-side condo in Malibu, and survived a heart transplant eleven years.  Mann's film succeeded in placing Altman squarely in that precious counter-cultural generation of Americans which wasn’t prepared to play the now ubiquitous corporate game.  “No hippies were harmed in the making of this film” said the closing credit!