Hey Folks Harry here - Altman's great films are effortlessly named. However, for me it is his films that I loved that critically fell on their face and that the public at large seemed to turn up their nose to - that really endeared Altman to me. I saw my first Altman film on my 9th birthday in 1980, the day before it opened at a promotional screening at the Americana theater in Austin. I was dying to see it. It starred that Alien from TV and Jach Nicholson's crazy wife in that scary Stephen King movie. You see - that was how my brain back then thought of it. Altman wasn't on my mind. I ate a triple helping of Spinach before going to see POPEYE. And when it played - I was absolutely entranced. It wasn't based on the Fleischer Cartoons, which is where most film critics and the public when dumbshit on that film. Rather, it was an astonishing embodiment of the Newstrips and Sunday Pages and early early comics of POPEYE. That didn't really matter to me though. It was simply POPEYE. I grew up on musicals, so the music was blissful. And Shelly was perfect as Olive. Robin was a god as POPEYE. The Brutus version of BLUTO threw a lot, but that was his early interpretation - and it was an awesome first Popeye story and I remember hoping to see more. Sadly, that never came to pass. But that was the first time I learned the director's name. It was years before Altman made a serious impression. At some point in my high school life, whilst exploring my Parent's Video collection that I inherited at their divorce, I discovered MASH, NASHVILLE, BREWSTER McCLOUD, THIEVES LIKE US, COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME JIMMY DEAN JIMMY DEAN and BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS - a wonderfully misunderstood film. When I entered my first Film Appreciation class in college, my professor Dick Cutler introduced me to THE LONG GOODBYE and put NASHVILLE into context in my mind. Around that same time - Altman released THE PLAYER and SHORT CUTS - I prefered SHORT CUTS - everyone else in my film classes prefered THE PLAYER. Don't get me wrong, I really really like THE PLAYER, but SHORT CUTS blew me away. I started to really get into Altman, but finding videos was difficult. Then the site got started and the first Altman film we covered from production to release was THE GINGERBREAD MAN - a film that had massive studio interference and crazed test screening problems. I got to see an early cut, which was much better than the final film. I first met Robert Altman when he brought DR T AND THE WOMEN to Austin. We shared some words and he seemed to really appreciate the support AICN threw behind his cut of GINGERBREAD MAN - but he had not so much a sadness when he talked of the film in his eyes - so much as it was a difficult job. I got the idea he didn't linger upon the bad, instead invigorated by the next idea, the next project, the next collaboration. I think that is why he was so productive, so hungry to produce film. Over the history of AICN - he released 10 films in the 10 years. I didn't like all of them, but each of them were about ideas, notions, experiments and trying something new. The films didn't resemble one another and sometimes they were great like GOSFORD PARK. My favorite Altman memory from the decade of AICN - was at CINEVEGAS - when I got introduced to CALIFORNIA SPLIT - a gorgeous 35mm print in a casino multiplex. Watching that film, then walking out into a casino - with the sounds of gambling everywhere... it was awesome. The Sadness in losing Robert Altman isn't that the filmmaker who made great films in the 70s is dead. No, the sadness is that one of the most unique and vibrant filmmakers of TODAY has passed. Somebody that created cinema despite the budget, the equipment. Whether it was studio financed or independent. He was alive in the way that so many so-called living directors are zombies treading forward in search for brains. His brain teemed with ideas, I know this because his film was filled with ideas. Something incredibly refreshing! We lost an artist last night. One of my faves.
Hey guys. Quint here with some real sad news. Robert Altman, director of such classics as MASH, MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER, CALIFORNIA SPLIT, NASHVILLE, POPEYE (screw the world, I love this movie), THE PLAYER, SHORT CUTS and tons more, has died. The cause of death is not known, but he was 81 years old. I had the pleasure of spending 2 days on the set of THE COMPANY during one extremely wintery week in Chicago a few years back. I never got to speak with the man, but I got to watch him work. My main memory of that visit, spent in a rundown building somewhere downtown Chicago, was how different a filmmaker Altman was from anybody else I've seen work. He was shooting HD and had at least two cameras on every take. That in and of itself is not unusual. It's rather common to have two cameras running to get as much coverage as possible, but what Altman was doing with his second camera was what really caught my attention. He had his A camera set up with the standard framing. It was a sequence with Malcolm McDowell training Neve Campbell and a class of dancers. The B camera wasn't fixed, though. During McDowell's speech to his class, the second camera was floating around the set, looking in every single corner, on every bit player or extra's face as McDowell talked, searching for a reaction or an angle that would just chance to happen. I was told that he works that way on all his films, which is why you get some amazing spontaneous reactions in his films. That really impressed me. My total interaction with Altman was kind of like most people's relationship with God. On the set, he had every room rigged with speakers and an audio system for him to be able to give direction from another room. So, as I sat with the sound man, watching the monitors, I'd hear Altman's voice randomly boom overhead. "Malcolm, do that a little slower!" or "That looks good, Neve. Let's do it again." Every once in a while the actors would need a little more interaction and out he'd walk from his room, past me and into the set with Neve, Malcolm and the rest of the cast to impart his direction in person. On one of these trips, he looked over at me, a stranger with a cold, locked eyes for a moment and then continued on his way, I'm sure thinking, "Who is that fat geek and what is he doing on my set?" That was the extent of my interaction with the man, but I look back on my experience on that set with a lot of happiness. That was a fun trip, my first time in Chicago and a really great hand-shake and chat with Malcolm McDowell... not to mention the chance of a lifetime to watch one of film's best directors work, a chance I will not have again. One of the great ones has gone. My thoughts are with his friends, family and fans.
