Director Robert Altman will long be mourned by the movie world. The news of the death of honored American director Robert Altman 81, has brought a series of accolades from actors and writers who have worked with him over the years. In fact Sandcastle 5 Productions in New York just said "He had lived and worked with the disease {cancer} for the last 18 months," Robert Altman's thinly veiled Vietnam War satire
is indicative of when the spirit of the 1970s went mainstream, with Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland and Tom Skerritt as rebellious, sarcastic and endearing Army doctors fighting military (read corporate) bullshit while healing wounded soldiers during the War. He hated the sitcom that it spawned calling it "that series" and I read in the Freep this morning that he only put the disclaimer that it was Korea and NOT Vietnam after pressure from the producers to make the film less aggressive. I don't know..I kinda like aggressive--at least in film directors. Pete Travers said this In Rolling Stone "Here was a director who spawned his own adjective, Altmanesque. That meant overlapping dialogue -- think of all the characters talking at the same time in M*A*S*H. That meant movies that fit no existing mold -- think of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Three Women, Images, The Long Goodbye, California Split, Thieves Like Us. That meant large ensemble casts -- like the hordes of actors in Nashville, The Player, Gosford Park, Short Cuts and what turns out to be his last film, A Prairie Home Companion, who came together under his direction to create a teeming sense of collective life that no director has been able to match since." I am sad.
