R.I.P. Robert Altman

[UPDATE: I wrote this in a real hurry this morning, before work, so it has now been cleaned up considerably. Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere noted our efforts at the video store to keep up with current events.

I feel kind of morbid setting up DVD displays for the recently deceased, but it's pretty much a necessity. Otherwise, we'd all just be running around the store grabbing Bob Altman films for people for 8 hours straight. Seeing a director's name in the newspaper alone on any occasion inspires people to seek out that person's films. Believe me, I see it every day. But when they die it's an entirely different phenomenon. Even relatively obscure directors get this treatment once the obit appears. We had a run on The Eel and The Pornographer the week Shohei Imamura passed...It was weird.

Today, a guy came in and derided us for setting up an Altman display so soon after the guy's death. Apparently, he felt it was insensitive to not allow a few days to pass before making money on the guy's memory. Even though we're a video store and renting Altman movies is how we make money 365 days a year. This guy, not 10 minutes later, came up to the front counter to rent McCabe & Mrs. Miller, totally unaware of the hypocracy of his situation. What an idiot.]

Legendary American director Robert Altman has died today, here in Los Angeles, at the age of 81. His IMDB biography includes this sentence, pretty much the best sentence I've ever read in anyone's biography ever.

"After a brief fling as publicity director with a company in the business of tattooing dogs, Altman finally gave up and returned to his hometown of Kansas City, where he decided he wanted to do some serious work in filmmaking."

Tattooing dogs? That seems kind of cruel. Either way, you just know it's difficult to publicize. "Hey, is this the Kansas City Star? I represent a company that draws decorative, yet searingly painful, designs on people's pets and we were hoping...Hello? Hello?"

Anyway, he eventually did get to start making movies (amazingly, at first he worked out of Kansas City, which apparently served as kind of a small Midwestern Hollywood at the time). Once he got to Hollywood, he worked a lot in television, on shows like "Bonanza," "Surfside 6," "The Millionaire" (one of the weirdest shows ever) and "Combat!" His first big hit was MASH in 1970, but many many many more successes followed. I mean, look at the other highlights on this resume:

The Long Goodbye
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (among the greatest Westerns ever filmed!)
California Split
Nashville
3 Women
Thieves Like Us
The Player
Short Cuts
Gosford Park

That's a really tremendous, important collection of films. Altman and Martin Scorsese are probably the two most influential American directors of the 1970's. California Split and Long Goodbye in particular strike me as overlooked gems. Split is that rare, perfect combination of comedy and drama, an ultimately depressing story about two degenerate gamblers that's somehow funny all the way through. Elliott Gould and Peter Segal are ridiculously charismatic here, making their downfall almost unbearable to watch. In fact, this is probably my favorite Segal performance. My favorite Gould performance might well be his take on Phillip Marlowe in Long Goodbye, a reimagining of film noir that's ceaselessly, and effortlessly, brilliant. This film features one of the great final scenes/shots of all time.

No career overview, of course, would be complete without mentioning the duds. Altman directed perhaps more bad movies than any other filmmaker of his esteemed generation. It's rare that such a key artistic talent would have bombs like OC and Stiggs, The Gingerbread Man or Dr. T and the Women littering his CV.

Some of the "lesser" Altman films aren't as bad as everyone says. Quintet moves slowly but is actually quite watchable, and some of the sets are really impressive in their detail. Brewster McCloud has enjoyable moments (though it's getting more and more difficult to even find a copy to watch, what with no DVD available). Some are just as bad as people say, if not worse. Popeye, I'm looking in your direction.

Altman faltered so often not only because he was a cagey risktaker, but because he refused to be restricted to certain genres or types of stories. His style is immediately recognizable (an Altman film announces itself as an Altman film typically by the first scene), yet Altman worked in such a wide variety of genres and forms. Period pieces, comedies, science-fiction, domestic dramas, thrillers, they're all up there. He would tell many of these stories in the same fashion, and with his trademark sarcasm, but that's about all they would really share. (Though I suppose his old school Lefty politics tended to play a role in some of his films, particularly the satires...)

Altman pioneered a type of filmmaking that's become increasingly prevalent in today's Hollywood. These ensemble character studies - films like Crash, Babel and Magnolia - share a lot in common with Altman classics, particularly Nashville and Short Cuts. Except none of them come even close to Altman's mastery of the form. The man had an extrasensory ability to juggle narratives. Gosford Park manages to keep dozens of characters engaged in involving, complex stories all going on simultaneously in a few shared rooms. And it's funny!

Altman's technique for placing microphones around the set and filming multiple conversations and interactions simultaneously, creating a lived-in natural environment, works perfectly in these sorts of ensemble films. We get a sense not only common themes and ideas running through these stories, but the context of the larger community in which they're set. Movies about nebulous connections between people are obviously buoyed by a roving camera that takes in as many conversations and meetings and, yes, connections as possible.

Anyway, the guy will be missed. His was a restless creativity; he continued working right up until the time of his death, always bucking the Hollywood system and carving out his own path. At 81!

His last film was released earlier this year - Prairie Home Companion - and regrettably, it's not among his best work. It's an example of Altman turning over his considerable gifts to a different artist's work, in this case, using his film to showcase the writing (and, oddly, singing) of Garrison Keillor. He'd done this sort of thing before - his ballet film The Company focused mainly on the dancing, his Secret Honor is an acting showcase for Phillip Baker Hall - and the success or failure of the enterprise is really up to the other artists whose performances are the centerpieces.

But the guy will be remembered not for his handful of misfires, but for the amazing wealth of quality cinema he gave the world.