Within a common location, the zigzag orchestration of separate though related and overlapping “stories” became a trademark style of Robert Altman’s. In Short Cuts, co-written by Frank Barhydt, it achieves a very rich flowering, a brilliant dynamism, shrewd coherence and absolutely revelatory unity. For all the L.A. stories by Raymond Carver it juggles (ten, actually), […]
Tag Archives: Bob Altman
In the Pacific Northwest, about 1900, John McCabe (Warren Beatty, good) enters Presbyterian Church, a mining town whose mud seasonally changes to the snow in which he dies, shot by an enforcer over his failure to sell to a big, respected company the business he (along with madam Constance Miller) built, a successful whorehouse/tavern. As […]
Among Robert Altman’s 1980s theatrical adaptations, and hilarious, Beyond Therapy has been widely maligned, at least in the States. Christopher Durang and Altman’s script comes from Durang’s play, though Altman’s extensive changes led Durang to all but disown the final result, giving reviewers cover for their venom—although some of them took the occasion to dump […]
Robert Altman, one of the best American filmmakers of the past forty years, had his share of misses, perhaps the most unendurable of which is the frigid, futuristic Quintet (1977). For a quarter-century there have been those who have wanted to relegate the teen comedy O.C. and Stiggs to this ignominious group. These must be […]
Robert Altman, the brilliant director of The Long Goodbye (1973) and Nashville (1975), wanted to have his name erased from the credits of The Gingerbread Man, and he did manage to hide his authorship of the script behind the pseudonym Al Hayes. In short, Altman repudiated this film, which is based on a story that […]
Dennis Grunes 