Have We "Departed" from the True Point of the Oscars?

I admire greatly Martin Scorsese's body of work and his contribution to film preservation efforts, but if "The Departed" is the best American movie we made last year, Hollywood needs to take a long hard look at itself. I just finished watching the Chinese film on which "Departed" was based, 2002's "Infernal Affairs", which tells the same basic story but is tighter, more coherent, lighter on sex and violence, has a better ending- and is 50 minutes shorter, with no Nicholson mugging. OK- it's politics, and Mr. Scorsese certainly deserves an honorary Oscar, but last time I checked, the Best Picture Oscar involves the actual merit of the film. Wake up, la-la land: there is a discerning, growing, underserved group that wants leaner, more intelligent and more original pictures.

Memories of Altman

I just finished reading your part two about Robert Altman.

I'm "nobody." My son, Jarrett Lennon (Kaufman) was in Short Cuts (Chad Weathers) and, because he was a minor, I of course "HAD" to be by his side for the entire work-time. I cannot begin to tell you what a delightful, soul-satisfying time both Jarrett and I had with Bob, as well as the rest of the crew and cast. Bob was the dearest man, and he gave me as much attention as anyone else, and we talked politics, art, and a great deal about my parents (both labor union organizers, Commies, friends of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the whole history that goes with all that). Day after day, week after week, it was an absolute joy to be around that dear man.

What Jarrett and I both, to this day, appreciate most about Bob (besides his extraordinary artistic talent) is that everyone was equally important on the set. He knew that; we knew that. It was good to be around someone who recognized how very much every single being counts on one of his shoots.

The friendship between my then-little boy (who turned 25 today, the 1st of February) and Bob lasted through phone calls.

Bob's death knocked me out. I'm still reeling from it, amazingly enough.

I am glad you got to meet Bob and feel just a bit of his wonderful self.

Upstairs is Daphne. She is a very old little lizard, now, but in 1992, she also had a small part in Short Cuts. As Peter Gallagher's about to stomp down the side of his former house, we see what appears to be a scary monster. The camera quickly pulls back, revealing it's a tiny lizard in the hands of Jarrett, as seen through Frances McDormand's kitchen window [and yet another through-the-window shot, eh?). Sweet Daphne is a daily reminder of Bob, because Bob gave Jarrett her, but that's a whole other super wonderful little story on just how personal Bob always was.

I have a huge lump in my throat right now.

Thank you for your good words about Robert Altman.

Tribute to Robert Altman - Part Two

Coming out of the ether after a hectic but happy holiday and new year, I now complete my two-part tribute to the late director Robert Altman, who, with immeasurable grace and class, helped us re-launch the restored Avon Theatre just three years ago.

A review of Altman’s filmography reflects an artist unafraid to place his idiosyncratic stamp on a variety of vehicles, with the result ranging from outright triumph to noble misfire. In the former category, I nominate the following titles spanning from the late seventies to the early nineties.
3 Women (1977) - Shy Texas gal Pinky Rose (Spacek) has just relocated to a small North Carolina town, where she takes a job working at a rehab center for the elderly. After befriending garrulous co-worker Millie Lammoreaux (Duvall), the two move in together. Over time, Pinky becomes obsessively attached to Millie, whom she idolizes. But Millie’s dalliance with Edgar (Robert Fortier), a former TV stunt man, threatens to turn Pinky’s world inside out. This moody, dreamlike drama of psychological obsession was one of Altman’s finest films of the 1970s, owing mostly to his two female leads, whose performances are surreal and strangely touching. Altman, who based his script on an actual dream, focuses heavily on atmosphere and symbolic visual imagery, but he allows his actors—especially Duvall, as the chattering Millie—plenty of room to unravel their weird Southern personas. Vague, provocative, and awash in a hazy blue-and-yellow palette, “3 Women” is a bewitching tale of naiveté and emotional distress.
Secret Honor (1984)- Shortly after his resignation following the Watergate scandal, former U.S. president Richard M. Nixon (Hall) sits alone in his private study late at night, dictating his memoirs, with a bottle of Chivas close at hand. Downing a few drinks, then a few more, Nixon rants bitterly about Khruschev and Kissinger, Castro and the Kennedys, revisiting his past glories and failures while attempting to rehabilitate his tainted image. A filmed adaptation of Philip Baker Hall’s tour de force one-man show, Altman’s “Secret Honor” presents Nixon as a blustering paranoid-obsessive consumed by rage and a crippling insecurity, but also as a man with deep regrets about his life and legacy. Hall is haunting as the broken, isolated former leader, and Altman’s unique visual sensibility lends a restrained but effective cinematic quality to the single-actor, single-setting environment. Disturbing and poignant, “Secret Honor” is a complex look at a misguided, misunderstood, and ultimately, quite pathetic figure.
Vincent and Theo (1990)- Dark, complex film delves into the fraught relationship between artist Vincent Van Gogh ( Tim Roth) and younger brother Theo (Paul Rhys), a struggling art dealer who single-handedly supports his penniless, eccentric older brother for most of Vincent’s life, sacrificing his own happiness and fulfillment. The long-suffering Theo spends his time either selling inferior art work to rich dilettantes, pushing his brother’s work to a dismissive public, or struggling to keep Vincent from descending into madness. There exist several worthy films on the character and work of Van Gogh, this now revered artist who ironically sold only one painting during his lifetime. But only Altman’s entry probes the mysterious, mystical connection between the brothers, whereby Vincent’s tormented genius acts on Theo like some invisible magnet, drawing him into a caretaker role, while making him keenly aware of his own relative ordinariness. Altman evokes a rich sense of period, and elicits winning performances all around (most notably, a juicy turn by Jean-Pierre Cassel as a pompous art patron). The two leads shine as well, particularly the intense, mesmerizing Roth in an Oscar-caliber portrayal. At the end credits, this unsung film leaves us sensing the immense frustration of ill-timed brilliance.
The Player (1992)- Studio executive Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) has a comfortable, if hectic, life as a Hollywood green-lighter, listening to pitches for bad sequels and misbegotten action flicks while schmoozing with a who’s who of silver-screen luminaries. Mill’s cushy life begins to unravel, however, when he starts receiving anonymous death threats. Spooked and frustrated by the harassment, Mill has a fateful parking-lot confrontation late one night with pushy screenwriter David Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio) that leads him to the brink of ruination. No one has an eye for human behavior like Altman, and this caustic satire of back-stabbing power brokers and anxious movers and shakers in La-La Land really soars, thanks to a brilliant script by Michael Tolkin, adapted from his own novel. Robbins is creepily understated as a put-upon exec, the drifting center of a sprawling cast that includes Greta Scacchi as a painter and Buck Henry, Dean Stockwell, Fred Ward, and Peter Gallagher, all incarnating various types of preening, unctious “players” in Hollywood. Watch for cameos by A-list celebrities too numerous to mention, and too much fun to give away.
Short Cuts (1993)- In the director’s ambitious follow-up to “Player”, featuring a decidedly different side to the City of Angels, myriad lives criss-cross and intertwine in a sprawling ensemble drama adapted from Raymond Carver stories. As various couples bicker and struggle with love, sex, marriage, and alcohol, three friends on a fishing trip (Fred Ward, Buck Henry, and Huey Lewis) find a woman’s dead body but decide not to report it, an aging philanderer (Jack Lemmon) confesses his infidelities while his grandson lies comatose after an auto accident, and a birthday-cake baker (Lyle Lovett) seethes with anger over a trivial slight. The inspired match-up of Carver and Altman makes for movie magic in “Cuts,” a character-driven comedy/drama that wrings a lot of emotional truth from its engaging, ever-proliferating storylines, much like the director’s previous film quilt, “Nashville.” And you’d be hard-pressed to find a quirkier, more accomplished cast, including Tim Robbins, Frances McDormand, Julianne Moore, Lily Tomlin, Matthew Modine, Andie McDowell and Bruce Davison, who inject humanity and eccentricity into their roles with effortless naturalism. The film is long at just over three hours, but “Short Cuts” is such an enthralling (and constantly varying) slice of life that you hardly feel the time passing.

A Tribute to Robert Altman - Part One

I was nervous and excited to meet this man. It was May 5th, 2004 in downtown Stamford, and as a founding board member of the restored Avon Theatre, it was my privilege to host Robert Altman at our gala re-opening event. Better still, as part of the program, we’d meet Altman and his wife Kathryn for a private dinner beforehand to get acquainted.

My nerves came from opening night jitters, but also from the director’s reputation as a maverick and the fact he rarely smiled in photos. Soon after the couple’s arrival at Siena Restaurant, a block away from the Avon, I found myself completely disarmed and at ease.. Robert Altman was turning out to be one of the more generous and unassuming people I’d ever met.

True, he was not a big smiler, but it was quickly apparent this was due to a natural mid-western reserve, and nothing else. In addition, Kathryn, his spouse of 45 years, was consistently gracious and delightful. Altman ordered a drink for Kathryn and himself, told me to call him “Bob”, and we were off to the races.

We spoke of his early days learning the craft, directing episodes of the 60’s TV series “Combat”. He said it was the best training he could have hoped for, and was grateful to have been paid to learn the tricky, time-sensitive art of directing.

After the meal, strolling with me to the theatre, he made this comment: “People should realize that when they revisit a truly great movie, they’ll always see it with fresh eyes.”

That night, both Avon’s houses were packed, with the larger theatre showing Altman’s classic “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”, and the smaller house featuring “The Company”, a recent production starring Neve Campbell .Patiently, Bob went from one theatre to the other, gave everyone the same self-deprecating welcome, and introduced each movie.

After the screenings, the audiences merged into the large house for a Q&A session that lasted a full hour. The director (then almost eighty) was engaged and eloquent throughout. At about half past eleven, it was all over, and after warm, grateful farewells, the Altmans headed back to New York City. Before departing, Bob made a special point of telling me how much he loved our theatre.

I thought: what a class act. And of course, with a pang of sadness I felt it all over again when I heard of Altman’s passing last month. At the same time I was grateful that we Avon patrons got to see this gifted gentleman in such fine form not so long ago.

This first installment of my two-part Altman tribute focuses on his initial period of cinematic success, from 1970-1975, when his film career first sky-rocketed. The following early Altman titles all warrant the “re-visiting” the director mentioned on that magic night in Stamford.
M*A*S*H (1970) -Altman’s breakthrough black comedy details the shenanigans of three rogue surgeons ( Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, and Tom Skerritt) assigned to a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War. Their hijinks distract them from the daily horrors they face in the operating room. This ground-breaking film remains my personal favorite Altman work, a sharp, seamless blending of comedy and anti-war film that’s as fresh and irreverent today as when released. (Extensive use of overlapping dialogue sequences was a first at the time.) Top-notch performances throughout and some unbearably funny and fast dialogue distinguish this memorable outing, soon to be adapted into one of TV’s longest-running series.
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) - John McCabe (Warren Beatty), gambler turned entrepreneur, finds a remote community in the 1900’s Pacific Northwest, and with the help of savvy madam Constance Miller (Julie Christie), builds it into a thriving town. Soon, some determined business interests want to buy McCabe out, but he refuses, forcing an eventual showdown. Altman’s dark, ironic tale is more mood piece than classic western, painting an unidealized portrait of our country’s expansion. Though we side with McCabe against the corporate interests, we realize we’re actually rooting for a crooked card-shark whose relationship with a drug-addicted prostitute is anything but healthy. The movie’s filled with stark, stunning visual set-pieces, and boasts one of Beatty’s best performances. This is more peak Altman, and don’t miss that finish!
Images (1972) - Altman’s subtle, under-exposed chiller concerns Cathryn (Susannah York), a woman whose last vestiges of reality are giving way to schizophrenia. Her disintegration occurs mainly at the Irish country home which she and her husband Hugh (Rene Auberjonois) share. Other mysterious, predatory men pop in and out of the film as well, but since the viewer is trapped inside Cathryn’s diseased mind, it’s hard to tell just who or what is real. Weird, creepy film builds dread and disorientation as we experience madness right alongside the central character. Altman’s choice of rustic Irish setting is ideal, as cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond uses its dank, remote quality to accentuate Cathryn’s building isolation and paranoia. The movie’s bleak, opaque quality will not be to all tastes, but psychological horror fans should pounce. York is outstanding in the lead.
Nashville (1975) - This ensemble drama finds mean-spirited, patriotic crooner Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson), mentally fragile country queen Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakely), philandering folkie Tom (Keith Carradine), and more than 20 indelible characters--performers, wanna-be stars, groupies, runaway wives, and Bible thumpers—crossing paths over a long, eventful weekend in the Country Music Capital of the U.S.A., where a political campaign is also underway. Altman’s sprawling masterpiece cleverly satirizes both the wholesome image of the country-music industry and the values of the “Me Generation”. But the enduring strength of the film lies in the hands and hearts of the many talented actors— Lily Tomlin, Ned Beatty, Jeff Goldblum, Karen Black, and Shelley Duvall, to name a few, who populate this rich cinematic mosaic. Real-life singer Blakely stands out as a troubled star modeled after Loretta Lynn. In yet another grand Altman-esque gesture, the actors composed their own songs for “Nashville”--and a most tuneful soundtrack it is.
But wait, there’s more. After the New Year, we’ll review the cream of Altman’s later work, from the late seventies forward. Till then, happy holidays and happy viewing.