ALTMAN POLL

Welcome to L.A. yesterday, Three Women today. I've had a home-taped VHS for years that I never watched, figuring it would show up at the Cinematheque sooner or later; it never did, and I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't played here since its release. I'd read enough about it to know there'd be some Persona in there, and there is, but what it really reminded me of was Lynch--generally, for the first hour, and then towards the end it felt like Mulholland Dr. (Which I was a little more receptive to when I watched it again last week.) I recognized Liberty Bell from The Paper Chase right away--he plays the doctor (or whatever he is) at the spa. Eight votes in this poll seems very generous, but I was ready to really dislike it, and I didn't.

I don't know if there are prints of 3 Women available. I first saw it at a museum retro of Altman 70s films back in '03. IIRC, Fox supplied the print and it was absolutely beat to hell, with missing frames, audio drop-outs, specs and lines galore. At the time it looked like this was the best you could get to see the film properly. When the Criterion disc dropped the next year, the quality was a revelation.

If you're still around, I'd be very interested in hearing from the person who voted for That Cold Day in the Park. Took me almost a week to get through it. It went somewhere I didn't expect towards the end, so that was interesting, but if you love Altman for his mid-'70s run, you'd have a hard time finding that guy anywhere here. Or maybe not: between Cold Day and Three Women, plus what I know of two others I haven't seen (Images and Quintet), Altman seems to have had this side of him that wanted to make cold, cerebral films that denied you all the pleasures of his mid-'70s run. Maybe Persona was his inspiration--Cold Day and Three Women both have one lead character who never shuts up while the other lead listens passively. Stuff like The Collector and Bunny Lake Is Missing also seem to be precedents for Cold Day. Can't say I liked it much, but I found Michael Burns' ("the Boy") story interesting--he went on to be a history professor at Holyoke, and wrote a couple of books about the Dreyfus case.

yeah i also watched that recently & didnt think it was v successful. none of the characters motivations > actions ring particularly true or believable. i think it was adapated from a play? def felt stagey

Adapted from a dream iirc

Watched A Wedding for (I think) the first time ever. I'm not sure--I taped it off TV years ago, but I think I was holding out for a theatre screening.

The reviews were only middling at the time, but it's probably more the end of the beginning than the other way around--it and the two before (Buffalo Bill and 3 Women) were sort of a holding pattern until he really got hammered for Quintet. I thought it was pretty good. Took a while to get going, and it doesn't have anything even approaching the sweep of Nashville, but some of the performances are good, and Altman still directs with more or less a sure hand. My favourite character was the doddering old bishop--reminded me a lot of Mayor Milford in Twin Peaks. Carol Burnett and Howard Duff and Vittorio Gassman are good, and there are lots of just-getting-started people to look out for: Dennis Franz, Pam Dawber, Dennis Christopher, and a few I completely missed--John Malkovich, George Wendt, Joan Allen, Laurie Metcalf, Gary Sinese. I don't know what Altman thought Desi Arnaz Jr. brought to his role; he didn't do much besides smile. I liked seeing Mia Farrow play somebody less than wholesome, before Woody Allen turned her into a saint. The Anchor Bay CD I watched wasn't cleaned up much, so the color in some scenes was faded, in others garishly saturated. I feel like I should know Dina Merrill from something, but looking at her credits I don't.

I like the part where the bridesmaids get stoned to "Bird On A Wire"--oh ho, and Mia's "counting"! I agree w/it being closer to the "End of The Beginning". According to "Altman On Altman", Dawber & Mia were replacements for (respectively) Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek. Duvall was with Paul Simon at the time, and he'd gotten locked into a lease on a summerhouse, so she dropped out and Spacek then used her friend's exit to leave as well.

BTW, speaking of late '70s Fox Altman: Any opinions out there on A Perfect Couple?

Interesting. Mia felt like she belonged in an Altman film, but Dawber seemed out of left field (not sure if Mork and Mindy was on the air by the time the film came out). Not that she wasn't fine for the 10 minutes she was there. My first thought was that Arnaz was forced onto Altman by a studio, but at that point--maybe for his whole career, but definitely before Quintet--you couldn't have forced anything onto Altman. I started to watch A Perfect Couple one night and stopped after 15 minutes or so.

A Wedding was the first one I saw in a theater. Haven't RESCREENED in at least 20 years.

Dina Merrill was known for being married to Cliff Robertson. The big guy with the mustache who plays her husband, Pat McCormick, was a writer for Johnny Carson for years.

I knew I knew McCormick, couldn't remember why. He did sketches on the show too, right?

Kael's pretty tough on the film, which makes sense--mildly enjoying it in 2013 is one thing, writing about it a couple of years removed from Nashville is another. Agree with a couple of things she wrote. "It takes most of the movie to spot the actors who are listed and to figure out who they're playing and what their relationships to each other are"--for much of the film, I didn't know who was related to who or how. "There's no way into the movie"--yeah, it's just a lot of stuff, some of which works and some of which doesn't, but if felt mostly like I was just keeping score on that count.

I really liked A Wedding the couple times I saw it, but I'd have to watch it again to remember exactly why.

yes, McCormick was occasionally in the Mighty Carson Art Players. He also played Grover Cleveland in Buffalo Bill and the Indians, was in the Smokey and the Bandit series, etc.

The kid in the movie running around taking the photos and talking about monster movies was Mark Deming, who grew up to be an online critic for Allmovie and Yahoo. He wrote a nice obit for the former (which appears to have been taken down) talking about the experience.

thinking about running a McCabe/Long Goodbye runoff poll years later

How about the top 3? I just want Nashville to win--even though my sense, from reading Altman commentary on here, is that The Long Goodbye would win any kind of a follow-up configuration.

(xpost) Kael singled out Deming as one of the things she liked about the movie. Can't find an image--he had a great look.

Long Goodbye would come in third for me in a runoff against Nashville and McCabe, but it's all win-win-win up there.

yah that's probably true for me too, plus I probably like Brewster more than McCabe (though not like much more).

for me it's like Nashville>Brewster>McCabe>Long Goodbye>Thieves>3 Women. Hate MASH, and I haven't yet seen any of the 90s ones (let alone the 80s). I'd have to watch California Split again before I could decide on it, it's been ages...

I highly recommend Short Cuts, also the entirety of Tanner '88. (Not as big on The Player, although you should see that too.)

my short list to a tyro:

McCabe...
The Long Goodbye
Thieves Like Us
3 Women
Vincent and Theo
The Gingerbread Man

Gingerbread Man?!

Might have to take another look at this one, as I remember hating it when it was new.

I didn't care much for The Player when it came out. I recognized that it was well done, but I didn't connect with it at all, not on any level (i.e., even conceding that it aims for chilly acerbity, and is supposed to be off-putting).

I go back to it every few years, and it gets better and better every time. I'd almost put it up on my shortlist of favorites--it's at the top of the second tier, at the very least. The thing that most impressed me last night was Tim Robbins--what a great performance. Sometimes he's as coolly venal as J.J. Hunsecker, elsewhere he's like a hapless noir patsy. The cameos are almost uniformly perfect. (I'm looking at Wikipedia's list, and some of them--Martin Mull, Brad Davis--I missed.) Weirdest: Rod Steiger. Lots of just-starting-out people to look for, too.

vhs of kansas city in my living room, i think it's my roommates. worth watching?

Never seen it. Belafonte has one of the most prominent cameos in The Player.

Don't know if I'd go as far as calling The Player my favourite Altman, but it is the one I find the most purely pleasurable. And yeah, Robbins' best performance without question.

some of them--Martin Mull, Brad Davis--I missed.

You didn't miss Brad Davis. He was in an advanced stage of AIDS when his cameo was filmed, and he passed away shortly after. Altman elected to leave the scene out of the film.

I go back to it every few years, and it gets better and better every time. I'd almost put it up on my shortlist of favorites--it's at the top of the second tier, at the very least. The thing that most impressed me last night was Tim Robbins--what a great performance.

You nailed it. The Player was the first ROBERT ALTMAN movie I was aware of. It got a decent ad push, so much so that my local paper devoted Sunday arts coverage to "The Master is Back!" type story. A weird release iirc -- late spring or early summer? I didn't get to it until its video release in early spring the following year. Because so many of his films were unavailable in the early nineties I rated it high; the casual acerbic tone, matched by the gliding camera and the odd bits of punctuation (those shots of movie posters) were unlike anything I'd seen. I went into Short Cuts expecting a masterpiece, and it took somethign to get a group of non-film friends into the theater. I sat rapt while they fidgeted. I didn't want to admit then what I would a few months later: not only doesn't the "Carver soup" cohere, you can't assemble short stories into a pattern and have them make sense; besides, what Altman movie follows a pattern anyway?

Then in the next couple years I saw McCabe, The Long Goodbye and the rest. But, yes, The Player is top of the second tier.

The Player was my first Altman as well, at least if we don't count Popeye (nothing to do with the quality of the film, but I would have had no idea who Altman was when I watched it), and I was similarly made excited by a bunch of coverage that touted the triumphant return of a figure whose work I didn't know but now knew that I should. Saw it in a shopping mall in Detroit one afternoon with my dad while my mom and sister shopped, where I sat rapt while he fidgeted. I even got the Criterion laserdisc (!) for Christmas either that year or the one after--like my Criterion disc of Tootsie, its one of those things I hang on to even though I have no way to watch it anymore.

The Player really fell out of favour didn't it? it was a Big Deal when it came out but you never hear anyone mention it these days. i wonder if it's because gossip and insider-stuff about The Industry is now commonplace. also it feels like its attitude/sensibility has been ripped off by a bunch of TV shows.

my favorite Altman film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3V-7DEAgdc

Now, after years in the making, Robert Altman brings to the big screen the long-awaited Liberian Girl, with 24 -- count 'em -- 24 of your very favorite stars!

born 90 years ago today; strange to think of him as just under 10 years Welles' junior, when he had his breakthrough just as OW had only one completed feaature to go.

Film Comment video on the Altman TV years:

https://vimeo.com/116894504

CA Split is not worth going out into Hoth for, right?

I'm about the only person who would agree with that.

i was never hugely impressed by it either

(so there)

Its 2nd tier imo. Which is still p good.

CA Split is not worth going out into Hoth for, right?

the ion cannon will protect you

I really love CA Split. Love Segal and Gould together (70s sublime combo). But my high regard may have to do with my fondness for movies/ fiction about gambling-- more specifically, the psychology of gambler. NB I'm not a gambler and personally feel no inclination toward gambling, but despite that (or because of that) am all the more fascinated, and on that particular theme IMO CA Split is among the best ever. Also love The Gambler (1974, with amazing James Caan), Bob le flambeur, The Story of a Cheat (not long ago caught for the first time on TCM), Owning Mahoney (great PSH performance), Lost in America (inexhaustible LOLs), etc. (and of course the Dostoevsky short story; offhand not as well versed in literature on the theme). California Split and The Gambler may be top two for me in films about gamblers.

I'd throw in Rounders as one of the three best. (I love California Split too. Last year I posted on the some thread that it had become my second favourite Altman film.)

Half-distracted half-saw Rounders on cable, but liked what I saw; will get around to a good watch, thanks for the recommendation.

Was really enjoying HBO's Luck too, for the brief time it lasted, alas.

I'm interested in film about all kinds of gambling (or all kinds of its aspects). But (maybe because I'm not a gambler) I'm less interested in depictions of gamblers who really just want to "win," or gamblers as skilled experts in a competitive sport (as it were), and more interested in "existential" gamblers, so to speak. (Is this a more pathological form of gambling? Or something like a drive, something like-- but more complicated than-- a death drive, which underlies all gambling, primordial part of the compulsion and thrill?)

There's something mysterious there which The Gambler and California Split (and Dostoevsky's novel) et al get at.

But that makes it sounds like my interest/ fondness is theoretical. I love hanging out with those two characters-- two gamblers, but ultimately very different-- to be immersed in the non-plot-driven idiosyncratic details of their time together, and such a complicated male friendship (so much more shaded and complicated and dark along with light than, say, the buddies in MASH).

HBO's Luck had some of that feeling too.

let's talk about Combat! instead

Saw Nashville for the first time last week - p good film!

The sound production was very trebly though, is that an issue w the blu-ray or a 70s sound thing? if so: why is the background noise so trebly? dark side of the moon is '73 so I know hifi mixing equipment was available...

What a filmography...

I can definitely get with your ranking. You captured pretty much everything I'd include except for Images, PHC, and Brewster McCloud. And Tanner '88 is an absolutely essential work so it's only natural that you'd include it.

Actually just watched The Gingerbread Man for the first time last week. Relatively minor Altman but definitely the best Grisham film I've seen (faint praise, yes).

The sound production was very trebly though, is that an issue w the blu-ray or a 70s sound thing? if so: why is the background noise so trebly? dark side of the moon is '73 so I know hifi mixing equipment was available...

― niels, Monday, November 2, 2015 6:45 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Late w/this, but feel I can address the matter. tl;dr--it's a 70s sound thing.

Longer version: This is an apples and oranges thing. The tech--from microphones to consoles--involved in recording studios in the 70s was a bit more advanced than what was being used on films of the time, particularly heavy on location productions like Altman's works. That said, in this case the disparity isn't as much as it could have been. The direct sound was recorded on a 24 track remote console, not unlike what would be used for a live album or concert film, that Altman had purchased to get more wide-ranging and true stereo location sound on his films, which--as in the case with Nashville--were becoming total on location productions with little if any filming being done on soundstages. (Before I go further, all of this is covered in greater and definitely more accurate detail in the Nashville Chronicles book).

The problem was, even with the big board, due to restrictions caused by the small omnidirectional lavaliere microphones hidden on actors (instead of the tradition over/under head boom mic), they couldn't use all the tracks at once because of frequency issues. Usually only a couple of actors would be mic-ed, even in big scenes (Allen Nichols recalls in the book having to speak in the direction of Keith Carradine's shoulder in their scenes together so he'd get picked up into the mic sewn into the latter's costume).

Mixing in post-production presented another problem. Despite the studio tech available to them, most theatres at the time were not equipped to handle surround or even plain stereo. Generally the only films exhibited with such mixes were musicals, concert films, or event films like Irwin Allen's 'Disaster' films & their ilk, which played in specially equipped theatres (hence the somewhat infamous story about the distribution of Ladies & Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones, wherein exhibitors were supplied with portable PA equipment with the film print for a proper aural experience). Therefore background noise--particularly location sounds like in Nashville--didn't have much thought put into its recording since it wouldn't have a prominent place in the mono presentation many would hear the film in upon release.

Now that we are fully ensconced in the surround era, a lot of older films are being remixed for 5.1 & beyond (such as the Criterion edition of Nashville, which is 5.1 only), so these flaws are becoming more apparent.

thanks, that's a lot of interesting facts!

I guess the alternative would have been to dub it all, and that would ofc not have suited the style

California Split. saw a gorgeous 35mm print of this in my favorite theater in the world the other day. amazing experience. i'm completely obsessed with Altman's constantly moving, roving camera. i liked the movie as it went on but wasn't first tier, reminded me of Cassavetes' Husbands and Faces, grown men getting drunk and silly. Really cruel playing that prank on the cross-dressing man, that sucked. anyway like i said for most of it i was just enjoying seeing thru Altman's wandering eyes, was slight otherwise, until that shot of George Segal sitting at an empty bar looking completely dejected in the background, the camera slowly pushing in on him as Elliot Gould hoots and hollers in the foreground. a stunning shot, and of course what follows- "this doesn't mean anything" - but that shot made the movie. feel lucky I got to see this movie for the first time under ideal circumstances. i can't believe it's out of print.

Like it much better than Husbands, but yes, they come from the same place.

Oh yeah for sure

I haven’t seen Husbands in ages but Altman’s roving camera automatically makes his so much better