ALTMAN POLL

challopsy, but Glenda Jackson yes

sort of a sketch-show Nashville

Jackson is hilarious in it but really demonstrates why she was so difficult to cast. Bacall as Reagan was hilarious, Wikipedia says that he mentions it being the worst movie ever in his published diaries.

I'm genuinely shocked that no one picked the astounding BREWSTER MCCLOUD.

anyway, here are 3 phenomenal Altman television rarities:

Killer App, a pilot from 1998 that was written by Garry Trudeau. It's like SILICON VALLEY 20 years earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fesJbkZjH84&disable_polymer=true

Rattlesnake in a Cooler: soliloquy produced for television in 1982-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8q-7LHEZ3Y

The Laundromat-incredible adaptation of Marsha Norman's play that was made for HBO in 1985---https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVB7dsuboQo&disable_polymer=true

Wow, thanks!!!

Nightmare in Chicago remains the holy grail for me (lucky enough to have seen it once, on TV, 30-35 years ago). I check YouTube periodically, but nothing.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BzLS-J2wF58/V3VKr1iNuOI/AAAAAAAABdA/xU7-NGJjWPonV1HE_4avtEhNISNckFevgCKgB/s1600/Nightmare%2Bin%2BChicago%2B5.jpg

clemenza I have a link for that if u want it

Wow--absolutely! I'm hoping you mean a file...I did find a DVD bootleg place that'd end up costing some ridiculous amount after postage and exchange.

(My user profile/homepage will take you to my e-mail address if you don't want to post it here.)

Yeah it's a file, 930mb so not amazing quality but probably watchable. I'll email ya

The Holy Grail located; thank you, Simon.

beyond therapy or fool for love?

which one are you?

I need to know which to rent today 😞
xp Both 😭

when I first saw Nashville I thought Carradine's performance of "I'm Easy" and the simultaneous look around the bar was the culmination, and seeing again I still think so

“you may say that I ain’t free but it don’t worry me” from Nashville is prophetic

echoing my thoughts exactly, altho when I rewatched it in March (2 days after pandemic declared), the finale with Barbara Harris really hit hard. yes, exactly, that ending is just a perfect demonstration of America in miniature: a horrible, motiveless tragedy occurs, complete chaos for a few minutes, and then it's a singalong. Nothing ever changes, but throw those flowers into the crowd and tilt up to the cloudy, grey sky. CLOROX PRODUCTS! WITH RED DOTS ON 'EM! thats right

For a heavy psychological drama (and despite its dysphoric 1970s score) 3 Women seemed almost light in a really appealing way until the end. It was very strange and unlike any other Altman film I’ve seen. Shelley Duvall won the Cannes best actress award for it but Sissy Spacek was equally amazing

I liked Altman’s comment about “empty vessels in an empty landscape”, and also the idea that the California desert represents "a space of death but also one of creation"

A Wedding was an interesting follow-up to Nashville and 3 Women

marriage celebrations (and marriages) are messy and chaotic and relationships are often unequal, charged, and fraught with peril, but we can always decide to move ahead

saw on the cast list that Joan Allen, John Malcovich, Laurie Metcalf, and Gary Sinise were extras, but the scenes were so complex that I didn’t even notice them

*Malkovich

I love that throwaway line, "You can get cancer from smoking pot?"

I only spotted Metcalf (I think)

Popeye is so broad and dumb, it's hard to believe this is the same director who made McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville

think his next film Come Back to the 5 & Dime will be better

Saw Popeye when it came out, immediately erased everything from my mind. Come Back I saw years after the fact--some positives, I think.

Come Back is too long but good

revisited a couple of his movies yesterday.... Brewster McCloud, good lord, so bad... so much worse than I remember... just stupid and not funny and so boring...

but Nashville was even more of a masterpiece last night... there's that incredible match cut of the old man crying at the hospital after his wife's died right to Michael Murphy and Ned Beatty laughing in the club.

I also think it's worth noting the final three shots: there's the zoom out from the stage, and then right as the lens is pulled completely back, there's a cut to one last shot of the crowd: two cops walking around wearing aviators. Cut back to the wide shot, tilt up to the gray sky. Maybe it's an arbitrary shot, but going back into the crowd after that relatively long zoom out to show two cops who look like they're looking for trouble, it feels absolutely intentional--a brief reminder of reality, that the dream is almost over

Crisp description, flappy. Every time I wanna knock Nashville to a second tire I remember that match cut.

I still prefer Brewster McCloud to M*A*S*H*, but yeah--Nashville, McCabe and Mrs. Miller--he got better as the 70s went along.

Seeing Brewster McCloud at 18 and reading Robert Kolker's A Cinema of Loneliness (about the New American Cinema) was the first real spur to my becoming a cinephile, and conscious of auteurism and the role of a director. The film is completely chaotic and doesn't really have a centre other than Altman's whims, but I would rank it above such vote-getters in this poll as M*A*S*H, The Player and Short Cuts.

Paul Schrader, on Facebook today:

3 WOMEN. Several FB friends have been harrumphing for years about the greatness of Altman's 1977 film to the extent I felt psychologically arm twisted to watch it again. Which I just did. I disliked it when it came out, I disliked it ever more on belated viewing. The corona of condescension, superficiality and self importance which exudes from Altman and his films like a marijuana haze is in full display. And that score? Could it be the worst serious score ever? Nice prod design, though.

classic schrade shade

there's a cut to one last shot of the crowd: two cops walking around wearing aviators.

Is one of them the female cop? I think she gets the frame to herself.

Seeing Brewster McCloud at 18 and reading Robert Kolker's A Cinema of Loneliness (about the New American Cinema) was the first real spur to my becoming a cinephile

Me too, although I'd swap a few dozen films in for BM (which I didn't see for years and didn't like). Excellent book

I should say Brewster is only bad relatively imo, it has plenty going for it. Watching it with a couple other people, and none of us laughed... well, it looked good as most Altman movies do, and there's great stuff here and there. I should say that if I found more of the leads attractive it would work. Bud Cort is too close to the 2001 baby for me to get interested, much less excited.

That Paul Schrader writeup is INSANE. Hilarious, his opinion can only be taken so seriously since he was a competitor with Altman at the time. All one has to do is counter with is Cat People.

Schrader bagging on another filmmaker for "self importance" is pretty rich

there's that incredible match cut of the old man crying at the hospital after his wife's died right to Michael Murphy and Ned Beatty laughing in the club

otm, altho it’s murphy and geraldine chaplin, not beatty— the most evil char and the dumbest char. you can work out that what they’re laughing at is barbara baxley’s kennedy monologue. chaplin says the assassination’s her fault for owning a gun. lol

Whoa! Great catch

(the monologue happens earlier to be clear but p sure opal from the bbc has just been telling advance man tripple about it when we cut to them in that moment.)

whole last scene is such a symphony. otm about the ominous dissonance of that cut into the angelus-novus-pov pullback. oh, man, i can’t stop that blood, man!

lmao. Somebody sing.. SING!

I've been filling in the Altman I haven't seen yet and I got to O.C. & Stiggs and holy shit it's bad. Like hateful terrible bad. What the hell?

Thieves Like Us has been the big why-didn't-i-watch-this-sooner surprise. Keith Carradine & Shelley Duvall should have played Tom Verlaine & Patti Smith.

saw Streamers the other night, I liked it more than the other 80s stuff of his I've seen recently

but it did have that 'stage play turned into a movie' quality, like Come Back To the 5 & Dime and Secret Honor

Found this the other day, uploaded only 2 months ago, short making of on California Split

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDgCM-V41_A

Altman's hat is awesome

Vincent and Theo as a film adapted from a miniseries didn't have to be as long as it was, but I liked it

Saw 5&dime for the first time last month and I kinda loved it. It’s very ‘for hire’ even if he did the OG play but as a bottle movie is really moves

The Player and Short Cuts seem like a comeback for Altman after his non-commercial play-based films of the 80s

I was wondering about Short Cuts as I hadn’t seen it again since it came out. The missed connections between the characters and the earnestness of their trying to connect made the film for me, even if it didn't all come together