Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American filmmaker. He is considered an enduring figure from the New Hollywood era, known for directing subversive and satirical films with overlapping dialogue and ensemble casts. Over his career he received numerous accolades including an Academy Honorary Award, two BAFTAs, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe as well as nominations for seven competitive Academy Awards.
Altman was nominated for five Academy Awards for Best Director for the war comedy M*A*S*H, the musical film Nashville, the Hollywood satire The Player, the dark comedy Short Cuts, and the murder mystery Gosford Park. He is also known for directing Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, California Split, Thieves Like Us, 3 Women, A Wedding, Popeye, Secret Honor, The Company, and A Prairie Home Companion.
Also known for his work on television, he directed the HBO political mockumentary miniseries Tanner '88 for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. He also directed the HBO television film The Laundromat. On stage, he directed the Broadway revival of the Ed Graczyk play Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and later the 1982 film of the same name. He directed the West End revival of Arthur Miller's penultimate play Resurrection Blues.
In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized Altman's body of work with an Academy Honorary Award. He never won a competitive Oscar despite seven nominations. His films M*A*S*H, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye and Nashville have been selected for the United States National Film Registry. Altman is one of four filmmakers whose films have won the Golden Bear at Berlin, the Golden Lion at Venice, and the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Early life
Altman was born on February 20, 1925, in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Helen, a Mayflower descendant from Nebraska, and Bernard Clement Altman, a wealthy insurance salesman and amateur gambler who came from an upper-class family. Altman's ancestry was German, English and Irish; his paternal grandfather, Frank Altman Sr., anglicized the spelling of the family name from "Altmann" to "Altman". Altman had a Catholic upbringing, but he did not continue to follow or practice the religion as an adult, although he has been referred to as "a sort of Catholic" and a Catholic director. He was educated at Jesuit schools, including Rockhurst High School, in Kansas City. He graduated from Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri in 1943.Soon after graduation, Altman joined the United States Army Air Forces at the age of 18. During World War II, he flew more than 50 bombing missions as a co-pilot of a B-24 Liberator with the 307th Bomb Group in Borneo and the Dutch East Indies.
Upon his discharge in 1947, he moved to California. He worked in publicity for a company that had invented a tattooing machine to identify dogs. He entered filmmaking on a whim, selling a script to RKO for the 1948 picture Bodyguard, which he co-wrote with George W. George. Altman's immediate success encouraged him to move to New York City, where he attempted to forge a career as a writer. Having enjoyed little success, he returned to Kansas City in 1949 and accepted a job as a director and writer of industrial films for the Calvin Company. He directed some 65 industrial films and documentaries for the Calvin Company. Through his early work on industrial films, he experimented with narrative technique and developed his characteristic use of overlapping dialogue. In February 2012, an early Calvin film directed by Altman, Modern Football, was found by filmmaker Gary Huggins.
Altman also had a career directing plays and operas parallel to his film career. While he was employed by the Calvin Company, he began directing plays at the Resident Theatre of the Jewish Community Center. These plays allowed him to work with local actors, such as fellow future director Richard C. Sarafian, whom he directed in a production of Richard Harrity's Hope Is the Thing with Feathers. Sarafian would later marry Altman's sister and follow him to Hollywood.
Career
1957–1969: Directorial debut and early work
Altman's first forays into television directing were on the DuMont drama series Pulse of the City, and an episode of the 1956 western series The Sheriff of Cochise. In 1956, he was hired by a local businessman to write and direct a feature film in Kansas City on juvenile delinquency. The film, titled The Delinquents, made for $60,000, was purchased by United Artists for $150,000, and released in 1957. While primitive, this teen exploitation film contained the foundations of Altman's later work in its use of casual, naturalistic dialogue. With its success, Altman moved from Kansas City to California for the last time. He co-directed The James Dean Story, a documentary rushed into theaters to capitalize on the actor's recent death and marketed to his emerging cult following. Both works caught the attention of Alfred Hitchcock who hired Altman as a director for his CBS anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. After just two episodes, Altman resigned due to differences with a producer, but this exposure enabled him to forge a successful television career. Over the next decade Altman worked prolifically in television directing multiple episodes of Whirlybirds, The Millionaire, U.S. Marshal, The Troubleshooters, The Roaring 20s, Bonanza, Bus Stop, Kraft Mystery Theater, Combat!, as well as single episodes of several other notable series including Hawaiian Eye, Maverick, Lawman, Surfside 6, Peter Gunn, and Route 66.By the 1960s, Altman established himself as a television director due to his ability to work quickly and efficiently on a limited budget. Though he was frequently fired from television projects for refusing to conform to network mandates, Altman always was able to land new assignments. In 1964, the producers decided to expand "Once Upon a Savage Night", one of his episodes of Kraft Suspense Theatre, for release as a television film under the title Nightmare in Chicago. In a 1963 episode, "The Hunt", his cast included James Caan and Bruce Dern.
Two years later, Altman was hired to direct the low-budget space travel feature Countdown, but was fired within days of the project's conclusion because he had refused to edit the film to a manageable length. He worked with Caan again, who led the cast with Robert Duvall. He did not direct another film until That Cold Day in the Park, which was a critical and box-office disaster. During the decade, Altman began to express political subtexts within his works. In particular, he expressed anti-war sentiments regarding the Vietnam War. Because of this, Altman's career would somewhat suffer as he came to be associated with the anti-war movement.
1970–1979: Breakthrough and stardom
In 1969, Altman was offered the script for M*A*S*H, an adaptation of a little-known Korean War-era novel satirizing life in the armed services; more than a dozen other filmmakers had passed on it. Altman had been hesitant to take the production, and the shoot was so tumultuous that Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland tried to have Altman fired over his unorthodox filming methods. Nevertheless, M*A*S*H was widely hailed as a classic upon its 1970 release. It won the Palme d'Or at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival and netted five Academy Award nominations. It was Altman's highest-grossing film, released during a time of increasing anti-war sentiment in the United States. The Academy Film Archive preserved M*A*S*H in 2000.Now recognized as a major talent, Altman notched critical successes with McCabe & Mrs. Miller, a revisionist Western in which the mordant songs of Leonard Cohen underscore a gritty vision of the American frontier; Images, his single, Bergman-inspired attempt at making a horror film; The Long Goodbye, a controversial adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel now ranked as a seminal influence on the neo-noir subgenre; Thieves Like Us, an adaptation of the Edward Anderson novel previously filmed by Nicholas Ray as They Live by Night ; California Split, a gambling comedy-drama shot partially on location in Reno, Nevada; and Nashville, which had a strong political theme set against the world of country music. The stars of the film wrote their own songs; Keith Carradine won an Academy Award for the song "I'm Easy". Altman's next film, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, won the Golden Bear at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival.
Although his films were often met with divisive notices, and some, like A Perfect Couple and Quintet were widely panned, many of the prominent film critics of the era remained steadfastly loyal to his directorial style throughout the decade. Audiences took some time to appreciate his films, and he did not want to have to satisfy studio officials. In 1970, following the release of M*A*S*H, he founded Lion's Gate Films to have independent production freedom. Altman's company is not to be confused with the current Lionsgate, a Canada/U.S. entertainment company. The films he made through his company included Brewster McCloud, A Wedding, and 3 Women.
1980–1991: Career fluctuations
In 1980, he directed the musical film Popeye. Produced by Robert Evans and written by Jules Feiffer, the film was based on the comic strip / cartoon of the same name and starred Shelley Duvall and the comedian Robin Williams in his film debut. Designed as a vehicle to increase Altman's commercial clout following a series of critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful low-budget films in the late 1970s, the production was filmed on location in Malta. It was soon beleaguered by heavy drug and alcohol use among most of the cast and crew, including the director; Altman reportedly clashed with Evans, Williams, and songwriter Harry Nilsson. Although the film grossed $60 million worldwide on a $20 million budget and was the second highest-grossing film Altman had directed to that point, it failed to meet studio expectations and was considered a box office disappointment.In 1981, the director sold Lion's Gate to producer Jonathan Taplin after his political satire Health was shelved by longtime distributor 20th Century Fox following tepid test and festival screenings throughout 1980. The departure of longtime Altman partisan Alan Ladd Jr. from Fox also played a decisive role in forestalling the release of the film.
Unable to secure major financing in the post-New Hollywood blockbuster era because of his mercurial reputation and the particularly tumultuous events surrounding the production of Popeye, Altman returned to television and theater between films. His first project after Popeye was 2 by South, a double bill of plays by unknown playwright Frank South, Rattlesnake in a Cooler and Precious Blood. The production debuted in Los Angeles and transferred off-Broadway, before Altman adapted it as a pair of television films. Altman's next project was to revive Ed Graczyk's play, Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Like 2 by South, Altman adapted his production as a film. The film, which starred Cher, Karen Black, and Sandy Dennis, played at film festivals before its independent theatrical release; Altman turned down several distribution deals to keep the film under his control.
In 1982, after finishing work on Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Altman travelled to Dallas to film his next film, Streamers. The film, adapted by David Rabe from his hit play, was shot in only 18 days. Its 1983 release made it Altman's third theatrical adaptation in as many years. Afterwards, he began teaching a course on his films at the University of Michigan, where he concurrently staged his first production of Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. He also co-wrote John Anderson's 1983 hit single "Black Sheep".
After the critical success of his three successive theatrical adaptations, Altman attempted to return to Hollywood with the teen comedy O.C. and Stiggs. Like Popeye, the chaotic production was characterized by tension between Altman and the studio, MGM. Altman travelled to Arizona to shoot away from the executives and the screenwriters, whom he banned from the set. There he shot the film in the summer of 1983, but poor test screenings, chaos within the studio, and changing ownership delayed the film's release. It finally received a belated limited commercial release in 1987, four years after it was shot. The British Film Institute later referred to it as "probably Altman's least successful film".
While O.C. and Stiggs was shelved, Altman returned to theatrical adaptations and to the University of Michigan to film Secret Honor, using his students as crew members. Based on a one man-play about former president Richard Nixon, the film starred Philip Baker Hall as the ex-president. In 2008, the University of Michigan Library acquired Altman's archive. Adapted by Altman and Sam Shepard for The Cannon Group from Shepard's Pulitzer Prize-nominated play, Fool for Love featured the playwright-actor alongside Kim Basinger, Harry Dean Stanton, and Randy Quaid; it fared better than most of his films from the era, earning $900,000 domestically on a $2 million budget and positive reviews from Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby.
Disappointed by his string of critical and commercial failures, including the still-unreleased O.C. and Stiggs, Altman moved to Paris. There, he shot another television film, The Laundromat, which he completed before Fool for Love. He then wrote and directed Beyond Therapy, which proved to be one of his biggest failures. Altman then mounted his second production of The Rake's Progress, this time at the prestigious Opéra de Lille. The Opéra was undergoing financial collapse at the time, and its failure to regain money through ambitious productions caused it close later that year. Altman also used a selection from Jean-Phillipe Rameau's Les Boréades as the basis for his contribution to Aria, which was shown at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival to mixed reception. Altman made his next television film, Basements, based on two plays by Harold Pinter. Though Pinter wrote the screenplay himself, this film became the latest of Altman's failures. The long-awaited release of O.C. and Stiggs that year was also panned.
Altman finally regained a modicum of critical favor in 1988 for his television work. He returned to America early that year to shoot the mockumentary show Tanner '88, a collaboration with Garry Trudeau set in the milieu of a United States presidential campaign, for which he earned a Primetime Emmy Award. The series was shot on the actual campaign trail and featured several real candidates. During the show's run, Altman's television production of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial aired. Though it received high acclaim, it would be his last television film. In 1990, Altman directed Vincent & Theo, a biographical film about Vincent van Gogh that was intended as a television miniseries for broadcast in the United Kingdom. A theatrical version of the film was a modest success in the United States, marking a significant turning point in the director's critical resurgence.