Long recognized in Europe as a true auteur, Robert Altman brings an ironic, spare, irreverent gaze to bear on many long-standing American values through his ongoing project of reconsidering film genres. His style—very much part of what one might call "American art cinema"—is full of quirks and surprises, all the more striking in light of his early training in TV and industrials. Altman's apprenticeship began in 1947 in his native Kansas City with the Calvin Company, a leading producer of industrial films. "The Delinquents" (1957), his first feature, was followed by "The James Dean Story" (1957), a docudrama that mapped out his intentions of using film to explore the harsh reality behind pop culture icons.
From 1957 to 1965, Altman worked in Hollywood on a wide variety of television programs including "Combat", "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", and "Bonanza"; his resistance to conformity, however, delayed his progression into feature filmmaking for another decade. "Countdown" (1968) and "That Cold Day in the Park" (1969) garnered some critical attention, but Altman's career took a dramatic turn with "M*A*S*H" (1970), a box-office and critical smash which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Altman's defining characteristics were already emerging: the episodic structure, the penchant for black comedy, the ability to use a minute and detailed setting (here a medical unit during the Korean War) as a vehicle for broader social concerns. Success led him to expand his own Lion's Gate production company—complete with state-of-the-art editing and sound recording facilities—where the creative process was once described as "controlled chaos."
Altman's ensuing films, "Brewster McCloud" (1970), "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" (1971), "The Long Goodbye" (1973) and "Thieves Like Us" (1974), added to his reputation as an artist, but were all disappointments at the box-office. They also demonstrated his interest--doubtless nurtured during his restless TV days—in revising genre conventions to better reflect "reality", hence the downbeat turns of the grim yet humorous western, "McCabe", and the oddly relaxed quality of his excursion into film noir with "The Long Goodbye.”
"Nashville" (1975), though, won back the audience, was nominated for several Oscars, and invariably appears on critics' "Best of the 1970s" lists for its layered narrative, breezy character treatment and witty use of music. Technically, the film was perhaps most remarkable for its dense, multi-track sound, which enabled Altman to subtly merge a diverse and often savagely satirical group of stories set in the world of country music and contemporary politics. The accolades stopped, however, with the still underrated "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson" (1976), Altman's Bicentennial film which explored the marketing of American history. His feud with producer Dino de Laurentiis over its editing led to his dismissal from "Ragtime" (1981), eventually directed by Milos Forman.
Altman debuted as a producer with "Welcome to L.A." (1976), by his protégé Alan Rudolph, and "The Late Show" (1977), by screenwriter Robert Benton, both films echoing his fondness for quirky characters and situations. Altman's own directorial style continued to evolve and diversify with "Three Women" (1977), a film very much influenced by European art cinema, which won Shelley Duvall the Best Actress prize at Cannes; the freewheeling and also underrated satire "A Wedding" (1978); and "Quintet" (1979), an obscurely poetic film set in a snowbound post-apocalyptic world. Two comedies of this period, the offbeat romance "A Perfect Couple" (1979) and "Health" (1980), a send-up of America's health food craze, ran into distribution problems and were not widely seen. His final Lion's Gate effort, "Popeye" (1980), was a curious but off-the-mark cartoon re-creation that, like all Altman films, has its champions. The critical consensus, however, was hostile and the box office was disappointing. It would mark Altman's last mainstream Hollywood studio feature for more than a decade.
In 1981, Altman sold Lion's Gate and turned his attention to the theater. He staged and then filmed the drama "Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" (1982). "Secret Honor" (1984) portrayed Richard Nixon (Philip Baker Hall) delivering an "apologia pro vita sua" monologue, while "Streamers" (1983), a film of David Rabe's play about stateside barracks life in the early days of the Vietnam War, garnered some critical support and a Venice Film Festival award for its ensemble cast. These films were a dramatic departure from the freewheeling, relatively improvisational, large canvas films of the preceding decade. These rigorous experiments tended to explore character in miniature with surprising fidelity to the theatrical sources. Paradoxically, Altman then returned to carving a niche in the small screen, having worked on several made-for-TV productions including "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" (CBS, 1988) and the Gary Trudeau-penned political comedy "Tanner '88" (HBO, 1988), for which he won an Emmy (he revisited the story of the politician Jack Tanner for the sequel "Tanner On Tanner" in 2004).
Treading water as a film director for much of the 80s, Altman helmed such little-seen misfires as "Beyond Therapy" and "O.C. and Stiggs" (both 1987) before regaining critical attention with his handsomely filmed, quietly intense portrait of the van Gogh brothers, "Vincent and Theo" (1990). He followed up with his most acclaimed film in years and one of his most commercially successful ever, "The Player" (1992), a bravura, scathing look at Hollywood opportunism which reunited Altman's restless camera stylistics with his ironic take on popular culture. The maverick filmmaker found himself restored to the A-list.
Apparently reinvigorated by success, Altman followed up with "Short Cuts" (1993), a return to the collage of portraits from the "Nashville" era. Twenty-two actors in nine different stories enacted Altman's take on writer Raymond Carver's stories of families and marital problems in a darkly rendered vision of Southern California life. Altman faltered a bit as he proceeded in a lighter but similar panoramic vein with "Ready to Wear (Pret-a-Porter)" (1994), in which another highly varied collection of contemporary and past stars and character players enacted roles in a satirical look at the world of haute couture during the Paris shows. Unlike his two previous films, however, "Ready to Wear" failed to provide any insight into the subject matter and characters. Reviewers and audiences rejected the glitzy but shallow proceedings. Having survived far worse career reversals, Altman continued to tackle new projects beginning with "Kansas City" (1996), a period urban gangster film set in the era of his earlier rural "Thieves Like Us". Miranda Richardson, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Harry Belafonte starred in this tale of a telegraph operator who kidnaps the wife of a leading politician to secure her husband's release from death row.
In 1997, Altman made a short-lived return to the small screen as creator, executive producer and occasional director of "Gun" (ABC), an anthology series that followed individuals who came into contact with the titular weapon. Some critics were impressed, but audiences stayed away and only six episodes were aired. The following year, the director tackled "The Gingerbread Man" (1998), a legal thriller that marked the first original screenplay by author John Grisham. Grisham, however, objected to the changes made by Altman and removed his name (the final screenplay was credited to the pseudonymous Al Hayes), and the releasing studio (PolyGram) was reportedly unhappy with the director's ending and did not really support the movie on its release. Despite receiving respectful reviews, the film was a box-office failure. Altman's next two films, the Southern Gothic "Cookie's Fortune" (1999) and the satirical "Dr. T and the Women" (2000), were praised by critics but failed to spark a response with the movie-going public.
Altman had virtually tackled—and inverted the conventions of—nearly every genre in his long and distinguished career. Longtime friend Bob Balaban proposed an idea for a murder mystery along the lines of an Agatha Christie novel and together Altman and Balaban hammered out a sketchy outline. They hired actor Julian Fellowes—whose previous screenwriting credits had been for the small screen—to flesh out their outline of a shooting party at an English country house in 1932. The result, "Gosford Park" (2001), was Altman's most accessible and successful picture in years. The standard touches were all employed: an all-star ensemble (in this case the cream of British talent including Sir Michael Gambon, Dame Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren as well as rising talents like Clive Owen and Kelly Macdonald); a terrifically designed production (sets by Stephen Altman, the director's son, and costumes by Oscar-winner Jenny Beavan); sweeping camera movements (captured by director of photography Andrew Dunn); and a literate screenplay delivered with overlapping dialogue. The film earned seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director.
Altman's next film, "The Company" (2003), an ensemble drama focusing on a company of dancers at the Joffrey Ballet co-written the film's lead, actress and former dancer Neve Campbell. While Altman vividly and beautifully captured the grace and elegance on film, the story was threadbare and uninspired. In 2006, still one of five directors who hold the record for most Academy Award nominations without winning, Altman was selected to receive an honorary Oscar at the 78th Academy Awards. In accepting his award, Altman gave a modest, even humble speech, declaring several times how grateful he was to have the opportunities given him. He went on to quip about the heart transplant he received from a woman in her mid-30s, which by his estimation has added another forty years to his career. Not letting his advanced age slow him down, Altman released his next film, “A Prairie Home Companion” (2006), to good reviews. Starring an ensemble cast that included Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, John C. Reilly, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson and Lindsay Lohan, “A Prairie Home Companion” was a fictional take on Garrison Keillor’s popular Saturday evening radio program that showcased various musical acts and featured the host’s 20-minute long musings on the made-up town of Lake Wobegon. In Altman’s film, the show’s station has been bought by a Texas conglomerate that cancels the show. Meanwhile, a county fair duet, a forgetful singer, a former private eye down on his luck and others gather at the Fitzgerald Theater with an unsuspecting audience for their last hurrah.