MOVIE THEATERS would have been a much duller place over the past three decades if not for Robert Altman.
From 1970’s “M-A-S-H” to this year’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” the idiosyncratic director kept audiences and the industry off balance with a string of films that broke rules and shattered preconceptions — even preconceptions about Altman’s style. Who would have thought that the man who directed
“M-A-SH” — a movie at once joyfully anarchistic and savagely anti-war — could also have directed “Gosford Park,” a beautiful, sedate drawing-room murder mystery? How could the man who created “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” also create “The Player”?
A Kansas City native, Altman was Hollywood’s official maverick — the person the industry would point to whenever it was accused of lacking imagination and any commitment to art. “if we’re so bad,” the logic went, “why is Robert Altman still able to make the movies he wants to make?”
Of course, for every movie Altman managed to find financing for, Hollywood was cranking out 10 slasher flicks, a dozen car-chase extravaganzas and another “Rocky” sequel.
Altman managed to keep working because he was an incredibly talented filmmaker, full of ideas and always willing to let others try their own ideas. For professionals tired of the industry’s business as usual, for good actors soul-sick after years of type casting, he was a refuge. For audiences, he was always thought-provoking. He didn’t talk down to the people who bought the tickets. Instead, he invited them to share the delight he had in making his films.
Good as he was, Altman was not perfect. He turned out a few films that people will still be watching in a hundred years, a few that barely made it through their first run and even more that were, at best, only average.
But what made Altman unique in Hollywood was that he was not afraid to fail. He did fail time and again, but it never seemed to dent his — and everyone else’s — conviction that he could still make great movies.
It turned out to be true.