Director Robert Altman Dies at 81

[Hipkitten]

Robert Altman, the caustic and irreverent satirist behind "M-A-S-H," "Nashville" and "The Player" who made a career out of bucking Hollywood management and story conventions, died at a Los Angeles Hospital, his Sandcastle 5 Productions Company said Tuesday. He was 81.

The director died Monday night, Joshua Astrachan, a producer at Altman's Sandcastle 5 Productions in New York City, told The Associated Press.

The cause of death wasn't disclosed. A news release was expected later in the day, Astrachan said.

A five-time Academy Award nominee for best director, most recently for 2001's "Gosford Park," he finally won a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2006.

"No other filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have," Altman said while accepting the award. "I'm very fortunate in my career. I've never had to direct a film I didn't choose or develop. My love for filmmaking has given me an entree to the world and to the human condition."

forbes.com

 

[igotgoodjeans]

i just saw this too! sad. i was just talking about prairie home companion with my friends last night - may he rest in peace. film buffs lost a giant.

 

[PoppyAzura]

oh wow. He's been sick for a long time. So sad- he's one of the greats

 

[susie_bubble]

Oh god....that's really sad....I knew he had been ill but I had no idea it was that serious...... jeez Gosford Park really blew me away...

 

[SiennaInLondon]

That is shocking. I talked to him once at the Baftas and he was a darling. Although I am not particularly enamoured of his work... except (and I know it was terrible -but more for the eye candy) Pret a Porter. That was fun!

 

[xtine888]

Sad day. RIP Robert; you will be greatly missed. One of my favorite movies of all time was his "McCabe and Mrs. Miller." He went out on a high note, though. "A Prairie Home Companion" was fantastic, too. Love this man, love his movies, will miss him lots.

Here's an article from CNN:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Robert Altman, the caustic and irreverent satirist behind "M-A-S-H," "Nashville" and "The Player" who made a career out of bucking Hollywood, has died at 81.
The director died Monday night at a Los Angeles Hospital, Joshua Astrachan, a producer at Altman's Sandcastle 5 Productions in New York City, told The Associated Press.

The cause of death wasn't disclosed. A news release was expected later in the day, Astrachan said.
A five-time Academy Award nominee for best director, most recently for 2001's "Gosford Park," he finally won a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2006.

"No other filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have," Altman said while accepting the award. "I'm very fortunate in my career. I've never had to direct a film I didn't choose or develop. My love for filmmaking has given me an entree to the world and to the human condition."

Garrison Keillor, who starred in Altman's last movie -- this year's "A Prairie Home Companion" -- said Tuesday that Altman's love of film clearly came through on the set.

"Mr. Altman loved making movies. He loved the chaos of shooting and the sociability of the crew and actors -- he adored actors -- and he loved the editing room and he especially loved sitting in a screening room and watching the thing over and over with other people," Keillor said in a statement to The Associated Press. "He didn't care for the money end of things, he didn't mind doing publicity, but when he was working he was in heaven."

Elliot Gould, who starred in "M-A-S-H," said Altman's legacy would "nurture and inspire filmmakers and artists for generations to come."

"He was the last great American director in the tradition of John Ford," Gould said. "He was my friend and I'll always be grateful to him for the experience and opportunities he gave me."
Altman had one of the most distinctive styles among modern filmmakers. He often employed huge ensemble casts, encouraged improvisation and overlapping dialogue and filmed scenes in long tracking shots that would flit from character to character.

Perpetually in and out of favor with audiences and critics, Altman worked ceaselessly since his anti-war black comedy "M-A-S-H" established his reputation in 1970, but he would go for years at a time directing obscure movies before roaring back with a hit.

After a string of commercial duds including "The Gingerbread Man" in 1998, "Cookie's Fortune" in 1999 and "Dr. T & the Women" in 2000, Altman took his all-American cynicism to Britain for 2001's "Gosford Park."

A combination murder-mystery and class-war satire set among snobbish socialites and their servants on an English estate in the 1930s, "Gosford Park" was Altman's biggest box-office success since "M-A-S-H."
Besides best-director, "Gosford Park" earned six other Oscar nominations, including best picture and best supporting actress for both Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith. It won the original-screenplay Oscar, and Altman took the best-director prize at the Golden Globes for "Gosford Park."

Altman's other best-director Oscar nominations came for "M-A-S-H," the country music saga "Nashville" from 1975, the movie-business satire "The Player" from 1992 and the ensemble character study "Short Cuts" from 1993. He also earned a best-picture nomination as producer of "Nashville."

No director ever got more best-director nominations without winning a regular Oscar, though four other men -- Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Clarence Brown and King Vidor -- tied with Altman at five.
In May, Altman brought out "A Prairie Home Companion," with Keillor starring as the announcer of a folksy musical show -- with the same name as Keillor's own long-running show -- about to be shut down by new owners. Among those in the cast were Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, Woody Harrelson and Tommy Lee Jones.

"This film is about death," Altman said at a May 3 news conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, also attended by Keillor and many of the movie's stars.

He often took on Hollywood genres with a revisionist's eye, de-romanticizing the Western hero in 1971's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and 1976's "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson," the film-noir gumshoe in 1973's "The Long Goodbye" and outlaw gangsters in "Thieves Like Us."

"M-A-S-H" was Altman's first big success after years of directing television, commercials, industrial films and generally unremarkable feature films. The film starring Donald Sutherland and Gould was set during the Korean War but was Altman's thinly veiled attack on U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

"That was my intention entirely. If you look at that film, there's no mention of what war it is," Altman said in an Associated Press interview in 2001, adding that the studio made him put a disclaimer at the beginning to identify the setting as Korea.

"Our mandate was bad taste. If anybody had a joke in the worst taste, it had a better chance of getting into the film, because nothing was in worse taste than that war itself," Altman said.
The film spawned the long-running TV sitcom starring Alan Alda, a show Altman would refer to with distaste as "that series." Unlike the social message of the film, the series was prompted by greed, Altman said.

"They made millions and millions of dollars by bringing an Asian war into Americans' homes every Sunday night," Altman said in 2001. "I thought that was the worst taste."

Altman never minced words about reproaching Hollywood. After the September 11 attacks, he said Hollywood served as a source of inspiration for the terrorists by making violent action movies that amounted to training films for such attacks.

"Nobody would have thought to commit an atrocity like that unless they'd seen it in a movie," Altman said.

Altman was written off repeatedly by the Hollywood establishment, and his reputation for arrogance and hard drinking -- a habit he eventually gave up -- hindered his efforts to raise money for his idiosyncratic films.

While critical of studio executives, Altman held actors in the highest esteem. He joked that on "Gosford Park," he was there mainly to turn the lights on and off for the performers.

The respect was mutual. Top-name actors would clamor for even bit parts in his films. Altman generally worked on shoestring budgets, yet he continually landed marquee performers who signed on for a fraction of their normal salaries.
After the mid-1970s, the quality of Altman's films became increasingly erratic. His 1980 musical "Popeye," with Robin Williams, was trashed by critics, and Altman took some time off from film.
He directed the Broadway production of "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean," following it with a movie adaptation in 1982. Altman went back and forth from TV to theatrical films over the next decade, but even when his films earned critical praise, such as 1990's "Vincent & Theo," they remained largely unseen.
"The Player" and "Short Cuts" re-established Altman's reputation and commercial viability. But other 1990s films -- including his fashion-industry farce "Ready to Wear" and "Kansas City," his reverie on the 1930s jazz and gangster scene of his hometown -- fell flat.
Born February 20, 1925, Altman hung out in his teen years at the jazz clubs of Kansas City, Missouri, where his father was an insurance salesman.
Altman was a bomber pilot in World War II and studied engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia before taking a job making industrial films in Kansas City. He moved into feature films with "The Delinquents" in 1957, then worked largely in television through the mid-1960s, directing episodes of such series as "Bonanza" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."
Altman and his wife, Kathryn, had two sons, Robert and Matthew, and he had a daughter, Christine, and two other sons, Michael and Stephen, from two previous marriages.
When he received his honorary Oscar in 2006, Altman revealed he had a heart transplant a decade earlier.
"I didn't make a big secret out of it, but I thought nobody would hire me again," he said after the ceremony. "You know, there's such a stigma about heart transplants, and there's a lot of us out there."

 

[m.j.]

so sad...
RIP Robert Altman!!!

i liked gosford's park and pret-a-porter soooooo much....

 

[strawberry daiquiri]

rest in peace, sir

 

[TheGlassAngel]

RIP. The man was brilliant. He will be missed.

 

[Tinetush]

This is so sad... I've heard that he was ill, but I though he was getting better, he had so many projects lined up. Some of which I was really looking forward to. Gosford Park was brilliant.!

I'm completely shocked.!
RIP.

 

[MulletProof]

ooh, Rest in peace.

 

[ultramarine]

I even loved Pret-a-porter!

I cant believe his last film inclused LiLo!

Eeeew!

 

[*Happiness*]

So sad! I read this on IMDB tonight. Condolences to his family and friends. He directed Godsford Park...one of treasured movies in my collection.

 

[jssy4eva]

That's so sad My heart goes out to his family

 

[xtine888]

I even loved Pret-a-porter!

I cant believe his last film inclused LiLo!

Eeeew!

She was great in the movie, and just one part of a terrific ensemble class. It also had Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, Tommy Lee Jones, Virginia Madsen, Garrison Keillor, among others. And "APHC" was a damn good movie. I saw it twice in theatres and just picked it up on DVD. What a divine movie. Divine, just like all his other movies. And he was a great guy, too. In every interview I ever saw of him, he was funny, down-to-earth, and humble. Classy and totally awesome. The film world lost a great auteur, but the world lost a really good person.

It's pretty obvious that Altman liked her too.
(locationlohan

Hey, what's everyone's favorite Altman movie?
Mine's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller". Although I just watched "The Player" again last night and was reminded of how much I love that movie.

 

[xtine888]

Here's another article; from Yahoo News

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=+1]Director Robert Altman dies at 81[/SIZE][/FONT]
By CHRISTY LEMIRE, AP Movie Writer

LOS ANGELES -
Robert Altman, a five-time Academy Award nominee for best director whose vast, eclectic filmography ranged from the dark war comedy "M-A-S-H" to the Hollywood farce "The Player" to the British murder mystery "Gosford Park," has died of complications from cancer. He was 81.

Altman died Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, surrounded by his wife and children.

He had worked with the disease for the last 18 months, including during the making of this year's "A Prairie Home Companion," the director's Sandcastle 5 Productions in New York said in a statement. The death was a surprise, Sandcastle said.

When he received a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2006, Altman revealed he'd had a heart transplant a decade earlier. "I didn't make a big secret out of it, but I thought nobody would hire me again," he said after the ceremony. "You know, there's such a stigma about heart transplants, and there's a lot of us out there."



Altman was set to begin work on "Hands on a Hardbody," a fictionalized version of the documentary about a Texas contest in which people stand around a pickup truck with one hand the vehicle, and whoever lasts the longest wins it. The film would have been vintage Altman.

While he was famous for his outspokenness, which caused him to fall in and out of favor in Hollywood during his nearly six decades in the industry, he was perhaps even better known for his influential method of assembling large casts and weaving in and out of their story lines, using long tracking shots and intentionally having dialogue overlap.

His most recent example of this technique, "A Prairie Home Companion," starred Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, Kevin Kline and Lindsay Lohan.

"I feel as if I've just had the wind knocked out of me and my heart aches," Lohan said Tuesday night in a lengthy e-mail statement. She added, "I learned so much from Altman and he was the closest thing to my father and grandfather that I really do believe I've had in several years."

Garrison Keillor, whose radio show provided the basis for the movie, said Altman's love of film clearly came through on the set.

"Mr. Altman loved making movies. He loved the chaos of shooting and the sociability of the crew and actors — he adored actors — and he loved the editing room and he especially loved sitting in a screening room and watching the thing over and over with other people," said Keillor, who also wrote and co-starred in the film. "He didn't care for the money end of things, he didn't mind doing publicity, but when he was working he was in heaven."

"He was very good at letting actors think that they had more control than they actually did," said "Prairie Home Companion" co-star Tommy Lee Jones.

Altman received best-director Oscar nominations for "M-A-S-H," "Nashville," "The Player," "Short Cuts" and "Gosford Park." No director ever got more nominations without winning a competitive Oscar, though four other men — Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Clarence Brown and King Vidor — tied with Altman at five.

Tom Skerritt, who got his break from Altman on the 1960s TV series "Combat!" which led to his role in "M-A-S-H," said the director's death left him with "a big void."

"M-A-S-H" mattered, Skerritt said, because of "the timing, the anti-war sentiment," when it came out in 1970. It took place during the Korean War, but clearly was an attack on U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

"He said to me, 'This is a two-ticket film.' I asked what he meant by that, I'd never heard that before. He said, 'Well, make it really interesting the first time, give 'em a little humor, a little of the opposite and just blast through it and make it interesting enough for them to want to come back and buy a second ticket to pick up on what they missed the first time.' He knew that about it and he was right. It was a second-, third-, fourth-ticket film."

Despite his longevity and the many big-name stars who've appeared in his films, Altman famously bucked the studio system and was often critical of its executives. One of his best-received films, the insiderish "The Player," follows the travails of a studio executive being blackmailed by a writer.

But amid all those critical hits were several commercial duds including "The Gingerbread Man" in 1998, "Cookie's Fortune" in 1999 and "Dr. T & the Women" in 2000. His reputation for arrogance and hard drinking — a habit he eventually gave up — hindered his efforts to raise money for his idiosyncratic films.

Julian Fellowes, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of 2001's "Gosford Park," called the director "a force of nature."

"A lifelong rebel, he managed to make the movie industry do his bidding, and there are very, very few people who can claim that. He altered both my career and my perceptions, vastly for the better, and no matter how long I live, I will die grateful to him."

Born Feb. 20, 1925, Altman hung out in his teen years at the jazz clubs of Kansas City, Mo., where his father was an insurance salesman.

Altman was a bomber pilot in World War II and studied engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia before taking a job making industrial films in Kansas City. He moved into features with "The Delinquents" in 1957, then worked largely in television through the mid-1960s, directing episodes of such series as "Bonanza" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."

Married three times, Altman is survived by his wife, Kathryn Reed Altman, and six children. He also had 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

It was Altman's love of actors that came through over and over again as Hollywood reacted to his death. "Short Cuts" co-star Bruce Davison recalls Altman's insistence that the cast members join him in watching the rushes every day, and that he'd have wine and cheese waiting for them.

"The best directors I've found are those who are ensemble players, not those guys who have great vision and make everyone hammer into that mold." ... He wanted you to participate — we came up with a lot of dialogue on our own, it was that kind of collaboration.

"He was Buffalo Bill," Davison added. "That's who he was."

 

[LoveMyBoots]

This is one of the few Hollywood deaths that I was visibly stricken by. A lot of the times deaths are announced of old Hollywood stars, all of whom I know nothing about. But, I've seen a lot of Robert Altman films and seeing him at the Oscars this past year, it's hard to believe that he is dead...

 

[kissmesweet]

He's a fantastic director. I'm so sorry this has happened and my condolences goes to his family.

I just watched A Prarie Home Companion on DVD and really liked it.

May he rest in peace.

 

[iamthewalrus28]

RIP Robert Altman
The film community mourns

 

[tiffany]

RIP He was truly a great director