Robert Altman through the eyes of Noah Bombast as Seth Kupchick
I've written a lot about movies but have barely mentioned, Robert Altman, my favorite director. I haven't known whether to focus on one of his movies or his career in general, and to make it worse I'm not sure ANY of his movies make it to my top ten film fan list, though "Nashville" might, but even that doesn't beat something as cheesy as "The Way We Were," "The Graduate," "Five Easy Pieces," "The Heartbreak Kid," or a slew of movies from the late Sixties and early Seventies. But what Altman had was something bigger than a great movie, he had great movie after great movie, and each seemed like a piece in a bigger puzzle. Lots of people talk about his big ensemble casts, and how he'd interweave four or five stories at once, or the improvisational nature of a script, that may or may not have existed, and how he let the actors create and be. I know something about the way he looped audio, and gave us a million seemingly small but important snippets of conversation, letting the viewer eavesdrop on the movie the way the characters were doing on screen and erasing all bounds between the viewer and the actors. I'm also not sure any of this really gets at how much I loved the guy's movies and how they gave me a reason for living.
I first saw "Nashville" when I was 21 and though I'd accidentally seen some Altman movies before that (MASH), I didn't identify him as a director worth studying, maybe because the Boomers I knew didn't really worship at his throne. From the old school, Stanley Kubrick was considered the greatest filmmaker of his time, and from the new school they were really into Woody Allen, Scorsese, and Coppola, but Altman was a litttle out there, and didn't get mentioned much, save for MASH, and maybe because it was a hit TV show. I do remember them religiously showing "MASH" once a year after a Monday Night Football game, because the movie ended with one of the great football sequences ever, along with "The Longest Yard" (a great early Burt Reynolds flick), but Altman was more part of the landscape than the landscape, and most of his movies slipped under my radar. VCR's came out around the time I was in high school (take that Hipsters!), and by the time I turned 21 I finally saw "Nashville," a film I'd heard about for years, as being Altman's best, but had never seen. I still remember watching it in my parents living room with the lights out and hadn't felt that changed by a movie in my life. I'd loved thousands and in a couple of my favorites like "The Graduate," or "Easy Rider," I'd even seen parts of myself that I was looking for desperately in the film, but this had more to do with a search for identity, and the aesthetics carried me along. I'm not sure I saw myself in any of the 20 or so characters in "Nashville" but more importantly I saw what was possible in MOVIES, and that's why I wrote Robert Altman gave me a reason to live.
I was very lost as a young man but wanted to be an artist and the art I loved best was the movies because I was from L.A. and had a natural feeling for them in a way I didn't music. Movies were my art, but I actually thought they were everyone's art, because I was taught movies were for the masses, like a poor man's theater, and the real theater that you paid big money for was for snobs, but that was another time and now I feel like an aesthete for liking movies, something I would have never believed as a kid. "Nashville" appealed to the aesthete in me in a way I doubt a movie ever will again, and while that makes me sad, it also makes me happy with wonder that I was ever able to feel something so deeply, or truly, because my love for him wasn't mere idolatry like it was for Benjamin Braddock or Captain America, meaning I didn't want to be Altman, I just felt his overwhelming comic/absurd/ballet like vision of America wash over me in celluloid strips that were like a collage vision I had in my mind, splicing up reality every day driving through L.A., and the palm trees. I don't really have words to describe it but "Nashville" made me feel I could be an artist and make it in Hollywood with all my ideals intact.
Robert Altman had a revival in the early Nineties with "The Player" and "Short Cuts," the first a classic of an era, and the second a classic of any era. It lodged him into the popular consciousness in a way he wasn't in the Seventies, at least for my generation, and Altman was rightly coronated as one of the great filmmakers of an era, if not the one, but for my money he is THE great filmmaker of any era. I don't have it in me to do one of those laundry lists films critics are famous for and what idiots have tried to copy, but his influence can be seen in many movies of the Nineties ("Boogie Nights"). The reason I started thinking about him today was the movie "Greenberg," which to me had a lot of Altman in it. In some ways, Noah Baumbach (Bombast!), may be the equivalent of what I dreamed of for myself in the early Nineties in my parents downstairs living room watching "Nashville" and thinking anything was possible, but Baumbach is hardly a clone. He also has a lot of Allen/Mazursky/Ashby running through him also from an era many consider one of the best in American cinema. I saw Altman in Greta Gerwig's eyes and Henry's Taco T-Shirt driving through a Southern California afternoon with the radio on.
"Greenberg" has almost no plot, and one of Altman's great contributions to me was the way he freed movies from plot, and really let them breathe. I know that this trend may have been done to death by now, and we may be at a point where we need plot again like in a 40's Noir, but the freedom from it in the early Seventies was never more crystallized than in the work of Altman. His plotless movies were as fascinating as the most tightly wound script with tricks and surprises every other page, and at the worst they were 'flascinating' (a combination of fascinating and flat). People loved the way he used overlapping voices to get the feel of a restaurant, because in some ways Altman was the biggest movie fan of all and he was eavesdropping in on his own creations like he was the ultimate viewer, and managed to erase himself from the story almost completely, except as the ultimate voyeur, and this was his point of view, and also why people weren't inclined to think of him as the greatest director until later in his life, because he barely existed on the screen, bringing very little of his ego into the ensembles, but orchestrating them like a symphony conductor in control of every nuance. Altman epitomized 'negative capability' as a filmmaker in a way that none of his peers did, maybe because he was a decade or so older, making him from a different generation, or it may have been his God given character, but Altman's ego was never the centerpiece of his movies like it was for many of the greats, and this is why he's my favorite and not a favorite, like Scorsese/Allen/Coppola, or a couple of others I'm forgetting. Altman possessed a real negative capability that Noah Bombast doesn't in the least, and why the comparison is ultimately aesthetic. I'm afraid I haven't reached Altman's negative capability in my own writing so I'm in the same boat as Noah Bombast, but our spiritual father, Robert Altman, taught us both how to free up a story.
Part of the negative capability that Altman gave to cinema had to do with cinema verite (Godard), and the popularity of documentary filmmaking in the early Seventies, epitomized by the great PBS series "An American Family," that I wrote a blog about by the same name. The documentarians of the day were involved with capturing real life and I'd guess were influenced by the theory of cultural relativism that had taken over anthropology, and the humanities in general. I was a creative writing major, as I also testified to in a blog (Oh the shame...), so I don't know much about anthropology, but my guess would be that the norms of every culture were relative to that culture and even the purest scientific investigation distorted the norm. This was a struggle the documentarians of "An American Family," acted out for us, and why the couple who filmed them were mad at Craig Gilbert for tampering with the purity of the experiment by having dinner with Pat Loud, the matriarch of the family. They felt this was a breach of trust and ruining the good faith they were trying to build with the Loud's by living in their Santa Barbara house and blending with the family as much as possible for people with characters and cameras trying to capture real life.
"Greenberg" was definitely an attempt to recreate this cinema verite documentary filmmaking technique, albeit with a seemingly autobiographical character in Roger Greenberg, putting the film somewhere between Woody Allen and Robert Altman. "While We're Young," the unofficial sequel to "Greenberg," actually relied on an almost Noir like plot that made the viewer go back through the story at the end to unravel a hustle, nothing Altman would have ever done, or if he did he would have subverted the intent. "While We're Young" was a plot heavy movie about a documentarian full of the ideals that spurred on "An American Family," in a movie that had nothing to do with cinema verite. It may have been Baumbach's Gen X ironic statement, considering his last great movie "Frances Ha" was almost a modern day Sixties Godard piece. To make it crazier, "While We're Young" ends with a speech about film and truth that you could imagine Robert Altman giving, even if the speaker is disingenuous, and the whole plot revolves around this eternal theme.
8/18 Bombast has a new movie coming out with his screen/siren Greta Gerwig, and I can't blame him for falling for her, nor can I blame him for falling in love with Jennifer Jason Leigh, the guy has good taste. I'm sure I'll like this movie because like a goofy guy with a stupid crush I like Greta Gerwig, and find her acting enough to keep me interested, even if the movie sucks. "While we're Young," didn't have Gerwig, so maybe I just like Gerwig/Baumbach together, even if it meant breaking Jennifer Jason Leigh's heart, who I feel sorry for, but not too sorry, since I had a secret crush on her like many teenage boys who saw "Fast Times," even more than Phoebe Cates, even though Phoebe was sexier. I give Baumbach credit for being more accessible than Wes Anderson, his buddy, while at the same time being more memorable, a hard feat in movies, or any popular art.
I first saw "Nashville" when I was 21 and though I'd accidentally seen some Altman movies before that (MASH), I didn't identify him as a director worth studying, maybe because the Boomers I knew didn't really worship at his throne. From the old school, Stanley Kubrick was considered the greatest filmmaker of his time, and from the new school they were really into Woody Allen, Scorsese, and Coppola, but Altman was a litttle out there, and didn't get mentioned much, save for MASH, and maybe because it was a hit TV show. I do remember them religiously showing "MASH" once a year after a Monday Night Football game, because the movie ended with one of the great football sequences ever, along with "The Longest Yard" (a great early Burt Reynolds flick), but Altman was more part of the landscape than the landscape, and most of his movies slipped under my radar. VCR's came out around the time I was in high school (take that Hipsters!), and by the time I turned 21 I finally saw "Nashville," a film I'd heard about for years, as being Altman's best, but had never seen. I still remember watching it in my parents living room with the lights out and hadn't felt that changed by a movie in my life. I'd loved thousands and in a couple of my favorites like "The Graduate," or "Easy Rider," I'd even seen parts of myself that I was looking for desperately in the film, but this had more to do with a search for identity, and the aesthetics carried me along. I'm not sure I saw myself in any of the 20 or so characters in "Nashville" but more importantly I saw what was possible in MOVIES, and that's why I wrote Robert Altman gave me a reason to live.
I was very lost as a young man but wanted to be an artist and the art I loved best was the movies because I was from L.A. and had a natural feeling for them in a way I didn't music. Movies were my art, but I actually thought they were everyone's art, because I was taught movies were for the masses, like a poor man's theater, and the real theater that you paid big money for was for snobs, but that was another time and now I feel like an aesthete for liking movies, something I would have never believed as a kid. "Nashville" appealed to the aesthete in me in a way I doubt a movie ever will again, and while that makes me sad, it also makes me happy with wonder that I was ever able to feel something so deeply, or truly, because my love for him wasn't mere idolatry like it was for Benjamin Braddock or Captain America, meaning I didn't want to be Altman, I just felt his overwhelming comic/absurd/ballet like vision of America wash over me in celluloid strips that were like a collage vision I had in my mind, splicing up reality every day driving through L.A., and the palm trees. I don't really have words to describe it but "Nashville" made me feel I could be an artist and make it in Hollywood with all my ideals intact.
Robert Altman had a revival in the early Nineties with "The Player" and "Short Cuts," the first a classic of an era, and the second a classic of any era. It lodged him into the popular consciousness in a way he wasn't in the Seventies, at least for my generation, and Altman was rightly coronated as one of the great filmmakers of an era, if not the one, but for my money he is THE great filmmaker of any era. I don't have it in me to do one of those laundry lists films critics are famous for and what idiots have tried to copy, but his influence can be seen in many movies of the Nineties ("Boogie Nights"). The reason I started thinking about him today was the movie "Greenberg," which to me had a lot of Altman in it. In some ways, Noah Baumbach (Bombast!), may be the equivalent of what I dreamed of for myself in the early Nineties in my parents downstairs living room watching "Nashville" and thinking anything was possible, but Baumbach is hardly a clone. He also has a lot of Allen/Mazursky/Ashby running through him also from an era many consider one of the best in American cinema. I saw Altman in Greta Gerwig's eyes and Henry's Taco T-Shirt driving through a Southern California afternoon with the radio on.
"Greenberg" has almost no plot, and one of Altman's great contributions to me was the way he freed movies from plot, and really let them breathe. I know that this trend may have been done to death by now, and we may be at a point where we need plot again like in a 40's Noir, but the freedom from it in the early Seventies was never more crystallized than in the work of Altman. His plotless movies were as fascinating as the most tightly wound script with tricks and surprises every other page, and at the worst they were 'flascinating' (a combination of fascinating and flat). People loved the way he used overlapping voices to get the feel of a restaurant, because in some ways Altman was the biggest movie fan of all and he was eavesdropping in on his own creations like he was the ultimate viewer, and managed to erase himself from the story almost completely, except as the ultimate voyeur, and this was his point of view, and also why people weren't inclined to think of him as the greatest director until later in his life, because he barely existed on the screen, bringing very little of his ego into the ensembles, but orchestrating them like a symphony conductor in control of every nuance. Altman epitomized 'negative capability' as a filmmaker in a way that none of his peers did, maybe because he was a decade or so older, making him from a different generation, or it may have been his God given character, but Altman's ego was never the centerpiece of his movies like it was for many of the greats, and this is why he's my favorite and not a favorite, like Scorsese/Allen/Coppola, or a couple of others I'm forgetting. Altman possessed a real negative capability that Noah Bombast doesn't in the least, and why the comparison is ultimately aesthetic. I'm afraid I haven't reached Altman's negative capability in my own writing so I'm in the same boat as Noah Bombast, but our spiritual father, Robert Altman, taught us both how to free up a story.
Part of the negative capability that Altman gave to cinema had to do with cinema verite (Godard), and the popularity of documentary filmmaking in the early Seventies, epitomized by the great PBS series "An American Family," that I wrote a blog about by the same name. The documentarians of the day were involved with capturing real life and I'd guess were influenced by the theory of cultural relativism that had taken over anthropology, and the humanities in general. I was a creative writing major, as I also testified to in a blog (Oh the shame...), so I don't know much about anthropology, but my guess would be that the norms of every culture were relative to that culture and even the purest scientific investigation distorted the norm. This was a struggle the documentarians of "An American Family," acted out for us, and why the couple who filmed them were mad at Craig Gilbert for tampering with the purity of the experiment by having dinner with Pat Loud, the matriarch of the family. They felt this was a breach of trust and ruining the good faith they were trying to build with the Loud's by living in their Santa Barbara house and blending with the family as much as possible for people with characters and cameras trying to capture real life.
"Greenberg" was definitely an attempt to recreate this cinema verite documentary filmmaking technique, albeit with a seemingly autobiographical character in Roger Greenberg, putting the film somewhere between Woody Allen and Robert Altman. "While We're Young," the unofficial sequel to "Greenberg," actually relied on an almost Noir like plot that made the viewer go back through the story at the end to unravel a hustle, nothing Altman would have ever done, or if he did he would have subverted the intent. "While We're Young" was a plot heavy movie about a documentarian full of the ideals that spurred on "An American Family," in a movie that had nothing to do with cinema verite. It may have been Baumbach's Gen X ironic statement, considering his last great movie "Frances Ha" was almost a modern day Sixties Godard piece. To make it crazier, "While We're Young" ends with a speech about film and truth that you could imagine Robert Altman giving, even if the speaker is disingenuous, and the whole plot revolves around this eternal theme.
8/18 Bombast has a new movie coming out with his screen/siren Greta Gerwig, and I can't blame him for falling for her, nor can I blame him for falling in love with Jennifer Jason Leigh, the guy has good taste. I'm sure I'll like this movie because like a goofy guy with a stupid crush I like Greta Gerwig, and find her acting enough to keep me interested, even if the movie sucks. "While we're Young," didn't have Gerwig, so maybe I just like Gerwig/Baumbach together, even if it meant breaking Jennifer Jason Leigh's heart, who I feel sorry for, but not too sorry, since I had a secret crush on her like many teenage boys who saw "Fast Times," even more than Phoebe Cates, even though Phoebe was sexier. I give Baumbach credit for being more accessible than Wes Anderson, his buddy, while at the same time being more memorable, a hard feat in movies, or any popular art.
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