Altman dies

On the wire:

LOS ANGELES -
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.

Read the story.

Watching an Altman movie reminds me a little of watching hyperdrama. Altman captured the same density of simultaneous action, the camera becoming a kind of character wandering through the layers of activity. He always brought his own vision to the material: for example, in my essay The Los Angelesation of Raymond Carver I argue that Short Cuts has more to do with California culture than with the Northwest territory of Carver. It's a powerful film: but Carver, I argue, is more powerful because in his stories characters are more hidden, dangerous and surprising. We expect to find crazies in L.A. It's another thing to find them at the small town lumber mill. By moving Carver's characters from small town NW America to L.A., Altman changes the deck, and a different story gets told.

But what a body of work, what a unique artist, what a maverick!

Altman profile in Christian Science Monitor.

The Modernist Art Cinema of Robert Altman by Robert Self.