Alt. Man

It's the birthday of Robert Altman, one of the most interesting filmmakers of the last 40 years.  He died a few years back, and if there's any guy who did it his way, it's Altman.  He kicked around doing industrial films and TV until he broke into features.  Even then it wasn't until he did MASH, in his mid-40s, that he really established himself.

Little did producers know it was an anomaly.  The timing was right, everything came together, and this little-heralded film became one of the biggest hits of 1970.  So he was able to make a whole bunch of films (including McCabe And Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, California Split and Nashville) before everyone figured out by the time he did Popeye in 1980 that the guy was a commercial disaster.

Still he kept plugging away, taking theatre gigs and whatever was available through a decade he spent outside the spotlight.  Then he made a comeback and ended his career with highly-respected films that even made small profits, such as The Player, Short Cuts and Gosford Park.

He was beloved by actors, because he'd give them a lot of freedom.  He'd also stick by them, even if they weren't stars.  He wasn't so loved by the suits, whom he despised (even though, let's face it, they allowed him to make his films).  His relationship with writers were ambivalent.  They generally admired his talent, but Altman, more than any other director I can think of, wasn't kidding when he said scripts are just blueprints.  He would rewrite dialogue and redo, or throw out, entire scenes, including endings.  Really the blueprint line is too kind--he was the kind of guy who'd come in one day and tear down the porch so he could put in a swimming pool.

It led to a lot of fascinating films, and even his worst are interesting. Still, a lot of his stuff doesn't quite play, and often meanders, and you wonder if he couldn't have put out more satisfying (though conventional) stuff if he'd just stuck to the script.

I thought writer Julian Fellowes (a guy with very little experience whom Altman took a chance on), who won an Oscar for Gosford Park, summed it up pretty well:

[Two actresses in Gosford Park] ad-libbed [a nice bit in the movie]  But for the most part of the film that was not so.  This was very difficult for Bob in a way.  I think he wanted to be an auteur director and it was hard for him to accept the importance of script.