Robert Altman has passed away at 81. He was a director who I admired quite a bit for always doing what he wanted to do with a medium he truly loved. His hallmarks - ensemble casts, overlapping dialog, wandering cameras - are things that I think are copied over and over again by directors, but seldom with the same skill (Paul Thomas Anderson is probably his best student).I've always been a big fan of Westerns, but I never really understood why until I saw McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Altman's deconstruction of the genre from 1971. He took every trope of the Western and burnt them down, along with the church in the finale. It blew me away. It made me understand what made a Western a Western, and why it is the ultimate American movie form. He had a bunch of misses throughout his career, as any filmmaker who puts so much out there will have, but most of his stumbles still had something to them. Except for Pret-A-Porter. That was just awful. But, to his credit, there was an awful lot of nudity involved.
Altman was nominated 5 times for the Best Director Academy Award but never won. Last year the Academy gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award. In accepting the award he said:
"No other filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have. [...] 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."
Word up, Robert Altman. Word up. You'll be missed.
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