Robert Altman takes a look at his life, dies
The passing of a great man, with a greatness defined equally by his failures and triumphs.
I’ll choose to recall him at his cine-intellectual apex when during a certain interview he revealed the “ultimate irony” of 1992’s The Player:
“The actress whose breasts you see[1] is not the actress whose breasts you wish to see.[2]”
Of course, as it would happen I can’t seem to find that interview online to attribute it, so we’ll just have to remember it fondly in the iPod of our minds. Or acknowledge it was never said, and that I just had a very vivid dream once about Altman giving the Player interview and saying the words, and it just all seemed right, so I never doubted it. Or something.
[1] Cynthia Stevenson
[2] Greta Scacchi
NOTE: This would have gone up last week, but I’ve been unable to access my blog from my home ISP for about six days. It looks like they finally knocked something loose at Comcast, so I’m getting in there.
November 28th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
You truly have to admire his commitment to casual nudity in film. One of the all-time greats.
November 29th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
So true Neil. Julianne Moore not wearing any panties in Short Cuts is wonderful.
Check out LL’s condolence letter to RA: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2023859.ece
November 29th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
From IMDB:
“Mr. and Mrs. Smith get married, they have problems, they get back together and they live happily ever after. End of the movie. Two weeks later, he kills her, grinds her body up, feeds it to his girlfriend who dies of ptomaine poisoning, and her husband is prosecuted and sent to the electric chair for it–but here’s our own little story with the happy ending. What is an ending? There’s no such thing. Death is the only ending.”
LL is a bobblehead.