Jan. 8, 1996

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Altman was born on February 20, 1925 in Kansas City, Missouri. He started out in films, working for the Calvin Company in his home town, as a producer for some of the films. He debuted as a director in 1957, with the low-grade, teenage exploitation flick, The Delinquents and the documentary, The James Dean Story. Nothing in these films showed any bit of the great director to come. Between 1957 and 1965, he worked mostly in television, working on shows like Combat, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Bonanza. He gradually returned to Hollywood as a director of feature films. His late sixties projects, Countdown(1968) about the first landing on the moon, and That Cold Day In The Park(1969), garnered some critical attention. It was not until 1970 that Altman found success with the comedy M*A*S*H, a hilarious anti-war satire about an army surgical unit in the Korean war, who try to releave the stress of their job through really funny hijinks .

M*A*S*H was a goldmine for Altman, who later that year, formed his Lion's Gate company. Altman's later films, McCabe and Mrs. Miller(1971), The Long Goodbye(1973) and Thieves Like Us(1974) added to his reputation as a artist, but were all box office bombs. It wasn't until his 1975 film Nashville that Altman won his audience back. This film is a brilliant look at America, as seen through the eyes of 24 characters during a Nashville politcal, country-music rally. It took Altman 17 years to return to his former glory. He continued to make fun of certain industries and subjects, like the health food craze in H.E.A.L.T.H.(1979) and dating in A Perfect Couple(1979). These films ran into distribution problems, and were not widely seen. For the Bicentennial year, he made Buffalo Bill & the Indians(1976), a huge box-office failure. His biggest bomb to date, and also the film that forced him to close down his Lion's Gate company, was the live-action version of Popeye. The eighties were not very kind to Altman either. Still, he had a protege, Alan Rudolph (Made in Heaven, Welcome to L.A.) who Altman has frequently worked on as producer of Rudolph's films. Altman made his comeback in 1992, with the scathing Hollywood satire, The Player. The film was a little too close to home for Hollywood, and was not well-liked in L.A. The rest of the film industry, outside of Hollywood, and the public welcomed Altman back with open arms.

Altman makes films that seem like real life, and yet a little too bizarre to be really real. His camera techniques are superb. He always said that, in his films, he never felt like he was taking part in the conversation of the story, but rather he was spying on them. Altman is definitely on my top ten list of the best directors of all time.

My rating on a scale of 1 to 10: 10

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