Google the term "Altmanesque" and
you’ll find over 1500 mentions (make that 1501) from a veritable "Who's Who
in American Film Criticism." The adjective has been applied to recent films
like P.T. Andersen’s “Boogie Nights,” Mike Figgis’ “TimeCode” and Steven
Soderbergh’s “Traffic.” Even Mira Nair’s recent Indian hit “Monsoon Wedding” seems
to fit the bill.
Altman has been putting together film for over 50 years, directing
such extremely varied works as “The James Dean Story,” “Three Women,” “McCabe
and Mrs. Miller” and “Popeye.” All totaled, he has shot more than 74 films.
With such a massive canon of work, ranging from straightforward dramas to
roaring comic adventures, what is it, exactly, that makes a film “Altmanesque”?
All Stars No Stars
Perhaps no film addresses the easy answer - Altman's tendency towards large ensemble
casts – better than his latest effort, "The Company."
Filmed entirely in Chicago and featuring the city's own Joffrey Ballet, according
to the director "The Company" is "a season in the life of a ballet company...more
documentary than fiction."
The film was brought to Altman by Neve Campbell, a classically-trained ballerina who once danced for the Royal Canadian Ballet. Campbell's passion for dance and particular respect for the Joffrey led her and writer Barbara Turner ("Pollock" and "Georgia") to pursue the director and his adjective-worthy approach to filmmaking.
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Holding court at a recent Chicago press gathering, Altman talked a bit about how directing an ensemble of dancers proved far easier than actors, largely because of the Joffrey’s oddly appropriate “all stars, no stars” mentality.
"I had done a film before this called Gosford Park and I had many top professional thespians in my cast. They were great and couldn't be more cooperative, but they were actors. When I'd say 'let's get this scene going' and we needed to get 18 people into the scene, they'd say things like 'oh oh am I late? Is Maggie on the set? I can't be on the set until Maggie's on the set.' It was very hard to get together."
"So I was concerned that with 40 or 50 people in this film, it would be even more difficult. Then I found out that when I said 'let's have the dancers,' they were all there. I'd have them walk through the space so that we could see how they moved.
And they'd do that and I would say to one dancer 'would it be possible for you to do this dance just this much shorter' and forever more that dancer would stop at that one spot. They were so disciplined and so like one organism. Orgasm. One or the other. Anyway, it was wonderful…"
Rampant Pussyfooting
Outside of a tendency to congregate in large groups, what has perhaps kept Altman's work as culturally relevant and "Altmanesque" as ever is his unabiding insistence on experimentation.
After achieving wide commercial success with "Mash," Altman founded Lion's Gate, where he deliberately fostered a "controlled chaos environment." The director ended up selling what would become one of independent cinema's most adventurous entertainment groups, but his appetite for lateral thinking has shown no signs of wavering.
"Nothing changes. We go into each one of these projects with great fear and trepidation and we don't know what we're doing. If you do know what you're doing you just as well might not do it, 'cause why found out.
With "The Company," Altman stuck with that well-worn approach.
“I didn’t have any idea of what I was going to do or how this was going to work. This was really walking into the fog. I didn’t know how the dancers and dance masters would be performing, so I kind of just pussyfooted through until I found what did work, what didn’t work, and I sort of followed that path.”
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001: Robert Altman
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