Lily Tomlin kissing Lauren Bacall kissing Marisa Berenson kissing Sally Kellerman, unforgettable as Hot Lips Houlihan in Robert Altman’s Mash. The memorial service for the iconoclastic director was best described by Tim Robbins, one of 21 speakers at the Majestic Theater on 44 Street on his would-be 82nd birthday, February 20, as a typical Altman movie set: Chaotic, epic-length, with characters coming and going, talking over one another. Somewhere, said Robbins wistfully describing a fantasy, he is directing the whole thing.
I was seated next to Jules Feiffer who provided a running commentary on the proceedings. Altman loved chaos, he said, then he could provide order, you see. The writer E. L. Doctorow onstage spoke about his collaboration with Altman on a movie of his novel Ragtime: He and his wife arrived at the set of Buffalo Bill in Vancouver where Altman promptly sent them to wardrobe and made them extras. In between takes, they planned the movie. Doctorow provided a 410-page script. He said Altman loved every word and intended to film the whole thing. Of course, Altman was removed from that job and Ragtime became a rather so-so movie directed by Milos Forman. In truth, whispered Feiffer in the most loving way referring to Altman, it was miserable to write for him. Scripts were accepted and abandoned, becoming springboards for improvisation.
Fitting then, the jazz ensemble from his movie Kansas City performed. In fact, Altman took his structural cues from jazz. His films are like riffs, with melodies weaving in and out. Music defines them. Think of 3 Women, Brewster McCloud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller (I hear Leonard Cohen in my brain), Popeye, Pret-a-Porter, Cookie’s Fortune, Short Cuts, Kansas City, Nashville, the recent Prairie Home Companion. Annie Ross sang a jazzy rendition of “One Meatball” which always made Altman laugh. (“You get no bread with one meatball.”) Lauren Flanigan sang from the opera of A Wedding. Julianne Moore recounted the story about Altman, declaring definitively that she was a redhead after her nude scene in Short Cuts. The final speaker, Harry Belafonte one-upped Tim Robbins. His fantasy was that Altman was making a movie in Heaven, completing his own unfinished movie about minstrels with everyone up there in black face.
A true artist sees his medium as a frontier. Break the rules. Go as far as you can. Altman was an artist. His movies have a signature look. While they are not for everyone, his worst mistakes are better, more interesting, desirable, and thrilling to me than most other’s triumphs. And that was the mood at the Majestic.
Some tidbits: Noah Baumbach’s upcoming movie (as yet untitled) will star Nicole Kidman and will feature Halley Feiffer, Jules’ daughter, who gave a stand-out performance in The Squid and the Whale. Lily Tomlin and Lauren Bacall co-star in a new movie by Paul Shrader.
See Roger Friedman’s Fox 411 column for additional coverage of this event
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Posted by: Alex Nicco | August 09, 2017 at 04:23 AM