the hot hand, and some subject creep

Interesting article about the “hot hand” as it applies to artists: “Bob Dylan and the ‘Hot Hand’

The article focuses on Bob Dylan, but it covers some other artists as well (for example, did you know that Shakespeare wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet all in one year?)

I expect there are a lot of factors which go into a hot streak like that. A congenial working situation, whatever that may be, is probably one. Events in the world. Artistic competition (I remember when it was very obvious that the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who were all watching each other very carefully, and they all were watching Dylan, too).

It makes me think of Robert Altman, too. Hot streaks in movies don’t happen the same way, since movies take a lot longer to make, but after he had his first big success, with MASH, in 1970, he made eight movies in six years. All are good, most are great, and at least two are masterpieces (Probably three — my opinion of The Long Goodbye keeps improving. The two definite masterpieces are McCabe and Mrs. Miller, my favorite film, and Nashville).

Possible factors? He had been working in television for years, perfecting his craft, figuring out what he wanted to do (particularly the things that he couldn’t do in television). Because of the success of MASH, he was given a lot of leeway (this was true in general in Hollywood at that time, as I talked about here — point #2). Because of his television experience, he knew how to keep his costs low. He made some flops in his career, but he never made an expensive one.

The streak stopped, or at least slowed down, because Altman was scheduled to direct Ragtime, a prestigious project, but then Buffalo Bill and the Indians was a flop (and may have been considered inappropriate Bicentennial fare in some circles). Ragtime was given to Milos Forman, Three Women (Altman’s next picture) was not a hit, and for a while his pace slowed down somewhat.

But he kept going. Yes, sometimes you’re on a roll, but sometimes — most times — you’re not. Sometimes none of your shots are falling. But you keep going.

My mother was an art historian, and one of her opinions, after a long lifetime of studying art and artists, was that anybody who could be stopped or discouraged from making art — well, they’re weren’t real artists anyway. The real ones persist, finding ways to work.

Altman kept going — directing plays when nobody would give him money to make movies, and then making movies of the plays (movies of plays are really cheap to make).

As I’ve said before, at one point, years ago, somebody asked Altman how he dealt with the fact that most of his movies weren’t available on video at that time.

“How can I deal with it?” he replied. “I make another movie.”

And I seem to have wandered, away from what interested the writer at the New Yorker and toward what interests me.

Oh, well. 🙂

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