{"id":1135,"date":"2004-11-14T12:45:09","date_gmt":"2004-11-14T16:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=1135"},"modified":"2010-10-02T01:10:25","modified_gmt":"2010-10-02T05:10:25","slug":"the-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=1135","title":{"rendered":"The Player"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert A. Heinlein once wrote a story called \"He\r\n\r\nBuilt a Crooked House.\" In this story, a house constructed in four\r\n\r\ndimensions* falls in on itself (California earthquake), and the result\r\n\r\nis a small box of a house, obviously only one room, but when you go\r\n\r\ninside the whole eight-room house is there. But any exit to the\r\n\r\noutside world just leads to another part of the house. There is no\r\n\r\nway to get out.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Robert Altman's \"The Player\" is the opposite. It\r\n\r\nlooks like an ordinary house, with all the usual rooms, but if you try\r\n\r\nto go in the front door, you end up in the back yard. If you try to\r\n\r\ngo in through the garage door, you find yourself coming out of the\r\n\r\nbasement. There's no way to get in, because there is no inside. It's\r\n\r\nall surface.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The first clue, the one that sets everything up, is\r\n\r\nthe long tracking shot that opens the movie. The camera moves around\r\n\r\nand around a studio lot, following different conversations, looking in\r\n\r\nwindows where various writers are pitching various (mostly inane)\r\n\r\nideas for movies.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

All well and good, but the tip-off is that it calls\r\n\r\nattention to itself. First, in one of the conversations we overhear,\r\n\r\none character is complaining to another that there are no long shots\r\n\r\nin movies anymore. It's all cut-cut-cut. Then he goes on to remember\r\n\r\ngreat long shots in the past, including (of course) the long tracking\r\n\r\nshot that opens Orson Welles'\r\n\r\n\"Touch of Evil.\"<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The whole movie is like that. You can't miss\r\n\r\nanything, Altman points at everything of any significance. It's like\r\n\r\nan old Bugs Bunny cartoon, where if someone is crying someone else\r\n\r\nwill hold up a sign saying, \"Sad, isn't it?\"<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The characters are all two-dimensional at best.\r\n\r\nNone of them even need names, except as a convenience. They could\r\n\r\njust be called The Player, The Aspiring Player, The Idealistic Victim,\r\n\r\nThe Self-Involved Writer, etc. And none of them have any really\r\n\r\nlikable qualities, so there's no risk of the audience getting\r\n\r\nparticularly emotionally involved with anyone.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

(BTW, movie reviewers who talk about the writer who\r\n\r\ndies being victimized by the studio system are betraying their own\r\n\r\nprejudices (reviewers are writers, after all): the guy is a nitwit and\r\n\r\nhis idea for a movie is narcissistic and inane.)<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I could go on, but I would start to give the idea\r\n\r\nthat this is a pan. I heartily recommend people see this movie, I just\r\n\r\nwant to give some idea of what to expect.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The movie is Altman's movie about Hollywood, but not\r\n\r\nin the obvious way that \"SOB\" is Blake Edward's. I love \"SOB,\" but\r\n\r\nthe \"Hollywood director gets back at Hollywood by making movie showing\r\n\r\ndirector screwed by system\" thing was a pretty straightforward\r\n\r\nresponse. Altman is after a much subtler joke, and he carries it off\r\n\r\nwonderfully.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This is a bad movie (by any ordinary standards,\r\n\r\nincluding the standard we expect from the director of classics like\r\n\r\nNashville<\/A> and\r\n\r\nMcCabe & Mrs. Miller<\/A>).\r\n\r\nBut that's the point. He made a\r\n\r\nSuccessful Hollywood Movie, every bit as inane as the Bruce\r\n\r\nWillis\/Julia Roberts blockbuster that he shows us the finale of. And\r\n\r\nit has been, of course, very successful. He is telling us that the\r\n\r\nAltman Victimized by Hollywood thing was wrong. He could have made\r\n\r\nthis movie at any time. Unlike \"SOB,\" this is not a bitter movie,\r\n\r\nbecause Altman is not bitter. He's been playing his game, by his own\r\n\r\nrules, and he's won.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I only wonder one thing. This movie means Altman\r\n\r\nwill have a much bigger budget and more clout when he directs his next\r\n\r\nmovie. I wonder if he has had something specific in mind.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

-------------------
\r\n\r\n* Explanation on request<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Player<\/BIG>
(1992)<\/SPAN><\/B>
\r\n\r\nDirected by Robert Altman
\r\n\r\nWritten by Michael Tolkin
 
\r\n\r\nCast:<\/SPAN><\/B>
\r\n\r\nGriffin Mill : Tim Robbins
\r\n\r\nJune Gudmundsdottir : Greta Scacchi
\r\n\r\nWalter Stuckel : Fred Ward
\r\n\r\nDetective Susan Avery : Whoopi Goldberg
\r\n\r\nLarry Levy : Peter Gallagher
\r\n\r\nJoel Levison : Brion James
\r\n\r\nBonnie Sherow : Cynthia Stevenson
\r\n\r\nDavid Kahane : Vincent D'Onofrio
\r\n\r\nAndy Civella : Dean Stockwell
\r\n\r\nTom Oakley : Richard E. Grant
\r\n\r\nLarry Levy : Sydney Pollack
\r\n\r\nDetective DeLongpre : Lyle Lovett

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Robert A. Heinlein once wrote a story called “He Built a Crooked House.” In this story, a house constructed in four dimensions* falls in on itself (California earthquake), and the result is a small box of a house, obviously only one room, but when you go inside the whole eight-room house is there. But any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[36,33],"class_list":["post-1135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-reviews-2","tag-robert-altman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1135"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1276,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions\/1276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}