Director Robert Altman Dies at 81

LOS ANGELES, November
22: Robert Altman, the American director whose critically acclaimed movies
influenced filmmakers everywhere, has died at age 81.

Altman was perhaps best
known for 1970’s MASH, a black
comedy set in the combat theater of the Korean War. The film was interpreted by
many as a protest against the absurdities of warfare, and it fed the emotions
of Vietnam War oponents.

MASH led to a television series of the same name that
ran on CBS for eleven seasons, producing 251 episodes. Its finale, broadcast in
February, 1983, was one the most watched TV shows ever.

Altman’s other films
included McCabe and Mrs. Miller,
Nashville, The Player,
Gosford Park, and Prairie
Home Companion. The director’s
hallmark was a chaotic visual style, complex and overlapping soundtracks,
ambivalent characters, and large casts of A-list players who worked for a
fraction of what they were normally paid just to be in an Altman film.

The Kansas City-born director who got his start in industrial films
was always considered somewhat of an outsider in Hollywood. Despite decades of
critical acclaim, five Oscar nominations for best director, and two shared
nominations for best picture, Altman never received an Academy Award until the
Motion Picture Academy awarded him an honorary statuette in March, 2006. He
revealed at the ceremony that he had a heart transplant a decade earlier but
had kept it secret in order to keep working.