Altman on Altman
By (Author) David Thompson
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
1st April 2006
Main
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
791.430233092
Paperback
336
Width 135mm, Height 215mm, Spine 15mm
395g
Robert Altman found fame in 1970 with "M*A*S*H", the hit comedy about a Korean War medical unit. The 1970s became Altman's decade, a string of masterpieces including "McCabe and Mrs Miller", "The Long Goodbye" and "Nashville", his brilliant ode to America's bicentennial. In the 1980s Altman struggled to fund his brilliant work, but never sold out or went under, and in 1992, "The Player", an acerbic satire of Hollywood, returned him to prominence. The Raymond Carver mosaic "Short Cuts" and the Oscar-winning "Gosford Park" have further cemented his reputation.
David Thompson is the director of many acclaimed documentaries about a diverse range of films and filmmakers, from Vittorio Storaro and Jean Renoir to Josef von Sternberg and Busby Berkeley. He has co-edited Scorsese on Scorsese and edited Levinson on Levinson.