1925 - 2006

[spatch]

M*A*S*H
Brewster McCloud
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
The Long Goodbye
Nashville
3 Women
Popeye
Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
Vincent & Theo
The Player
Short Cuts
Gosford Park
A Prairie Home Companion

In A Prairie Home Companion, Robert Altman's final film (on which, honestly, he didn't do the bulk of the work; Paul Thomas Anderson took up most of the directing duties when Altman didn't have the strength) there's a scene where Garrison Keillor's character is asked to deliver a eulogy on the air for a beloved cast member who's recently died.

"I don't say eulogies," Keillor refuses.
"What if you die someday?" Lindsay Lohan's character asks him.
"Then I die."
"But don't you want people to remember you?"
"I don't want them to be told to remember me!" Keillor protests, as stubbornly and as defiantly as only a Minnesota Lutheran can, then walks out of the room.

Robert Altman has nothing to fear about that. He followed "show, don't tell" to the letter and the body of his work, often screened frame-by-frame by wide-eyed film students, definitely shows how much he'll be remembered and missed. We almost don't even need to be told.



and yes, I do consider Popeye to be one of his flawed masterpieces. so there.

Comments

[cursethedark.livejournal.com]

The only one of these that I've got is A Prairie Home Companion, although I have seen most of M*A*S*H.

I guess I might have seen a minute or two of Popeye, but was more confused than anything, because at the time I'd never heard about the movie. I guess I just wasn't ready for it.