Robert Altman

Mitchell Zuckoff’s new oral biography “Robert Altman” is a brilliantly researched, near-cinematic evocation of how the boy from Kansas City became one of the twentieth century’s greatest native Americans. Altman, who came of age as a TV director, was his generation’s . . .  

Robert Altman's movie life You're a cocky film-school grad with a drawer full of socko screenplays and Hollywood ambitions. But it's all California dreamin', as you're shivering in New England, cutting public-service announcements and digitizing educational videos, your only brush with the studios those Netflix rentals. BIG DADDY: What was everything to Altman was moviemaking, both the art and the hanging-out.Robert Altman: The Oral...  

Like all great improvisers, the late Robert Altman kept a repertoire of stock routines handy. Anyone who’s read multiple interviews with Altman can’t help but note how often the director repeated himself, not with the same personal anecdotes—because Altman was stingy with those—but with the same metaphors and analogies. The biggest problem with Mitchell Zuckoff’s Robert Altman: The Oral Biography is that many Altman fans will have read just...  

This month the KC Public Library is showing several movies by Kansas Citian Robert Altman.  Tonight is Short Cuts from 1993, 6:30 p.m. at the Central Library.  Get the details at www.kclibrary.org.  

Mitchell Zuckoff, author of the newly published “Robert Altman: The Oral Biography,” will discuss the life and career of the Kansas City-born film director in a free presentation Monday. For the book, Zuckoff interviewed more than 200 of Altman’s friends, co-workers, enemies and family members.  

In Mitchell Zuckoff's Robert Altman: The Oral Biography (Alfred A. Knopf, 560 pages, $29.95), Altman tells the author that his motto is "Giggle and give in." But this thick, frustrating book -- ri...  

I forgot to mention this earlier, but tonight / tomorrow morning at 3:15 AM EST on Turner Classic Movies, they are showing Robert Altman's little seen first film THE DELINQUENTS. This isn't a typical Altman film, more of a B-movie he directed. But it should be of interest to his fans.  

In an L.A. Times review of the new Robert Altman biography, Richard Schickel went on an attack on Altman and his films.He writes of Altman: "When he was not drinking heavily, he was smoking dope -- often doing both simultaneously"He writes of the author Mitchel Zuckoff, "Zuckoff basically knows nothing about filmmaking and film history"So, it wasn't a positive review.The L.A. Times Hollywood blog has a story on it, and Alan Rudolph's...  

ALTMAN MONTH The films of Robert Altman will be featured at 6:30 p.m. Mondays and 1:30 p.m. Saturdays in November in the Film Vault of the KC Central Library. Admission is free.  

A weatherman. That's what Robert Altman might have become had he pursued meteorology, an early interest in life. "I liked the idea of how the different cooling levels of a lake affect the atmosphere," the late film director tells Mitchell Zuckoff in "Robert...  

Slate.com: "In Janet Maslin’s New York Times review of a new oral biography of Robert Altman, an ambiguous portrait emerges of the renegade director. Depending on who’s testifying, Altman comes off as expansive and moody, generous and chiseling, an exacting artist, a freewheeling stoner, a skirt-chasing husband, and a painfully...  

The Big Picture gets out the boxing gloves over Richard Schickel's "nasty, dismissive" review of a new biography about the filmmaker.  

“Daryl Glenn and Jo Lynn Burks Play and Sing Robert Altman’s ‘Nashville’” is a popular little show that has been playing at the Metropolitan Room on the first Sunday each month.  

Dan Hoyle, 29, is a native San Franciscan who happens to have been born on the island of Malta. That's where the family was because his father - master clown and noted actor Geoff Hoyle - was working on Robert Altman's film "Popeye" with Robin Williams,... RobinWilliams - Malta - Popeye - Robert Altman - Geoff Hoyle  

"[H]e was a pilot at the tag end of the Pacific war, a member of a crew, and someone who survived great peril in flimsy aircraft. It made a gambler out of him - or someone who declined to be as responsible as others."...  

This week our daily reviewed were royal, revolutionary, copyright-y, post-Nobel-laureate-y and about a revolutionary Oscar-winner. Here's a taste. Of William Shawcross’ "The Queen Mother: The Official Biography," Patt Morrison writes: Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother lived to be 101. On...  

Screening of the late director's personal print heralds the donation of his materials to the archive. Director Robert Altman, who died in 2006, always polarized critics and audiences with his maverick, freewheeling, structureless style and determination to reinvent genres.  

In a way, it's not surprising that when Mike Altman, the son of the movie's director, Robert Altman, wrote the song's lyrics, he was only 14 years old.  

A new biography of Kansas City native film director Robert Altman has one bombshell political revelation: Altman once tattooed a dog owned by President Harry S. Truman. The New York Times’ review of the book notes it in passing and Slate’s Brow Beat blog has all the details.  

Robert Altman, the iconoclastic director of groundbreaking films such as “M*A*S*H,’’ “Nashville,’’ “Short Cuts,’’ and “The Player,’’ never met a Hollywood executive he trusted. Throughout his career, Altman (and his crews) maintained an “us against them’’ mentality about the studios who financed his films. Even in his younger days in television, director Altman pushed the boundaries with his trademark dark ...  

I've always had a soft spot for Robert Rubin and the moderate, fiscally-conservative wing of economic officials associated with the Clinton administration. That said, this Wall Street Journal op-ed, by former Clinton deputy Treasury secretary Roger Altman, reads like a left-winger's parody of a moderate Democrat. Altman offers prosaic advise -- propose a tax credit for businesses that create jobs, create a commission to address the deficit...  

It had 22 leads, multiple storylines – and a director who was having serious doubts. Producer Mike Kaplan relives the chaos, danger and fun of life on the set of Robert Altman's Short CutsI hadn't seen Bob Altman in three days – our longest separation since we started shooting Short Cuts. So far all the locations had been in the Los Angeles area, but this week we were going down to the Kern river, in central California. We were filming Raymond...  

"Robert Altman: The Oral Biography" by Mitchell Zuckoff; Knopf (560 pages, $35)