The Player

The Player
Author: Michael Tolkin
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2007-12-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1555847471

The “shrewd, entertainingly dark Hollywood novel” that inspired the award-winning Robert Altman film (The New York Times Book Review). Hollywood insider Michael Tolkin perfectly skewers the movie-making business through the mind of Griffin Mill, senior vice president of production at a major Hollywood studio. Ruthlessly ambitious, Mill is driven to control the levers of America’s dream-making machinery. He listens to writers pitch him stories all day, sitting in judgment of their fantasies, their lives. But now one writer whose pitch he responded to so glibly is sending him mortally threatening postcards. Squeezed between the threat to his life and the threat to his job, Mill’s deliberate and horrifying response spins him into a nightmare. Then he meets the sad and beautiful June Mercator and his obsession for her threatens to destroy them both. “One of the most wounding and satirical of all Hollywood exposes.” —Los Angeles Times “In its wry, acerbic description of life behind the studio gates Tolkin’s book recalls F. Scott Fitzgerald . . . and the vengeful comedy of Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

Robert Altman

Robert Altman
Author: Mitchell Zuckoff
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2010-12-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0307387917

Robert Altman—visionary director, hard-partying hedonist, eccentric family man, Hollywood legend—comes roaring to life in this rollicking oral biography. After an all-American boyhood in Kansas City, a stint flying bombers in World War II, and jobs ranging from dog tattoo entrepreneur to television director, Robert Altman burst onto the scene in 1970 with M*A*S*H. He reinvented American filmmaking, and went on to produce such masterpieces as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts, and Gosford Park. In Robert Altman, Mitchell Zuckoff has woven together Altman’s final interviews; an incredible cast of voices including Meryl Streep, Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, among scores of others; and contemporary reviews and news accounts into a riveting tale of an extraordinary life.

Robert Altman

Robert Altman
Author: Daniel O'Brien
Publisher: Burns & Oates
Total Pages: 152
Release: 1995
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Few careers in Hollywood can match the highs and lows of Robert Altman's. In the past several years, The Player, and Short Cuts especially have seen the director - who has been written off time and again - emerge as a major creative force. (Critical reception of Ready to Wear, his latest film, also fits the pattern of Altman's career.). O'Brien explores the causes for Altman's rise and fall from critical acclaim, as well as the director's unconventional attitudes to the film-making process, which may have left him better equipped than many to adjust to the bitter realities of the Hollywood film industry. He is a true Hollywood survivor. Altman's comeback in the 1990s, and the accompanying reappraisal of his earlier work, is fully discussed and documented, right up to the present. By exploring a rich and varied career, this book reveals Robert Altman's unique position in American culture and world cinema.

The Player ; The Rapture ; The New Age

The Player ; The Rapture ; The New Age
Author: Michael Tolkin
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1995
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780802133922

Michael Tolkin is one of Hollywood's hottest new players, a screenwriter and director who has created films that are intellectually uncompromising, provocative, hilarious, sexy, and brilliantly contemporary. The Player, the award-winning movie sensation about the twisted world of Hollywood, was directed by Robert Altman and starred Tim Robbins and Greta Scacchi. It has been hailed as "a masterpiece! One of the smartest, funniest, most penetrating movies about moviemaking ever made" (Vanity Fair). The Rapture explores the emotionally intense, surreal world of Christian fundamentalism. The Los Angeles Times called it "a nervy, unsettling, edgy piece of work, that most audacious of cinematic ventures, a film of theological ideas, intent on looking into what we believe and why we believe it, determined, even eager, to explore the issues of heaven, hell, and the hereafter." The New Age, a film sure to become an archetype for the post-1980's era, tells the story of a young couple's fall from financial grace and their quest for spirituality in a world defined by materialism. These screenplays not only represent some of the finest and most challenging work being done in Hollywood today but present, collectively, breadth, and feeling to that created by any of our time's most talented artists, whatever the medium.

Robert Altman's Subliminal Reality

Robert Altman's Subliminal Reality
Author: Robert T. Self
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2002
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780816637904

With his complex and unconventional films, Robert Altman often draws an impassioned response from critics but bafflement and indifference from the general public. Some audiences have dismissed his movies as insignificant, unsatisfying, and unreadable. Ironically, Altman might agree: he makes films in order to challenge filmgoers' expectations of straightforward narratives and easily understood endings. In Robert Altman's Subliminal Reality, Robert T. Self sheds light on Altman's work and provides the most comprehensive analysis of his films to date. With close readings of classics like MASH, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and Nashville, as well as the more recent films The Player, Short Cuts, and Cookie's Fortune, Self asserts the value of Altman's work not only to film theory and the entertainment industry but to American culture. Book jacket.

Altman on Altman

Altman on Altman
Author: David Thompson
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2011-04-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0571261647

In Altman on Altman, one of American cinema's most incorrigible mavericks reflects on a brilliant career. Robert Altman served a long apprenticeship in movie-making before his great breakthrough, the Korean War comedy M*A*S*H (1969). It became a huge hit and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, but also established Altman's inimitable use of sound and image, and his gift for handling a repertory company of actors. The 1970s then became Altman's decade, with a string of masterpieces: McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, Nashville . . . In the 1980s Altman struggled to fund his work, but he was restored to prominence in 1992 with The Player, an acerbic take on Hollywood. Short Cuts, an inspired adaptation of Raymond Carver, and the Oscar-winning Gosford Park, underscored his comeback. Now he recalls the highs and lows of his career trajectory to David Thompson in this definitive interview book, part of Faber's widely acclaimed Directors on Directors series. 'Hearing in his own words in Altman on Altman just how much of his films occur spontaneously, as a result of last-minute decisions on set, is fascinating . . . For film lovers, this is just about indispensable.' Ben Sloan, Metro London

Altman (Text-Only Edition)

Altman (Text-Only Edition)
Author: Kathryn Reed Altman
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2017-10-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1683351916

This intimate and critical biography of the pioneering director explores his life, work, and creative process—with contributions by fellow filmmakers. For decades, Robert Altman fascinated audiences with films such as McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, Gosford Park, and many others. He won critical acclaim by combining technical innovation with subversive, satirical humor and impassioned political engagement. His ability to explore so many different worlds with a single vision changed the landscape of cinema forever. This signature "Altmanesque" style is, in the words of Martin Scorsese: "as recognizable and familiar as Renoir's brushstrokes or Debussy's orchestrations." Now, the Altman estate opens its archive to celebrate his extraordinary life and career in this authorized biography. Written by Altman’s widow Kathryn Reed Altman and film critic Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, this volume brims with personal recollections of the director. Alongside the intimate story of his life is a complete historical and critical narrative of Altman’s films and his process. To honor the Altman trademark of using a wide cast of characters, Altman also features contributions from his collaborators and contemporaries including Frank Barhydt, E. L. Doctorow, Roger Ebert, Jules Feiffer, Julian Fellowes, James Franco, Tess Gallagher, Pauline Kael, Garrison Keillor, Michael Murphy, Martin Scorsese, Lily Tomlin, Alan Rudolph, Michael Tolkin, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The Nashville Chronicles

The Nashville Chronicles
Author: Jan Stuart
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2003
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0879109815

The Nashville Chronicles is a fascinating journalistic tour de force of the movie that legendary film critic Pauline Kael called "The funniest epic vision of America ever to reach the screen." In writing this book, Jan Stuart enjoyed the benefit of full cooperation from Altman, who sat for many hours of interviews, as well as most of the motley crew of cast and characters. Illustrated throughout with behind-the-scenes photos.

Great Books

Great Books
Author: David Denby
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 518
Release: 2013-06-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1439127158

*NATIONAL BESTSELLER* “A lively adventure of the mind...The tone of the prose...is one of unqualified enthusiasm: energy, vigor, intellectual curiosity, and what might be called an ecstasy of imaginative journalism.” —The New York Times Book Review At the age of forty-eight, writer and film critic David Denby returned to Columbia University and re-enrolled in two core courses in Western civilization to confront the literary and philosophical masterpieces -- the "great books" -- that are now at the heart of the culture wars. In Great Books, he leads us on a glorious tour, a rediscovery and celebration of such authors as Homer and Boccaccio, Locke and Nietzsche. Conrad and Woolf. The resulting personal odyssey is an engaging blend of self-discovery, cultural commentary, reporting, criticism, and autobiography -- an inspiration for anyone in love with the written word.