Robert Altman: In Memoriam

Iconoclasm, serendipity, and bad ideas were his tools, and I can't think of any living filmmaker who valued all three in equal measure. My first viewing of The Player almost fifteen years ago was instructive, watching Ready To Wear not long afterwards more so: both films revealed how serenely an artist can create something cringeworthy from the same material he'd transformed so triumphantly.

"The industry" – those windmills that obituary writers claim Robert Altman toppled – no longer exists, if it ever did. "There was always room for an Orson Welles picture," the boy-genius once said about the studio system. Despite Altman's legendary squabbles with boardroom members, he really had nothing to worry about; during his most fallow period, the company men didn't blink when he churned out Images, Buffalo Bill & The Indians, Health, and A Wedding. There was always room for a Robert Altman picture; a system needs a rebel. Even the rebel gets an honorary Oscar if he's around long enough. If the pieties of Garrison Keillor seemed too homespun for a director this purportedly irascible, let's remember that he took David Rabe, Ed Gracyzk, The Caine Mutiny, and Richard Gere seriously too.

We had little time to assemble a commemorative package, but this turned out to be rather excellent under the circumstances.