Robert Altman: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)

Sterritt, David

ISBN 10: 1578061873 / ISBN 13: 9781578061877

Published by University Press of Mississippi (edition First Edition), 2000

About this Item

It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Seller Inventory # 1578061873-8-1

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Robert Altman: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (edition First Edition)
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1578061873
• ISBN 13: 9781578061877
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Robert Altman is one of the most inventive, unpredictable, and hotly debated American filmmakers of the past thirty years. His movies include popular hits (M.A.S.H., Nashville), critical successes (Thieves Like Us, The Long Goodbye, Short Cuts), and outright disasters (Beyond Therapy). Through triumph and tribulation alike, Altman has never lost the experimental spirit that brought him into feature filmmaking after twenty years of refining his talent on industrial movies and TV episodes. He also has maintained a gregarious, often garrulous nature, rarely missing an opportunity to discuss his work, life, and ambitions with the many critics and scholars who have plied him with questions throughout his career.

The lively interviews in this book, drawn from a wide variety of sources, range from a colorful talk with Altman as he prepared an early foray into the western genre (McCabe and Mrs. Miller) to a mid-1990s conversation about the challenges of blending jazz and cinema in Kansas City.

The interviews probe the many corners of Altman's work, including his epic battles with Hollywood studios and producers, his deep commitment to independent production, his creative views on video and stage-to-screen adaptation (a major facet of his career), and his insistence that he is more an audiovisual artist than a storytelling entertainer. Altman's conversations cast light on his idiosyncratic personality, revealing his taste for intoxicating experiences both on and off the screen and suggesting links between his risk-taking behaviors at the gambling table and the motion-picture set. This collection of interviews is a first-person portrait of a true American maverick whose freewheeling career has waged a decades-long campaign against Hollywood complacency and served as inspiration for new generations of independent screen artists.

About the Author

David Sterritt is a film critic for the Christian Science Monitor and professor of theater and film at Long Island University and Columbia University. He is author of Guiltless Pleasures: A David Sterritt Film Reader, editor of Robert Altman: Interviews and Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews, and coeditor (with Lucille Rhodes) of Terry Gilliam: Interviews, all published by the University Press of Mississippi.