AMERICAN ICONS
I wanted to study our myths, heroes and hypocrisy
using film, because by the time we usually get around
to studying our present it’s past, and the truth is buried
so deep we can’t ever find it. – ROBERT
ALTMAN
For over a half-century, Robert Altman remained an
anomaly to Hollywood ’s search for new big-buck
gimmicks to fill the seats and to fight off the competition
from theever-advancing competition of electronic technology
and gadgetry. Altman remained aloof, casting himself,
without announcing it, as the innovative, irreverent
auteur storyteller stretching the limits of filmmaking.
The result is a large body of work highlighted by iconic
films that stand alone like high peaks. This is a slim
sliver of films selected from his life’s work,
revealing him as a quintessential seeker after truth
who uses film to examine contemporary culture and what
passes for the sacred cows of truth in these United
States of America .
M*A*S*H
Sunday, January 14 • Sunday Schmooze
Hot Bagels at 10am • Film at 11am
Members $10 • Public $13
Guest Speaker: Victor
Skolnick, CAC Co-Director
M*A*S*H units ( Mobile Army Surgical Hospital ) brought
hospital surgery tothe front lines in Korea . From 1950-53,
US dead in Korea (51,000 with 103,000 wounded) was matched
in Vietnam from 1967 to 1973. Phony political delays
added two years of warfare in Korea and Vietnam . In
the 1920’s H.L.Mencken, a Baltimore journalist
and severe caustic critic of US political life, remarked
“you could never underestimate the stupidity of
Americans.” In the Seventies, perhaps picking
up on Mencken, Altman began delivering cinematic indictments
of the state of the brainery in the U.S. of A. Altman’s
powerful satire of the Korean conflict creates a powerful
tragic-comic satire about a front line medical center.
USA, 1970, 116 min., color, rated R • Director:
Robert Altman • Writer: Ring Larder, Jr., based
on the novel by Richard Hooker • Cast: Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt, Robert Duvall,
Sally Kellerman
Secret
Honor
Tuesday, January 16 at 7:30pm
On his death in 1994, the major media, led by The New
York Times, eulogized Richard Nixon by extolling his
statesman-like qualities—and then a week after
his burial the media was filled with his shameful memorabilia
in the Nixon White House papers. Secret Honor is Philip
Baker Hall’s tour-de-force one-man performance:
part fictional, part historical portrait. It is a monologue
- at times sad, angry, tearful and reverential - to
create a portrait of a man attempting to justify his
life and score his enemies who conspired to unseat him
from the presidency. Altman’s single set is a
paneled study replete with four security video monitors
and a tape recorder. Altman’s Nixon delivers a
non-stop halting monologue on his life and career. The
big plums are the suggested real reasons for his pardon
and retirement.
USA, 1984, 90 min., color • Director: Robert
Altman • Writers: Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone
• Cast: Philip Baker Hall
Nashville
Thursday, January 25 at 7:30pm
Nashville, home of the Grand Ol’ Opry, is the
Mecca of country and western music and the setting around
which the story’s twenty-four characters gyrate.
Their stories alternate and cross together. Altman’s
cast is outstanding: Lily Tomlin, Geraldine Chaplin,
Michael Murphy, and Keith Carradine. The innovative
opening credits set the stage for what’s coming:
Altman’s sales pitch for his own movie segues
into quick short cuts. For Altman, the commercial serves
as a metaphor for the quality of American popular music
and politics—the manipulation and sale of public
images for money and power. The structure of Nashville
forms a kind of Rashomon of the US . Joan Tewkesbury,
Nashville’s screenwriter, comments, “All
you need do is add yourself as the twenty-fifth character
and know that whatever you think about the film is right,
even if you think the film is wrong.”
USA, 1975, 159min., color, rated ‘R’ •
Director: Robert Altman • Writer: Joan Tewksbury
• Cast: Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Keith Carradine,
Geraldine Chaplin, Shelley Duvall, Jeff Goldblum, Lily
Tomlin, Elliott Gould
Buffalo
Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History
Lesson
Sunday, January 28
Sunday Schmooze • Hot Bagels at 10am•
Film at 11am
Members $10 • Public $13
Guest Speaker: Victor Skolnick, CAC Co-Director
Set in 1885, this is Altman’s debunking of the
celebratory so-called American Conquest of the West:
it necessitated the Ethnic Cleansing of the various
Indian Nations whose lands we coveted. The minor boundary
dispute, starting the 1847 Mexican-American War, enabled
the U.S. to strip then-troubled Mexico of two-thirds
of their country. As in Nashville the show business
commercialization serves as a microcosm and mindless
cover for the endemic brutality of American life. As
ever, our government and their handmaiden media mystify,
glorify and commercialize the stars who represent the
glorious achievements of our national history. Paul
Newman is Bill Cody, retired Indian killer, whose traveling
road show created the media hero Buffalo Bill. Burt
Lancaster’s Madison Avenue-style promoter Ned
Buntline created Buffalo Bill. Geraldine Chaplin is
Annie Oakley. Shelley Duvall, Harvey Keitel and Joel
Grey are vivid secondary characters.
USA, 1984, 90 min., color • Director: Robert
Altman • Writers: Robert Altman and Alan Rudolph
• Cast: Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Joel Grey,
Harvey Keitel, Geraldine Chaplin, Shelley Duval
