AMERICAN MAVERICK:
A ROBERT ALTMAN RETROSPECTIVE
April 29–June 8, 2006

Director Robert Altman's trademark filmmaking techniques-overlapping sound, semi-improvised performances, documentary camera style, and sprawling ensemble narratives-express a distinctive approach to his art form, and a kaleidescopic view of contemporary life. Subverting nearly every Hollywood genre, including westerns, war movies, comedies, musicals, and gangster films, Altman's films create a feeling of life spilling off the screen, and peel away the layers of showmanship, spectacle, and illusion that pervade American culture.

Media support for the series generously provided by WLIB Air America Radio.


Kansas City
Followed by a Pinewood Dialogue with Robert Altman
Saturday, April 29, 2:00 p.m.

1997, 116 mins., 35mm. With Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte. Set in Altman’s hometown, Kansas City is a panoramic melodrama about politics, race, crime, and the movies, made in a “jazz” style that matches the film’s musical milieu. Followed by a Pinewood Dialogue with Altman moderated by Chief Curator David Schwartz.
Tickets: $24 public/$16 Museum members. Call 718-784-4520.


Robert Altman’s Jazz ’34:
Remembrances of Kansas City Swing
Saturday, April 29, 5:00 p.m.

1996, 72 mins., 35mm. Narrated by Harry Belafonte. With Don Byron, Ron Carter, Cyrus Chestnut. In an extended jam session, filmed as an offshoot of Kansas City, more than twenty musicians pay tribute to the Prohibition-era jazz scene.


M*A*S*H
Saturday, April 29, 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, April 30, 6:30 p.m.

1969, 116 mins., 35mm. With Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Sally Kellerman. Written by Ring Lardner Jr. This black comedy, set during the Korean War, was Altman’s artistic breakthrough and his biggest hit; it also earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Director.


Brewster McCloud
Sunday, April 30, 2:00 p.m.

1970, 104 mins., 35mm. With Bud Cort, Sally Kellerman, Shelley Duvall. In this oddball counterculture fantasy, a young man builds a birdlike flying machine in the Houston Astrodome.


California Split
Sunday, April 30, 4:00 p.m.

1974, 111 mins., 35mm. With George Segal, Elliott Gould. A sardonic study of friendship and failure, this Las Vegas comedy is also an innovative experiment in multi-layered sound recording


Tanner ’88
Pilot: “The Dark Horse” .
Saturday, May 6, 12:30 p.m.

“For Real” and “The Night of the Twinkies”
Sunday, May 7, 12:30 p.m.

“Moonwalker and Bookbag” and “Bagels with Bruce”
Saturday, May 13, 12:00 p.m.

“Child’s Play” and “The Great Escape”
Sunday, May 14, 12:00 p.m.

“The Girlfriend Factor” and “Something Borrowed, Something New”
Saturday, May 20, 12:00 p.m.

“The Boiler Room” and “The Reality Check”
Sunday, May 21, 12:00 p.m.

1988, 353 minutes, video. Written by Garry Trudeau. With Michael Murphy, Pamela Reed. Appearances by Gary Hart, Robert Dole. A fascinating hybrid of satire and reality TV, this pseudodocumentary miniseries made during the 1988 presidential campaign pits a fictional candidate against the real hopefuls.


Thieves Like Us
Saturday, May 6, 2:00 p.m

1974, 123 mins., 35mm. With Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall. A variation on Bonnie and Clyde, this offbeat story of the romance between a small-time bank robber and a naïve country girl beautifully evokes Depression-era America.


The Long Goodbye
Saturday, May 6, 4:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 7, 2:00 p.m.

1973, 112 mins., 35mm. With Elliot Gould. With the unlikely casting of Elliot Gould as private eye Philip Marlowe, Altman said that he set out to “satirize Hollywood and the entire Raymond Chandler genre.”


McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Saturday, May 6, 6:45 p.m.
Sunday, May 7, 6:45 p.m.

1970, 121 mins., 35mm. With Warren Beatty, Julie Christie. “A beautiful pipe dream of a movie,” said Pauline Kael of Altman’s lyrical antiwestern about an ambitious prostitute and a gambling man with a poet’s soul.


Secret Honor
Sunday, May 7, 4:30 p.m.

1983, 85 mins., 35mm. With Philip Baker Hall. “They said they wouldn’t buy a used car from me, but they gave me the biggest vote in American history. Then they flushed me down the toilet,” says Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon in his bravura solo performance.


Nashville
Saturday, May 13, 1:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 14, 4:00 p.m.

1975, 159 mins., 35mm. With Ronee Blakley, Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Michael Murphy, Geraldine Chaplin, Shelley Duvall, Henry Gibson. Altman’s definitive film, portraying the intersecting lives of 24 characters, depicts America as a carnival where show business and politics are one.


Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
Saturday, May 13, 4:30 p.m.

1976, 123 mins., 35mm. With Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Harvey Keitel. Altman characterizes Buffalo Bill as a Wild-West con man who presents himself as a legendary hero.


Images
Saturday, May 13, 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, May 14, 7:00 p.m.

1972, 101 mins., 35mm. With Susannah York. This surreal drama about a schizophrenic writer secluded in the Irish countryside features dazzling cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond.


Popeye
Sunday, May 14, 1:30 p.m.

1980, 114 mins., 35mm. With Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall. Altman’s live-action adaptation of the Popeye comic strip was described by Andrew Sarris as “a Bertolt Brecht production of a Betty Boop cartoon.”


Three Women
Saturday, May 20, 1:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 21, 4:00 p.m.

1977, 124 mins., 35mm. With Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule. Two California therapists undergo a mysterious psychological transference in this beautiful, enigmatic film, which reportedly came to Altman in a dream.


Vincent and Theo
Saturday, May 20, 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, May 21, 6:30 p.m

1990, 138 mins., 35mm. With Tim Roth, Paul Rhys. Focusing on Vincent Van Gogh’s tortured relationship with his brother, Altman depicts the famed painter not as a misunderstood genius but as an angry failed artist.

The Player
Saturday, May 20, 6:30 p.m.

1992, 123 mins., 35mm. With Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi. This masterful satire, a murder mystery involving a screenwriter and a producer, reflects Altman’s love-hate relationship with Hollywood.


Gosford Park
Saturday, May 27, 1:30 p.m.

2001, 137 mins., 35mm. With Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, Bob Balaban, Helen Mirren, Emily Watson. Evoking Jean Renoir’s classic film Rules of the Game, Altman’s upstairs/downstairs murder mystery satirizes the fading days of the British Empire.


H.E.A.L.T.H.
Saturday, May 27, 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, May 28, 4:00 p.m.

1980, 96 mins., 35mm. With Glenda Jackson, Carol Burnett, James Garner. This still-timely political satire about a society obsessed with physical fitness was originally made for release during the 1980 election campaign.


Short Cuts
Saturday, May 27, 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 28, 6:30 p.m.

1993, 187 mins., 35mm. With Julianne Moore, Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Lemmon. Deftly interweaving multiple story lines, Altman’s virtuosic adaptation of a series of Raymond Carver short stories reveals the underside of life in Tinseltown.


Tanner on Tanner
Sunday, May 28, 2:00 p.m.

2004, 120 mins., video. With Michael Murphy, Cynthia Nixon.
In this sequel to Tanner ’88, made during the 2004 election, Jack Tanner’s daughter is making a documentary about her father’s 1988 political campaign.


A Prairie Home Companion
Followed by a Pinewood Dialogue with Virginia Madsen*
Thursday, June 8, 7:30 p.m.

2006, 100 mins., 35mm, PictureHouse. With Garrison Keillor, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Meryl Streep, Virgina Madsen, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan. In Altman’s 39th feature film, reality and fiction once again merge as a radio show prepares for its final broadcast.

At the Directors Guild Theater, 110 West 57th Street, Manhattan. Tickets: $24 public/$16 Museum members. Call 718-784-4520.

*Robert Altman is not able to appear at the screening due to a sudden scheduling conflict.