Robert Altman, a five-time Academy Award nominee for best director whose vast, eclectic filmography ranged from the dark war comedy MASH to the Hollywood farce The Player to the British murder mystery Gosford Park, has died of complications from cancer. He was 81.
"He had lived and worked with the disease for the last 18 months, a period that included the making of his film A Prairie Home Companion," the director's Sandcastle 5 Productions in New York said in a statement on Tuesday. "His death was, nevertheless, a surprise: Altman was in pre-production on a film he had planned to start shooting in February."
He died Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, surrounded by his wife and children.
PHOTO: AP
When he received a lifetime achievement Oscar this year, Altman revealed he had had a heart transplant a decade earlier.
"I didn't make a big secret out of it, but I thought nobody would hire me again," he said after the ceremony. "You know, there's such a stigma about heart transplants, and there's a lot of us out there."
While he was famous for his outspokenness, which caused him to fall in and out of favor in Hollywood over his nearly six decades in the industry, he was perhaps even better known for his influential method of assembling large casts and weaving in and out of their story lines, using long tracking shots and intentionally having dialogue overlap.
His most recent example of this technique, this year's A Prairie Home Companion, starred such varied performers as Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson and Kevin Kline. It was based on the long-running radio show from Garrison Keillor, who said Altman's love of film clearly came through on the set.
"Mr. Altman loved making movies. He loved the chaos of shooting and the sociability of the crew and actors -- he adored actors -- and he loved the editing room and he especially loved sitting in a screening room and watching the thing over and over with other people," said Keillor, who also wrote and co-starred in the film. "He didn't care for the money end of things, he didn't mind doing publicity, but when he was working he was in heaven."
Altman received best-director Oscar nominations for MASH, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts and Gosford Park. No director ever got more nominations without winning a competitive Oscar, though four others -- Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Clarence Brown and King Vidor -- tied with Altman at five.
Born Feb. 20, 1925, Altman hung out in his teen years at the jazz clubs of Kansas City, Missouri, where his father was an insurance salesman.
He was a bomber pilot in World War II and studied engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia before taking a job making industrial films in Kansas City. He moved into features with The Delinquents in 1957, then worked largely in TV through the mid-1960s.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
The Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader made a rare public appearance yesterday, an Afghan government spokesman said, leading thousands of worshipers in prayers marking Eid al-Fitr. Hibatullah Akhundzada has made only a handful of public appearances since inheriting the leadership of the Taliban in 2016 and leading the movement back to power with the withdrawal of US forces in 2021. Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said prayer in the largest mosque in Kandahar was “performed under the leadership of the supreme leader.” In a statement on X, he said the early-morning service “was attended by thousands of compatriots” in the southern province considered the