Robert Altman (film director)
Robert Altman (1925 - 2006) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter known for his iconoclastic style, as well as his naturalistic perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.
After struggling in television for many years, he finally was offered the script for M*A*S*H*, which would change his luck forever. Altman directed the film, and it was a huge success, both with critics and at the box office. It was Altman's highest grossing film.
He followed it with other critical breakthroughs such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1974), and Nashville (1975), which made the distinctive, experimental "Altman style" well known for using overlapping dialogue.
As a director, Altman favored stories showing the interrelationships between several characters; he stated that he was more interested in character motivation than in intricate plots. As such, he tended to sketch out only a basic plot for the film, referring to the screenplay as a "blueprint" for action, and allowed his actors to improvise dialogue. This is one of the reasons Altman was known as an "actor's director," a reputation that helped him work with large casts of well-known actors, as seen in films like The Player (1992), Short Cuts (1993) and Gosford Park (2001).
