The Player
|  Robert Altman always resisted labeling The Player his “comeback film” because, from his perspective, he never went anywhere. It is true that his heyday in the 1970s, when he worked with the resources of virtually every major studio and produced hits both commercial (1970’s anti-war comedy M*A*S*H, made for 20th Century Fox) and critical (1975’s kaleidoscopic Nashville, made for Paramount), came to a crashing end on the disaster that was Popeye (1980), an ill-conceived would-be blockbuster that was a joint production of Paramount and Disney. The conventional story is that Altman was sent into exile, rejected by the studio system that had embraced him the previous decade, where he languished until being resurrected by the commercial and critical success of The Player, which won him the Best Director award at Cannes and netted him an Oscar nomination, his first since Nashville 17 years earlier. However, such a narrative leaves out the fact that Altman remained consistently busy throughout the 1980s, albeit within the realms of low-budget independent film and television. During that time he directed 12 features (several of which were made for TV), as well as the 11-part miniseries Tanner ’88 (1988). Given that level of productivity, one can see why Altman resisted the “comeback” label.Yet, it is hard to deny the overall impact The Player had on Altman’s career. If it wasn’t a comeback, it was at the very least the beginning of an Altman resurgence. While he didn’t quite regain the foothold he had in Hollywood in the ’70s, the scope of the projects on which he subsequently worked grew quite impressively (the very next year he was able to finally make Short Cuts, based on the stories of Raymond Carver, which he had been trying and failing to get off the ground when the script for The Player came his way). He would go on to be nominated twice more for Best Director Oscars (for Short Cuts and 2003’s Gosford Park), and he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2006. It is hard to imagine any of that happening without The Player. The irony of The Player’s impact on Altman’s career is that he was essentially a gun for hire. He did not generate the project, but rather was brought on board after others had passed to direct the script by Michael Tolkin, which he had adapted from his own novel. Of course, it immediately became a Robert Altman film, with the auteur putting his indelible stamp on every aspect of the film. It was, as it turned out, the perfect vehicle for Altman to re-energize his career, as it allowed him to simultaneously satirize the Hollywood industry that had exiled him a decade earlier while taking advantage of its many resources, particularly the cavalcade of A-list stars who showed up to play themselves. The Player boasts an impressive roster of early ’90s star power—Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, John Cusack, Andie MacDowell, Anjelica Huston, Jeff Goldblum, Gary Busey, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Cher, Teri Garr—as well as veterans of the industry—Harry Belafonte, Jack Lemmon, Rod Steiger, Steve Allen, Peter Falk—none of whom were written into the script and all of whom showed up based on Altman’s reputation. Altman got Hollywood to turn out to satirize itself. The story centers on Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), an executive at a fictional movie studio who is feeling increased pressure in his job, not only by the difficulty of having to listen to writers pitch him ideas all day, but also by the arrival of Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher), an executive from another studio who Griffin fears is going to take over his position. Griffin’s professional concerns are also being exacerbated by a series of vicious, threatening postcards he keeps receiving from an anonymous source who he suspects is a writer who felt slighted by his treatment. Griffin zeroes in on David Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio), a writer who pitched him an idea six months earlier and who Griffin subsequently ignored. Griffin tracks David down at a theater in Pasadena showing The Bicycle Thief, and their impromptu meeting goes from bad to worse, as David ends up dead, facedown in a pool of dirty water in a back alley. Soon, Griffin is being questioned by a Pasadena police detective (Whoopi Goldberg) while he becomes romantically involved with the dead man’s girlfriend, June (Greta Scacchi), an artist who functions, despite her cynicism, as the film’s one true innocent (largely because she is the only character not associated with either Hollywood or law enforcement). One of the reasons The Player returned Altman to a place of standing in Hollywood is the film’s astute visual brilliance. Altman, cinematographer Jean Lépine, and production designer Stephen Altman (both of whom had previously worked with Altman on Tanner ’88 and Vincent & Theo) play with tones, styles, and time periods; the film is clearly taking place in the early ’90s, yet there are vestiges of previous eras, from the broad double-breasted suits that all the men wear, to the film-noir-ish venetian blinds that adorn all the offices. With just a few minor tweaks, it could easily be a film set in the ’40s. Of course, one can’t mention the film without thinking of its opening eight-minute tracking shot, which functions simultaneously as a self-consciously attention-grabbing technical tour-de-force that is explicitly linked to other great tracking shots in films like Touch of Evil (1958) and a nimble, efficient narrative device that establishes a number of important characters and the all-important atmosphere of modern filmmaking. As the camera moves around the studio lot, peering through windows and catching snippets of conversations, we realize that all anyone can talk about is movies, movies, movies (a little later, at a high-power lunch, Griffin admonishes the group he’s with to talk about anything other than Hollywood, which is met with brief silence before everyone starts cracking up). We hear a number of pitches, most of which are terrible and all of which rely on connection to other movies (“It’s Out of Africa meets Ghost,” one writer declares, while at another point Buck Henry, playing himself, pitches Griffin a sequel to The Graduate). There is no sense of artistry, no desire to push boundaries; only the urge to feed off what is currently successful, which is what dooms a later subplot involving an unctuous British director played by Richard E. Grant and his pitch for a ludicrous, star-free social thriller called Habeas Corpus (the speed with which one’s art becomes commerce when test audiences don’t respond correctly is head-spinning). Just as Altman refused to see The Player as his comeback film, he also resisted pigeonholing it as just a satire of Hollywood. Of course, Hollywood is the subject of the film, but it could just as easily have been set in any massive industry in which well-dressed executives make multi-million-dollar decisions over mineral water. Having been both inside and outside it, Altman knew Hollywood, but The Player casts a much wider net by allowing the movie industry to stand in for the shark-eat-shark nature of modern business in general. Griffin is a cad, both professionally and personally, but Robbins plays him with just enough charm and intelligence to keep us from despising him. The manner in which Griffin treats his current girlfriend, a story editor at the studio (Cynthia Stevenson), borders on the cruel, and the manner in which he moves in on June right after murdering her boyfriend is discomfiting. Yet, because Griffin is as much a victim as he is a perpetrator, we can’t help but empathize with his plight, even if the film’s sardonically pitched “happily ever after” ending leaves us feeling more than a little queasy. Altman, after all, never liked happy endings.
Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick All images copyright © The Criterion Collection | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Overall Rating: 
(4)
