I don't follow film makers very closely, but love a good film. One couldn't miss Altman's playful selections of material, creativity and playfulness. It was good to read of his career in perspective. Thanks for the tribute to Robert!

David Bryan writes:

"....many [of Altman's films] bastardized their source material, like .....A Prairie Home Companion."

If so, why do you suppose that poor bastardized writer and broadcaster Garrison Keillor is listed in the film's credits as writer of the screenplay and co-writer of the story?

Miss Zacharek writes:

"During the course of Altman's career, there were times ("Prêt-à-Porter," "Kansas City") we wondered what he was nattering on about, times we weren't sure he had anything more to offer us."

Bad, bad writing, Stephanie. To lump as audacious a film as Kansas City alongside the truly grating Pret-a-Porter shows no critical discernment whatsoever. I haven't seen very many kind words for Kansas City, either from the Paulettes or from the next generation down of critic-mediocrities. It's possible, that after the jumbled, overpraised messes of The Player and Short Cuts, that the pared-away intensity of Kansas City was neither comforting nor expected. It's a dark movie, but not in a way that feels falsely pessimistic. Of Altman's later films, Kansas City comes closest to embodying the fatalistic spirit of his 1970s work -- and KC is a good deal superior to most of that. I hated McCabe & Mrs. Miller: it's always struck me as phony and posturing, unwatchable even with as great an actress as Julie Christie on hand.

Also, Stephanie, don't use "we" in making critical pronouncements. You speak for no one other than yourself.

Likewise, The Company and the dismal Cookie's Fortune don't belong lumped together either. Cookie's Fortune was like a late-night Cinemax sexploitation picture that had had the porno scenes removed (a quality owed entirely to Anne Rapp's atrocious writing).

The Company is a different animal. A "serviceable charmer" it is not. I wonder how many times Stephanie has seen this movie. I found it irritating the first-go-round, but something drew me back to the Company again and again. Viewing by viewing, the movie yields its treasures slowly, so that the fragmented, almost jigsaw approach coalesces over time into something seamless. It's one of his richest works, I think, much more so than that amiable weekend in the country called Gosford Park.

Proof positive that Kansas City and The Company will better stand the test of time than the Altman films approved by the herd: Look at how many dumb mainstream critics (including the ones who are "more alternative than thou") have dismissed these two, how blind they willfully are to pleasures not shared by the rest of the pack.

Beware of linking your name to your own work, Mr. Thompson. Your own review of "A Prairie Home Companion" is by turns schizoid and contradictory. For example, you pour derision (the likes of which I have never read, I might add) on Garrison Keillor, accusing him of "arrogance" in the writing of his script, then turn around and loftily praise the dialogue between Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep. Sorry, but you can't poison your pen and write with it too. Keillor wrote those scenes, and if they're that good you might do well to reconsider your condemnation of the script in which they reside and the person who wrote it.

Your attacks on Altman are, as I wrote above, schizophrenic. Or maybe just confused. One sentence he's a hack, the next he's a creator of "fluid" moments. The man can't be both. Trust in your judgement is further eroded by your statement that Virginia Madsen can't act. Have you seen "Sideways"?? The woman may have indeed started off as a chantreuse (although she was magnificent in "Creator" with that other lousy actor Peter O'Toole), but she has matured into a very fine screen actress.

And you really shouldn't have quoted that other nitwit. It's very bad form for one critic to quote another to buttress your own arguments, which should be able to stand on their own. But if you must do it, choose someone with sense. Spielberg one of America's "most overrated" directors? From that emanation I would have to assume that your esteemed colleague is an "Ain't-It-Cool-News" variety hack.

Is Huey Lewis peeing on a corpse while on a fishing trip.

Seems to me that the Altman impersonators, such as Paul Thomas Anderson, make better films than he did.

But rest in peace, Robert.

Though Altman never rose with much passion to defend the anti-war perspective of MASH, which both he and screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr. preferred to describe as “anti-military,” the complaints about its misogynistic treatment of women (also endemic to the source novel and script) seemed to rankle him. Altman would protest, “That is the way they were treated back then.” (Patrick McGilligan, Robert Altman, p. 315)

Altman: “I’m showing you the way that I observed women were treated. That is the way women were treated, and still are treated, especially when you get into these Army situations where you’ve got so many males with egos with 14-year-old development.” (DVD: Commentary)

Even if MASH was sexist and racist (and if it is, it only reflects the time in which it it set – it is, after all, a film about the Korean War) it's not Altman's responsibility to rewrite history. He was telling a story about something that really happened, and telling it in as realistic a way as possible, in order to make it an effective commentary on the Vietnam War, which was then in progress.

In United States Army in the Korean War: The Medics' War, Albert E. Cowdrey wrote: "Pulled [by the draft] from budding practices and thrust by their lack of rank to forward stations in an uninviting land, young doctors displayed unconscious arrogance and a refusal to adapt to the necessities of a life that they despised... As danger lessened, the surgical hospitals gained a reputation for insouciance bordering on wackiness. Liquor was abundant and cheap, and the MASH was normally the farthest point forward that American women got in Korea. Questioned about the nature of the highjinks during off-duty hours, a MASH doctor later said tersely, 'Oh, sex and liquor. What else is there?'"

MASH was originally a novel written by Dr. H. Richard Hornberger and the professional freelance writer William E. Butterworth, under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. Hornberger had been a physician for the US Army during the Korean War, and used his experience at the 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital as background for his work. Hornberger worked on the book for 12 years, having it rejected repeatedly by publishers, until it was accepted for publication by William Morrow in 1968. Hornberger based the character ‘Hawkeye Pierce’ on himself. Even after the success of his book, Hornberger remained a surgeon in Waterville, Maine until his retirement in 1988. He died in 1997.

Dr. H. Richard Hornberger: “The surgeons in the MASH hospitals were exposed to extremes of hard work, leisure, tension, boredom, heat, cold, satisfaction and frustration that most of them had never faced before… A few flipped their lids, but most of them just raised hell, in a variety of ways and degrees.”

Hornberger: “Hawkeye does a lot of the things I’d like to do… Surgeons are more likely to be aggressive than others in medicine… It’s the aggressive man’s specialty. You’re taking responsibility for other people’s lives. No dermatologist ever lost a patient. Surgery is the combat zone.”

Instead of “anti-war,” Hornberger preferred to call his book “anti-Army.” Hornberger: “You might call the book anti-Army, but then, very few doctors like the Army. That is why we were able to survive and have a fairly good time in the midst of a lot of chaos.”

Hornberger: “Our philosophy was, do the job well, and after that—do as you please. We were out there in the middle of nowhere. What could they do, fire us?”

Sources: (“It Pays Me…,” TV Guide, 3/24/73) (“The Real Thing,” Weekend Outlook, 2/19/83) (Surgeon Hornberger…, Daily News, 11/7/97) (“Goodbye, Farewell and Amen…,” Guardian, 2/7/06) ("H. Richard Hornberger," wikipedia.org) (Albert E. Cowdrey, United States Army in the Korean War: The Medics' War, 1987)