Happy Birthday Mr. Altman
It’s the birthday of filmmaker Robert Altman, born in Kansas City, Missouri (1925). His father was a successful insurance salesman, and a compulsive gambler. Altman said, “I learned a lot about losing from [my father]. That losing is an identity; that you can be a good loser and a bad winner; that none of it—gambling, money, winning or losing—has any real value.”
…to play it safe is not to play…
Altman served during World War II as a bomber pilot and then got a job making industrial films for various corporations. He started working on television shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Bonanza, but the television executives didn’t like him. He always wanted important characters on his TV shows to die unexpectedly because he thought that was more realistic. He didn’t think there was enough realism in television.
His first success as a Hollywood filmmaker was the movie M*A*S*H (1970). Altman has since become known for movies using large casts of characters and overlapping, improvised dialogue.
Robert Altman said, ““To play it safe is not to play.””
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