Robert Altman

I must admit that before this year, Robert Altman was the only director on the list of directors work we'd be viewing that I hadn't been exposed to before. Sure, I was familiar with some of his movies I later found out that he had done such as Popeye and M.A.S.H, but it was refreshing going into a director almost completely blind with no knowledge of who he was or what he did stylistically.

One of the aspects of Altman's work that I really enjoyed and found unique to the director was the fact that in all of his films we saw, particularly The Long Goodbye and Nashville, the characters dialog seemed to collide together. As one person was finishing up talking, the next would start early almost interrupting them, giving a really, gritty, real life feel to his films.


I think this fits perfectly into the slogan that Mr. Klobuchar gave him to fit the unit; "Controlled Chaos", because the characters seem to be almost ad libing their own lines as though it is a real life conversation but are all infact presumably carefully instructed on what to say and do. This is perhaps a play on Hollywood, as Altman often enjoys doing, where as most movies are very structured and to form, his is still the same way but with the illusion to the audience that it is infact not.