Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: The Long Goodbye

From: Terrill Lankford ( lankford2000@earthlink.net)
Date: 15 Feb 2007


----- Original Message ----- From: Brian Thornton To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com Sent: 2/15/2007 5:12:30 PM Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: The Long Goodbye

TL wrote in response to something Jim said (for those of your scoring at home):

>Terrill wrote:
>
>"Jim, you're assuming Altman thinks being a loser is a bad thing. If you look at just about any of his films it is pretty clear to see that he sympathizes with the losers over the winners every time."

And then I said:

>Yeah, sure. Take THE PLAYER, for examp- oh... uhhhh.... that is....

And then Terril said:

>You're saying he's on Griffin Mill's side in that movie?

Let me be clear, I don't think Altman took a side here. Your stated position was that he sympathized with the losers. My take was that for Altman, art ought to imitate life, and thus he was willing to blur the lines either a little or a lot, and leave things messy (like he did in nearly every film of his I've ever seen, success or failure). For what it's worth, THE PLAYER is absolutely my favorite Altman movie. It's darkly comic, and Tim Robbins is incredibly successful at making the odious Griffin Mill a sympathetic point-of-view character. How could one not root for him, even though he's a leech, a drag on society, and everything that any sort of true artistic soul would be against?

Well, he's also a murderer. That ought to count for something.

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