Watched again some Altman, Prairie Home Companion & The Player, amazed at the spontaneous comic and serious themes, death with the Keillor homage, and the viciousness of Hollywood in The Player. Been reading an oral bio (Mitchell Zuckoff, Knopf) of Robert Altman, just out. Altman hated his chosen world as much as he loved it and each piece is a loving/macabre stew of stories and acting by almost always capable players. Something radically funny about Altman and his capacity for storytelling, Nashville pretty close to a masterwork. But he worked his beat with a stealth unmatched by others. Was planning new projects at the end. Worked in TV too; I worked for a protege of Altman,  Riza Badiyi, on Falcon Crest. Meryl Streep finally got to work with Big Bob on Prairie Home, playing singing sister Yolanda Johnson (with Lily Tomlin as another sis) and she obviously had a great time. Death haunts Prairie, Virginia Madsen plays the Angel of Death. Altman took on death as one of his special subjects, and in the Player you can see how much suffering went into what looks like the death of American filmmaking: it's all unreal this Hollywood world of grotesque relationships, phony stories pitched by nimrods, distortions of humanity at every level. The improvisational feel of the piece, and the departures from the Michael Tolkin script make it one of Altman's best. He makes it up as he goes along, you can feel the savage power of his intention when he is working at his best.

Altman: Making a film is like painting a mural. You've got this big wall to fill and you've got a subject, and the only difference is, as you go up there and you're painting it, you've got living pigment...You have to control it, but you're dealing with a living thing that's really forming itself. So you're sitting up there doing damage control all the time. But the style in which one paints these films is...their personality, it's what they do, it's their artistry.