BY BILL STAMETS

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'A charismatic exploding lion'

Casts, crews, family members have much to say about director Robert Altman
Sun, 8 Nov 2009 04:00
BY BILL STAMETS


Robert Altman’s biographer Mitchell Zuckoff sums him up nicely: “He lived the way he made movies.”
(Carlo Allegri/Getty Images)

When American auteur Robert Altman died on Nov. 20, 2006, his biographer was left with a pile of transcripts. Besides losing a new friend, Mitchell Zuckoff figured he could not finish his book.

Zuckoff had just begun interviewing the director of “MASH” (1970), “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (1971), “Nashville,” (1975), “The Player” (1992), “Short Cuts” (1993) “Gosford Park,” (2001) and “A Prairie Home Companion” (2006). Zuckoff’s editor greenlit an “oral biography” and the former Boston Globe reporter set out on “an Altmanesque tour from birth to death.”

Robert Altman: The Oral Biography (Knopf, $35) lists 144 informants in its “Cast of Characters.” Zuckoff lets Altman’s casts, crews and family do the talking. This author of Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend outsources his task to the likes of Julie Christie, who calls Altman “a great, unique, adventurous, experimental, confrontational, provocative director.

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