clickbliss — Robert Altman’s The Player

Robert Altman’s The Player

Every week we’ll be recommending you a game and either an album or movie to check out. This week I’m… falling short, but I got a movie to recommend.

Robert Altman’s The Player is a satire that pokes fun at the whole hollywood system. This plot is written on a backdrop of sleazy Hollywood deals and several subplots involving the politics of the industry. It’s satire of the Hollywood system, the system of pitching ideas, how films get made, the question of form over substance, and the constant pushing for happy endings, and whatnot.

Altman, of course is known and celebrated by most as being one of the most prolific and influential filmmakers in film history and especially in recent history as being considered being under umbrella of “New Hollywood”. Altman having previously directed and brought to life MASH, The Long Goodbye, Nashville and many others.

The movie follows Griffin Mill, a movie exec who receives threats from an anonymous writer whose pitch he once rejected written on the back of postcards. All alongside a change happening in the studio and rumors of him being replaced by younger blood. Mill must now figure out which writer is threatening him and track him down. When he does find the writer and whole new hurdle arises when he accidentally murders the wrong writer. Griffin is now faced with the guilt of killing the wrong guy, continues to receive threats, having to not lose his place in the studio and avoiding arrest. Griffin ultimately gets everything that he desires, freedom, his job and the girl. A year passes and he gets a call from a writer giving a pitch, and the story he gives is the exact story that he lives. We clearly see that the man on the phone was the man sending the threats. He pitches the same story and calls it “The Player”. Griffin ultimately agrees to have it made after the writer guarantees the executive in the movie is guaranteed a happy ending.

The film shows us a little bit of how the process of making films is as it happens in the background. Griffin works alongside the writers of a movie called Habeas Corpus, originally conceptualized as a more realistic film without any use of big names and stars.But in the end it stars Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts.

The film has this 7 minute long long take as its opening, the camera moves around the movie studio showing some of the key players in the business. As this is going on we hear and understand the tone of the movie, It’s hollywood making fun of itself. We hear some of the key players talking about their favorite long takes, we hear writers and directors pitching ideas and choosing the perfect big name roles to fill the spot, like Julia Roberts… or Bruce WIllis.

The Player is a very self aware movie, the characters in the film talk about the business, the things the hate, etc. And Altman includes it all in the film. There are a lot of recurring mentions within the movie about the aspects that a film needs to make it a hit like, suspense, laughter, violence. hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings – mainly happy endings. It even starts in a movie studio and even starts with an “ACTION” scene where an unseen director yells “Quiet on the set” followed with an “Action” before the opening scene starts. The Player to me is one of the best work of Robert Altman, it’s smart, it’s funny and it reads completely different when you really pay attention to it. The film is riddled with these visual motifs that are very present if you pay attention, colors that are representative of certain characters, the movie posters that are strategically showed on screen as if it marks different chapters in the film. In the end Altman actually succeeds with a smart movie that comes out of the hollywood list of cliche ingredients to make a hit, but he does it his own way and cheats the system.

With all that I’d really recommend this to someone who’s looking for rooting for a bad guy.