Robert Altman and the Elaboration of Hollywood Storytelling reveals an Altman barely glimpsed in previous critical accounts of the filmmaker. This re-examination of his seminal work during the "Hollywood Renaissance" or "New Hollywood" period of the early 1970s (including M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Images, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, California Split, and Nashville) sheds new light on both the films and the filmmaker, reframing Altman as a complex, pragmatic innovator whose work exceeds, but is also grounded in, the norms of classical Hollywood storytelling rather than someone who rejected those norms in favor of modernist art cinema. Its findings and approach hold important implications for the study of cinematic authorship. Largely avoiding thematic exegesis, it employs an historical poetics approach, robust functionalist frameworks, archival research, and formal and statistical analysis to demystify the essential features of the standard account of Altman's filmmaking history and profile-lax narrative form, heavy reliance on the zoom, sound design replete with overlapping dialogue, improvisational infidelity to the screenplay, and a desire to subvert based in his time in the training grounds of industrial filmmaking and filmed television. The book provides a clear example of how a filmmaker might work collaboratively and pragmatically within and across media institutions to elaborate upon their sanctioned practices and aims. We misunderstand Altman's work, and the creative work of Hollywood filmmakers in general, when we insist on describing innovation as opposition to institutional norms and on describing those norms as simply assimilating innovation.

Robert Altman and the Elaboration of Hollywood Storytelling reveals an Altman barely glimpsed in previous critical accounts of the filmmaker. This re-examination of his seminal work during the "Hollywood Renaissance" or "New Hollywood" period of the early 1970s (including M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Images, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, California Split, and Nashville) sheds new light on both the films and the filmmaker, reframing Altman as a complex, pragmatic innovator whose work exceeds, but is also grounded in, the norms of classical Hollywood storytelling rather than someone who rejected those norms in favor of modernist art cinema. Its findings and approach hold important implications for the study of cinematic authorship. Largely avoiding thematic exegesis, it employs an historical poetics approach, robust functionalist frameworks, archival research, and formal and statistical analysis to demystify the essential features of the standard account of Altman's filmmaking history and profile-lax narrative form, heavy reliance on the zoom, sound design replete with overlapping dialogue, improvisational infidelity to the screenplay, and a desire to subvert based in his time in the training grounds of industrial filmmaking and filmed television. The book provides a clear example of how a filmmaker might work collaboratively and pragmatically within and across media institutions to elaborate upon their sanctioned practices and aims. We misunderstand Altman's work, and the creative work of Hollywood filmmakers in general, when we insist on describing innovation as opposition to institutional norms and on describing those norms as simply assimilating innovation.

Reclaims, reframes, and reexamines one of acclaimed maverick filmmaker Robert Altman's most accomplished and admired movies, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, as a commentary on Western history, the Western film, the times from which it emerged, and as a tribute to a neglected masterpiece of American cinema.

This dissertation seeks to provide a more accurate understanding of director Robert Altman's early 1970s films, from M*A*S*H (1970) to Nashville (1975), and in doing so attempts to clarify the disputed relationship between Altman, whose work is often characterized as oppositional art cinema, and the norms of classical Hollywood filmmaking. To address this question the dissertation applies a methodology that requires close analysis of the moment-by-moment details of Altman's films that in places utilizes a quantitative approach. This provides a remedy to scholarship and critical work on Altman's films of the early 1970s that tends to claim too much while describing too little. The dissertation also relies on archival resources to support its account, including production and pre-production documents. This approach is employed within the larger project of historical poetics and in coordination with a problem/solution model of artistic endeavor, in which filmmakers act as rational agents setting goals and pursuing strategies meant to effect definable aims. The dissertation's first four chapters focus on key aspects of Altman's biographical legend: his approach to narrative, his use of the zoom, his employment of overlapping dialogue, and his use, or misuse, of the pre-production script. This reexamination finds that rather than characterizing Altman's filmmaking approach as oppositional art cinema, it is best understood as elaborative and amplificatory, expanding upon classical Hollywood storytelling practices in the service of authorially expressive, realist, and aesthetic motivations. The final chapter re-describes Altman's time in the "training grounds" of industrial filmmaking and filmed television prior to his move to feature filmmaking in the late 1960s. In doing so it employs the methodology of the previous chapters while also finding evidence to support and extend their findings. Altman's early career shows how a binary opposition between institutional norms and radical opposition fails to capture the manner in which maverick auteurs might shift the dominant filmmaking paradigm through the accumulation of more incremental, and perhaps more sustainable, innovations.

The author makes an argument for clemency in judging Hollywood's interpretations of history and thoroughly investigates its serious limitations and opportunities to construe history.

Robert Altman is the most quintessentially American of contemporary directors. His films cut across virtually all genres, and though few have met with huge commercial success (apart from the blockbuster M*A*S*H), Altman's unique vision of our society, his distinctive directorial signature, and his defiance of conventional film "language" have all helped reinvent the way we look at America. Keyssar shows why it is time for us to consider this unusual auteur among the pantheon of great directors. She identifies the peculiarities of the Altman style, discusses his films from both a feminist and political perspective, and offers a chapter-length discussion of one of his most important films, Nashville (1975), a "gleeful vision of an American landscape perpetually exploding upon itself."--From publisher description

Discussions of the phenomenon of postmodernism have established certain characteristics that are typical of postmodernist culture. This book presents a brief summary of the characteristics that have typically been associated with postmodernism, especially as they pertain to film.