The Player

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Robert Altman

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BEYOND THERAPY (1987)
Starring Jeff Goldblum, Julie Hagerty, and Glenda Jackson, this satire of analysis — adapted from Christopher Durang's 1981 play — bombed at the box office. ''I was living in France, and I rewrote the story and said 'I'll shoot it in Paris and call it New York.' The conceit was that for the last shot, we'd pull back and show the Eiffel Tower and we're suddenly there for no reason. There was no way for that picture to succeed. We opened about the same time that AIDS had just hit the public eye, and here we were coming along with this bisexual love story. People were appalled by it.''

THE PLAYER (1992)
Altman returned to his home turf with this satire of Hollywood, starring Tim Robbins as a scurrilous studio executive. One of Altman's ''comebacks,'' The Player scored him another Best Director Oscar nomination. ''I was kind of surprised [at how it was received] because it was a very soft satire. It was almost like a comic book. The reality of those guys is so much more brutal than it appeared. I was just trying to make it entertaining and fun. I didn't have any malice or hate in my heart. Had I, I don't think it would have worked.''

SHORT CUTS (1993)
Based on a series of stories by Raymond Carver, Short Cuts, with its daunting 189-minute running time, may have scared off audiences, but not the critics: Altman earned yet another Best Director nomination for this epic character piece. "One moment that I loved is the nude scene with Julianne [Moore]. That scene really said everything I wanted to. I originally offered that part to Madeleine Stowe and I told her, 'This is going to require you to be naked from the waist down for five minutes.' She called back and said, 'I can't.' So I called Julianne and said, 'Before I send you the script, let me tell you you have to play naked from the waist down for five minutes.' She said, 'I can do that, and Bob, I have a bonus for you. I really am a redhead.'''

READY TO WEAR (1994)
...And he's down for the count again. Altman was lambasted for his ensemble piece about the fashion industry, which starred dozens of actors, including Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Sophia Loren, and Lyle Lovett. ''Miramax tried to sell it as a movie it wasn't. It was always a farce and [was filled with] the machinations of the fashion business. But [audiences] hated the idea, they just hated it.''

KANSAS CITY (1996)
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dermot Mulroney, and Harry Belafonte starred in this period piece about the jazz age in '30s Kansas City. It wasn't a career pinnacle for anyone involved. ''I told the story backwards, and you had to see the film twice to get it. You just can't ask that of an audience, so that hurt it. Plus, the real jazz fanatics didn't give a s--- about the story, and [to] the average audience who goes to the movies, jazz means nothing to them. But I predict in a few years it will end up [appreciated] like McCabe & Mrs. Miller [1971]. That was probably the most failed opening I ever had.''

THE GINGERBREAD MAN (1998)
When Altman (using a pseudonym) rewrote John Grisham's ''dreadful'' original screenplay about a lawyer seduced by a Southern femme fatale, the best-selling author removed his name as the screenwriter. Altman earned nice reviews, but is still reeling from a nasty fight in the editing room with the film's distributor, PolyGram. ''I called Ken Branagh and said, 'If you're game and we can make this guy a flawed Bill Clinton kind of character, I'll do it,' and he agreed. And that's what threw off the test audiences. [PolyGram] took the film away from me and hired an editor, and what they did was terrible, so they gave it back to me. They were dumb about it and it was ugly. All they cared about was Grisham's name. They buried the picture because they got mad at me.''