Talk about a comeback. Coming off nearly a decade of critical and/or financial failures, following the disastrous production of Popeye in 1980, the once-lauded Robert Altman was in need of a project to ingratiate himself back into the wider Hollywood community. 1990’s Vincent & Theo was not a commercial success, but the warm reception it garnered precipitated enough renewed goodwill towards Altman that he was able to secure eight million dollars towards a brand-new project: The Player. Written by author and screenwriter Michael Tolkin, adapted from his novel of the same name, The Player is an industry satire so appropriately positioned within Altman’s wider oeuvre that the story behind its production sounds like a movie in and of itself. Picture the logline: Altman, an idiosyncratic auteur, returns to Hollywood from a decade-long exile to direct a star-studded satire condemning the very industry that turned their backs on him. Despite the inherent bitterness of its concept, the film is a financial success, ushering in a new period for his career and becoming one of his most oft-referenced works. In short, it’s a hell of a picture.
From its opening frame, The Player is Altman firing on all cylinders, though the film’s overall execution is predicated on an intense sense of irony. Much has been made amongst critical circles of the film’s exceedingly memorable opening sequence, a 7-minute-long virtuoso tracking shot following various characters, including Tim Robbin’s beleaguered studio executive Griffin Mill, around the maze of a Hollywood backlot. It’s an excellent introduction, efficiently introducing key players while emphasizing the relentless hamster-wheel-like flow of an industry that barely has time for anyone. The shot is also a gimmick, one that took 15 takes to properly capture, and is, by Altman’s own words, “… what people talk about.” The self-referential nature of The Player’s lengthy introduction, both in form and content (countless films, both before and since, have used the “one-take” conceit to illicit sometimes unearned admiration), is mirrored throughout the film’s narrative structure. There’s a recognizable star in nearly every scene, some performing as fictional characters (Whoopi Goldberg, Dean Stockwell, Sydney Pollack), but just as many playing themselves (Anjelica Huston, Bruce Willis, Peter Falk, etc.). It’s also one of the most traditional and story-focused works of the filmmaker’s career, following a singular protagonist through a series of intricately plotted events, in contrast to the entirely ensemble-driven hijinks of Nashville or Short Cuts. Still, with its endlessly roaming camera and bitingly cynical heart (nevertheless, still a heart), The Player is unmistakably a Robert Altman production.
Anxious and perpetually starved for handshakes (“asshole,” as Burt Reynolds eloquently puts it), Robbin’s Griffin Mill is an executive in charge of listening to and dealing with writers’ pitches. By his own admission, the studio can only accept 12 projects per year, so he spends most of his time rejecting ideas rather than approving them. As Altman’s film begins, this sometimes-unpleasant business has put Griffin in the crosshairs of an anonymous and unstable screenwriter, who barrages the corporate suit with threatening post cards doubling as thinly veiled death threats. Facing extraneous pressures related to the hiring of a rival producer, Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher), at work, Griffin tracks down the ostensible culprit, a bitter screenwriter named David Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio – with hair!) and attempts a peaceful confrontation. Things do not go as planned and Kahane ends up dead, Griffin’s hands viciously gripped around his throat. The now-murderer attempts to dispose of any incriminating evidence, but he remains trapped in the case’s purview, quickly forming a relationship with his victim’s curiously sanguine girlfriend, June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi). Worse yet, as continuing postcards suggest, he may have killed the wrong guy.
Much of The Player’s best moments come from the brilliance of Altman’s thematic construction. The subplot involving Habeas Corpus, a star-less and depressing legal drama that Griffin purposefully greenlights in order to torpedo Larry Levy’s career, incisively mirrors the overarching plot of the film itself. Late in the story, June asks Griffin what elements are needed to sell a movie. He responds: “Suspense, laughter, violence. Hope, heart, nudity. Happy endings. Mainly happy endings.” Habeas Corpus’s director, Tom Oakley (Richard E. Grant) is insistent that his film has none of these things, and yet ultimately, the final product completely betrays his artistic integrity, complete with casting Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts in the starring roles. Appropriate to Altman’s cynical perspective, The Player also includes all of these elements (violence, nudity, happy endings, etc.), though not in the way you’d expect. The film’s main love scene, for instance, is framed exclusively on Robbins’s and Scacchi’s faces, a choice that distinctly rejects the common notion towards portraying (specifically female) nudity on-screen. Likewise, it’s emphasized that Griffin’s life unfolds exactly like a movie because, much like his work-obsessed colleagues, he’s unable to relate to any life experience beyond than the movies.
If the multitudes of thrillingly random cameos are any suggestion, than Altman still had plenty of friends and admirers in Hollywood when he made his grand return, all of whom came together to make this a remarkable retort to anyone that doubted him. The Player is a far better satire of the business than, say, Hail, Caesar! because it actually has a compelling narrative beyond its inside-baseball references. As repugnant as Griffin can be, callously dropping his girlfriend, story editor Bonnie (Cynthia Stevenson) as soon as the more exotic June shows interest, he’s still oddly sympathetic for a large majority of the runtime. Perhaps it’s the particular extremity of his situation, or the fact that he actually does seem to care somewhat about the art he financially incentivizes (to a point). He’s not a monster, and in fact, no one in the film is. Altman populates his fake-real Hollywood with recognizable faces not because they’re recognizable (a la the Entourage movie – whoa, it’s Mark Wahlberg!), but because they’re real people, and the audiences can therefore inherently recognize the humanity behind the incessant double-dealing and business politics.
Altman’s layered scene construction captures the incessant but hushed buzz in which everyone seems to be having two conversations at once, and effectively conveys Griffin’s own paranoia over how he is perceived in the business. Executives come across as grifters here, groveling for attention from movie stars when they aren’t screwing over underpaid writers, a none-too-subtle sign of Altman’s own bitterness. But beyond that, the film also operates as a fascinating time capsule to the era in which it was made. Yes, The Player is of its time, but that aspect only strengthens it. Early on, the newly-hired Larry attempts to pitch the studio on making movies without screenwriters, to which Griffin retorts, “Cut out the directors and actors and you’ll really have something.” This is played as something of a farce, after all, how can you make a movie without the artists? But in 2023, post-WGA and -SAG strikes, seemingly absurdist gags like this become eerily prescient. Through AI or otherwise, studios do want to cut out the artists. Even if their methods have changed, their philosophy has not. Greed will always be timeless.
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