Inspiring Films: The Company

The following is from my notes on watching The Company and how I want to incorporate elements from it into I Want It.  It also includes criteria from the theatre company that's offering a commission.  From my notes, it seems like The Company has influenced me the most out of the Altman films I've watched thus far. Although, I just got word that the library finally has Short Cuts ready for me.

Take different parts of the dance in rehearsal…then see it fully actualized in the performance.  We see how it is put together.  We see process.  WE MUST SEE PROCESS in the ads that are created.

Character starts talking, talking, then retalking…then putting it together slowly (like in the writing session with Alanna the other day). 

ORIGINAL NOTE: Is temperature a factor?

In The Company, there’s a dance that’s heightened when a thunder and rain storm take over the stage. 

“Does weather take a part?” 

Is a much better question than

“Is temperature a factor?”

One character plays a minor part in one scene, then he expands into the next scene.

Overlapping dialogue.  Talking over action as commentary.

He uses different versions of “My Funny Valentine”, much like he used different versions of a song in The Long Goodbye.  Recurring motif.

What purpose do the dance sequences provide?

The argument that the black dancer has with Malcolm McDowell about constantly changing movement.  Taking the piss out of this touchy feely creative bullshit.  “How’s a man gonna give birth?  Where’s it going to come out of?”  Genius.

There’s no plot in this movie.  In the DVD featurette, Bob says that The Company is the closest he has gotten to Nashville in that there are real singers in Nashville and real dancers in The Company.  It has a verite feel even though it’s a scripted film.  There’s something to that.

Josh and Ryan’s relationship is kind of happened upon (as a matter of fact).  Toward the end, I love how they barely talk.  They just signal to each other from across the room.  Once at the bar on New Year’s Eve and then again in the last scene across opposite sides of the stage.  I don’t know if this is meant to imply that their relationship is heading towards an inevitable end.  It seemed like a relationship that is good for a while, but not one that is meant to be long lasting or life changing.  I loved how that was handled.

I love how the world of dance was so exactly created: the jargon, the physicality, the drama and the matter-of-factness of getting injured.  I loved how much of a bubble the world felt.  I loved that when two dancers injured themselves, it was just matter of fact.  I loved how slice of life it was.  There were things that were not tied up or resolved—like Josh and Ryan’s relationship, like Justin being kicked out of the dance and his guardian wanting to file a complaint.  It just was a period of time and then it was over.

I also liked that the movie ended with the curtain call.  And there was a bit of a run on sentence there with Josh and Ryan talking at the end.  It felt alive and very much like eavesdropping. 

Here’s what Roger Ebert said about The Company:

“Why did it take me so long to see what was right there in front of my face—that “The Company” is the closest thing Robert Altman has come to making an autobiographical film?  I’ve known him since 1970, have been on the sets of many of his films, had more than a drink with him in the old days and know that this movie reflects exactly the way he works—how he assembles cast, story, location and plunges in up to his elbows, stirring the pot….”The Company” is his film about the creative process itself, and we see that ballet, like the movies, is a collaborative art form in which muddle and magic conspire, and everything depends on that most fragile of instruments, the human body.”

When I look at what came before The Company—the widespread triumph of Gosford Park (which I have been resistant to watch again)—and what came after A Prairie Home Companion (and the end of the magic), I have to say that The Company feels more like classic Bob than anything else.  Sure, A Prairie Home Companion is about the angel of death coming to take someone, so it seems autobiographical in a way.  But I just think it’s a film about the end.  It’s not a film about Bob.  I agree with Roger Ebert, The Company is about Bob.  It’s about everything he seemed to love and thrive in.  In that way, it is like his All That Jazz more than Prairie Home is.  But I don’t want to get into the business of comparing two luminaries of the directing world.  Fosse had Cabaret and All That Jazz (I haven’t seen Star 80).  All of his films had a darkness in them or a darkness realized.  And while I admire that in a person because I don’t think I have that sort of darkness available to me at all times, it just seems cynical.  And The Company…I still can’t get it out of my head.  Even when I saw it ten years ago, I knew how much I loved it.  So revisiting it now, for this project…it’s a great template.  My play is about the creative process, but it’s about a secret creative process.  It’s about a creative process that’s not supposed to be creative because all you’re doing is selling shoes.  All you’re doing is trying to move product.  But these guys—unintentionally (they would never aim that high)—are trying to do something else.

The entire film felt like eavesdropping.  That was its strength.