Bob Altman and his Descendants

I was thinking about the kinds of Altman films I like.  I like the ones that are more about social commentary.  Those are usually the ones that are some sort of play on a genre.  They’re about our expectations and our pre-judgments.  The ones I like less are the ones that are just a milieu or a story.  The ones that are just about quirky characters and an interesting world without the backbone of Bob’s take on something politically.  Even The Company was a story about a strict, regimented world told in a completely laisse faire way.  It wasn’t Fame, which happens to be a movie I love.  But it’s not that narrative and it’s not so disciplined in its storytelling as well as in its subject matter. 

I really couldn’t get into Cookie’s Fortune.  Pret a Porter was a complete disappointment, even the second time around.  I won’t be evaluating either one of them here.

I drove to get some snacks for my evening in and as I was driving home, I was thinking about what subjects I wouldn’t want to see Bob take on.  Now that he’s dead, there ain’t much chance of him disappointing me further.  But I thought about the South.  And even though Nashville is the clear exception to this, I wouldn’t want him to take on a real Southern, Tennessee Williams sort of bayou story.  But then the HBO show Treme popped into my head, which seems like a total nod to Bob in a lot of ways.  I caught an episode of it once and it was cool to be in that world, but I didn’t have a bunch of episodes at my disposal to get into it.

Thank God for HBO Go.  I am going to start watching Treme to see if there’s any inspiration I can get from it.  I am not just “considering” Nashville, like I said, but I am considering the children he had before and after.  I’m considering a godchild of his like P.T. Anderson.  I am considering a show like Treme, which seems to at least be in the same neighborhood.  Just as this project is asking me to consider being influenced by Bob’s oeuvre, I am looking at other artists who were either directly or indirectly influenced by him.  And the truth is, I am considering revisiting an old TV pilot idea I had.  And I was inspired to do so by reading about a project Bob never got to work on that takes place in the same world.  So Bob’s leading me a lot of places.