Beware the Jabberwock, my son (Robert Altman)

You hear good and bad things about Robert Altman, dead today at 81. On the one hand, his skill with an ensemble cast ("MASH" "The Player") was justly legendary. Actors loved him, relaxed around him, and sometimes gave performances better than they ever had or would before or again for him.

In "Dr T. & the Women," for example, which was not on the whole a creatively successful film, he got a touching and memorable performance out of Tara Reid, of all people.

He was a filmmaker who, for better or for worse, deserved to have his name attached to a style of filmmaking. It's quite possible that some years from now if you say a film is "Altmanesque," people will know what you're talking about-big ensemble, overlapping dialogue, improvised in feel if not in reality, etc.

He was also, just to lighten things up a moment, one of the few Great American Directors who could get great American actresses to buy this argument: Taking off your pants is integral to your character.

(The story goes that in the phone conversation where he convinced Julianne Moore to do her infamous scene in "Short Cuts", she told him, "Bob, you get a bonus. I am a real redhead.")

I'm also a fan of "Tanner 88" his political-satire collaboration with Garry Trudeau, and I'm pleased it's currently rated second only to "MASH" in his listing at the IMDB.

And I'm one of those who thinks "O.C. and Stiggs," which seems generally thought to have been misconceived, is at least somewhat underrated. If nothing else the soundtrack by King Sunny Ade is always worth listening to, and he gets some fun and sexy performances from his cast, including a young Cynthia Nixon.

But-

He was also enamored and enraptured by The Auteur Theory, to the point where he tended to diminish the contribution of screenwriters and claim that he and the actors improvised much of his films.

This started especially after the success of "MASH," his first hit. According to people who were there at the time, most of "MASH" was in the script by Ring Lardner, Jr. But the bigger a hit it became, the less you heard Altman mention that name.

He was also publicly very negative about the TV series version of "MASH." Although in (series developer) Larry Gelbart's memoir, he records a meeting with the director in which he professed jealousy as the primary motivating factor for those comments.

Altman made the mistake, I feel, that many actors with a gift for improvisation make as well: He relied on it, trusting it to pull rabbits out of his ass when he hadn't prepared sufficient material. I loved "Popeye" as a kid and it's still a guilty pleasure today, but there's no denying it's a film that has no ending. It has a stopping place, not an ending, and that's not the same thing. Even Jules Feffier, the guy who wrote it, will tell you that.

In a way, if you wanted to make a satire of Altman's weaknesses as a filmmaker, you couldn't do better than his own "Ready To Wear." This is an indulgent movie which, dramatically, has no ending and, as a film, ends with Nude Women On Parade.

As Alice said of the Jabberwocky, it seems very pretty, but it's awfully hard to understand.

For better and for worse, such might be Altman's epithet.