Robert Altman Filmography

The American Ruling Class

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

Synopsis: The Z Channel wasn't America's first premium cable outlet specializing in feature films, and it wasn't the most commercially successful, but few, if any, had as strong an impact on the film industry or a more influential list of customers. Based in California and blanketing sections of the state Read More

Epreuves d'Artistes

Actors: Pedro Almodóvar, Robert Altman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Roberto Benigni, Bernardo Bertolucci

Tanner on Tanner [TV Series]

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael Murphy, Cynthia Nixon

The Company

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Neve Campbell, Malcolm McDowell, James Franco, Barbara Robertson, William Dick, Joffrey Ballet

Synopsis: Robert Altman directs the musical drama The Company from an original story by actress Neve Campbell, based on her own experiences with The National Ballet of Canada. At the center of the ensemble cast is the young dancer Ry (Campbell), a rising star with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. She Read More

A Decade Under the Influence

Actors: Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Ellen Burstyn

Synopsis: In the late '60s, American culture experienced a period of change as the youth movement challenged conventional attitudes about politics, sex, drugs, and gender issues, while the advancement of the Vietnam War found many citizens questioning the actions and wisdom of their government for the first Read More

Gosford Park

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jeremy Northam, Bob Balaban, Alan Bates, Richard E. Grant, Helen Mirren, Eileen Atkins, Emily Watson

Synopsis: Maverick American filmmaker Robert Altman takes a witty and absorbing look at the foibles of the British class system in this intelligent murder mystery set in the early '30s. Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) and his wife Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas) are a pair of wealthy British Read More

Dr. T & The Women

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Richard Gere, Helen Hunt, Farrah Fawcett, Laura Dern, Shelley Long

Synopsis: Director Robert Altman reteams with Cookie's Fortune scribe Anne Rapp for this tale of a Dallas gynecologist and the parade of anxious patients, haggard family members, and potential love interests who come his way. Richard Gere plays the titular role of Dr. Sullivan Travis, a calm, successful Read More

Trixie

Crew: Producer

Actors: Emily Watson, Dermot Mulroney, Nick Nolte, Nathan Lane, Brittany Murphy, Lesley Ann Warren, Will Patton

Synopsis: Alan Rudolph directed and co-wrote this eccentric comedy about a woman who bumbles her way into fighting crime. Trixie Zurbo (Emily Watson) is a well-meaning but scatter-brained casino security guard, who dreams of a career as a private detective. Her ambition accidentally becomes reality when Read More

Roads and Bridges

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Abraham Lim, Matt Malloy

Synopsis: The alienating effects of racism are explored in this auteurist debut from editor, producer, writer, director, and star Abraham Lim. Set and shot in Kansas City, Roads concerns the inner rage of Johnson Lee (Lim), an Asian-American man who -- spurned by the death of a loved one and the casual Read More

Cookie's Fortune

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler, Chris O'Donnell, Charles S. Dutton

Synopsis: Robert Altman directed this bittersweet ensemble piece about an eccentric and entangled group of family and friends living in the Deep South. Jewel Mae "Cookie" Orcutt (Patricia Neal) is the widowed matriarch of a small-town Mississippi family, which includes her nieces Camille (Glenn Close), a Read More

The Opera Lover

Actors: Tom Bastounes, Monica Zaffarano, Megan Moore Burns, Dean Bastounes, Nick Bastounes

Synopsis: Star and producer Tom Bastounes reportedly sold his family produce store in Chicago to finance this semi-autobiographical romantic comedy about lost love and lost opportunities. As he works at his family's produce store, George (Bastounes) is haunted by his choices of 20 years ago. The two things Read More

FilmFest, Vol. 1

The Gingerbread Man

Crew: Director

Actors: Kenneth Branagh, Embeth Davidtz, Robert Downey, Jr., Daryl Hannah, Tom Berenger

Synopsis: Robert Altman directed this John Grisham tale that begins at a party where Savannah attorney Rick Magruder (Kenneth Branagh) celebrates his successful defense of a man who shot a local cop. The partygoers include his ex-wife Leeanne (Famke Janssen), the mother of his two children; his law partner Read More

Gun [TV Series]

Crew: Executive Producer

Synopsis: Functioning as an executive producer, distinguished filmmaker Robert Altman lends his unique touch to this ABC network anthology series that follows the life of a pearl-handled, semi-automatic handgun. Featuring big name directors and distinguished casts, each suspenseful episode tells the story Read More

Afterglow

Crew: Producer

Actors: Julie Christie, Nick Nolte, Lara Flynn Boyle, Jonny Lee Miller, Jay Underwood

Synopsis: Director Alan Rudolph offers a typically idiosyncratic look at a relationship approaching the point of collapse. Phyllis Mann (Julie Christie) and her husband Lucky (Nick Nolte) are a married couple living in Montreal whose marriage has slowly skidded to a halt. There's still a glimmer of Read More

Gun: All the President's Women

Crew: Director

Actors: Daryl Hannah, Sally Kellerman, Tina Lifford, Randy Quaid, Jennifer Tilly, Sean Young

Synopsis: Bill (Randy Quaid), a wealthy Texan, is fooling around on his wife (Sally Kellerman) with two different women (Jennifer Tilly and Daryl Hannah). But Bill begins realize that he's gotten himself into hot water when all three women in his life begin receiving parts of the same gun in the mail. Gun Read More

Kansas City

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte, Michael Murphy, Dermot Mulroney

Synopsis: The jazz world of 1930s Kansas City serves as the backdrop for an offbeat story of kidnapping, political corruption, and organized crime in director Robert Altman's loving but unsentimental look at his childhood hometown. The film's intricate story is triggered by petty thief Johnny O'Hara (Dermot Mulroney Read More

Robert Altman's Jazz '34: Remembrances of Kansas City Swing

Crew: Director, Producer

Synopsis: This cool and tuneful documentary centers on a band of modern musicians in period garb playing a dozen authentic pieces from 1934 Kansas City jazz. Their performance was recorded on the set of Robert Altman's 1996 film Kansas City, and selections from this atmospheric concert were used in his Read More

Prêt-à-Porter

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Kim Basinger

Synopsis: This large, sprawling comedy directed by Robert Altman concerns a variety of romantic and personal intrigues that intersect against the backdrop of Paris's annual "Pret-a-Porter" fashion extravaganza. With 31 principal characters and a number of cameos from well known models, designers, actors and Read More

Luck, Trust & Ketchup: The Making of Short Cuts

Synopsis: This documentary takes the viewer behind the scenes of the making of the Robert Altman film Shortcuts. Based on a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver, the movie chronicles the triumphs and failures of ordinary people. The documentary presents interviews with the cast, the director, and Read More

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

Crew: Producer

Actors: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Matthew Broderick, Campbell Scott, Peter Gallagher, Jennifer Beals

Synopsis: Jennifer Jason Leigh offers an acclaimed performance as humorist Dorothy Parker, who together with such 1920s luminaries as Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott and George S. Kaufman, was a charter member of the legendary Algonquin Round Table. The story is related in flashback form, as Mrs. Parker Read More

Short Cuts

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Andie MacDowell, Tim Robbins, Bruce Davison, Chris Penn, Julianne Moore, Matthew Modine, Anne Archer, Fred Ward, Jack Lemmon, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lili Taylor, Robert Downey, Jr., Madeleine Stowe, Lily Tomlin, Tom Waits, Frances McDormand, Peter Gallagher, Annie Ross, Lori Singer, Lyle Lovett, Buck Henry, Huey Lewis

Synopsis: Based on stories by Raymond Carver, Short Cuts follows 22 Los Angeles residents whose lives intersect over the course of a few days. Ann and Howard Finnegan (Andie MacDowell and Bruce Davison) are preparing for their son Casey's birthday party when the boy is injured in an auto accident and falls Read More

The Player

Crew: Director

Actors: Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Gallagher

Synopsis: Robert Altman takes a scalpel to Hollywood ethics in the 1990s (or the lack thereof) in his acidic satire The Player, adapted from Michael Tolkin's novel. (Tolkin also wrote the screenplay.) The film concerns a sleek and smooth Hollywood studio executive who starts receiving death threats from a Read More

Vincent and Theo

Crew: Director

Actors: Tim Roth, Paul Rhys, Jip Wijngaarden, Kitty Courbois, Johanna ter Steege, Vladimir Yordanoff, Jean-Pierre Cassel

Synopsis: The relationship between the obsessive, brilliant painter Vincent Van Gogh and his more practical brother Theo is at the center of director Robert Altman's well-received biography, originally produced as a miniseries for European television. Now universally acknowledged as masterpieces, Vincent Read More

Hollywood Mavericks

Actors: Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Peter Bogdanovich, D.W. Griffith, Erich Von Stroheim

Synopsis: This documentary respectfully interviews a number of important American directors who have in one way or another "bucked the system." It also explores the life and work of earlier American mavericks through the tributes, reflections, and recollections of the first group. Prominent among the living Read More

George Carlin: What am I Doing in New Jersey?

Actors: George Carlin

Synopsis: George Carlin: What Am I Doing in New Jersey? was taped before a live audience. Carlin's conceptual brand of humor encompasses any number of topics, ranging from politics to those Seven Deadly Words. His random musings on stupid drivers would later be develop into a weekly Fox TV series. As with Read More

Aria

Crew: Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: Theresa Russell, Nicola Swain, Buck Henry, Jack Kyle, Julie Hagerty, Marianne McLoughlin, Marion Peterson, Tilda Swinton

Synopsis: An international collection of well-known directors contributed to this compilation film, each fashioning a short film inspired by an aria from a famous opera. The approaches vary broadly, from the playful abstraction of Jean-Luc Godard's segment, which illustrates Armide with exercising Read More

The Caine Mutiny Court Martial

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Brad Davis, Eric Bogosian, Jeff Daniels

Synopsis: Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Herman Wouk, this thought-provoking made-for-television drama chronicles the court martial of the lieutenant who commandeered the U.S.S. Caine during a potentially deadly storm. The only way his attorney can save him is to prove that Captain Queeg was Read More

Tanner '88 [TV Series]

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael Murphy, Pamela Reed, Cynthia Nixon

Synopsis: Written by Garry Trudeau and directed by Robert Altman, this is an amusingly vicious squint at the American electoral process. Michael Murphy plays Jack Tanner, Democratic Presidential nominee. Also featured are Cynthia Nixon as Jack's teenage daughter Alex, and Pamela Reed as campaign manager T. Read More

O.C. and Stiggs

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Daniel Jenkins, Neil Barry, Paul Dooley, Jane Curtin, Jon Cryer, Ray Walston

Synopsis: In what can only be described as a dramatic change of pace, Robert Altman directed this raunchy teen comedy based on the antics of two characters featured in a series of stories published in the National Lampoon. Oliver Cromwell Ogilvie (Daniel Jenkins), aka O.C., and his buddy Mark Stiggs (Neil Barry Read More

Beyond Therapy

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Julie Hagerty, Jeff Goldblum, Glenda Jackson, Tom Conti, Christopher Guest

Synopsis: Based on the play by Christopher Durang, Robert Altman's Beyond Therapy is a comedy set in New York City but filmed in Paris, where Altman was living at the time. Arrogant Bruce (Jeff Goldblum) grows bored with his live-in lover, Bob (Christopher Guest), so he looks for a change by placing an ad Read More

The Room

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this made for TV drama, two youthful strangers endeavor to rent the room already owned by a strange woman and her almost comatose husband. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Dumb Waiter

Crew: Director

Actors: Tom Conti, John Travolta

Synopsis: Based on the one-act play by Harold Pinter, Robert Altman's The Dumb Waiter is a short made-for-TV movie originally shown on ABC. This absurdist crime story doesn't follow a traditional plot, but it follows the work of two hitmen: Ben (John Travolta) and Gus (Tom Conti). They hang out in the Read More

Fool for Love

Crew: Director

Actors: Sam Shepard, Kim Basinger, Harry Dean Stanton, Randy Quaid, Martha Crawford

Synopsis: Though there are several actors in Fool for Love, two share the majority of screen time: Sam Shepard as Eddie, and Kim Basinger as May. May toils away at a fleabag motel; Eddie is her former love, long absent. Unexpectedly re-entering May's life, Eddie picks up where he left off, and soon the Read More

Laundromat

Crew: Director

Actors: Carol Burnett, Amy Madigan, Michael Wright

Synopsis: Based on a 1978 play by Pulitzer Prize-winner Marsha Norman, The Laundromat was made for cable by acclaimed director Robert Altman. Late in the middle of one night, two women from different backgrounds meet at a laundromat. Alberta (played by Carol Burnett) is a middle-aged ex-school teacher who Read More

Secret Honor

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Philip Baker Hall

Synopsis: After resigning in disgrace, Richard Nixon (Philip Baker Hall) sits at a desk in his study late at night, dictating his memoirs. Taking one drink, then another, he rants about Eisenhower, Castro, Khruschchev, Kissinger, the Kennedys, and any number of other people, some real, some imagined Read More

Streamers

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Matthew Modine, Michael Wright, Mitchell Lichtenstein, David Alan Grier, Albert Macklin

Synopsis: Based on the virulently antimilitary play by David Rabe, Streamers is set in a basic-training barracks. Matthew Modine is among the raw recruits who alternate between strutting around like bantam cocks to snivelling like frightened children. To test one another's manhood, the recruits indulge in Read More

Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Crew: Director

Actors: Sandy Dennis, Cher, Karen Black, Sudie Bond, Marta Heflin

Synopsis: Robert Altman directed this low-budget film version of the play by Ed Graczyk, also directed by Altman on Broadway with the same cast. The film takes place in the small Texas town of McCarthy in 1975. Inside of a five-and-dime store, a reunion is planned for the members of a local 1950s James Dean Read More

Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter

Actors: Jay Leyda, Robert L. Rosen

Synopsis: At the beginning of this documentary on early cinematographer Edwin S. Porter (1869-1941), director Charles Musser gives some background on the "nickelodeons" or theaters that charged a nickel as an entrance fee, and their early (presumably cheaper) predecessors. The men who set up the programs at Read More

Endless Love

Actors: Brooke Shields, Martin Hewitt, Shirley Knight, Don Murray, Richard Kiley

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Scott Spencer, Endless Love details the doomed romance between 17-year-old David (Martin Hewitt) and 15-year-old Jade (Brooke Shields). Banished from Jade's home by her daddy Hugh (Don Murray), David obsessively cooks up a scheme to get back into the family's good graces. Since Read More

Popeye

Crew: Director

Actors: Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall, Ray Walston, Paul L. Smith, Paul Dooley

Synopsis: Based on the long-running comic strip created by E.C. Segar (and less on the animated cartoons created by Max Fleischer, which were decidedly different in tone and approach), Popeye follows the sailor man with the mighty arms (played by Robin Williams in his first major film role) as he arrives in Read More

Rich Kids

Crew: Executive Producer, Producer

Actors: Trini Alvarado, Jeremy Levy, Kathryn Walker, John Lithgow, Terry Kiser

Synopsis: The rich kids of the title are 12-year-old Trini Alvarado and her intellectual pal Jeremy Levy. Alvarado is down in the dumps because her parents are going through a divorce. She finds a kindred spirit in Levy, whose folks split up long ago. He points out the advantages and privileges of being a Read More

H.E.A.L.T.H.

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Glenda Jackson, Carol Burnett, James Garner, Lauren Bacall, Dick Cavett

Synopsis: Robert Altman, the director responsible for M*A*S*H, came up with another acronymic title for his 1979 comedy H.E.A.L.T.H The letter stand for Happiness, Energy And Longevity Through Health--the name given a health-food convention at a Florida luxury hotel. In the tradition of his earlier Nashville Read More

A Perfect Couple

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Paul Dooley, Marta Heflin, Titos Vandis, Belita Moreno, Henry Gibson

Synopsis: Robert Altman cooled his "innovative" jets to make the innocuous romantic comedy A Perfect Couple. Marta Heflin plays a member of a boisterous rock group. Paul Dooley is a bashful bachelor from a tradition-bound Greek family. Heflin and Dooley meet via a computer dating service, whereupon all the Read More

Quintet

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Paul Newman, Vittorio Gassman, Fernando Rey, Bibi Andersson, Brigitte Fossey

Synopsis: Perhaps the least seen but most talked about film of Robert Altman's career, Quintet is a somber science fiction tale that takes place after a nuclear holocaust has thrown the world into another Ice Age. A man named Essex (Paul Newman) and his pregnant wife Vivia (Brigitte Fossey) are wandering Read More

Remember My Name

Crew: Producer

Actors: Geraldine Chaplin, Anthony Perkins, Moses Gunn, Berry Berenson, Jeff Goldblum

Synopsis: This disquieting domestic thriller from writer and director Alan Rudolph was produced by his long-time mentor Robert Altman. Anthony Perkins stars as Neil Curry, a construction worker living happily in suburbia with his wife Barbara (Berry Berenson) until their home becomes vandalized during the Read More

A Wedding

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Carol Burnett, Paul Dooley, Mia Farrow, Lillian Gish, Amy Stryker, Howard Duff, Geraldine Chaplin, Dennis Christopher

Synopsis: Robert Altman's over-frenetic satire on American marriage rituals and hypocrisy concerns the upper-crust marriage between Dino Corelli (Desi Arnaz Jr.) and Muffin Brenner (Amy Stryker). As the film begins, a senile bishop forgets the lines to the wedding ceremony and Nettie Sloan (the groom's Read More

3 Women

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule, Robert Fortier, Ruth Nelson

Synopsis: Robert Altman's Three Women takes a surreal, improvisational and rather eerie look at the lives of three women in a western desert town. The plot centers around the youngest of the women, Pinky (Sissy Spacek), an eccentric, withdrawn woman trying to begin a new life. She finds work as an attendant Read More

The Late Show

Crew: Producer

Actors: Art Carney, Lily Tomlin, Bill Macy, Eugene Roche, Joanna Cassidy

Synopsis: Even though he barely makes enough money to cover his expenses and finds divorce cases (his bread and butter) unsavory, aging detective Ira Wells (Art Carney) is determined to stay active and to retain some amount of self-respect. When his partner Harry Regan (Howard Duff) is killed while on Read More

Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Kevin McCarthy, Harvey Keitel, Allan Nicholls

Synopsis: "Truth is whatever gets the loudest applause." Debunking western myths even more than he did in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976) sardonically explores the gap between western history and legend in show biz-obsessed Read More

Welcome to L.A.

Crew: Producer

Actors: Keith Carradine, Sally Kellerman, Geraldine Chaplin, Harvey Keitel, Lauren Hutton

Synopsis: Alan Rudolph's first feature Welcome to L.A. displays his characteristic mood of romantic despair utilizing a La Ronde-like circle of sexual adventures and failed affairs centered around song-writer Carroll Barber (Keith Carradine) which spread out through the city. Barber is an aloof womanizer Read More

Nashville

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Henry Gibson, Barbara Baxley, Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakely, Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin

Synopsis: Following 24 characters through 5 days in the country music capital, Robert Altman's 1975 epic presents a complexly textured portrayal (and critique) of American obsessions with celebrity and power. Among the various stars, aspirants, hangers-on, observers, and media folk are politically ambitious Read More

California Split

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: George Segal, Elliott Gould, Ann Prentiss, Gwen Welles, Ed Walsh

Synopsis: The most narratively loose of Robert Altman's '70s films, California Split details the haphazard lives of two compulsive gamblers searching for that ever-elusive big score. Newly single and soon-to-be-unemployed Bill (George Segal) joins live-wire pal Charlie (Elliott Gould), as the pair moves Read More

Thieves Like Us

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Josephine Bennett, Walter Cooper, Lloyd Jones, Howard Warner, Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, John Schuck, Bert Remsen, Louise Fletcher

Synopsis: Released in the same 12-month span as Terre