Robert Altmans The Player 1992

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Robert Altmans The Player (1992)
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Outline

• General Information
• Plot Summary
• Characters
• Plot Outline
• The Satire in The Player
• Habeas Corpus the movie-within-the-movie

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General Information

• Based on the screenplay and novel The Player by
  Michael Tolkin
• Directed by Robert Altman
• Cameos brief appearance of a well-known person
  in plays, films and television. Appearances by
  film directors, politicians, athletes, and other
  celebrities are common.

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Cameos in The Player

• Few of the cameos were planned
• The movie was shot in Hollywood and in so many
  locations that Hollywood figures frequent, most
  of the cameos were just coincidences
• Their lines were improvised.
• Most of the actors with cameos received no
  compensation.
• 60 cameos e.g. Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis, Cher
  

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• Plot Summary

• Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), a studio executive
  who selects scripts for production, is being
  blackmailed by an angry writer whose script he
  has not taken into consideration.
• Mill, whose job is threatened by another studio
  executive, Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher), tries to
  find the writer in order to make him stop sending
  these letters.
• He calls David Kahane, a young writer, whose
  script has been turned down but on the phone,
  Kane's girlfriend June Gudmundsdottir (Greta
  Scacchi) tells him that David had driven to
  Pasadena to watch watching "The Bicycle Thief".
  Griffin follows him, where had an argument and
  Griffin Mill accidentally kills David Kane.

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Plot Summary

• The police starts investigations. Meanwhile,
  Griffin starts to date June, although he already
  has an affair with Bonny Sherow (Cynthia
  Stevenson) from the studio.
• Griffin and June begin a love affair, while
  Griffin still receives those postcards.
• A new project secures Griffin's job. He and June
  travel to Mexico, while the police has found a
  woman who had witnessed Kane's death. Griffin is
  called to Pasadena but is not identified by the
  witness and, thus, is free and gets away with
  murder.
• One year later, he is still successful in
  business and married to June.

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• Characters

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Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins),
cynical, slimy, and money-obsessed studio
executive
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Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher)
cynical, slimy, and money-obsessed studio
executive

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David Kahane (Vincent DOnofrio)
Script writer, accidentally killed by Griffin
Mill who believes he is the blackmailer
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June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi)
David Kahanes former gilfriend and later his
widdow Love relation to Griffin Mill later his
wife and pregnant
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Bonny Sherow (Cynthia Stevenson)

• Story editor, love relation with Griffin Mill
  who left her for June, fired at the end because
  she advocates realism of films

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Detective Susan Avery (Whoopi Goldberg)
One of the detectives, appears to be a buddy-like
cop
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Plot Outline
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The Satire of The Player

• Two schools of thought
• follows the norms of Hollywood classical
  structure, chock-full of film stars ? The Player
  participates in what it criticises
• The sheer number of cameos increases the films
  realism and makes the viewer aware of the films
  artificiality
• Although Griffin is a complete swine, he is the
  protagonist and the viewers want him to get away
  with the murder ? we are more affected by
  structure than by morality

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Habeas Corpus the movie-within-the-movie

• This was the thing that made it work, To show
  how the ending changed was one of the most
  important parts of the film Altman, Robert
  (1997). Director's Commentary on DVD. Ed. By Doug
  Jacobson. Fine Line.
• Claim by the writer "Habeas Corpus" should stand
  apart from typical Hollywood fare in two ways no
  stars, no happy ending. The film should conclude
  with an innocent woman being executed, "because
  that's the reality - the innocent die." The
  message "is too damned important to risk being
  overwhelmed by personality,"
• Hollywood distorts and transforms artistic
  projects to fit its successful formulas ? vivid
  and relatively obvious point of this sequence
  in The Player.

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Habeas Corpus the movie-within-the-movie

• comments, as does the movie as a whole, on
  celebrity recognition and on the role of the
  audience in shaping film narratives.
• In this very self-referential film about
  filmmaking, Habeas Corpus also reflects
  ironically on the plot resolution of The Player
  itself.
• The audience in some sense wrote the ending of
  Habeas Corpus, as they did in the famous case
  of Fatal Attraction (where test screenings led to
  a very different ending).

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The Ending of The Player

• The Player itself exhibited the very qualities
  Griffin Mill explained he needed to market a
  film successfully. . . . Suspense, laughter,
  violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings
  - mainly happy endings. (Altman, Robert (1992).
  The movie you saw is the movie we're going to
  make, Interview by Gavin Smith and Richard T.
  Jameson. Film Comment 28 (3), pp. 20-30.)
• final pitch disguised bribe by the threatening
  writer who knows what Mill has done. He pitches
  the movie we have just seen It's a Hollywood
  story, Griff. A real thriller. It's about a
  shitbag producer, studio exec, who murders a
  writer he thinks is harassing him. The problem is
  he kills the wrong writer. Now he's got to deal
  with blackmail as well as the cops. But heres
  the switch the son of a bitch, he gets away with
  it.

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The Ending of The Player

• But the villainous writer-blackmailer dubs
  Griffin Mill's getting away with murder a happy
  ending.
• ? This definition offers an ironic conclusion to
  the films satire of Hollywood convention
• the bad are rewarded and the good punished
• reversal of the original, intended conclusion of
  Habeas Corpus
• there an innocent woman goes to the gas
  chamber here a murderer goes free and prospers.
  The revised "Habeas Corpus
• The Player share the swelling, feel-good ethos of
  the Hollywood ending.
• Altman underscores the connection by having the
  framing film end with the same line as the framed
  film Traffic was a bitch.

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The Ending of The Player

• self-conscious use of the unjust happy ending,
  right on the heels of the just but corny happy
  ending of "Habeas Corpus,"
• ultimately implicates the audience
• If the audience freed Julia Roberts in "Habeas
  Corpus", then we have also provided murderer
  Griffin Mill his getting away

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Sources

• Altman, Robert (1997). Director's Commentary on
  DVD. Ed. By Doug Jacobson. Fine Line.
• Altman, Robert (1992). The movie you saw is the
  movie we're going to make, Interview by Gavin
  Smith and Richard T. Jameson. Film Comment 28
  (3), pp. 20-30.
• If you want to download this presentation go to
  www.sundawn.de.vu