The PlayerIt's a fact that soulless corporate overlords ruin everything, even the joy that comes from making a good movie. That's the basic theme of Robert Altman's satire on Hollywood moviemaking, titled The Player. Conceited studio executive Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) spends all day hearing tired and rehashed pitches for movies from writers, turning down the vast majority of them. Even though Griffin has become numb to the job, he becomes rattled by two events. First, he learns that a savvy new exec named Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher) has been hired by the studio (and will likely become his new boss), and second, he's receiving cryptic, threatening postcards from a disgruntled writer. Griffin believes that they're coming from someone he turned down several months ago named David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio). As the tension ratchets up for Griffin, he becomes increasingly desperate to regain control over his affluent life once more.
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Filmmaker Robert Altman was always something of an iconoclast in Hollywood. His unorthodox revisionist work from the Seventies represented his "golden age", with amazing classics like Nashville, The Long Goodbye, and (personal favorite) McCabe & Mrs. Miller. (And for the record, I loved Quintet; sorry Tarantino.) The story goes that Altman struggled to secure support for his projects during the Eighties, after the unfairly maligned Popeye and others failed to meet studio expectations. The Player has been subsequently described as a "return to form" for him. With this in mind, perhaps it should be unsurprising then that The Player is a scathing satire--nay, indictment--of the proverbial "dream factory" turned into a production mill of insipid entertainment for the masses by business moguls only concerned with lining their pockets at the expense of creativity and originality. This message couldn't be louder in The Player if it was shouted from the rooftops, which it all but practically is when Kahane lets loose a tirade against Mill and what he represents...not long before Mill kills him. Yes, Griffin is so stressed out by the threat of losing his stature as a big wig in Hollywood that he lets a nobody screenwriter get under his skin, to the point that an escalated fight in a back alley pushes him to drown Kahane in a shallow pool of water. Griffin, apparently raised on movies, stages the murder to appear to be a botched stick-up, even eliminating his handprint on Kahane's car window by hurling a rock through it. It's not really convincing; both the studio's head of security (i.e. "fixer"), Walter Stuckel (Fred Ward), and the Pasadena police detectives assigned to investigate it have their doubts, including the sly Detective Susan Avery (Whoopi Goldberg). Before long, the crime hangs like an albatross around Griffin's neck...not because he feels guilty for murder, but because he fears getting caught. Yes, Griffin is afraid, but that doesn't imbue him with any humanity or affability. Instead, the majority of The Player after the killing deals with Griffin concealing his crime; yet his greater crisis is the fear of being made subordinate to Larry Levy. (Priorities, after all.) Griffin continues to receive threats in private, which he withholds because he doesn't want to make himself into any kind of liability to the studio, something that would threaten his already shaky position. He begins to break down, and suddenly finds himself drawn to Kahane's ex-girlfriend (of all people), June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi), playing with fire by initiating a relationship with her. It's a classic film noir trope that recalls the likes of The Postman Always Rings Twice, where the guilty protagonist tempts fate, wisdom be damned. (In a clever sight gag, when Walter first confronts Griffin about Kahane's death in his office, there's a big poster of the noir classic, Laura, in the background, recalling the first interaction between Dana Andrews and Clifton Webb in that movie, sans bathtub.) It seems that the more and more that Griffin hides his sin, he becomes drawn into a plot not unlike those yesteryear hits that defined these kinds of studios from an era long past.
Owing to his quality of work and artistic appeal, Robert Altman often attracted high profile actors, not to mention his familiar stable of performers who worked alongside him throughout the years. The Player is the acme of this, and it couldn't be better suited to the content. In fact, there is such a plethora of recognizable talent in this movie that Altman exploits this to a deliriously disorienting effect. The backlot of the studio is predominated by the studio execs, calling the shots, with the occasional cameo by actual screenwriters, like Buck Henry, who pitches a sequel to The Graduate--which he co-wrote--to Griffin. But as a studio exec, Griffin often travels in circles replete with actors. For instance, at lunch he glad-hands actors like Anjelica Huston and John Cusack, who are polite but annoyed at being accosted as they're leaving the restaurant; same with Burt Reynolds later. This aspect works double duty in The Player, because so many other characters are performed by recognizable actors (like Sydney Pollack as Griffin's lawyer), making the audience question with each new interaction whether this actor is playing a character or "themselves". I think that the best example of this comes when Griffin crosses paths with Malcolm McDowell at a hotel, who chides Griffin for gossiping about him. For a moment we're left to wonder: is this supposed to be "the" Malcolm McDowell or someone else "played" by McDowell. To play further off of the sort of "cult of personality" that arises with Hollywood actors, the scene segues into an interaction with Dean Stockwell and Richard E. Grant playing an agent (Andy Sivella) and director (Tom Oakley), trying to get Andie MacDowell (who would later appear in Altman's Short Cuts), playing herself, to be in their movie. Is your head spinning yet? It should, because that's the exact same kind of effect I'm sure Altman was aiming for to convey Griffin's mental state at this point in the story.
Movie posters, like the aforementioned one for Laura, act as a kind of punctuation for the scenes in which they occupy. For example, as the celluloid noose starts tightening around Griffin's neck (so to speak), a couple of posters in his meeting room of Prison Break and Murder in the Big House loom in the shadows, suggesting that he will be punished. When Griffin's assistant (and lover) Bonnie Sherow (Cynthia Stevenson) learns that he's been seeing June behind her back, the camera pans to a poster of Fritz Lang's M as she storms out, with the tagline of "the worst crime of all" on it. This speaks not just to Griffin's murder of Kahane, but of his betrayal of Bonnie and the impact it has on her. The absolute immersion in the Hollywood filmmaking process contributes to a warped perspective on reality for Griffin, not to mention everyone else. It's infectious and corrodes the love of movies for these "players" from the inside out. Take how impassioned director Tom Oakley pleas with Griffin to make his movie "without stars" and with a downer ending, because "that's reality", only later to flip his attitude because the depressing ending didn't "test well". What happened to that passion for "movies as art", as Griffin puts it during a celebrity gala charity event? Instead, Oakley's movie falls into the trappings from every tired pitch Griffin has been hearing since the start of the film, where everyone sees Julia Roberts or Bruce Willis as the leads in their movies. (The greatest punchline in The Player is, of course, when the leads in Oakley's faux thriller--titled "Habeas Corpus"--turn out to be played by Roberts and Willis.) Watching the end of The Player, you can't help but wonder if, at some point, Griffin might have been a starry-eyed dreamer himself, looking to shape the world of Hollywood into something...more. But the tragic implication is that Hollywood is itself a cesspool of selfishness and banality, and warps these dreamers into cynical yuppies instead. The powerful get away with murdering creativity and thrive because of it. But as long as audiences are lulled into a stupor by way of trite and derivative cliches, movie stars, and "plot 47-B made glossy and slick", they'll keep coming back for more.
Recommended for: Fans of a biting critique of the vapidness of the soul-crushing Hollywood machine. (Gee, the more things change, the more they stay the same, am I right?) The Player is clever and witty, disarming and engaging. It is a solid story given an additional dimension by way of its self-awareness. Altman fans should be right at home in this darkly funny thriller, and movie buffs will find their love of movies rewarded by all of Hollywood trivia.
Owing to his quality of work and artistic appeal, Robert Altman often attracted high profile actors, not to mention his familiar stable of performers who worked alongside him throughout the years. The Player is the acme of this, and it couldn't be better suited to the content. In fact, there is such a plethora of recognizable talent in this movie that Altman exploits this to a deliriously disorienting effect. The backlot of the studio is predominated by the studio execs, calling the shots, with the occasional cameo by actual screenwriters, like Buck Henry, who pitches a sequel to The Graduate--which he co-wrote--to Griffin. But as a studio exec, Griffin often travels in circles replete with actors. For instance, at lunch he glad-hands actors like Anjelica Huston and John Cusack, who are polite but annoyed at being accosted as they're leaving the restaurant; same with Burt Reynolds later. This aspect works double duty in The Player, because so many other characters are performed by recognizable actors (like Sydney Pollack as Griffin's lawyer), making the audience question with each new interaction whether this actor is playing a character or "themselves". I think that the best example of this comes when Griffin crosses paths with Malcolm McDowell at a hotel, who chides Griffin for gossiping about him. For a moment we're left to wonder: is this supposed to be "the" Malcolm McDowell or someone else "played" by McDowell. To play further off of the sort of "cult of personality" that arises with Hollywood actors, the scene segues into an interaction with Dean Stockwell and Richard E. Grant playing an agent (Andy Sivella) and director (Tom Oakley), trying to get Andie MacDowell (who would later appear in Altman's Short Cuts), playing herself, to be in their movie. Is your head spinning yet? It should, because that's the exact same kind of effect I'm sure Altman was aiming for to convey Griffin's mental state at this point in the story.
Movie posters, like the aforementioned one for Laura, act as a kind of punctuation for the scenes in which they occupy. For example, as the celluloid noose starts tightening around Griffin's neck (so to speak), a couple of posters in his meeting room of Prison Break and Murder in the Big House loom in the shadows, suggesting that he will be punished. When Griffin's assistant (and lover) Bonnie Sherow (Cynthia Stevenson) learns that he's been seeing June behind her back, the camera pans to a poster of Fritz Lang's M as she storms out, with the tagline of "the worst crime of all" on it. This speaks not just to Griffin's murder of Kahane, but of his betrayal of Bonnie and the impact it has on her. The absolute immersion in the Hollywood filmmaking process contributes to a warped perspective on reality for Griffin, not to mention everyone else. It's infectious and corrodes the love of movies for these "players" from the inside out. Take how impassioned director Tom Oakley pleas with Griffin to make his movie "without stars" and with a downer ending, because "that's reality", only later to flip his attitude because the depressing ending didn't "test well". What happened to that passion for "movies as art", as Griffin puts it during a celebrity gala charity event? Instead, Oakley's movie falls into the trappings from every tired pitch Griffin has been hearing since the start of the film, where everyone sees Julia Roberts or Bruce Willis as the leads in their movies. (The greatest punchline in The Player is, of course, when the leads in Oakley's faux thriller--titled "Habeas Corpus"--turn out to be played by Roberts and Willis.) Watching the end of The Player, you can't help but wonder if, at some point, Griffin might have been a starry-eyed dreamer himself, looking to shape the world of Hollywood into something...more. But the tragic implication is that Hollywood is itself a cesspool of selfishness and banality, and warps these dreamers into cynical yuppies instead. The powerful get away with murdering creativity and thrive because of it. But as long as audiences are lulled into a stupor by way of trite and derivative cliches, movie stars, and "plot 47-B made glossy and slick", they'll keep coming back for more.
Recommended for: Fans of a biting critique of the vapidness of the soul-crushing Hollywood machine. (Gee, the more things change, the more they stay the same, am I right?) The Player is clever and witty, disarming and engaging. It is a solid story given an additional dimension by way of its self-awareness. Altman fans should be right at home in this darkly funny thriller, and movie buffs will find their love of movies rewarded by all of Hollywood trivia.