The Player

Altman, a great director at the top of his form, has done an elegant hatchet job on the town that made him a player when M*A*S*H was a smash in 1970 and then a pariah when his follow-up films, Brewster McCloud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye, sank at the box office. From a modest $8 million budget, Altman has fashioned a mammoth triumph. What makes The Player the best and boldest American comedy in years is Altman's wizardry at leavening anger with cathartic wit. He sticks it to every target, himself and us included, with a wicked zest that hurts only when you laugh -- and The Player keeps you laughing constantly.

The uneasy truce between art and commerce has obsessed Altman from Nashville to Vincent and Theo. Maybe that's why The Player, adapted by Michael Tolkin (The Rapture) from his 1988 novel, comes off as pure Altman. Though Tolkin's admirably dark book often choked on bile, Altman's improvisatory style gives Tolkin's script an exhilarating buoyancy without blunting its ironic edge.

Paranoia is what drives The Player. Griffin Mill, wonder boy, thinks he's on the way out. Rumor has it that Joel Levison, the studio boss, played superbly by Brion James, is bringing in hotshot Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher). Griffin can read the signs. There's the curdled smile of Levison's secretary, Celia (a never-better Dina Merrill), and the furrowed brow of sharp-eyed story editor Bonnie Sherow (the excellent Cynthia Stevenson), with whom Griffin shares bed and hot tub.

There's also a more dangerous complication; threatening postcards from an anonymous writer whose calls Griffin didn't return. "In the name of all writers," says one scary note, "I'm going to kill you." Though Griffin is unnerved, he keeps functioning at the studio. Altman shows how in the soon-to-be-legendary opening scene, which is eight minutes long and done without cuts.

As security chief Walter Stuckel (Fred Ward) raves about Orson Welles's famous opening shot in Touch of Evil, Altman's camera swoops down on the studio lot, picking up snatches of conversation as Griffin takes story meetings with writers, including Buck Henry, who pitches a sequel to The Graduate ("Mrs. Robinson has a stroke"). Altman has used interlocking characters and overlapping dialogue before, but rarely as hilariously.

Next up is a Hollywood power lunch that mixes real stars with fictional characters the way Altman did in Nashville. Griffin spots Levy hustling Anjelica Huston and John Cusack at another table. That night, at a celeb-studded party thrown by Griffin's lawyer, Dick Mellen -- a delicious caricature by Tootsie director Sydney Pollack -- Griffin sees Levy in deep conversation with Jeff Goldblum.

Movie allusions are everywhere, and not just as ambience. Hollywood's golden past is a constant rebuke to its tarnished present. Altman is examining the work and mating habits of players whose standards are set by box-office grosses. Watch Pollack's character muff the name of Griffin's date (she's Bonnie, not Bunny) and decide in an instant that she's not worth an apology. Or catch Gallagher's Levy -- an incisive portrait of high-octane guile -- rush off to an AA meeting because that's "where all the deals are made."

In the guise of a riveting black-comic thriller, The Player cuts to Hollywood's corrupt heart. Griffin decides that David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio) is the postcard writer. He finds Kahane at a revival house showing a real movie -- The Bicycle Thief -- that leaves Griffin as disoriented and threatened as Superman after exposure to Kryptonite. The two fight in a parking lot, where Kahane is killed. Griffin panics, then realizes there's no evidence to implicate him. He even charms Kahane's artist girlfriend, June Gudmundsd=ttir (a coolly erotic Greta Scacchi); she's from Iceland, but that's not what makes her an outsider. June doesn't like movies. At a party with Griffin, June is unfazed, even sitting next to Cher. Griffin is enraptured.

The cops are a tougher sell, especially Pasadena detective Susan Avery (Whoopi Goldberg), who drags Griffin in for questioning. The scene is a howl, as is Goldberg. Avery relishes bringing this young prince low. No, he can't go in the chief's office; he has to sit at her desk in the hall, and he has to wait until she finds a tampon. Her desk mate, detective De-Longpre (singer Lyle Lovett), is a movie fan -- he reveres Freaks and has the unnerving habit of chanting, "One of us! One of us!" as Griffin sweats out the inquisition. Lovett is crazily unforgettable.

Back at the studio, Griffin sets up Levy by giving him Habeas Corpus, a movie pitched by agent Andy Civella (Dean Stockwell) and his client Tom Oakley (Richard E. Grant). It's a grim drama with no stars and an ending that finds the guiltless heroine going to the gas chamber because, in Oakley's words, "it's reality, and that's what happens." In a Hollywood where few films are produced without a Julia Roberts or a Bruce Willis, Habeas Corpus is professional suicide.

It's dirty pool to reveal what happens next as Griffin joins a police lineup and Altman prepares his final thrust. The upshot is that Altman, Tolkin, cinematographer Jean Lepine, production designer Stephen Altman (the director's son), editor Geraldine Peroni, composer Thomas Newman and a pluperfect cast have crafted a movie that debunks the very conventions (stars, sex, violence, fun, happy ending) that are likely to make it a hit.

For Altman, Hollywood is a microcosm for a world that's swallowed its own marketing campaign. If those who sell soulless products are corrupt, what are those who lap them up? Griffin, with his formula tastes and short attention span, is the audience. That's why he's so good at his job. Robbins delivers a classic performance, mining every comic and lethal nuance in the role of his career. Casting the likable, crinkle-grinned Robbins as this devil baby is an Altman masterstroke. Monsters don't sprout horns these days. Griffin is boyishly affable, fashionably decked out by Alexander Julian and scrupulously sober (he orders his brand of mineral water before he goes to lunch).

The Player reveals a Hollywood where creativity is bad for business, marketing puts a seductive face on compromise and success means having the clout to ski on the slopes of Aspen with Jack Nicholson. It's a barren culture that's not hard to recognize as our own. Talking shop with his peers, Griffin stops to announce: "We're all intelligent people. We must have other things to discuss." Silence falls. In a hack movie, the joke would be on them. In The Player, the joke comes from people with the wit to laugh at themselves but without the moral fiber to change. At sixty-seven, Altman is older but hardly mellower. The Player is two hours of watching artistic freedom getting squeezed. Altman is very funny and casual about it. But no way is he kidding.

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(Posted: Dec 8, 2000)