HOW-OF-WHY

I was writing and directing a play in Vancouver,
British Columbia. Working collaboratively with a talented company of young Canadian actors, designers and technicians, far from Milwaukee. It was July 4th. Not a holiday in Canada. I was homesick and lonely. During the afternoon I went to see a movie on a giant big screened theatre. It was as American of a movie as I could have chosen. For the 157 minutes that the tapestry of the film played I was enmeshed in a contemporary portrait of America, told with country music, satirical comedy and dramatic tragedy. My home, America surrounded me in the darkened theatre.
As I walked into the bright lobby after the movie I silently gave thanks to Robert Altman.
It was his masterpiece ensemble film, NASHVILLE.

Five years earlier I had been studying film in summer grad school in Madison, Wisconsin. Another war was being fought by Americans as young as I and younger. For one of my classes I was to see a film and write a critical essay. My entire grade would be based upon my paper. I chose a commercial film playing in Madison and saw it probably half a dozen times. It was my first exposure to Mr. Altman.

The campus was like a battle zone, with windows boarded up for as many as 20 blocks around what was left of Sterling Hall, a building that had housed a Math Research Center funded by the United States Defense Department that had been blown up by anti-war protesters. They had called in a warning on the early morning of the explosion but ironically, the department hardest hit by the blast was not the MRC but Physics, many of whose faculty were actively and vocally against the war. A 33-year-old physics researcher named Robert Fassnacht was one of those working late and was killed by the detonation of a van loaded with explosives that was driven up what was then Lathrop Drive and parked in a loading area by the newer East Wing of Sterling Hall. Fassnacht was killed, and four others in Sterling Hall were injured because they had been working all night in the otherwise empty building.

The film I had chosen to see and write about was set during the Korean War but was actually an anti-war comedy that was mostly regarded to be against all war and specifically the Viet Nam conflict that was going on. Young men were being drafted to fight and die in Southeast Asia in a land war that had all the appearance of an insurrection and civil war. America supported the South and China the North. The unrest on American campuses led the growing national anti-war movement that eventually drove Lyndon Johnson out of the office of the Presidency and the American Military to cut, run and abandon the conflict. The movie, made for a modest budget and abandoned by the Corporate studio went on to make millions, being nominated for several Oscars (and winning one) and launch the careers of many of the actors was entitled MASH.

Now, in 2006, a fitting and appropriate online tribute and memorial to distinctly American artist Robert Altman,
whose technique, vision and work inspired my admiration & enriched my life for 36 years:

HERE

HERE

AND HERE

Robert Altman died a couple of days ago. His creative life is one of many things to recall and be thankful for on the eve the very American tradition of Thanks giving.

©2006 MICHAEL JOHN MOYNIHAN