Robert Altman s The Player 1992

1. Robert Altman’s The Player (1992)

3. 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.

4. 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 …

5.  Plot Summary

6. 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.

7.  Characters

8. Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins),

9. Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher)

10. David Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio)

11. June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi)

12. 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

13. Detective Susan Avery (Whoopi Goldberg)

15. The Satire of “The Player”

16. 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.

17. 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).

18. 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 here’s the switch: the son of a bitch, he gets away with it.”

19. 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 film’s 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.”

20. 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

21. 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