How Altman fashioned his career

IN one of those bizarre kinds of plot twists that only Hollywood could throw up, one of the movie industry's hottest names is one whose films hardly make a cent.

No matter how large the box office grosses of the likes of Robert Zemeckis or Steven Spielberg, one suspects they cannot help but feel envious at the aura of celebrity which surrounds their colleague, Robert Altman.

There may be no other director who could command, at a fraction of their normal salaries, the services of Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Lauren Bacall, Kim Basinger, Tim Robbins and Julia Roberts - all in one film - while having their phone ringing off the hook with names such as Rupert Everett and Rossy de Palma clamouring to be allowed on to the set.

And all this before one even considers the case of Robert de Niro, who pulled out of the movie, then changed his mind, and couldn't win a reprieve.

This is the bizarre fate of Altman, the white-bearded, languid 70-something director who has seen his long career ebb and flow from the early heights of M*A*S*H and Nashville, through a decade of under-funded and under-appreciated works such as Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, and back to Hollywood icon status as the bringer of The Player and Short Cuts.

And the movie which has emerged as a living microcosm of the Altman mystique is Pret a Porter, his stellar satire of the Paris fashion industry. Needless to say, if everyone who has heard about the making of the film actually goes on to see it, 'Pret' will end up bigger than The Lion King.