Alan Rudolph’s third film and the first of eight films in the archives
Certainly Rudolph is the most Altman-like of all the Altman acolytes—he worked with him and on projects like Nashville and The Long Goodbye as second assistant director—this is “Robert Altman presents” before the title and heavily influenced by Nashville. It is an ensemble portrait of a town and time with music playing a central part (this has Richard Baskin- who wrote songs for Nashville pervading throughout the film, shots of him in a recording studio)
The cast is all Altman, too—Geraldine Chaplin (Nashville), Keith Carradine (Thieves Like Us, Nashville, McCabe—8 of the 10 Carradine archiveable films are with Rudolph or Altman), Sally Kellerman (MASH) and then Spacek would work on Three Women with Altman later and Keitel in Buffalo Bill the same year
I don’t love Baskin’s voice or songs—but I appreciate and admire the form—it is repeated and a part of the film
So another film would come along decades later and would be an ensemble Altman-like Nashville film set in LA—PTA’s Magnolia of course
No plot- a collage of these interconnected lives—hopping into bed with each other, love, rejection- very modern—sex, parties, crowds (another Altmanism but we don’t have the overlapping dialogue and zooms to the same stylistic effect). “City of One Night Stands” the song by Baskin – lines like Chaplin saying “I don’t need to be loved by anyone”- looking into the camera
Nice triple mirror in the frame shot at 12 minutes—another nice shot of the LA dusk at 62 minutes
Carrdine with Keitel here – they’d pair up again the following year in a better film- 1977’s The Duellists directed by Ridley Scott. Here in Welcome to L.A. Carradine is better- he’s an alcoholic writer and womanizer (not different than his turn in Nashville) sipping southern comfort. Keitel struggles and is miscast as a yuppie precursor. Viveca Lindfors is woefully miscast as well. She’s 30 years older than Carradine- nobody is buying that they were an item
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