Playing with Fire: Robert Altman takes on Hollywood

The Player is Robert Altman’s love letter, in his own way, to the movies.

Altman takes the viewer on a tour through the world of studio Hollywood he himself encountered in the early 1990’s. The bottom line is the bottom dollar. At one point, a studio executive even suggests they eliminate the screenwriters from the filmmaking process altogether. In a board room meeting, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

We see it all through the eyes of Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), a well-established power player in the business. But he’s looking for the next step up, the promotion to studio president that’ll solidify his spot as a mover and pusher in Hollywood.

And he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get there.

Before Altman made The Player, he’d run into trouble with American audiences, who didn’t appear to appreciate his artistic ambition in films like Nashville. He tried his hand at starting a studio but failed.

At the start of the film, Griffin is the recipient of a series of postcards from a disgruntled writer. His life is threatened and Griffin takes the threats seriously. He has a hunch on the postcards’ origin and confronts writer David Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio), who Griffin rejected a few months before, at a screening of The Bicycle Thief – a film with appropriate artistic integrity.

The foes can’t see eye to eye, and Kahane storms out, spewing threats of blackmail and undermining Griffin’s supposed spot as a force in the business. Griffin is enraged and kills the writer with his bare hands. He realizes his mistake, makes it look like a standard back alley robbery and spends the rest of the running time trying to ensure his tracks stay covered.

But, of course, the postcards keep coming.

Altman lays out The Player as a battle for Griffin’s soul and, by association, the soul of the town Griffin represents. Griffin isn’t instantly unlikable by any means. His relationship with Bonnie (Cynthia Stevenson) appears healthy. He gets along well with his co-workers. He poses as friendly and helpful to all the poor souls who wander into his office with dreams of grandeur.

But it all comes tumbling down. Because, in Altman’s mind, it has to.

Because Altman sets his story in the movie world, he gets a chance to directly confront issues like distribution, profits and artistic integrity. Midway through the film, Griffin is presented with what sounds like a decidedly raw, emotional and anti-Hollywood production. A perfect chance to redeem himself, to whatever extent, after murdering Kahane.

But instead, he uses it as an opportunity to undermine one of his superiors and positions himself as the next rung on the power ladder. Because for Griffin, the bottom line isn’t whether he makes a good movie – it’s whether he makes some bank and puts himself in the best possible spot.

Selfishness drives Altman’s protagonist.

And as he falls, the rest of Griffin Mill’s flaws shine through all the clearer. He begins ditching his girlfriend to stalk and then court Kahane’s grieving lover. He plots to out the new executive that moved into his studio. He lies, straight-faced, to the police, Bonnie, his co-workers without many hints of remorse.

As the climax approaches, Griffin is no longer the suave suit we saw in the film’s spectacular seven-minute opening tracking shot. He dons a black two-piece, his hair gelled back, and manipulates the room with the cool directness of a seasoned pro. Not much remains for the audience to relate to.

But Altman is in control, not Griffin, and he gets the last laugh in a film ripe with oddly comic and uncomfortable moments. Griffin is in the clear as the film winds down: he’s “saved” the gritty, anti-Hollywood production with a tacked-on happy ending; Bonnie is fired so he’s free to pursue Kahane’s old flame; all is well.

In the film’s final scene, Griffin’s phone rings. It’s the postcard writer. And we realize for the first time, establishing The Player as a true meta-film, that Altman himself has been threatening Mill all along. He’s sick and tired of Hollywood studios reusing unimaginative dreck instead of taking risks on real artists. He is the voice of the writers, the passionate few, all screaming to get out from underneath the commercial bubble.

The writer pitches the very movie we just watched, even titled The Player, to the startled exec. And Griffin, always out to save his own skin, eagerly accepts.