Ill-Informed Gadfly

Few moviegoing experiences were as profound for me as seeing “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” and “Nashville” for the first time, in the theater at Newcomb Hall at the University of Virginia. The 35mm prints were scratchy and frayed but still glorious. The same goes for “Brewster McCloud,” “Thieves Like Us,” “The Long Goodbye” and “California Split,” all unavailable on DVD at the time, during a retrospective at the ramshackle American Film Institute theater at the Kennedy Center. I think Altman was the greatest living American director — an innovator and adventurer who made movies with an incomparable joie de vivre. His death last night, from cancer, at age 81, has affected me deeply, and I will use this space in the coming weeks to celebrate his varied and thrilling career. As a start, here, courtesy of asap, is the appreciation I wrote in the couple hours after his death was announced. There’s more to come, I promise.