Directed by Robert Altman | Written by Michael Tolkin | 124 min | ▲▲▲▲ | Criterion Channel/VOD
This review is prompted by the recent arrival of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Apple TV+ show, The Studio, which features a veteran Hollywood exec named Griffin Mill played by Bryan Cranston. No accident that Griffin Mill is also the name of the Tim Robbins’ character in The Player, Robert Altman’s vicious and gregarious takedown of Hollywood dealmakers.
At the time of The Player‘s release, Altman, a giant of the auteur-driven era of American cinema in the 1970s, had spent a decade in the Hollywood wilderness struggling to get his projects made and seen. This movie was considered a real comeback — you know how Tinseltown loves a comeback — and no little irony that the vehicle of his return to relevancy provided him what must’ve been a unique pleasure, a smack upside the head of all those smug, bottom-line worshipping studio bullies who refused his meetings after Popeye crashed and burned at the box office in 1980.
The Player was marketed on the dozens of cameos from recognizable stars, everyone from Burt Reynolds to Julia Roberts, but the core of the story has Mill as a Hollywood powerbroker desperate to hang on to his sweet gig with a hungry new guy (Peter Gallagher) snapping at his heels. This while Mill’s terrified by a collection of threatening postcards from a writer whose pitch he blew off months before. Feeling the pressure, he tracks down the writer (Vincent D’Onofrio), which leads to a murder outside a Pasadena movie house.
As this noirish undercurrent carries us along, the picture sets itself against Hollywood studio backlots, bars, and stylish lunch joints where Mill always orders a different brand of bottled water as he hobnobs with screenwriters and other execs — the few familiar faces *not* playing themselves include Fred Ward, Richard E. Grant, Brion James, Lyle Lovett, Sydney Pollack, Dean Stockwell, Gina Gershon, and Jeremy Piven, with the always charming Cynthia Stevenson as Bonnie, another exec and Mill’s girlfriend, and Greta Scacchi as June, a local painter and the writer’s girlfriend.
Though he’d been out of the spotlight for awhile, Altman’s signature storytelling is fully compos mentis here — his roaming camerawork through party scenes where we get snatches of dialogue from conversations in the crowd signals this is the master filmmaker who gave us Nashville, California Split, and MASH. That said, the meandering nature of the plot, along with that creepy score, does occasionally test the patience.
It’s a fine line Altman walks with Griffin Mill as the lead — Robbins’ natural vulnerability and anxiety makes him relatable, but as we go along Mill’s selfishness and cruelty are as evident as his compassion. The script does allow him a minute to defend his profession: he works for a studio that can only produce a dozen films a year while he’ll hear 50,000 stories: Everybody wants something from him, and it sometimes means he has to be an asshole.
The razor of the satire and a number of incidental pleasures carry the day, even as the surfeit of slicked back lids and double-breasted, oversized jackets dates it. One hilarious moment has Whoopi Goldberg as a detective who, investigating the murder, picks up an Oscar at Griffin Mill’s office to give a mock speech. The Player came out in May 1992, the year previous she won an Oscar for her supporting role in Ghost (also now available on the Criterion Channel). The echoes of actual Hollywood tales and a variety of easter eggs are scattered about if you’d care to dig — the Criterion Channel includes plenty of additional features from The Player to enjoy.
Maybe the saddest part of revisiting this film more than 30 years later is even the most outrageous, ridiculous movie pitches Mill hears — including Buck Henry’s goofy idea for a sequel to The Graduate — all sound a whole lot more creative and compelling than, oh, A Minecraft Movie, the game inspired blockbuster product populating cinema screens this weekend.
