Alternative Film Guide

Robert Benton talks about Robert Altman, who produced his 1977 detective comedy The Late Show, while being interviewed by Chuck Wilson for the LA Weekly. Benton’s Feast of Love opens today in the U.S.

"He was repped by [agent] Sam Cohn and I was too. I was asked to go to a screening of Nashville before anyone had seen it. Pauline [Kael] was there that night. And the movie just took my breath away. I’d never seen anything like it. Later, when the script for The Late Show was finished, Sam took it to Altman and he said he’d produce it. I was scared shitless of him, but I loved him, even though he fired me three times on that picture. What would happen is that you’d be working pre-production in this big office, and at the end of the day, you’d sit and talk to him. He was a born teacher. He could tell you things without pontificating. He taught me to unclench, to stop being a writer who directed and be a director. He was the person who said to me, ‘Shut up, and listen to the actors. After the first week, they know more about the character than you.’"

Charles Taylor offers a review of The Late Show in Salon.

"The Late Show isn’t a wild-card satire in the manner of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (though Altman produced it). Benton’s film is actually a classically structured film noir. But he doesn’t make the mistake of trying to pass off the barroom profundities of noir for a world view. He’s true to the genre while recognizing that there are areas of experience its tough-guy attitude can’t encompass. What The Late Show does share with The Long Goodbye is the realization that the characters are living in their own movie-fed fantasies."

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