"Short Cuts" and American Life and Society in Early Nineties

By Hasti Sardashti

Prior and during the time Altmans Short Cuts was developed and shaped, Americans experienced over a decade of Republican administration, represented by Reagan and Bush, extreme right wing national policies, and an ill economy. On 9 November 1989 with the fall of Berlin Wall, America and whole world experienced one of the most extreme changes in the history of the twentieth century: the end of the cold war and the beginning of a new post-Cold war era. Hardly anyone could have foreseen the end of communism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe during that time. The demise of the Soviet Union left the United States the sole remaining superpower, a position that carried its own risks and problems. With this extreme change of dichotomy between the two world powers, on which was the base of the national and international politics for more than fifty years and also a major coping mechanism for the people by splitting between the Good and Bad, God and Evil, Communism and Democracy, in late 1980s and early 1990s it came to a break down of the known structures which were experienced as very frightening by American people. I wonder if Short Cuts was an attempt by Robert Altman in the early 90s, to comfort all these anxious and helpless people, who were confused, and who couldnt understand why things happen to them, what happened to them and asking themselves why? What did we do wrong? What if this did not happen and that happened?

The Robert Altmans Short Cuts and American Society and American Life in the Early Nineties is an attempt to examine all these notions and understand what is about Short Cuts making it to become such a timeless and unique movie.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467894517

Hasti Sardashti

Hasti Sardashti left Iran in 1984 as her parents kept worrying about her rebelliousness in all aspects of Iranian life and society after the revolution in 1979. She never reached her final destination but happened to arrive in (West) Germany, where she decided to stay and study medicine. In 1997 she left Germany to England where she did a post graduate degree in Film studies and one in Art therapy few years later maybe on her search to revive her passions and to return to her creative roots. She currently works as a part time child psychiatrist & psychotherapist and an artist. She never published a book before. She lives in London in a small apartment, the only place she get some space to paint.

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© 2011 Hasti Sardashti. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/25/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-9612-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-9451-7 (ebook)

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Short Cuts: a representation of the American society and American life in the early Nineties

Making of Short Cuts

Short Cuts: The Beginning, The End,

and The role of Audience

The ‘Post’ Classical Hollywood Cinema

Robert Altman’s Life and Cinema

Conclusion

About The Author

End Notes

To all the books and movies that took me through my childhood and after

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Jessica Zoya Sardashti for her editorial help and for encouraging me to be less fragmented and more linear, and to be more expressive and not to hide. I also want to thank all my friends and family that all through the years encouraged me for my passion for films and in particular for Robert Altman’s ‘Short Cuts’. My special thanks go to the University of Nottingham. If I hadn’t received those regular phone calls from them to check on me and encourage me to pursue my passion for films, I might have never got this far.

Introduction

Part of the miracle of Robert Altman’s triumphantly fierce, funny, moving and innovative Short Cuts is that you can’t get this movie out of your head. You keep playing it back to savor its formula-smashing audacity. Its peerless performances and its cleareyed view of blasted lives.

Rolling Stone/ Peter Travers

I was in Germany when I went to see Short Cuts at my local independent cinema in 1993. I don’t remember why I went, but I remember that I came out feeling very impressed, that it was a great film and that the director (Altman) was a genius. I was impressed by the stories and how the film was made, all these characters in nine different households, connecting and interacting. I had never seen something like that before. It was a time of transition in my life. Germany and the whole world were also going through a big transition. It was just few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall (Die Mauer), which led to West and East Germany’s reunification. The end of the Cold War, was just too confusing and scary for me. I grew up during the Cold War era in a neighboring country of Soviet Union, and in a family where socialism and sense of justice and respect for the working class was not a belief but a religion. Like many others from developing countries, I grew up with the genuine belief that only with the support of Soviet Union we can become free and reach political and economical independence from the west. So all that happening in the early 1990’s gave me a terrible sense of shock, fear, helplessness and grief. Having experienced pre and post revolution in Iran during my teenage years, my world seemed to have turned upside down again in the early 90‘s when I was just turning thirty.

In 1993 I was in my last year of qualifying as a medical doctor. I never thought that ten years later I would be living in England, feeling frustrated with my medical training and undertaking masters in film studies. It seems if all through these years Robert Altman’s Short Cuts continued to stay on my mind, and when I had to choose my final dissertation in 2004 I only could think of one film: Short Cuts. Although I made several discoveries through my work that could explain my fascination with Short Cuts, I still didn’t feel that I had completely understood my connection to Short Cuts, and I still couldn’t get the movie out of my mind. A year later I happened to join a social gathering of some Irish psychiatrists in London, one of them a good friend of mine, who introduced me to the group as the one who studied film. The group showed interest in my work. They encouraged me to send a copy of my writing to Mr Altman. They even drafted a letter for me starting with Dear Mr Altman I admire your work.... Few months later I sent a copy of my work to Mr Altman, believing it would never arrive, and would be never be read by anyone especially not by Mr Altman. I could not believe my eyes when few months later, in the beginning of 2006, I received an e-mail from Mr Altman’s PA saying Mr Altman ‘is honored by my hard work and that he wishes me the best of luck’.

I was extremely saddened ( and