Ceaselessly Into The Last

Lola: What if you die some day?
GK: I will die.
Lola: Don't you want people to remember you?
GK: I don't want them to be told to remember me.
--- from A Prairie Home Companion

    Robert Altman has died at 81.  People shouldn't need to be told to remember him, but I wonder how many people will.  If you haven't seen A Prairie Home Companion, this blog encourages you to do so tonight and speculate on the best way to remember one of the last truly independent film directors.  Prairie is wistful, whimsical, critical, cynical, meditative, museful, doggedly stoical and yet utterly charming.   More envoi than elegy, more celebration than lamentation, there's something roughly Prosperan about it, a final enchantment in which his characters sing and dance ceaselessly into the last. 

    Then go rent any of his classics--- M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player, Gosford Park, to name just a few.  It'd be the best way to remember him.  Or maybe for some of you, to discover him.