Robert Altman’s aptitude for non-commercial subjects, ensemble casts, dubious morals, and chaotic cinéma vérité techniques made him the most “un-Hollywood” filmmaker of the post-war generation, but that didn’t mean that actors wouldn’t drop everything to sign up for one of his projects. Few artists are so influential that their name became an adjective; the term “Altmanesque” is liberally used to describe the work of Paul Thomas Anderson, Richard Linklater, Noah Baumbach, Judd Apatow, and the Safdie brothers.
Altman’s legacy is most closely associated with his string of hits in the 1970s. Between the reinvention of war satire with M*A*S*H*, the revisionist western romance McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the ultimate “hangout” two-hander California Split, the farcical neo-noir The Long Goodbye, the musical masterpiece Nashville, and the devastating psychological drama 3 Women, Altman was capable of bringing a signature touch to multiple genres. Although the box office failure of Popeye (a film that’s since been hailed as a cult classic) brought this trajectory to a sharp end in 1980, Altman had a resurgence when his 2001 masterpiece Gosford Park was celebrated as the culmination in his exploration of fraught, darkly amusing stories about difficult families.
Sandwiched in between these two upswings in Altman’s career was a film so aggressively cynical that it feels like a fluke; while Altman was never afraid to demystify components of society, his 1992 satire The Player turned its eyes on the industry that had raised him. Loosely inspired by Michael Tolkin’s black comedy novel of the same name, The Player saw Tim Robbins in the role of Griffin Mill, a sociopathic studio executive caught between personal ambition and the seductive nature of being an artist.
The Player wasn’t the first “movie about the movies,” as Hollywood had patted itself on the back ever since Singin’ in the Rain and Sullivan’s Travels, films that unintentionally glorified an industry that often had a short memory. The Player wasn’t a farce in the vein of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, nor was it a personal expression like the ones Bob Fosse and Woody Allen had made with All That Jazz and Stardust Memories, respectively. The Player was about the reality of Hollywood in 1992; at the time it may have felt like a dire warning, but in 2025, The Player is the origin story of an industry on the verge of collapse.
Altman’s foresight was that he understood that any momentary success that Hollywood had earned wouldn’t last. In 1992, there wasn’t much to complain about when it; Best Picture winners like Dances With Wolves and The Silence of the Lambs were also commercial hits, diverse stories were told in the form of Do the Right Thing and Boyz n the Hood, indie cinema had grown mainstream thanks to Reservoir Dogs and Slacker, and the success of Batman and Indiana Jones had ushered in a new wave of blockbusters. Altman’s concern was never with the artists, but with those that granted them opportunities. Altman used The Player to paint an ugly portrait of how “movie magic” is actually made.
In his characterization of Mill, Altman drew upon the history of cinema’s greatest anti-heroes. With the charisma of John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards of The Searchers, the defiant independent streak of Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, and the obsessive narcissism of Malcolm McDowell’s Alex DeLarge of A Clockwork Orange, Mill’s convinced that he’s “different” from those that share his profession. Mill has an advanced knowledge of his film history, as he’s perceived all of the casually cruel comments made to prospective writers as being made in good faith. Despite the fact that he’s shaken his head at the ignorance of his fellow executives, Mill has still enjoyed the privilege of being one.
Altman could’ve been more direct in his commentary had Mill turned into a slasher villain overnight, but The Player is an examination of how those with power seek to assume expertise within any field that’s unfamiliar to them. Mill’s haunted by a threatening note from a dejected writer not just because he has understood that his life is in danger, but his shock that a meager screenwriter could pin their lack of success on him. The irony of Mill’s suggestion that this screenwriter develops a remake of Bicycle Thieves, the Italian neorealist film about the nightmare of enterprise, is perhaps the most scathing detail.
Actors play themselves in The Player, but not in the comical vein of Tropic Thunder or Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. The appearances by Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, and Burt Reynolds among others emphasize that the world Altman has created isn’t abstract, but a pure distillation of what it’s like to work in a creative industry dictated by bureaucrats. It’s no coincidence that the liveliest performances in the film are the cameos by Altman’s previous collaborators, including Elliot Gould, Scott Glenn, and Jeff Goldblum. Original characters like the pretentious director Tom Oakley (Richard E. Grant), the frustrated writer David Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio), and Mill’s willfully obtuse rival Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher), represent the vast majority of those that come to Los Angeles, but never have their photos grace Variety or The Hollywood Reporter.
Mill has learned there are no consequences to his actions, and considers that he could be the subject of a high-concept hit. As ruthless as The Player is with its assessment of Hollywood, it’s also a nail-biting thriller that evoked the best of Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder. Altman couldn’t stop himself from making great movies, but he could offer a truism to his contemporaries that the battle for autonomy was already lost.