Alan Rudolph is that rara avis among American film directors. He managed to work successfully within the classic Hollywood framework even though it may not always have been the happiest of experiences for him. Simultaneously, Rudolph has built up an impressive reputation in Europe as an exemplar of the independent American filmmaker, working resolutely outside the studio system.
Rudolph, forty-two, a second-generation filmmaker who grew up in Los Angeles - his father, Oscar Rudolph, was a veteran television director - never planned to direct movies himself. But one day, while he was still in his teens, a friend gave him a Super-8 camera, one of the first on the market. In his own words, Rudolph would go out "and shoot these little movies." These "little movies" turned out, according to Rudolph, to be very much like the MTV films seen on television today: He would select songs and then either try to illustrate them, or bounce off them in quest of original visual images.
After a time, Rudolph showed his films to friends who were going to local film schools. Before he knew it, he got involved in making some of their student projects - and the grades these films received were very good indeed, according to Rudolph. The young filmmaker began to think that he might have a future after all in this line of work.
Strange Movies
Rudolph covers the years before he turned into a full-fledged director by saying simply, "'flash forward': I became an assistant director [at age twenty-four] on a lot of strange movies, realized I did not want to do that all my life, and started to write." In 1972 Robert Altman's people called him: Altman was looking for an assistant director. Rudolph said proudly that he was sorry but he did not do that sort of work any longer. He was trying to write his own screenplays. Besides, he had never seen any of Altman's films. In disbelief they said, "You mean you haven't seen M*A*S*H?" Rudolph had indeed never seen one of the most successful and popular films in recent Hollywood history. Gently, Altman's office suggested that he might like to take a look at a new Altman production, McCabe and Mrs. Miller. He did, and found it "one of the best things I'd ever seen in my life. And new!" His apprenticeship with Altman meant working as an assistant director on The Long Goodbye (with Elliott Gould), California Split (with Gould again and George Segal), and the celebrated Nashville. Rudolph then wrote the screenplay for Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians (starring Paul Newman as the eponymous Bill). The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Rudolph made his first film when he was thirty-two; it was produced by Altman's Lion's Gate Films. Welcome to L.A. is a patchwork film in which various spiritually trapped Californians move about a sun-bleached cityscape on an endless, joyless quest. In its own way it is a companion piece to Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays. The critical reception to it in America was intense; some reviews were highly negative, others wildly enthusiastic, acclaiming a new directorial talent.
The film, which cost a modest $900,000, created a style that Rudolph likes to describe as "emotional science fiction." European film critics felt they had discovered a new director. They took him to their bosom as a new cult director. European critics have always been partial to a director who has a highly individual style, a special look. There have even been
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