Was it Robert Altman, Matthew Modine, or Andie McDowell who ruined Short Cuts?

Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin are aces. I would have watched a film based just on their short story.

yea so true. i would watch tom waits in any film pretty much, and have
i love the part where he comes into the diner with yard debris in his hair, totally distraught and nearly in tears and she treats it like it's happened dozens of time before. "i slept in the yard. i couldn't sleep in our bed." as she plucks the debris from his curls

lyle lovette's performance is painfully bad imo. perhaps he could have read his lines better off an offscreen teleprompter, his performance is just so dull and flat.

but that is my understanding of lyle lovette's ouvre: so dull and flat. except his hair. he's got that kid'n'play hi top fade for the white-guy thing goin on!

Jack Lemmon is the sore thumb in that cast.

― Dr Morbius, Monday, April 23, 2007 9:41 AM (ten years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is insane, his scene with Bruce Davison in the hospital telling him why he left him is the centerpiece of Short Cuts in the same way that "I'm Easy" is the centerpiece of Nashville.

really? He just oozes falsity (the actor, not the moment).

Exactly!!

Was it Robert Altman, Matthew Modine, or Andie McDowell who ruined Short Cuts?

it was me, sry

I don't think I dislike anyone in the movie (the actors, I mean, not the largely abhorrent characters they play), it just doesn't hang together. It needed a 'hub' for the disparate threads to wind around, e.g. the Nashville music scene. And no, the deus ex earthquake doesn't count.

The Lyle Lovett arc could've been a film unto itself imo.

ya the circuit in Nashville is smaller, it's easier to tie (almost) everyone together, in Short Cuts the constant interaction between storylines & the very astute editing achieves the same effect imo. having seen Magnolia years before Short Cuts, the impact of the earthquake was definitely dulled, but the awful CGI camera shaking more so than the device itself.