USA: Director Robert Altman attends New york Premiere of his film 'Kansas city'

Record ID: 481116

  • Title: USA: Director Robert Altman attends New york Premiere of his film 'Kansas city'
  • Date: 5th August 1996
  • Summary: NEW YORK CITY, USA (RTV ) (AUGUST 5, 1996) EXTERIOR OF THE SONY THEATRE WHERE PREMIERE WAS HELD DIRECTOR ROBERT ALTMAN ARRIVING HARRY BELAFONTE WITH MEDIA BELAFONTE SAYING THE DEMANDS OF A ROLE LIKE THIS SENDS AN ARTIST INTO HIS INNER SELF IN A DEEP AND MEANINGFUL WAY IT WAS THE WAY TO GET A CHANCE TO TOUCH THAT PLACE WHERE YOU CAN GIVE IT ALL, THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED TO ME IN THIS PICTURE. (ENGLISH)
  • Embargoed: 20th August 1996 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA AND NEW YORK CITY, UNITED STATES
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVADIFBTNIERZYJWWLMHV976PDV6
  • Story Text: Director Robert Altman has attended the New York premiere of "Kansas City", a dark tale of two off-beat women embroiled in crime and corruption.
    Altman set the film, his 31st, in his birthplace Kansas City, during the time of his adolescence. Previewed at the Cannes film festival this year, the veteran director's work won widespread acclaim.
    The plot, which takes place over a 48-hour period, follows two off-centre characters Blondie O'Hara (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Carolyn Stilton (Miranda Richardson).
    All the characters are based on real people, with the exception of O'Hara.
    Blondie kidnaps Carolyn, a laudanaum-addicted wife of an advisor to President Roosevelt, in hope of exchanging her for her husband Johnny O'Hara (Dermot Mulroney), who has been captured by big-time gangster, killer and club-owner Seldom Seen (Harry Belafonte).
    The uneasy relationship between Leigh and her captive is framed against a famous jazz contest between tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, with a 14-year-old Charlie Parker in the audience.
    Both British actress Richardson and America's Leigh paid tribute to Altman's ability as a director. Richardson said Altman allowed them to contribute to, and interpret, the script.
    Critics have compared the film, which portrays a lawless world devoid of sympathy, to Altman's earlier study of depression-era criminality: "Thieves Like Us".
    But for Altman, the film was as much about jazz as the bleak crime underworld of Kansas City.
    "I for years have been trying to figure out how to get jazz into a film," he said. The actors became associated with the score as filming progressed.
    "For me, Harry Belafonte was a trumpet, the brass. The two girls were the reed instruments with their two tenor saxes," Altman said.
    In the live recording sessions, musicians played jazz music of the 1930s in an attempt to reproduce the club atmosphere of that era.
    "We are attempting to create the jazz in the time when it did have that vibrancy and that connection with popular culture," musician Joshua Redman said. However, the score assumed an inevitable contemporary sound.
    "Kansas City" premiered throughout the United States earlier this month.
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