How to diss the dead.
Robert Altman's been dead for nearly three years, and apparently the time for politeness is over. (Hey, it's longer than Heath Ledger got). Mitchel Zuckoff's "Robert Altman: An Oral Biography" hit shelves last Tuesday, a book built out of Altman's final interviews and the voices of his collaborators that doesn't skirt the fact that, however acclaimed he was as a filmmaker, Altman could be a real ***. Janet Maslin notes actor Michael Murphy's anecdote about how "Bob would make the best bloody mary I've ever tasted. Then he would stand up and make a speech, pretty much the same speech every night... 'No one in this room knows what this movie is about except me.' " Reviews have been generally respectful, with exception of a blind haymaker from veteran film writer Richard Schickel at the LA Times, who spends, oh, about a paragraph of his 939-word review actually talking about...
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