1980 Week: HealtH

          A tiresome ensemble piece blending conspiracies, politics, romance, and satire through the mechanism of interconnected storylines and a kaleidescopic soundtrack, Robert Altman’s HealtH comes across as Nashville Lite. At best, HealtH is a goofy comedy using the intrigue at a health-food convention as a means of spoofing the corruption of modern American politics. At worst, HealtH is a pretentious trifle from an overrated director repeating old tricks. It’s interesting that HealtH was released in 1980, because the film’s artistic and commercial failure neatly bookends the chapter in Altman’s career that began with the success of M*A*S*H exactly one decade earlier. Over the course of the ’70s, Altman made a number of fine films and just as many bad ones, cementing his reputation as an iconoclast who put together wonderful casts by offering the promise of loose work environments and unconventional material. Yet by the time Altman derailed with the twin 1980 misfires of HealtH and Popeye, his first run as a commercial director was over. It wouldn’t be until 1992’s The Player that Altman was able to assemble a cast as impressive as the one he gathered for HealtH.

          Set at a hotel in Florida, HealtH observes a convention at which the officers of a massive health-food organization gather to elect their new president. The leading candidates are Esther Brill  (Lauren Bacall), a pontificating 83-year-old virgin with narcolepsy; Isabelle Garnell (Glenda Jackson), an insufferable progressive who recites old Adlai Stevenson speeches whether or not anyone’s listening; Gloria Burbank (Carol Burnett), a neurotic political operative with White House connections; and Dr. Gil Gainey (Paul Dooley), a vitamin salesman using his “campaign” as a publicity stunt to hype his products. Also involved in the election are Gloria’s ex-husband, Harry Wolff (James Garner); dirty-tricks specialist Bobby Hammer (Henry Gibson); crazed cowboy Colonel Cody (Donald Moffatt); and real-life talk-show host Dick Cavett, who plays himself.

          The mosaic structure of the picture showcases bizarre behavior in a casual style. One gets the sense of Altman and his collaborators indulging their shared sense of humor, so the resulting film feels like a compendium of in-jokes. The actors are all so skilled that some of the gags almost connect, but the overall vibe is quite tiresome. Altman adds virtually nothing to the statements about democratic elections that he made in Nashville, and he seems disinterested in health-food culture beyond making a few judgmental digs. Not surprisingly, HealtH never found a major audience. Altman made the film as part of a multipicture deal with Fox, delivering his third dud in a row after A Perfect Couple and Quintet (both 1979), so Fox initially balked at releasing HealtH. Altman snuck the film into a few theaters during 1980, and the studio released the picture properly in 1982, when it tanked.

HealtH: FUNKY

The Shootist (1976)

          The Duke finally rode off into the sunset with this solemn but satisfying Western, which echoes the conclusion of star John Wayne’s film career through a storyline about an aging gunfighter looking for the right way to die. Although Wayne had been experimenting with possible final cinematic statements throughout the early ’70s—for instance, he was memorably martyred in the terrific 1970 adventure The Cowboys—it’s generally agreed that Wayne knew his health would prevent him from completing another film after The Shootist. Thus, the parallels between his offscreen and onscreen exits make the picture feel weightier than it might otherwise, since the film is actually rather gentle and talky.

          After a montage of clips from old Wayne movies is used to cleverly convert his various cowboy characterizations into episodes from the colorful life of his current character, John Bernard Books, the movie proper begins with Books’ arrival in Carson City at the tail end of the Wild West period. Aware that he’s not well, Books seeks an examination from a trusted physician—played, in a nice touch, by fellow cowboy-movie veteran Jimmy Stewart—and learns he’s got terminal cancer.

          Books rents a room from a graying widow, Bond Rogers (Lauren Bacall), whose twentysomething son, Gillom (Ron Howard), predictably regards Books with worshipful awe. As the leisurely plot unfolds, old friends and enemies gravitate toward Books, some trying to exploit him and some trying to settle old scores, so a major theme of the movie is that Books’ violent life has left him with few real emotional connections. (Although it explores them far less elegantly, The Shootist anticipates themes that Clint Eastwood later investigated in his own farewell to Westerns, 1992’s Unforgiven.)

         The story twists and turns in order to set up the inevitable final shootout, so the resolution of Books’ quandary about how to die won’t catch anyone by surprise. Nonetheless, the way the picture assembles great Old Hollywood faces, and juxtaposes them with newcomer Howard, basically works. And because director Don Siegel was a master at screen economy—lest we forget, he was Eastwood’s directorial mentor—The Shootist never wanders into the realms of preaching or sentimentality, two potential traps given the material. Instead, The Shootist is an exercise in Hollywood mythmaking, and therefore exactly the right way for the actor born Marion Robert Morrison to retire the larger-than-life screen persona he spent a lifetime investing with idealistic meaning.

The Shootist: GROOVY