Short Cuts (1993)

The short stories of Pacific Northwest author Raymond Carver are not generally thought to be cinematic in nature. A typical Carver story deals with a telling shift in the small world of personal experience. There are no car chases or explosions, seldom is a gun wielded, and corpses appear only sporadically. And yet director Robert Altman perceived a unifying line of inquiry. Short Cuts (1993) strings together a series of interlocking vignettes that explore and comfort the quieter agonies of day-to-day existence. One sign of Altman’s deft and masterly touch with sensitive material is that a slew of A-list celebrity actresses show off everything from nip slip to flaring red muff during the jumps of Short Cuts. On the other end of the skin spectrum, the actors aren’t as willing to remove their clothes. Fred Ward teases us with a side shot of his rear as he goes from shower to under the sheets of his bed. Eighties singing sensation Huey Lewis shows up with a distant look at his dink as he drains it in the drink during a fishing trip. Ho-hum.