“There’s no difference between the Academy and the National Review, and nobody knows who those people are. They’re just a bunch of head waiters.”

—Robert Altman, from Altman on Altman, ed. David Thompson (forthcoming from Faber and Faber)

Last night at the 78th Academy Awards ceremony the Establishment fed a lion and he didn’t bite. Robert Altman graciously accepted his Honorary Oscar, the award slated for aged filmmakers whose industry colleagues have never otherwise recognized their work.

It would not have been precisely out of character for 81-year-old Altman to have lashed out at any hand offering a chintzy little gold statuette with his name on it, much in the manner that an insurance office will give a chunky timepiece to a senior claims adjuster upon his retirement. Altman ranting in a tuxedo would in fact have resembled a scene in The Company (2003) in which ballet director Malcolm McDowell, speaking at a formal banquet given in his honor, slanders the entire room. But Altman hasn’t retired (A Prairie Home Companion premieres next week at the South by Southwest Festival). Since 1970, when M*A*S*H propelled him from TV obscurity (and was in turn adapted into a hit TV show) he hasn’t stopped, and for as long as he has been around he has had a nasty reputation for publicly bad-mouthing the big studios. And the actors and the crews he’s worked with, and the screenwriters too.

Hollywood’s lords, who were ridiculed openly in The Player, have never taken Altman’s punches lying down at poolside. Indeed, the way in which they return fire brings to mind those gunned down birds dropping leadenly onto the shoulders of Gosford Park’s hunting party. This counter attack has been supported by most film reviewers. To them Altman’s over the hill, a grump, churning out despicable, mean-spirited movies showing nothing except the worst in people.