LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.- Filmmaker Robert Altman takes aim at the art world in his next ensemble film, to be titled “Paint” and to star Salma Hayek, with walk-ons expected from many contemporary art stars. Altman’s new project is supposed to be a meditation on the New York art scene. Robert Altman is the director of many famous movies such as: M*A*S*H, Nashville, Gosford Park, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Player, The Long Goodbye and Vincent & Theo, among other masterpieces. Altman’s roving, quasi-documentary approach to filming, and the "feeling of life" it creates, may be related to his having directed documentary films early in his career. His idiosyncratic take on established genres, and on narrative structures, may be a reaction to his also having worked for years within the strictures of series television.

Altman, who turns 79 next month, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and attended Jesuit schools before serving as a bomber pilot in World War II. After the war, he studied engineering at the University of Missouri. Altman took a job in his hometown as a director of "industrials", little film documentaries commissioned by businesses and public-service agencies. Meanwhile, he scraped together enough money to make The James Dean Story, a documentary about the famously causeless rebel, and The Delinquents, a low-budget exploitation flick about juvenile crime. Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, hired Altman to supervise a TV series called Suspicion and to direct episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.