Panel Discussion
07. Jan, 2011 
2 Comments
ever see Robert Altman‘s 1979 post-apocalyptic borefest Quintet [trailer] starring Paul Newman? you know, the flick about some ice age survivors playing an incompressible board game to the death????? didn’t think so. and although it was a critical and of course commercial failure for Altman, we hactually found it to have more merit than stinkin badges than most of his other movies!
anywho, the coolest thing about it all is that it was filmed on the empty and unused grounds of the 67 Expo in Montreal! Mont5reals!!!! Cause nothing sez decayed future like a 60s vision of the future left to rot for 10 years!!! anywho, in Altman’s own words…
‘About ten years ago I was shooting the interiors of my film Quintet in Montreal, in the remains of Expo ’67, and there were these forty-four glass panels – photomurals – eighteen feet tall on top of the seven-story structure that was one of the theme pavilions.‘
‘The thing was about to be razed, so I quickly made an arrangement with the government that I could salvage those panels. I took them down, at no small expense I must say, and shipped them to California, where I had a film studio called Lion’s Gate. I put them up in a projection room there and in the lobby. And when I sold that company in 1981, I sold the building and everything in it, except those panels – I had a great affection for them. I shipped them to New York, and I stored them in a warehouse there until I could find an apartment good enough for them and with a high enough ceiling to accommodate them.‘
guess what? HE DID!!! a 2 bedroom duplex on Manhattan’s Upper West Side!! HAMMMMAZINGNESS!!!!!!
read the entire article + mo pics: Architectural Digest, March 1990 [pdf] via IMDb
what’s the story with the panels today? no clue, since Altman has passed on, but we would assume they’re still at the same apartment, no? maybe that’s a PANEL DISCUSSION for another time!
