History Film / ShortCuts

The film was nominated for an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward for Best Director and won a Special Golden Globe for its ensemble.

The film was nominated for an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward for Best Director and won a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay.

* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: Aubrey Bell, the salesman who shows up at Betty Weathers' house to give her the free carpet cleaning she won in a prize drawing, thinks nothing of Stormy cutting every piece of furniture or clothing in the house in half, simply remarking that in his line of work, he's "seen about everything there is to see." He simply clears the destroyed furniture off to the sides of the room and shampoos the carpet while Stormy cuts Betty's lingerie to ribbons.

* SpiritualSuccessor:
** To ''{{Film/Nashville}}'', which Robert Altman acknowledged when he was pitching the project to the studios. It even shares two cast members with ''Nashville'': Creator/LilyTomlin and Robert [=DoQui=] (Wade in ''Nashville'', and the father of the patient in the room next to Casey Finnigan here).
** Good luck finding anything written about ''{{Film/Magnolia}}'' or ''{{Film/Crash}}'' that ''doesn't'' compare them to ''Short Cuts''.

* EpicMovie: With its large cast, its ambitious attempt to paint a portrait of life in America, and its run time of 3 hours and 8 minutes, it can be considered an example.

* FemalesAreMoreInnocent: Almost all characters displaying an immoral behavior are male.

* GetOut: Betty demands Stormy to leave their aparment. He does but [[spoiler:comes back later to destroy it]].

** Stuart grills his wife over her [[KissingUnderTheInfluence one-night-stand while drunk]].

''Short Cuts'' is a 1993 comedy-drama film directed by Creator/RobertAltman and based on nine short stories ("Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?", "Jerry and Molly and Sam", "Neighbors", "They're Not Your Husband", "Collectors", "Tell the Women We're Going", "So Much Water So Close to Home", "Vitamins", and "A Small, Good Thing") and a poem ("Lemonade") written by Raymond Carver. The film is a HyperlinkStory following 23 "ordinary" people, including eight couples, a mother and daughter, two fishermen, a grandfather, a baker, and a little kid, who go through their ordinary lives. Each story thread has loose connections with some of the others; several end in death, and most are [[LeftHanging unresolved at the end]].

** As part of his plan to seduce one of the mountain bikers, Barbara, Bill notes that Griffith Park (specifically, the [[BronsonCanyonAndCaves Bronson Canyon]] area) is the site of the caves that posed as the entrance to the Batcave in the 1960s ''Series/Batman1966'' series, and offers to take her there.

** As part of his plan to seduce one of the mountain bikers, Barbara, Bill notes that Griffith Park (specifically, the Bronson Canyon area) is the site of the caves that posed as the entrance to the Batcave in the 1960s ''Series/Batman1966'' series, and offers to take her there.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Twenty-three major characters (by the film's definition of "major"), including the Finnigans (plus their son Casey and Howard's father), the Wymans, the Kanes, the Kaisers, the Bushes, the Shepards, the Piggots, the Weathers, the Trainers, Andy Bitkower, and Stuart Kane's two fishing buddies Gordon and Vern.

** Ralph and Marian Wyman from "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" have two children; in the film, they have none. The original story follows Ralph after the revelation of Marian's affair as he goes to a bar and ends up losing all the money he has on him in first a poker game and then a mugging; in the film, Marian's confession happens while they are waiting for the Kanes to arrive, and he simply spends the evening needling her over it. Condensing their story arc in this way allows Ralph and Marian more screentime to play supporting roles in the Finnigans' story and the Shepards' story, respectively, as well as making it easier to merge their story with that of the Kanes in the film's final third.

* HarmfulToMinors:
** When Gene and Sherri Shepard's daughter enters her parents' room during an intimate session, Gene tries to pretend he just fell asleep on Sherri.
** Averted with Lois Kaiser's sexual phone calls while feeding the kids or changing the baby's diaper.

* PleasePutSomeClothesOn: Ralph twice deals with this. The first time, he walks in on his wife Marian's sister Sherri posing for a nude portrait, and immediately has trouble stringing a sentence together, to the amusement of Marian and Sherri. Later, he finally gets Marian to tell him the truth about her drunken liaison with fellow artist Mitch Anderson as she removes, washes, and blow dries the skirt she just spilled a drink on - [[PantsFree revealing that she isn't wearing underwear.]]

* {{Crossover}}: Robert Altman saw Raymond Carver's short stories as parts of a whole, and so the screenplay is a massive crossover between them:
** Ralph and Marian from "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" have dinner with Stuart and Claire from "So Much Water So Close to Home".
** Ralph is one of the doctors treating the son of Howard and Ann from "A Small, Good Thing".
** Marian's sister (and occasional artist's model) is Sherri, the film version of Betty from "Jerry and Molly and Sam".
** Stuart and his fishing buddies are the diner customers whom Earl overhears making lewd remarks toward Doreen from "They're Not Your Husband", who was driving the car that hit Howard and Ann's son.
** Doreen's daughter Honey is the equivalent of Arlene Miller from "Neighbors".
** Bill Bush is a CompositeCharacter of Bill Miller from "Neighbors" and Bill Jamison from "Tell the Women We're Going", so he both housesits with his wife for a more affluent couple in their building and pursues two teenage girls with Jerry even though both men are married.
** Jerry from "Tell the Women We're Going" is married to Lois, the equivalent of Patti from "Vitamins"; Howard and Ann from "A Small, Good Thing" are among the customers of his pool cleaning business.
** Betty Weathers, the film's version of Al's lover Jill from "Jerry and Molly and Sam", is going through a messy divorce from Stormy, the counterpart of "Mr. Slater" from "Collectors"; early in the film, Stormy visits the bakery from "A Small, Good Thing" to buy a birthday cake for Betty.

* HyperlinkStory: Each of the nine subplots intersects, sometimes only for a moment, with at least four or five of the others. Just to give a few examples:
** In the opening sequence, the TV audience for Howard's editorial on the medfly invasion includes the Kaisers and the Shepards, while the audience for Zoe's chamber concert includes the Wymans and the Kanes.

* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: When Betty and Chad return home, Chad barely seems to notice the fact that every piece of furniture in his parents' living room has been completely destroyed except his grandmother's clock, his Tinkertoy model, and enough of the television to leave it functional. He is far more interested in Aubrey Bell's business card wedged in his model and the episode of ''Captain Planet'' currently on television.

* WeirdnessCensor: Aubrey Bell, the salesman who shows up at Betty Weathers' house to give her the free carpet cleaning she won in a prize drawing, thinks nothing of Stormy cutting every piece of furniture or clothing in the house in half, simply remarking that in his line of work, he's "seen about everything there is to see." He simply clears the destroyed furniture off to the sides of the room and shampoos the carpet while Stormy cuts Betty's lingerie to ribbons.

* WrongNameOutburst: When Wally drops Betty and Chad off at their house after their weekend away, Chad shouts, "'Bye, Gene!" Betty hastily corrects him to "Wally".

* PantsFree: While arguing with Ralph over her honesty regarding her indiscretion with Mitch Anderson, Marian Wyman spills a glass of wine on her skirt. She hurries into the kitchen to wash the stain out, and after a few moments removes her skirt. It isn't until she emerges from behind the kitchen counter to run a blow dryer over the skirt that both Ralph and the audience notice she isn't wearing underwear.

* ComicallySmallBribe: Bill and Honey's neighbours, Jim and Harriet, take them out for drinks at the jazz club at which Tess Trainer performs in exchange for feeding their fish for a month while they are away. Bill uses this lopsided exchange to justify voyeuristically looking through their belongings (including their "adult literature") and having sex with Honey on their bed.

* InfantImmortality: [[spoiler:Subverted when Casey dies from his injuries just as he seems about to wake up from his coma]].

Marian's sister Sherri (Creator/MadeleineStowe) is married to highway patrolman Gene Shepard (Creator/TimRobbins); she is aware of his many extramarital affairs, but seems to enjoy listening to the far-fetched lies he tells to cover them up. Frustrated by the barking of the family dog, Suzy, Gene puts him in the compartment on the side of his motorcycle and leaves him by the side of the road, but has a change of heart when he sees how upset his children are at Suzy's disappearance. One of Gene's lovers is Betty Weathers (Creator/FrancesMcDormand), who is in the process of divorcing her husband, Stormy (Creator/PeterGallagher), one of the pilots spraying for medflies. When she leaves with their young son Chad for a weekend with yet another boyfriend, airline pilot Wally (Creator/CharlesRocket), Stormy lets himself into their house and proceeds to take "division of assets" to its logical extreme by chainsawing every piece of furniture in the house in half except his mother's grandfather clock and Chad's television.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/short_cuts_american_poster_1.jpg]]

''Short Cuts'' is a 1993 film directed by Creator/RobertAltman and based off of nine short stories ("Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?", "Jerry and Molly and Sam", "Neighbors", "They're Not Your Husband", "Collectors", "Tell the Women We're Going", "So Much Water So Close to Home", "Vitamins", and "A Small, Good Thing") and a poem ("Lemonade") written by Raymond Carver. The film is a HyperlinkStory following 23 "ordinary" people, including eight couples, a mother and daughter, two fishermen, a grandfather, a baker, and a little kid, who go through their ordinary lives. Each story thread has loose connections with some of the others; several end in death, and most are [[LeftHanging unresolved at the end]].

As the film opens, helicopters are spraying pesticide to combat a medfly infestation in Greater Los Angeles, during which we are introduced to the main characters. KCAL-TV pundit Howard Finnigan (Creator/BruceDavison) and his wife Ann (Creator/AndieMacDowell) have ordered an expensive custom birthday cake from baker Andy Bitkower (Lyle Lovett) for their son Casey, but when he is hit by a car on his way to school and later goes into a coma, he is rushed to hospital, and the cake is forgotten, causing the oblivious but enraged Bitkower to start leaving abusive messages on the Finnigans' answering machine. In the hospital, Howard has an awkward reunion with his father Paul (Creator/JackLemmon), whom he has not seen since his parents divorced nearly thirty years earlier.

The driver of the car that hit Casey, waitress Doreen Piggot (Creator/LilyTomlin), is in an on-off marriage with alcoholic limo driver Earl (Music/TomWaits), whom she thinks may have molested Honey (Lili Taylor), her daughter from a previous marriage. Honey's husband Bill Bush (Creator/RobertDowneyJr) is studying to be a make-up artist, and when another couple in their apartment building, Jim and Harriet Stone, ask them to housesit for them for a month, Bill takes the opportunity to voyeuristically look through their belongings. The Bushes' friend Jerry Kaiser (Creator/ChrisPenn) is the Finnigans' pool cleaner; his wife Lois (Creator/JenniferJasonLeigh) operates a phone sex line out of their home, indulging her customers' desires while changing diapers (to the frustration of Jerry, who wonders why she never talks like that to him).

As the film opens, helicopters are spraying pesticide to combat a medfly infestation in Greater Los Angeles, during which we are introduced to the main characters. KCAL-TV pundit Howard Finnigan (Bruce Davison) and his wife Ann (Andie [=MacDowell=]) have ordered an expensive custom birthday cake from baker Andy Bitkower (Lyle Lovett) for their son Casey, but when he is hit by a car on his way to school and later goes into a coma, he is rushed to hospital, and the cake is forgotten, causing the oblivious but enraged Bitkower to start leaving abusive messages on the Finnigans' answering machine. In the hospital, Howard has an awkward reunion with his father Paul (Creator/JackLemmon), whom he has not seen since his parents divorced nearly thirty years earlier.

Next door to the Finnigans are jazz singer Tess Trainer (Annie Ross) and her cellist daughter Zoe (Lori Singer); relations between them are difficult due to Tess' alcoholism and Zoe's growing depression. At a concert given by Zoe's chamber ensemble attended by Creator/AlexTrebek and his mother, the audience includes hospital doctor Ralph Wyman (Creator/MatthewModine) and his artist wife Marian (Creator/JulianneMoore). They strike up a conversation with the couple sitting next to them, unemployed salesman Stuart Kane (Fred Ward) and his party clown wife Claire (Anne Archer); the Wymans spontaneously invite the Kanes to dinner the following Sunday, with Stuart promising to bring the best catch from his upcoming fishing weekend. The Wymans' marriage is strained due to an adulterous affair Marian had some years earlier, while the Kanes' marriage is tested when Stuart and his fishing buddies Gordon Johnson (Buck Henry) and Vern Miller (Huey Lewis) discover a dead body on their trip and wait until they return three days later to inform the police, to Claire's disgust.

Marian's sister Sherri (Madeleine Stowe) is married to highway patrolman Gene Shepard (Creator/TimRobbins); she is aware of his many extramarital affairs, but seems to enjoy listening to the far-fetched lies he tells to cover them up. Frustrated by the barking of the family dog, Suzy, Gene puts him in the compartment on the side of his motorcycle and leaves him by the side of the road, but has a change of heart when he sees how upset his children are at Suzy's disappearance. One of Gene's lovers is Betty Weathers (Creator/FrancesMcDormand), who is in the process of divorcing her husband, Stormy (Peter Gallagher), one of the pilots spraying for medflies. When she leaves with their young son Chad for a weekend with yet another boyfriend, airline pilot Wally, Stormy lets himself into their house and proceeds to take "division of assets" to its logical extreme by chainsawing every piece of furniture in the house in half except his mother's grandfather clock and Chad's television.

The driver of the car that hit Casey, waitress Doreen Piggot (Creator/LilyTomlin), is in an on-off marriage with alcoholic limo driver Earl (Music/TomWaits), whom she thinks may have molested Honey (Lili Taylor), her daughter from a previous marriage. Honey's husband Bill Bush (Creator/RobertDowneyJr) is studying to be a make-up artist, and when another couple in their apartment building, Jim and Harriet Stone, ask them to housesit for them for a month, Bill takes the opportunity to voyeuristically look through their belongings. The Bushes' friend Jerry Kaiser (Chris Penn) is the Finnigans' pool cleaner; his wife Lois (Creator/JenniferJasonLeigh) operates a phone sex line out of their home, indulging her customers' desires while changing diapers (to the frustration of Jerry, who wonders why she never talks like that to him).

* YourCheatingHeart:
** Marian admits to Ralph that she had a drunken liaison with a fellow artist named Mitchell Anderson three years earlier. Ralph has suspected this all along; he does not take the confirmation of his suspicions well and spends their dinner with the Kanes sniping at her for it.
--->''(after Ralph has won yet another ''Jeopardy!'' game)''\\
'''Marian:''' Are you cheating, Ralph?\\
'''Ralph:''' No Marian, you cheat, remember?\\
''(later, as Marian passes the role of "Creator/AlexTrebek" to Ralph)''\\
'''Ralph:''' Does Alex Trebek cheat?
** Gene is a serial adulterer, to the point that Sherri no longer cares. Betty Weathers is one of his girlfriends, but when she tells him an obvious lie about going to Lake Tahoe to see her "half-stepsister" Bunny (she is actually going away with Wally, her other boyfriend) and he arrives at her house to find Stormy's car outside and sees Stormy's silhouette through the window as he destroys everything he can get his chainsaw on, Gene throws a rock through the window in a rage and goes back to Sherri (just as she predicted).
** Howard became estranged from his father Paul when, after the former was rushed to hospital as a child, his mother went to break the news to Paul and found him in bed with her sister Olla. Paul insists that it was a one-off and that Olla claimed that it was a long-term affair to break up their marriage, but Howard clearly doesn't believe him.
** While Bill and Honey are on a picnic with Jerry, Lois, and their children, Bill takes an interest in two young female mountain bikers who nearly crash into Jerry's van while they are laying out the picnic, and he suggests he and Jerry try to seduce them. Bill seems to be making some progress with one of the girls when [[spoiler:the emotionally unstable Jerry suddenly smashes the other girl's head with a rock, killing her]].

** As part of his plan to seduce one of the mountain bikers, Barbara, Bill notes that Griffith Park (specifically, the Bronson Canyon area) is the site of the caves that posed as the entrance to the Batcave in the 1960s ''Series/{{Batman}}'' series, and offers to take her there.

* ALessonLearnedTooWell: Casey refuses to let Doreen take him to get help after she hits him because his parents told him to never ride in a stranger's car. Also it's suggested that he's ashamed to have his parents find out about the accident because he didn't look both ways before he crossed the street.

The film was nominated for an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward for Best Director and won a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay. It currently holds a [[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/short_cuts/ 94% on RottenTomatoes.]]

Next door to the Finnigans are jazz singer Tess Trainer (Annie Ross) and her cellist daughter Zoe (Lori Singer); relations between them are difficult due to Tess' alcoholism and Zoe's growing depression. At a concert given by Zoe's chamber ensemble attended by Creator/AlexTrebek and his mother, the audience includes hospital doctor Ralph Wyman (Matthew Modine) and his artist wife Marian (Creator/JulianneMoore). They strike up a conversation with the couple sitting next to them, unemployed salesman Stuart Kane (Fred Ward) and his party clown wife Claire (Anne Archer); the Wymans spontaneously invite the Kanes to dinner the following Sunday, with Stuart promising to bring the best catch from his upcoming fishing weekend. The Wymans' marriage is strained due to an adulterous affair Marian had some years earlier, while the Kanes' marriage is tested when Stuart and his fishing buddies Gordon Johnson (Buck Henry) and Vern Miller (Huey Lewis) discover a dead body on their trip and wait until they return three days later to inform the police, to Claire's disgust.

Marian's sister Sherri (Madeleine Stowe) is married to highway patrolman Gene Shepard (Tim Robbins); she is aware of his many extramarital affairs, but seems to enjoy listening to the far-fetched lies he tells to cover them up. Frustrated by the barking of the family dog, Suzy, Gene puts him in the compartment on the side of his motorcycle and leaves him by the side of the road, but has a change of heart when he sees how upset his children are at Suzy's disappearance. One of Gene's lovers is Betty Weathers (Creator/FrancesMcDormand), who is in the process of divorcing her husband, Stormy (Peter Gallagher), one of the pilots spraying for medflies. When she leaves with their young son Chad for a weekend with yet another boyfriend, airline pilot Wally, Stormy lets himself into their house and proceeds to take "division of assets" to its logical extreme by chainsawing every piece of furniture in the house in half except his mother's grandfather clock and Chad's television.