Short Cuts

Altman brings together a group of stories by Raymond Carver, stories that were not otherwise connected in any way. They do not have the same characters, are not set in a specific place, and are not even found originally in the same anthology or collection. There is a book Short Cuts now that the movie has been made, but this is a collection which brings together the stories used in the film, taking them from their original place in a number of collections by Raymond Carver and putting them together in written form for the first time. The connections between the stories relate to theme, for most of Carver's stories deal with people trying to achieve some small success in their lives and failing. The incidents are small--a man tries to lose a dog because his family likes it and he does not; a man on a fishing trip finds a dead body and tells his wife about it; and so on.

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again until she finally gets it right. The characters seem especially to be California types, and other characters taken from Carver have been reshaped to fit in the California milieu. The importance of Los Angeles as a character becomes one of the means by which the various stores are connected, though it is a rather artificial union in some cases. In the opening scenes, the helicopters flying overhead move from one area of the city to the next, and each of the characters introduced is first reacting to the sound of the helicopters overhead and to the spraying taking place. That spraying alone creates a sense of doom and social disintegration, and it is clear that the people on the ground do not like or want the spraying but are being given no choice in the matter by the never-seen authorities who have made the decision. This creates a visual representation of the sort of social malaise and uncertainty that Carver does embody in his stories, the sense on the part of his characters that much of their lives are out of their control and that there is a doom hanging over them in the urban and suburban landscapes in which they work and reside. The uncertainties of life are somehow magnified in Los Angeles, a city shown here as
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Los Angeles, Raymond Carver, Short Cuts, Robert Altman, Altman's Carver, Readers Carver's, los angeles, short cuts, Random House, Line Features, , los angeles central, raymond carver, characters live, brings stories, characters story, characters carver, carver's stories, stories film, dead body,
Approximate Word count = 1422
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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