I just finished watching Gosford Park last night and I loved it. I tried watching it when it came out and couldn’t get very far due to the difficult to understand dialogue, but something about it stuck in my mind and I always knew I would try again one day. I’m glad I did.
My question is: the credits say it was written by xyz, based on an idea by someone and Robert Altman. Does anyone know what the idea was? It couldn’t have been “let’s make a murder mystery” as that idea was not incredibly important to the film or particularly original. I was thinking something along the lines of exploring English aristocracy in the interwar period or maybe even something as simple as “let’s film a party with natural dialogue.”
Guesses are welcome, but please label them as such. What I’m really interested in is if he ever explicitly mentioned this in an interview or something.
This might be what you’re looking for. Though the way Altman usually worked, I would guess that like 75% of his movies could have said “Idea by Robert Altman” if that is all there is to it. I don’t know exactly all the details. Hope this helps though. It is a fantastic movie by the by, and while not even one of my five favourite Altman films, definitely a step above 99% of movies out there.
Altmann denies having read Agatha Christie, who wrote many murder mysteries (including ten Little Indians) mostly set in England in the past with butlers, parlour maids, under-footmen and nobility.
However there have been several films of her books, so perhaps he picked up ideas from those.
There was also a UK TV series ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’, which covers the same master/servant relationships as Gosford Park.
Bob Balaban is the guy who shares the idea credit with Altman for Gosford Park, he was also the producer of the film, and the actor who plays the American director who is visiting and offending everyone with his American-ness and monopolizing the phone. The idea was to make an English-style murder mystery. My take on it is that the genius of the idea is not so much the mystery, but the notion that he wanted to work with Altman and specifically tried to come up with an idea that would work well as an Altman film.
