Altman repeatedly examines communities through the fragmentation of the desperate
and irreconcilable lives of their individuals, giving a prismatic portrait of an individualistic society. He has refused to create heroes and has consistently poked holes in the way such heroes are manufactured, whether by politics, the press, or cinema itself. Altman's portraits of particular places thus turn back on themselves and become self-portraits of the culture industry, documentary moving pictures about themselves as fiction. Altman's upending of Hollywood cinema form seems to be his way of staying in exile from Hollywood even while it embraces him.