On Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the 81 year old director died of complications due to cancer.

The man has plenty of achievements to mull over in the afterlife, such five Oscar-nominations for MASH, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts and Gosford Park; and he was awarded the DGA lifetime achievement award in 1994. When the filmmaker received an honorary Academy Award earlier this year, he announced that he had a heart transplant in the mid-1990s. So we’re talking about a tough old bird here.

The Kansas City native broke into feature films quite late by most standards as he was 45 when MASH was released, but had a prolific career in television and industrial films before that.

Altman was Hollywood’s whipping boy for awhile, due to his constant criticism of how the industry was run (he was the total rebel), then an alleged alcohol and drug problem that didn’t help with his belligerence. But to his credit, the man never stopped working... be it theater, films or television. Then he came back into the golden light in the late '80s with HBO's acclaimed limited series Tanner '88 (a satire on the presidential election process). It was followed by such critically praised films as The Player, Short Cuts, Gosford Park and his last film, A Prairie Home Companion, that came out this year. It should be said that even during the dark days, the stars that he worked with were always fiercely loyal to the man… like Cher and Meryl Streep.

A great man who always did his own thing and wasn’t afraid to bite the glitzy Hollywood hand that fed him is gone… but his memory can live on by making donations in his name to the Cedars-Sinai Heart & Lung Transplant Unit HERE. We also suggest a double feature this weekend of MASH and Popeye...