How did Short Cuts adapt Raymond Carver’s short stories?

In his 1993 film Short Cuts, director Robert Altman adapted nine short stories by Raymond Carver by utilizing a character-driven, kaleidoscopic structure.1

Rather than presenting the stories in isolation, Altman wove the narratives together into an ambitious, three-hour-plus film that mirrored the ensemble-based approach he previously employed in his 1975 film Nashville. This technique allowed the disparate lives and struggles of Carver’s blue-collar characters—who often grapple with broken marriages, financial instability, and failed careers—to intersect within a single cinematic framework.12