

Short Cuts
From two American masters comes a movie like no other
Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.
TMDB
7.2/10
723 votes
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Not rated yet
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- Status
- Released
- Budget
- $12M
- Box office
- $6.1M
- Language
- English
- suicide
- helicopter
- cheating
- loss of loved one
- fishing
- jazz singer or musician
- modern society
- cellist
- earthquake
- los angeles, california
- hit by a car
- multiple storylines
Top billed cast

















Behind the camera
Director
Writers
Music
Produced in
United States of America
Where to watch
All optionsAvailability for South Korea. Provided by JustWatch through the TMDB API.
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Videos
Release dates
United StatesUS
- TheatricalR1 Oct 1993
FranceFR
- TheatricalU5 Jan 1994
GermanyDE
- Theatrical166 Jan 1994
HungaryHU
- Theatrical12 May 1994
ItalyIT
- PremiereTVenice Film Festival4 Sept 1993
NetherlandsNL
- Theatrical1628 Apr 1994
- TV16Net 528 Jul 2012
PortugalPT
- TheatricalM/1218 Feb 1994
South KoreaKR
- Theatrical1824 Jun 1995
SpainES
- Theatrical1811 May 1994
Frequently asked questions
Short Cuts was released on 1 October 1993.
Audience reviews
3- T
tmdb39513728
2/4/2015
**tripping over ourselves** While there's no cinematic equivalent to the Mona Lisa, I submit a list of the top ten American movies of the last 50 years in no particular order: The _Godfather_, _Apocalypse Now_, _Raging Bull_, _Pulp Fiction_, _Blade Runner_, _Raiders of the Lost Ark_, _Mulholland Drive_, _Tree of Life_, _Boyhood_, _Short Cuts_. Whaaaaaa... _Short Cuts_? Is it even Altman's best work? Well, ev…
- F3/10
Filipe Manuel Neto
8/31/2022
**A huge cast full of familiar names, where each one does their job very well… but without commitment, without emotion and under a script so intricate that it leaves anyone lost.** I'm usually very critical of movies with bad or weak scripts. It's a recurring problem in cinema. This film, however, makes the opposite mistake: the script is excessive, it has so many characters and so many interconnected sub-plots th…
- B8/10
badelf
6/15/2026
Robert Altman's Short Cuts is a lovely polyptych of interconnected stories, inspired by Raymond Carver's short stories and his poem "Lemonade," which asks: what if this had happened, rather than that? What then? It's the question we all ask ourselves at some point in life, the endless branching paths of possibility, the sliding doors moment that changes everything or nothing. Altman weaves together lives in Los An…
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