Robert Altman

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  JAMES CAAN (actor): Bob was great. He was a wild man, but he was so far ahead of his time. He drove the sound department nuts. Everybody was wired. He was basically the first guy to do this—you would be at a party and hear three, four conversations at once. It was like real life, by God.

  So one night we’re working all night. We have a lunch break around midnight or one in the morning. He wanted to show us this little movie he did—The Party. They put up this stand-up screen, we sit down and we’re eating and it starts. Maybe halfway through it there is a shot of a girl coming in with a tray—she kind of turns to the camera and then she walks out. Five seconds go by—I scream, “Back that fucker up!”

  Bob goes, “What?”

  I say, “Just stop it, stop it!”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Just stop it, back it up. Please! Stop!”

  He does, and I go, “Who the fuck is that? Oh my God, is she gorgeous.”

  And he goes, “It’s my daughter.” “Oh God, I had no idea.”

  Well, it was his stepdaughter, Konni. We started dating. She was a really great girl.

  KONNI CORRIERE: Jimmy was wonderful, just so sweet. He would pick me up at UCLA—he would wear a letterman’s jacket and he would have a piece of licorice for me. He’d open up my textbooks and read in different dialects. He was just as charming as could be. We dated quite a while, both before and after my marriage.

  MICHAEL MURPHY: So in the movie we have a way we figure we can get Jimmy to the moon, but we haven’t got a way to get him back. So they shoot a shelter up on the lunar surface, they send Jim up, and he has to find the shelter and stay in it until we can get him down [laughs]. That was the idea of the movie. So Bob shoots all this, and at the end of the movie you see James Caan arrive on the face of the moon and he’s walking around and he finds the three Russians and they’re dead, the cosmonauts. And there’s a Russian flag there. So Jimmy takes out the American flag, he’s got it in his pack. Jimmy put the American flag under it or beneath it or to the side of it. And you see him start to walk off, and the camera pulls back, and you see the shelter, and he’s walking in the wrong direction, and that’s the end of the movie.

  Well, Jack Warner thought it was a Communist plot [laughs].

  Robert Altman, to Professor William Parrill, at Southeastern Louisiana University, April 14, 1974: I had a meeting with Mr. Warner, and he said, “I don’t like what you do. I call it fog on the lake.” Not understanding that, I accepted it. We shot the film, and we really tried to talk about this astronaut program in terms of real people rather than heroes. The film was shot on that level and to underplay the hardware and the suspense. Warner never saw it until about the time that it was finished and the film was just getting into assembly, first cut, and one night—I had gone home—and he, which he did quite a bit of, he called to look at the film. And then I got a call which said, “Don’t come in tomorrow because the guards won’t let you in the gate.” And he said, the quote was, “That fool has actors talking at the same time.”

  LORING MANDEL: As Bob was working on it, the talk about the film was very positive. I remember Bob calling me once and saying, “I’m getting invited to parties I never got invited to before. Everybody thinks this is going to be a terrific picture.” But Jack Warner was furious about the overlapping dialogue. So Bob was off the picture and Bill Conrad came on. Conrad did a little rewriting of the last part of the movie and reshot a little of it, and that’s the movie that came out. Before the movie was released I was brought to Hollywood to see a screening of it. I was really appalled at what happened at the end. I wanted to take my name off it but my agent convinced me that was a disastrous thing to do on a first solo-credit screenplay.

  MICHAEL MURPHY: So they take the picture away from Bob and they reshoot the ending. And Jimmy is walking towards the shelter and now the American flag is positioned above the Commie flag! [Laughs] I remember going to a screening of it. Bob wasn’t there. For a young guy, Jimmy Caan took no prisoners. He was a tough guy. And he stood up at the end of the thing, he said, “Well, you cut Altman right out of the goddamn movie.” He just really let them have it. Everybody sort of sat there in shocked silence. I thought it was great. Because that’s exactly what they had done. But nobody knew, of course, at the time, that M*A*S*H was crouching in the wings.

  JAMES CAAN: Bill Conrad took the picture away from him at the end. It was so comic book, so corny, and Bob is anything but corny. The original ending, you don’t know if he sees the beacon or if he’s going off the wrong way. Conrad said, “No, we can’t do that.” There was this whole bullshit with this toy mouse in my pocket. I spin the mouse and I head off in the direction of its ass or its nose or whatever it shows—obviously toward the beacon. I think they called us back without Bob, and that fat bastard Conrad called us back to do a day of shooting, with that spinning mouse thing. I remember that screening. They said, “Oh, we probably won’t use that ending.” You know how they say “Fuck you” in Hollywood, right? “Trust me.” I remember thinking about Bob when I saw what they did. It was his first real movie, so what is he going to do? I sent Conrad a ten-pound box of chocolates. He was such a big, fat guy. I think he got the message: “Here, have another chocolate.”

  Bob and I kind of stayed friends. Then Bob had this book he wanted to option. We got to talking, drinking of course, and I think he needed some stupid little amount of money—to buy a book was like seventy-five hundred bucks. I haven’t the faintest idea what the book was—I knew he liked it, and that was enough. Anyway, I loaned it to him. I gave it to him. Then this terrible thing happened. He was in between jobs, he was broke, and consequently when he saw me it was awkward. It was an unspoken thing. He never mentioned it again. Neither did I. His friendship was worth more than that. As time went on he started avoiding me because of the embarrassment of it. I never said a word about it until the day he died. After that when we saw each other we were friends, but it put something between us.

  Robert Altman, to David Thompson, from Altman on Altman: Actually, being fired from Countdown was great for me, because each time something like that happens, you get a battle scar and you know how to protect yourself in that situation again. It was the choice I had to make at that time in my career. Was I going to try to keep going in television? Why was I staying inside this bubble? Am I the artist here? And I made the only choice that was really available to me, because I would never have survived inside the system. I would have been chewed up and spat out.

  * * *

  That Cold Day in the Park (1969)

  Charles Champlin, review headlined “A Sick Character Gets Sicker,” the Los Angeles Times, June 26, 1969: Perish forbid every movie should have a message. But the movie which has nothing to convey to us beyond the sequence of its own events had better concoct some pretty special events or generate a very special atmosphere or else it is in trouble. Which brings us, shivering, to “That Cold Day in the Park”… a small, well-directed but still unsuccessful movie….[Sandy] Dennis is a sex-starved spinster who rescues [Michael] Burns from a rainswept park bench and sets him up in her spacious Vancouver apartment.

  Sandy Dennis searches for a prostitute for the boy she holds captive in her apartment in That Cold Day in the Park. At far left is Michael Murphy, playing the Rounder, who supplies girls for hire.

  GEORGE LITTO (agent): Everything was fine with me—everything was fine and flying. Then I heard from a social friend of mine. His name was Don Factor; he was the son of Max Factor. He told me he wanted to be in the movie business. And before Waldo Salt wrote Midnight Cowboy, I got Don to advance Waldo twenty-five thousand dollars, which was not a small amount of money in those days. Don wanted to do more things, and I went to a restaurant one night called Dolce Vita. I went to my booth and I looked over, and there were Bob and Kathryn and a group of people. I hadn’t seen him, it must be for over a year. I walked up behind him and I kissed him on the cheek.

  I said, “How are you?”

&nb
sp; He turned. “George,” he said, “I’m lousy.”

  I said, “Come on, how are things going?”

  He said, “Terrible.”

  I said, “You need an agent?”

  He said, “Yeah.”

  I said, “I’d like to be your agent.”

  The next day, he said he’s got this book called That Cold Day in the Park. He sent me the project and I said, “This is good.” I told him, “I want you to meet a friend of mine who wants to be in the film business. He’s a good guy, his name is Don Factor.”

  I put them together in a company called Factor Altman. Later on, I brought in a business-affairs guy to be their partner, to take care of the business because otherwise they bothered me too much. And I owned a piece of the company too, but I didn’t put my name on it. So we got going with Cold Day in the Park.

  DONALD FACTOR (producer): Before I made the deal with Bob I talked to a friend of my father’s who was an old-time agent. He said, “He’s a big talent, but keep away from him; he’s trouble.” That was the kind of advice I wouldn’t listen to in those days. Bob wasn’t very popular until he became a superstar himself.

  The two of us went off to England. I took him—Bob was broke. No one wanted to hire him. What had happened was, he wasn’t working, so we agreed we would make a little short together. It was called Pot au Feu. It was a jokey film about smoking pot, and it was a takeoff of a cooking show, only it explained rolling a joint instead of making a meal. It was a piece of therapy for us. It was great fun because it was still rather daring to admit you did that kind of thing. We shot it in sixteen millimeter and took a print of that with us to London and used that as a calling card. We hired a screening room in London and called everyone in the industry who might be of value to us. We had drinks and hors d’oeuvres and we kept running it over and over again, but we didn’t succeed in putting a deal together.

  We got along great, but I can remember one argument in London. I had rented a service flat in Mayfair, a two-bedroom affair. My girlfriend at the time, Vanessa Mitchell, and I were in one bedroom and he was in the other. One night he was rather drunk and we got into an argument and we were both rather pissed. It was a terrible argument and he ordered me out of the apartment. Of course I went, and when I got out into the street I realized, “Hey, I’m renting this place!” But most of our time together was very good. He fell out with almost everybody, but we never did fall out.

  ROBERT ALTMAN: One thing I remember about Don Factor is one of the great pot-smoking stories of all time. We were in Palm Springs.

  DONALD FACTOR: We came to an intersection with a red light. Bob was driving and we stopped. Chatting away, chatting away, and I said, “Why doesn’t that light change?”

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: Bob says, “God, that’s a long signal. Is it broken?” Finally, Don Factor says, “That’s not the signal! The signal is over there on the corner, and it’s green.”

  ROBERT ALTMAN: I’d been looking at a red light on the dashboard, thinking it was a traffic signal.

  DONALD FACTOR: It was the battery light. That was really being stoned. I don’t know how long we sat there, but it was wonderful.

  GEORGE LITTO: Factor and Altman were two very different guys, but they got along famously. Don Factor was very low-key, very intelligent, very sensitive, very unassuming, very wealthy, loved the adventure of being in the film business and he really had a high I.Q. for talent and taste. And he really liked Bob’s work. I got him together with Bob, and he could identify. He had the sensitivity and the brains. What he didn’t have is the backbone to put up with all the bullshit you have to put up with. That’s another side of the business; you got to be like Teflon to survive. But he was a terrific guy. So they got on great.

  Bob got Sandy Dennis interested in doing the movie. And Gillian Freeman was the writer. She had a reputation for The Leather Boys, a film that Sidney Furie did which got some distinction.

  GILLIAN FREEMAN (writer): I had a phone call sometime in March 1967 and a voice said, “You won’t know me, my name is Robert Altman, and I’m here with Donald Factor looking for a writer. Are you free to have lunch with us today?” Of course I said yes, and we met at L’Escargot, a restaurant in Soho that was—still is—a popular place for writers, publishers, film and TV producers, and various celebrities to meet. I felt that there was an immediate rapport between the three of us; both men were very laid-back and easy to talk to. Looking back, sartorially we epitomized the sixties. I was wearing a very short black coat cut like a man’s, with a velvet collar, and a black-and-white-check flat cap. Don Factor was in a turtleneck sweater and sports jacket and Bob was wearing a leather bomber jacket and also a rather British flat cap. They outlined to me the story of a novel, entitled That Cold Day in the Park, by Richard Miles, and seemed full of imaginative ideas, and I very much wanted to work with them. The story was about a lonely woman who, from her window overlooking a park, sees a boy sitting alone on a bench on a cold day. The boy appears mute and never speaks. She takes him in and becomes possessive about her “captive,” who sneaks out at night. Bob and Don appeared to look no further for a writer, and within two weeks I and my two daughters, Harriet and Matilda, aged nine and six, were on our way to L.A.

  Script sessions proceeded at Bob’s rented offices at 1334 Westwood Boulevard. We would talk each section of the story through in general terms, then in detail, before breaking for lunch at restaurants in Westwood. Then I would go off to my apartment for a couple of days and write up each scene we had discussed. Then we’d go through it, make any necessary changes, and discuss the next section. Don sat in on most meetings, occasionally making suggestions. Much of the money for the film came from his cosmetic inheritance from Max Factor. Bob ran showings of his previous films and TV work for me and I was impressed with the way he used the camera, with his atmospheric night shots, and by the way he made one conscious of the weather and general mise-en-scène. He was an easy and stimulating man to work with, and his concern with each scene was whether it seemed right for the story rather than what the film might gross.

  ROBERT ALTMAN: I sent that script to Ingrid Bergman, and she sent me back a note—she was rather insulted by that part. And I sent it also to Vanessa Redgrave. That’s how Sandy Dennis came up. She said, “Try her.” She read it and agreed to do it. It was just this story of this woman and this younger guy. I’ll tell you who I turned down for that part—Jack Nicholson. Jack wanted it—he came to my office and we talked about it. And I said, “Jack, I think you’re too old for it.”

  GEORGE LITTO: So we got Columbia interested. The film was supposed to take place in London originally. The park was Hyde Park. Again, they were close to a deal but couldn’t get it together. I flew over with Bob to try to get the deal made, and after several meetings with Columbia and other things, I said, “Bob, this isn’t going to work. I’ve been here for, whatever, ten days. I can’t spend any more time on this, and these guys are screwing you around. They’re screwing us around. They can’t make a decision. We’ve got to leave.”

  He said to me, “Well, I can’t pay my bills. I need five thousand dollars to get out of here.”

  I gave him the five thousand. And that night we went out to dinner. We ended up at the Colony Club, a gambling place. George Raft, I was very friendly with him, he was the maître d’ there, the “Mr. Lucky” of the Colony Club. Bob says, “I’m going to throw a little craps.” I told him to be careful. I’m talking, we’re drinking, we’re all having a good time, and I see a crowd at the table, and I look over and I see Bob rolling the dice. And I hear the crowd roar. I go over there and what I find out is he got permission to put five thousand dollars on the line and he crapped out. And I said, “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

  DONALD FACTOR: After London, Bob flew up to Canada and rang me up and said, “You’ve got to get up here right away.”

  GEORGE LITTO: We came back here and Bob had this idea of going to Vancouver, where they had no unions and the atmosphere was good. He co
uld make the picture for a price, three hundred fifty thousand or four hundred thousand. That movie would have cost a million in London, let’s say, with Sandy Dennis. She went along and we were able to get the deal made with her.

  DANFORD GREENE (film editor): When we did Cold Day, Bob found this wonderful house in West Vancouver, which I shared with Bob and Bob Eggenweiler, who we called Egg, who was a producer. We had a cook, a big Prussian woman. Anyway, it was a very family-oriented situation and we would talk about the picture at night and this woman would make dinner along with Egg, who loved to cook.

  One time, I had this girl over, and she got up and left early. I’m in the bedroom doing push-ups. Bob walks by, looks in, and says, “Danny, your girl is gone.” We had that kind of fun.

  They built this set on a big soundstage in West Vancouver, and Leon Ericksen built it. It was a set that was a whole interior of a very large apartment. He made it extra large so that Bob could get a camera into every place in that set. I learned so much from Bob—knowledge just fell off him onto me. I always loved the way he could walk into a set that he’d never been in, a place where you were going to shoot, and look around and in thirty seconds, if that, he’d say, “Okay, the camera goes here and we’ll put the tracks over there.” He just laid that shot out so fast.

  We used to watch a lot of the pro games and he would bet—you know, in those days he was betting five hundred dollars a game. That was a lot of dough then. He liked to gamble. He liked to live. Liked his Scotch and grass and good food.

  Dialogue from A Wedding:

  REVEREND DAVID RUTELEDGE (Played by Gerald Busby): Dr. Meecham, as a physician you should know the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

  Dr. JULES MEECHAM (Played by Howard Duff): You mean you don’t drink?

  REVEREND DAVID RUTELEDGE: No.