Robert Altman

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  He said, “Have you turned down anything?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “I guess I could mortgage my house.”

  A few days later, he said, “I didn’t get the check but I’m going to make it work anyway.”

  When it came down to it he was a man of his word. He knew obviously it would be a big disappointment to me not to do that. From what I heard from others he was in some financial difficulty at the time. I think he was having some second thoughts because I think he expected it to be a big hit in New York, and it wasn’t. It didn’t do well in New York. The first two weeks it rained every night. Sleet and soaked. People coming to the theater saying, “Why did we come out on a night like this?”

  It was a huge departure. If he couldn’t get a studio film or raise money to do a film conventionally financed, he had to find a film he could finance himself. A one-man film, filmed on a college campus, using college kids in many important technical jobs, he could do this and still maintain his dignity. He could still be Robert Altman.

  ROBERT HARDERS: My point of view was probably very limited, especially in this early period. When I thought of Bob or was in the room with Bob, I was acutely aware of his accomplishments and honestly completely unaware of any career difficulties or unhappiness that he may have been experiencing. Bob gave us that first-meeting persona of his. It works. Let the myth do the talking. Just stand there. We’re going to fill it in. Why say anything? We’ve got a monologue running in our heads, so why should he risk mucking that up? I think he understood that very well. He knew how to use that kind of thing.

  PHILIP BAKER HALL: When it was announced in Variety that Bob was going to make a film of this play Secret Honor, he did receive a letter from the Nixon office. I’ve seen it, and to paraphrase it: “Dear Mr. Altman, I’m a great fan of your films and I have always been. I particularly like M*A*S*H. Sincerely, Richard Nixon.” Robert Altman was very proud of that letter—he took it to mean Nixon had seen the Variety announcement and he believed something damaging could happen to his reputation. And Nixon, in his way, would write a letter—like, “Don’t hurt me, I’m just a nice guy who likes you.” That’s what we take to be the subtext. It’s a good demonstration of the kind of odd cleverness of Nixon’s life and career. He’s saying one thing and trying to get a different result.

  Bob had a complicated perspective on Nixon. In certain ways I think he admired Nixon. I think he admired Nixon’s cleverness, his ingenuity, his ability to dance around the truth and to play with the facts. In other ways he thought he was a menace, a dangerous person to the Republic. A person who needed to artistically be whipped into shape.

  We filmed it at one of the women’s dormitories. They had a room for us off the set. It had two single beds, side by side. They would send us off there when they were relighting. Bob and I spent a lot of time there in the semidarkness, talking about the next scene or talking about life in general. It was very helpful to that part of the Secret Honor history. I remember the intimacy of it and the importance of it. One time, one of us was depressed about what had just been shot. There was maybe twenty-four inches between us. One of us reached out to console the other. We held hands. That was pretty unusual.

  BILL BUSHNELL: That picture gave Bob’s career a tremendous bounce. It didn’t pay off right away, but it did pay off down the road. First he went to Europe. And ironically, Philip never worked with him again.

  PHILIP BAKER HALL: He put me on the map in big-time features with Secret Honor. I was a working actor before that, but after that I became a special actor. I just regret that I couldn’t have done another film or two with him. He’s a great director. I have done like sixty features now, but I have always felt that my résumé is not complete because I didn’t get to do another feature with Altman. There you have it.

  CHAPTER 24

  “I Made This”

  *

  The Laundromat (1984; TV)

  Anne Tremblay, story headlined “Altman Makes a Cable Film Abroad,” The New York Times, January 20, 1985: What is Robert Altman doing in Paris directing a film set in a quintessentially American locale? “I find there’s nothing for me to do in America because of the kind of films they make there and the way they make them,” Mr. Altman said during a recent interview on the set of “The Laundromat,” an hour-long drama he is directing for Home Box Office. …

  The American director, whose feature films “M*A*S*H” and “Nashville” have attained cult stature, moved here last August and at least for the time being has no intention of working in the United States. …

  “Artistically, it’s just miserable. Everything’s based on commerce. A guy can be a rapist or a crook, yet if he has a lot of money he’s admired. But that system will fail.”

  DAVID LEVY (producer): His move to France? Most artists want two things. They want to do their work and they want to have an audience for that work. In saying “audience,” you’re also talking about a kind of acceptance, aren’t you? You’re talking about acceptance or appreciation of the work. The things that were being offered here and the things being done here just weren’t getting that acceptance and appreciation, and he was very much an icon over there. That audience is different from the audience here and they were very indulgent of and accepting of anything he would do. I think it was largely a case of, “Why not be where I’m wanted? Why not be where I’m appreciated?”

  Holding the .357 Magnum used to shoot up the motel and a pickup truck in Fool for Love

  He had a bit of the gypsy in his soul. He loved being on location and just going into a place and feeding off it, doing his thing and moving on. I think that was a part of it as well.

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: What drew Bob to Paris? He could get a deal. I only liked it because I knew it was temporary. I loved the city and all the monuments. Bob didn’t even notice; he didn’t care. He was just making a movie, you know? He was as comfortable there as he would have been anywhere. And his French was the worst. He would garble it out and they’d get it. It helped being Robert Altman.

  GARRY TRUDEAU: His moving to Paris, scaling down the size of the films, doing more modest undertakings, didn’t make them less serious as films. I think that there are a great many directors who went through periods where their pride prevented them from making certain kinds of films and they now deeply regret that.

  STEPHEN ALTMAN: After Secret Honor we went right to Paris and he did The Laundromat there. Then he left for Fool for Love, to shoot it in New Mexico, but he edited it in Paris and stayed there until after Beyond Therapy, when he got sick of it, which eventually everybody does, including the French.

  * * *

  Robert Altman Operas

  The Rake’s Progress (Stravinsky; 1983, University of Michigan; 1987, Opéra de Lille, France); McTeague (director and coauthor of libretto with composer William Bolcom; 1992, Lyric Opera of Chicago); A Wedding, The Opera (director and coauthor of libretto with Arnold Weinstein, composer William Bolcom; 2004, Lyric Opera of Chicago).

  * * *

  Fool for Love (1985)

  Roger Ebert, review in the Chicago Sun-Times, December 18, 1985: At the center of Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love” are two people whose hurts are so deep, whose angers are so real, that they can barely talk about what they really feel. … Robert Altman’s movie version of Shepard’s play stars Shepard himself, in a strong performance as Eddie. But he doesn’t dominate the story as much as you might think. The central performance in the movie is Kim Basinger’s as May. Although she has played sexpots before—indeed has specialized in them—nothing prepared me for the dimensions she was able to find in this one…. Part of her impact probably is because the director is Altman. Few other major directors are more interested in women. In his films such as “Thieves Like Us,” “Three Women” and “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” he has shown women in setting very similar to this one: unfulfilled women, conscious of the waste of their lives, living in backwaters where their primary pastime is to
await the decisions of men.

  * * *

  SAM SHEPARD (writer/actor/director): I didn’t know Bob before this. He was originally interested in my play, and at that time he was doing a lot of adaptations. At the time I wasn’t that turned on about making Fool for Love into a movie. And if I was, I thought Ed Harris should do it because he was so great in the play. Bob kept insisting that I do it, and then he wanted Jessica [Lange] to do it, too. Then Jessica backed out at the last minute and I went ahead and did it.

  I still think it was a mistake on my part. I thought Ed was better. He had more of a clean attack on the character than I did. I think I was too attached to the material. I didn’t have enough distance from it.

  I directed the play. A play isn’t designed to be a movie, it’s designed to be a play. I don’t think the movie works nearly as well as it did onstage. But many people liked it. I think Bob did a commendable job. But in retrospect I don’t think it works. I think a lot of people who really enjoyed the film never saw the play.

  What didn’t work? The physicality of it. Onstage it was huge. It had a frightening physical reality to it, because of the actors, because of the intensity and the presence of the actors. On film it comes across as kind of a quaint little Western tale of two people lost in a motel room. Know what I mean? It doesn’t have the power. In the theater it was right in front of your face, it was so intense it was kind of scary.

  I don’t regret making the movie but I’ve certainly learned from it [laughs]. I personally don’t want to try to transform a play into a movie. If somebody else wants to take it and mess with it and do the screenplay and all that, I wouldn’t object to it. But I don’t have any ambitions to turn these plays into movies. And I’ve never had any success with it. There’s never been any of my plays that was turned into a movie that was worth a shit. A lot of people have tried it and one after another they don’t work.

  It was weird because he had told me I was going to be involved in the editing process and this and that, and he kind of took the film and went to Paris and cut the whole thing there and that was it. I was disappointed in that. I didn’t have anything to say about that. I don’t blame him really. Why should an actor be involved in the editing? But he did abscond with it and made his own thing. I can understand he probably got it done quicker, which was probably his objective. It was quite a while before I saw him again.

  I did an interview—it’s one of those things that smartens you up. I finished the interview. I finished it! As we were walking out of the building, the reporter for Esquire said offhandedly, “What do you think of Woody Allen and Bob Altman as directors of actors?” And I said, “Neither one of them knows anything about acting.” Which is true! I still stand by that! It’s true. They’re great filmmakers. Each of them in their own way is a fantastic, unique, extraordinary filmmaker. But they don’t know anything about actors. About acting. About how to talk to actors, about how to discuss the premise of the character, the situation of the character, how to find the character. I was spoiled to a large extent by working in the theater, by working with great directors who do know actors. People who know actors inside and out. Who have dialogue with them, who spend weeks in rehearsal. You don’t have that luxury in film.

  These guys want to make a movie. And they’re great casting guys. They find the absolute right actors for the job. Those actors know how to do it and they know that they know how to do it. But there’s no dialogue, there no discussion. It’s, “Let’s shoot it.” They’re making a movie! Their focus is the camera, the lights, the set, what’s going to be on film. They’re not interested in how the actor is approaching the character and what he’s trying to investigate or anything like that. Neither one of them would sit down with an actor for six to eight weeks working on a role. There’s no way. Altman would pull his hair out [laughs]. And I love Bob. It certainly wasn’t meant as an insult. It was meant as a perception, mainly having to do with the difference between film and theater. Simple as that.

  * * *

  O.C. and Stiggs (Released in 1987; filmed in 1983)

  Janet Maslin, review in The New York Times, March 18, 1988: “O. C. and Stiggs” rambles a lot and doesn’t have a full supply of the Altman alchemy, but it’s certainly a lively, colorful satire; its notion of American artificiality runs so deep that the film begins and ends at a man-made surfing beach in the middle of the desert.

  * * *

  PETER NEWMAN (producer): When we made O.C. and Stiggs, basically, no studios would work with Bob at that point. I was made aware that Freddie Fields used to be his agent, and Freddie had just been appointed the head of MGM. I called Freddie Fields. He said, “Yes, we’ll approve Altman if he can do it for eight million or under, and [if] he promises to shoot the script.” Within a month or two we were in Phoenix in the middle of the summer at a hundred and twenty degrees, shooting a film I don’t think he really wanted to make. But there were financial considerations.

  I felt a lot of anger from Bob. I think he was unhappy making the movie, and I think he was angry that I would even be talking to the studio. He said, “We really shouldn’t be talking to those people—not even giving them a shooting schedule.” I got the wrath of Bob for trying to figure out what a producer does.

  I still can’t even describe what that movie is. I don’t know if he was trying to do a parody of teen movies that were popular at the time, or what.

  When we showed it to MGM, MGM said, “We’ve got a huge problem here.” That’s one of the few instances where Bob didn’t want to hang around and fight the fight. He didn’t finish that movie. The studio finished that movie.

  I think this guy had given out his share of abuse, but he certainly had been abused by a lot of big corporations, and he was always certain that it was coming. I wish I had understood that when I saw him going through making this movie.

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: I remember one summer, he was really depressed at the time, and I’d try to think of things to do with two boys and one granddaughter, Signe. This was right after O.C. and Stiggs. We were all stuck in a one-bedroom apartment in the Delmonico. Something had fallen through, and there were no jobs in sight. I got everybody roller skates and then I got remote-control cars for Matthew so that he could run them up and down the hall. I just tried to think of all the different things that we could do. Finally Bob got pissed off with the whole thing. We got a friend of ours, Gillian Freeman in London, to look in the paper and see if she could find an inexpensive place—we had no money—so that we could go to London for a month. She found this place in Earls Court, which is not your greatest neighborhood. And it was a funny little place. And the boys went to Amsterdam on their own. And Signe and Bob and I went to Paris on the hovercraft.

  He had been put on the wagon and he wasn’t smoking dope then. But anyway, so then he decided that we would take the Queen Elizabeth back. With what money? Who knows? I stopped asking. I didn’t want to know. And so we did, but he had a horrible time because he wasn’t drinking. They had a casino but it was about as big as this table. The kids ended up having a good time, a lot of disco stuff and all that. And I was reading Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins, so that got me through it. It was sort of fun. As soon as we got in the range of telephones he was okay—this was a five-day crossing and you don’t get to the phones till like the end of the third day. And then he came to life.

  * * *

  Keeping Busy

  Basements—1987 (TV); Beyond Therapy—1987; Aria, segment called “Les Boréades”—1987 (film); The Dumb Waiter—1987 (TV); The Room—1987 (TV); The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial—1988 (TV).

  Robert Altman, to Sally Ogle Davis, story headlined “Robert Altman Reluctantly Tackles a Classic,” the Globe and Mail, May 7, 1988: I can’t get anything made at all in this community [Hollywood]. I don’t even have an agent. I don’t bother to go to talk to them. I won’t even send a piece of material out to them because I just know it’s pointless.

  PETER GALLAGHER: Caine Mutiny Court-Martial was my
first experience working with Bob, but the very first time I saw Bob was at Tufts University, where I was an undergraduate and he came to speak. It was around Buffalo Bill time. He was wearing a fringe jacket and I remember he looked like Buffalo Bill. He was all balls-to-the-wall and I thought, “Well, that guy seems like he’s awful stuck up. Who does he think he is up there in his big tassels?” That was sort of the scornful, outsider’s view of a sophomore or junior in college who was just assuming he wouldn’t be able to do what he wanted with his life, and it was all going to be miserable. Of course, what I would have seen had I been a little wiser was somebody who was having a great time and loved what he did and made no bones about it. Little did I know that years later, in terms of my approach to film, he’d be about one of the most important people in my life.

  Caine Mutiny was extraordinary for me for a lot of reasons. Bob was looking for this part of Jack Challee and nobody wanted to play it, thank God, which is how I’ve gotten most of my parts, I think. Nobody wanted to play it because he had all the lines and no laughs. No payoffs. It was all just grunt work. And so I got a call to come in—it was from Scotty Bushnell, who was working with Bob then—and we sat down.

  So I sat down, it was at the old office just above the Regency, at the Delmonico, and I went in there and it was winterish, kind of late in the day. He said, “I could really see you doing this part. I’d like you to think about that. Would you like a beer?”

  What? Huh? Would you like a beer? “Sure.”

  He left the room and I said to Scotty, “Did he just offer me a job?” I was so moved that he respected me enough to not just arbitrarily make me jump through hoops just for the sake of it. I thought, “I don’t care what kind of part this guy wants me to play, I’ll walk on broken glass for this guy.” He treated me with respect for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long, as opposed to the rounds and rounds and rounds of, “I don’t know, try it on one foot.”