Robert Altman

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  BOB BALABAN: Bob knew enough about what he didn’t know to make sure that Julian was on the set every second. Of course, by the end of it he wanted to kill Julian, which was no surprise to me. Julian would say to Bob, “See that maid in the distance? She’s coming down the stairs. She wouldn’t be carrying coffee. There would be no toast on her plate. This is eleven o’clock, she would have hard-boiled eggs. …”

  JULIAN FELLOWES: The standard thing in Hollywood is to direct the camera with a movement on the scene. The dog goes down the walk and the camera follows the dog, and it leads to the body. With Bob, the dog goes one way and the camera goes the other. He creates this illusion in the mind of the spectator that they are directing the camera. It becomes an autonomous being that is moving around the room. Because you are the viewer, you take responsibility for the image. You are given the impression that you are exploring this film.

  DAVID LEVY: Bob would give a listener the impression that he would show up on a set with a bunch of actors and they’d stir a pot and a movie would come out. Julian comes from the place where he’ll tell you that exactly one line of Gosford was unscripted, Maggie Smith’s line “Difficult color, green,” talking about Claudie Blakley’s frock. All I’ll say is those are both revisionist histories.

  As someone who rode to the set every morning with Bob in the car, I fought hard for Julian’s script. But Bob would scribble in the morning and try and change things and Julian worked very, very hard to beat the deadline that morning of trying to take whatever changes there were and incorporate them officially and formally and get those to be the words the actors did say on the day. So I understand what he means when he says every line was scripted save one. But it doesn’t give the most accurate impression. But it’s more accurate than Bob’s assessment of we made it up as we went along.

  BOB BALABAN: Certainly Gosford Park was not an improvised movie, but you got the feeling when you saw it that it was an improvised movie. There were enough sections that were improvised so that the actors really got in the skins of the people they were playing, even if they weren’t playing terribly well-developed characters.

  DAVID LEVY: I can tell you one thing that was spontaneous. We were at lunch one day. Helen Mirren had come in for hair, makeup, and wardrobe tests. Eileen Atkins had already been working in the picture. Eileen was in costume because she was shooting that day. And Helen was there in some form of costume and hair and makeup, not fully developed at that point. I was sitting at one table, Bob was a table away from me, and the women were off to one side at yet another table. And I saw his eyes kind of get big and he called me over. He starts pointing at them. “They’re sisters. They’re sisters.”

  He thought a large part of that picture’s success and appeal in terms of audience was because of that cathartic moment at the end that the sisters had. And you know, it’s something that I don’t think we’d have seen from the Bob of twenty years prior. Well, he might have thought it, but he wouldn’t have said it. I think it really comes as close to wrapping a package and tying it up with a bow as he would ever, ever do.

  JULIAN FELLOWES: Those two actresses ad-libbed that. But for the most part of the film that was not so. This was very difficult for Bob in a way. I think he wanted to be an auteur director and it was hard for him to accept the importance of script. That was just difficult for him.

  * * *

  Rick Lyman, story headlined “‘A Beautiful Mind’ Wins Four Golden Globes,” The New York Times, January 21, 2002: One of the evening’s bigger surprises, and the source of the longest ovation, was Robert Altman’s winning the best director award for “Gosford Park,” a murder mystery set on an English country estate. “Gosford Park” was widely seen as a solid return to form for one of the legendary American directors of the 1970’s.

  BOB BALABAN: The Academy Award thing mattered, if only financially. If it did win Best Picture, that was going to be another twenty-five million. It had already done enormously well. So it was very pressured. It lasted a long time and it went on and there was a lot of dirty fighting during it, which happens in Academy Award things. Trying to dig up things you said and what you did. In Bob’s case it was easy to dig up things he had said.

  JULIAN FELLOWES: I think it was unfair that I won the Oscar and Bob didn’t. I love Ron Howard and thought Beautiful Mind was a very good movie. But quite honestly I don’t think it was quite as iconic a movie as Gosford. I think it was a very difficult time. I don’t know about smear campaigns. I think that Bob misjudged the public mood about 9/11. For me, I was an Englishman. It seemed to me a terrible atrocity that had been visited on the United States and I felt very, very sorry for the people involved in it and sorry that it happened.

  Bob was a very passionate political man. He had all sorts of feelings about American foreign policy. They were informed, literate opinions. He wasn’t a rattling drum. He didn’t understand that America wasn’t yet ready to hear his reasoned opinions.

  We were in Paris together and doing one of those junket things. We were together on the platform, and—”Monsieur Altman, que pensezvous de 9/11?” And he came up with an impolitic answer. At the end of it, he turned to me and said, “Oh God, I think I can taste foot again.”

  I said to him, “It’s just too soon. It’s like walking into a maternity ward and saying, ‘What’s the matter with its ears?’“

  Robert Altman quoted by the Associated Press in stories published October 18, 2001: The movies set the pattern, and these people have copied the movies. Nobody would have thought to commit such an atrocity unless they’d seen it in a movie. … How dare we continue to show this kind of mass destruction in movies? I just believe we created this atmosphere and taught them how to do it.

  Jack Valenti, quoted in The Daily News (New York), October 19, 2001: That’s a giant leap from movies to Osama Bin Laden.

  BOB BALABAN: There was a lot of buildup and a lot of lead-in and there was this smear campaign going on. I’m not sure if Robert was aware of the smear campaign. He didn’t talk about it ever that I heard. But he probably knew.

  It would have just been politic for him to shut up during the Academy campaign, but then, you wouldn’t be Robert Altman if you were politic. If anything, when he came up against authority, instead of pacifying, it made Bob want to strike out. It was like flashing a red cape at a bull.

  JULIAN FELLOWES: That was the man. If someone said, “Bob, could you tone it down a bit?” Well, he wasn’t a big toner downer.

  My own belief is that if 9/11 had not happened, the following March he would have won the Oscar.

  BOB BALABAN: He was quite adorable the night of the awards. It was great how all the filmmakers and all the creative people weren’t in a competition. They were just happy to be with people they respected. It was really nice. But you focus so much on winning, winning, winning. And that’s so not what Bob would ever be about, you know? I’m not saying he would throw the race, but Bob would want there to be one giant thing where everybody won something. It didn’t appeal to his socialist nature too much, declaring winners. But he was fine during the award.

  Soon after, Bob called us all and said, “We’re having a losers’ party. Come to my house.” And he was giddy. I think it was that we all had a reason to be together and to affirm our friendship. Because in a way, us all not winning together—well, Julian won, so in a way that made him persona non grata. But in a way it was a bond, having all gone through this amazing experience with this movie that people adored so much and then not winning anything. I think it almost made it more special. In a way. Because it didn’t even have the seal of approval from those silly people who don’t mean anything.

  * * *

  The Company (2003)

  Roger Ebert, review in the Chicago Sun-Times, December 24, 2003: Why did it take me so long to see what was right there in front of my face—that “The Company” is the closest that Robert Altman has come to making an autobiographical film? I’ve known him since 1970, have been on the sets of many of h
is films, had more than a drink with him in the old days and know that this movie reflects exactly the way he works—how he assembles cast, story and location and plunges in up to his elbows, stirring the pot. With Altman, a screenplay is not only a game plan but a diversionary tactic, to distract the actors (and characters) while Altman sees what they’ve got. “The Company” involves a year in the life of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, during which some careers are born, others die, romance glows uncertainly, a new project begins as a mess and improbably starts to work, and there is never enough money. … “The Company” is his film about the creative process itself, and we see that ballet, like the movies, is a collaborative art form in which muddle and magic conspire, and everything depends on that most fragile of instruments, the human body.

  Neve Campbell and Malcolm McDowell in The Company.

  * * *

  NEVE CAMPBELL (actress and producer): I’d been a dancer most of my childhood and teenage life and moved into acting because I had a lot of injuries. I always had an idea in mind that there had never been a dance film that portrayed the world of dance in a realistic light. I didn’t want to do the typical narrative film about one dancer who wants to make it and does.

  I thought Barbara Turner, as a screenwriter, was very good at creating worlds—she does a lot of research. Over a period of about four years Barbara would go to Chicago to interview the dancers and basically ended up with hundreds of pages of conversations. We were throwing around names of directors—Barbara had worked with Bob in the past—and as soon as Bob’s name came up we knew that he would be perfect.

  BARBARA TURNER (screenwriter/actress/producer): I sent him the script mainly because I knew he would be the only person who would understand it. Because it was really about the dancers; it’s really about them and it wasn’t linear and it was all over the place. It was a year in their lives, basically.

  One of the things he said to me was, “Now, Barbara, I want you to know that this is your script and it’s wonderful, but it has to be my movie.”

  No bells went off yet. “I understand that, Bob, blah, blah, blah,” I said.

  So we get there and we start working. The script was long, and he said it has to be cut. Which I cut. He said, “What I want you to do is to take your ten favorite scenes, and make a list of them, because what’s important to you is important to me.”

  And I did it. And he didn’t shoot one of them. So I realized, “That’s what he meant by it’s got to be his movie.”

  It was painful but it was funny at the same time.

  NEVE CAMPBELL: We knew even going in—not a lot of people are going to be interested in this. He would make it anyway. He was interested in it. That was enough for him, and maybe other people would become interested by seeing it.

  Originally, Bob expressed some concern about the fact that he didn’t know anything about dance, and he needed to be shown why the film should be made. We started flying to New York and he just asked me a lot about dance—why this film could be important and what it was like to be a dancer. I think the more I talked about the dance world and what sacrifices dancers make, the more he identified with it. Bob was very similar to dancers in that he’s an amazing artist, he didn’t do many things for commercial value, and he never made as much money as he could have if he had sold out in any way. So I think he related.

  BARBARA TURNER: To the dancers, he was already a god when he walked on the set. He treated them with such respect, just the way he treats actors. He’s amazing and respectful. They could just feel love pouring all over them.

  ROBERT ALTMAN: I’d walk into the studio and there would be these beautiful girls with their legs spread apart, up in the air, and they’d think nothing of it. They’d call out, “Hi, Mr. A!” It made me feel young and old at the same time.

  NEVE CAMPBELL: It’s true—for dancers it’s your tool, you almost forget how normal people behave with their bodies. I don’t think Bob minded at all [laughs].

  MALCOLM MCDOWELL: He called me and said, “This young kid, Neve Campbell, she’s brought me a script about dance. Can you dance?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you don’t have to.”

  He just loved these dancers. Fell in love with them and what they do—their dedication and their athleticism and artistry. And it was just wonderful to see him working with them.

  And I remember my first day on the thing. We were rehearsing—the dancers were rehearsing in an outside theater. And I had to come on and, I don’t know, do something.

  And Bob sees me. “Mal!” I went over. And he says, “You got the scene?”

  And I said, “Yeah, absolutely, I got it.”

  And he said, “Forget it.”

  I knew this was coming. I knew it was coming. He said, “Call the company together and inspire them.”

  Well, I figured that’s a week’s work. An hour later we had it in the can. I don’t know what I said. I have no idea.

  NEVE CAMPBELL: I love that it’s a Robert Altman film. I like the fact that it doesn’t tell you how to feel. It lets you make up your own mind about things. It’s exactly what I envisioned and exactly what I wanted in the film. I said that to Bob. “I don’t know how you’ve done it, but you’ve done exactly what I wanted to happen.”

  He said, “Well, I just listened.”

  I don’t think there are many people who could have done that, who would have listened to another artist and known how to do it.

  I would say Bob is the coolest person I met in my whole life. He wasn’t an old-school cowboy. Besides, I don’t know any eighty-year-old who could smoke as much pot as he could and still function.

  CHAPTER 30

  Fatherhood II

  *

  JERRY WALSH: The influence of Kathryn on him in terms of their children really began to have an effect. He extended himself for his children in his later years in a way that he hadn’t before.

  PETER GALLAGHER: Bobby was an operator on The O.C., so I’d see Bobby all the time and I’d do impressions of Bob saying, “Cut! Cut!” Bobby in a way reminds you so much of Bob. I was on the phone with Bob a week or two weeks before he died, and he said, “How’s Bobby doing?” I said, “You’d be so proud of Bobby. He’s doing an awesome job. He’s such an important part of this whole team.” There was a softness and a naked kind of love in the way he said it. I don’t know that he would have allowed himself such vulnerability earlier in his life.

  STEPHEN ALTMAN: He mellowed in the last, I don’t know, ten, fifteen years of his life, perceptibly. Everybody was like, “Oh my God, what a change!” But he had to stop drinking. I think the alcohol didn’t really settle with him correctly.

  After he mellowed, it got very good. We were collaborators, and once I got my act together, we started being friends and enjoying each other’s company. I learned how to play backgammon, and that was his favorite thing. I would roll his joints for him and so I wasn’t the longhaired slob that he was embarrassed to be seen with. But even with all that, the collaboration and the trust and the “What do you think, Stevie?,” he always did things his way, no matter what. I still think he always kind of thought of me as a kid running around in diapers at the same time.

  I remember him pushing my oldest son in the stroller, and it was just like, “Oh, this is fun.” You know, walking with the wife in the Tuileries and strolling along and him being the granddad. Of course I said something rude like, “Oh, is that the first time you ever did that?” And he’s like, “Yes, it is.” But we were all good-natured about it.

  With son and favorite camera operator Robert (Bobby) Reed Altman

  MICHAEL ALTMAN: He certainly mellowed a lot. He used to be a tyrant, but he became a rather amiable character towards the end. He became very enamored of his family in the last ten years of his life, and that was because they wouldn’t go away. He just kind of grew attached to everybody. And you know it kind of got bigger. But the five of us kids—the boys and Konni—early on, kind of like created our own family unit for lac
k of any other one. It was the only semblance of family that we had. And I’m not saying that with any kind of remorse or anything like that, it’s just the way it was. It was fine. Me and Steve grew up with our mom and my stepdad and the summer vacations and holidays were out with my dad—you know, swimming pools and movie stars. And then the rest of the time it was refried beans and pot roast, which was great. We didn’t know the difference. Basically, you know, there’s the same amount of laughter and tears in both households, right?

  The last few years we would have these get-togethers and I would catch him sitting in the corner just looking at everybody with this grin on his face. And he would say something like, “Look what I made.” It was like one of his better movies. And that’s kind of how he looked at it. He became very enamored of the whole drama that he lived in. Like at the end of his life he became aware that he was in his own movie.

  Kathryn and Robert Altman on the red carpet at the Berlin Film Festival in 2006 (above) and at a gala to honor Jack Lemmon, in 1993

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: In the last ten years I think he realized how he’d been as a father. I wish he could have been a little more involved, but every time he had a chance he would play with them. They had their warm periods with him and memorable family games and funny songs. We had a couple of camping-out things. We did as much as you could do, living with a genius who was making a picture every second.

  ROBERT ALTMAN: Looking back, I have great guilt about my lack of attention to my own children. I don’t think I did well by my own children, who I think I had a responsibility to. I don’t think I lived up to that responsibility. I think I was too busy looking after me. Kathryn and I talk about it now.

  To keep the marriage together I’d take the family with me where I went on location. And consequently these kids were in different schools, and we sent them away to school, and they went to schools in Canada, and none of them went to college. Because the minute they were old enough to hold an apple box they were working. Consequently none of them are really supporting themselves, and it’s sad. And the sadness is that this is my fault. Yet I don’t know how I could have changed it. I was—what I was doing—was much more important than that. To me.