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Robert Altman
By Alain Silver and Gary Walkow
Director Robert Altman. (Photo: © 2000 Gary Walkow)
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Legendary iconoclastic director Robert Altman has built his career on breaking through traditional cinematic barriers. As such he has achieved star status in the world of independent-minded filmmakers. Recently, director Gary Walkow and UPM/AD Alain Silver sat down with Altman to discuss his extensive career, his methods and his latest film, Dr. T and the Women.
As you look back on your career, what's helped you endure as a director?
I think too many people feel there's something consistent about what this job of director is, that the mechanics are the same for everybody. They're not. Who am I to say, "It ought to be done this way," if somebody else does it just as well another way. I am sure we all do basically the same thing:
you have a problem, you solve it.
I think I learned to avoid a lot of problems by seeing so many bad movies. People ask me what director influenced me the most, and I answer, "I don't know their names because mainly I'd see a bad movie and I'd remark, 'Well, I've got to be sure and not do that.'" I never wanted to paint like Ingmar Bergman or Fellini or David Lean or John Huston. These were the people that turned me inward, made me realize there was an art form going on and movies were not just a manufacturing thing. So I set to work, and I worked constantly. I just didn't make a lot of popular, commercial films. If everything is judged on money, then success is how much money you make. I don't look at it that way. True, the more money a film makes, the easier it is for me to do my next job; but that doesn't mean the film's any better.
Didn't your craft have something to do with the successes?
Craft is very important, a big part of it. But I don't think your craft improves. I don't think your art improves. There have been some retrospectives of my work recently. M*A*S*H* is 30 years old now and Nashville is 25; and I've gone back and seen these films. I still think they're terrific. So I haven't gotten any better. I won't get better. I got more facile, more efficient, I learned how to do things and achieve what I want more effortlessly. There's a big danger, though, that if you get too facile, you lose the art.
Do you think there's an antipathy between art films and commercial pictures, between independent filmmaking and the studios?
Yes. It's as if the studios were selling shoes and the artists making gloves. So if you want to get it financed, you present some material and say you'll make it into a shoe. Then you make a glove, and let them sell it as if it were a shoe. So there has to be a certain amount of "hustle." Sometimes I write "fake" scripts. Then I actually do the picture, and it's different from the script. Sometimes a lot, sometimes just a little bit. If I'm meeting with somebody who is going to put the money up for the film, and he or she asks, "Is this going to have action in it?" "Oh, you bet. We're going to have lots of it, this is really going to be exciting." But what I mean by action and what they mean by action may be quite different. Sometimes what they have in mind and what the picture is going to be are really quite different.
Is that where some of the art is for you, in taking the script and filtering it as you see it?
A script is nothing more than a blueprint. I know a lot of writers go crazy about this, but the writer just makes the blueprint. Like a singer and a song. Take one song and have five different singers perform it. Four of them may be mediocre, bad, and you throw them out. But for one you say, "This is brilliant." It's simpler if you can put things in a category and say, "Oh, it's the writing that did this. This is a great writer." Simpler but not true. In the kind of films that I make, the actors are more creators than the writers.
What is your casting process? Do you read a lot of people?
Rarely. It's my failing that, if I read a lot of people, I can't make up my mind. I've got a project just now starting. It's an ensemble cast, a large cast; but if some gifted actor that doesn't fit comes in and says, "Oh, I want to work in this picture. Is there a part?" "Well, no, but we'll write one. We can take this part and change it. Then you can have it." I came up with the idea, so I kind of know where any project is going; but I may not have an idea of how big this should be, how long that should be, what color something else should be. All the details, which are the interesting things about the project, are done by the individuals that I bring in to do them.
So what is the process when you're actually shooting?
In many cases, we'll shoot a scene and I'll think, "God, that's great." And even though I don't want any changes whatsoever, I may want to see it again. I say, "That's good, but let's do another one." And the actors may ask, "What do you want us to change?" And my answer is "Nothing. I just want to see it again."
So you sometimes ask for another take because what you have is good but maybe you'll get something different that's even better?
Well, yes. Why should I say, "That's exactly what I want, and that's going to be it." I don't know exactly what I want. Of course, you adapt to the particular actors. I had a situation in McCabe and Mrs. Miller with Julie Christie and Warren Beatty. With Warren, on the first take with film actually going through the camera, he was just putting his toe in the water. He would barely put anything into the scene. For Julie Christie the best take on her was the first time she did it. We'd do another take and her performance would come down a little bit. Warren would allow himself to get more into it. Where do I draw the line? You learn this through experience with each actor. In the end, you have your own judgment and rely on that. My main concern with actors is making them comfortable, giving them as much space as possible, because I don't understand acting. I can't act. I have no idea how they do it. And I'm just amazed at what they do.
Have you ever had a circumstance where despite your best casting efforts you ended up with the wrong actor and had to make a change?
I don't believe I have ever replaced an actor, except as a producer. That director said to me, "I can't work with this guy. Get rid of him." So I fired him. But I have never felt that I've made a mistake in casting. Sometimes I have to make it work; but if you just take somebody out of a project, you leave chaos. You just can't put somebody into that same slot and make it not chaotic. You might put another actor into one part, and he's great, but now an actor in this part is not doing so good. You have to start all over again.
What is your process like on a typical shooting day or the night before? Do you come on the set with shot lists?
No, no, only if we have some special equipment or some reason for a shot list. Normally, we'll just bring in the actors in the morning - or whenever it is we're shooting - and I'll just get them on the set and say, "Let's walk this." Maybe I'll adjust slightly: "No, don't go over to that. I want to be on this side of the room." And we block it and shoot it.
When do you decide what shots you need to cover a scene?
After I've shot the main scene.
So you shoot a master without any preconceived idea of how you're going to cover it?
Pretty much. In most cases the only reason I do coverage is if I know I'm going to go to a very intense moment, and I need a real big close-up at a certain point. So I'll shoot the whole scene. Then I'll put the camera on each actor, and I'll shoot the whole scene. But I don't go in and just do pieces. Sometimes with the master of this scene, I'll think, "Wow, it tells the story great. But where's my escape hatch? Suppose I have to edit this down? Suppose I want to cut the middle out of the scene. What do I do?" This is the reason I do so many ensemble pieces, because I always know that I can cut away to another actor or to the scene that's going on next door and then come back. I like to see things. If I establish something, I just shoot a scene with five people in this room and then from a full shot slowly move in, slowly move in, move in the whole way until I end up tight on someone or something. Then I'll pan or pull back and come in on something else; I don't know how I'm going to edit it but I know I've given myself some escape hatches. In McCabe and Mrs. Miller and some other pictures, the camera was moving all the time with whatever the action was. But there was no pre-planning on that. It was the style. When you get all of the creative elements in, and you start to do it, the style dictates itself by the elements that you've chosen. They tend to lead you in a certain direction.
Was that true, then, of the opening shot in The Player?
Altman during the filming of Vincent & Theo. ©1990 Hemdale Film Corporation
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Well, no, the opening shot of The Player, I rehearsed that. But it was not written. It was improvised and the actors didn't do the same thing each time. They did similar things. But that was a conceit. It was showing off visually because I wanted to say this is what this picture is about. So we rehearsed it on one day, and then shot on the next.
The opening scene of Dr. T and the Women, in the doctor's office, that's 41Ž2, five minutes long. In that scene,
I think we had 26 actors. We rehearsed that one day, and the crew kind
of worked at the same time, lit it, took a wall out where we had to, etc. And then we came in the next day and shot it and kept shooting it again over
six days. All the versions were a little bit different, so one is better in this
and the other one's better here... But eventually the thing is, just pick one.
So all you've done up to the point when you start editing is gather raw material. Sometimes it goes together smooth as silk, sometimes a bit rougher. With Dr. T, from our first cut, I think just six minutes came out from what you see now, so hardly any changes whatsoever, minuscule changes.
What about music? In McCabe and Mrs. Miller, for instance, did you have those songs in mind before the film?
Yes, but my take with music on every film I've done is either I have a very clear idea of exactly what the music's going to be or I don't have a clue.
And if I don't know, I just have to wait until something discloses itself. Rarely do I plan on having an ordinary music score. Long before I made McCabe,
the editor and another friend of mine, four of us, had a house together;
and when we would get through shooting and come back home, we'd put on this Leonard Cohen album, which we all loved. But when I came to
do McCabe, neither Leonard Cohen nor his music ever entered my conscious mind. I never thought of him again.
We finished the shooting and I didn't know what I was going to do for music. I just knew I didn't want a score. I
had a fiddle player in the cast, so I got certain cues from that. I found one
of those old music boxes with the
big metal disks that we put in the whorehouse. Then I went to Paris
and at some person's house one night,
I walked in and that Leonard Cohen album was playing and I thought, "That's my film." I came back to
him, and we put that music in, and
it fit like a glove. But I think that
was subliminally in my mind all the time.
Do you preview your assemblies?
I start showing films to people who know about it or who were involved in it. I show them first. I try to look at the stuff through the backs of somebody else's head. And we just keep adding more virgins to that group. If the scene doesn't work for people like them, something's wrong with it usually.
What is the best part and the worst part of directing?
The best part is the collaboration; and the worst part is the responsibility for other people's pain. By that I mean actors are treated badly by the press; and it really hurts them. I mean it's amazing to me how they expose themselves like that.
Do you feel a similar sense of exposure yourself?
No, I don't have any problems with that. It's very painful when somebody doesn't like your picture. These things are like children. You spend, on most of them, nine to 12 months - and some much more than that - and then people just don't like it. There are a couple of critics that just hate my work. I know that when they see Dr. T, they're going to pan it. I make them angry. But maybe that tells me I'm doing good, because at least I get their attention.
Based on your feelings about actors and collaboration, what do you think of the auteur theory of filmmaking? Is the director the author of the film, the creator of its vision?
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Well, pretty much. I'm the one that decides. I do have the vision of how I want this thing to look, how I'm going to present it; but there's no such thing as doing it alone. I think the auteur concept countered the tradition in American films of a producer who could turn around and fire the director in the middle of a project, hire
somebody else, and say, "I want it done this way." Or even just ordering the director to reshoot something or cut something else. So when you don't
tolerate that, I guess you're an auteur. You're protecting the artistic package, which is your obligation to the actors and the others who have worked
with you; or else you've lied to them. When I hire an actor, I say, "Listen, this is going to be terrific." But if
I come back and say, "I can't play
the scene that way because the
producers don't like it," that actor
is going to be just as unhappy with me as with them. So if I'm going to take the heat, I want control of the kitchen.
Being for the most part an independent filmmaker, how do you think the nature of filmmaking has changed?
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I don't know what's going to happen to independent filmmaking in the future, but it's not ever going to be as open as it was. So many aspects are dictated by distributors from actors to ad campaigns. The arbitrary length limit that we put on, for instance. Why does a film have to be an hour and 45 minutes or an hour and 50 minutes? Why not more? Because the audience doesn't want to sit there that long? Because we can't have enough showings? Whatever the reasons, we cut to this "standard." Now I subliminally think in those terms; and I hate it. It shouldn't be a consideration. As an artist, you should be able to paint a picture this wide or this tall or not. But when you depend on others for the wherewithal to do it, you're going to have to accommodate those people. The ultimate example is what television has come down to. Some guy that sells cheese says, "I want this to appeal to the people who eat cheese. I don't care what the people who don't eat cheese think. The hell with them."
So when you're serving many masters, it's very tough. This came up in conversation last night as an anecdote. A painter tells an art dealer, "I'm going to let you have my paintings, but don't you dare tell me what to do, because I paint what I want. If you say one word about that, I'm out of here." The painter brings over a small personal painting; and the dealer says, "That's beautiful. Here, I'll write you a check." The check is for $7. The painter asks, "Is this all you think it's worth? $7?" The dealer answers, "Well, if it were another size and subject matter, I could pay you more."
So nobody's clean, nobody's pure, compromise is part of this process and we all fall into it. And, in fact, what is the point of making a picture, if you can do exactly what you want, but nobody sees it? There are better ways to waste your time.
How important is connecting with the audience, independent of the financial necessities?
Well, that's what you do it for. That's what I do it for. I want to go to every screening and sit in the back and see what the audience thinks. If I were on a desert island with a projection room and copies of all of my films, I'd never watch one of them. But if one person comes along who says, "Oh, I'd like to see that film," I'll set the thing up and look at every frame of it with them, because I'm seeing it through somebody else's eyes.
Are you interested in digital filmmaking and alternate methods or presenting films?
Sure. I don't care if it's 16mm, video, digital - they are all just tools. Should an artist sit there not working and proclaim, "I only use this size of canvas and only oil paints?" I'll use anything that's available to me. Features, television, film, tape, it's all part of the process.
Is there any advice you give to a filmmaker just starting out?
Yes. Never take advice from anybody. I tell my children that's dangerous, these people offering advice aren't you. The best advice I could possibly give would still just be telling you how I would like it to be for me. How dare I presume that you have the same needs or ambitions? So don't take advice. Listen to it, but don't take it.
Have you had any instances in your career where the Directors Guild helped protect the creative process?
Yes, yes, absolutely. Many times. Once I went into an arbitration with the DGA's help to stop the studio from doing something I didn't want them to do. Just recently - I'm embarrassed to mention the name of the company because their reputation's so bad - I did a TV project; and they just never paid me. The Guild is pursuing that for me. If I had to do it myself, hell, my legal fees would be more than what they owe me. So the Guild's been a great asset.
Alain Silver is a writer, producer, and AD/UPM member of the DGA. Gary Walkow is writer and a DGA director member. This interview is excerpted from their book of discussions with directors forthcoming from Hyperion.
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