INT: If you take truth and you bring it into you…
RA: You become grotesque and truth becomes an untruth. [INT: Expand in terms of something finite.] Truth is like mist, like fog. Can't grasp it but it's absolutely true. Things are changing infinitesimally and in every sense of scale. Always changing, nothing is correct. Look at arguments taking place today, over GIBSON Jesus film. Christians think this, Jews, Muslims... All kicking the shit out of each other but none of them can be right because if any of them are wrong, they're all wrong. That doesn't mean there isn't right but you can't delegate it or organize it. If you look at your sister that way you're going to get spanked. None of that's true. How do you know how I'm looking at my sister. You have to relate it to something you've heard or said or thought yourself. By the time we get the answer to the questions, is this true? It's no longer true, it's become something else.

INT: You went to Catholic school.
RA: In grade school yes. Minute I went into the army, that was the last of that. [INT: How old were you and what affect did Catholic School have on you?] I don't know. It certainly has a lot to do, basic, becomes part of my DNA. You grow up in this atmosphere, and you hear these things, and it's hard to shake them. It's hard for people to admit that they're wrong if they've invested something in it. I think about these nuns, who spent whole lives dedicated to some sort of self discipline and one day wake up and say this is just not true, but it's too late. It's like ballet dancers, kids start at 6 years old, by the time they're 15, their bodies changed shape, walk like a duck. I can't give it up because I've spent 15 years of my life doing it. [INT: Also you love] I don't know if it's so much that. It's like you become in love, like marrying your cousin.

RA: You become in love. Love is a moment that has an echo to it. We're lucky if in the society that we've created that we stay in love, but when we stay in love we don't have the same visceral feelings about our lovers as we did the moment it occurred so it's like a spark and then there's smoke, lingers and lasts. Usually lasts through a lifetime and you think oh I want to respark it and during our adult lives we try to respark it and we do and that's called infidelity and we get in trouble that way. Ultimately we find out that our spark isn't sparking so strong so we're more comfortable to sit by the fire with that first spark and make tea for him or her.

RA: I think it's what's coming out now, with the same sex marriage. Where do these people come from? They’re hidden in our society. We know about extremities, but these are just people who have just come together in their lives, made a life for themselves, not accepted. George Bush, just a jerk. What they're doing and saying and telling people is clearly wrong, being discovered it's wrong. I prefer to be deluded so I haven't been wasting that time. [INT: That preference, to be deluded, is a very very important thing...] It's the only way we can justify the existence we've allowed to be foisted on ourselves. When we get into the art, film, theater, all of that is saying here's scenario, look at that and you'll be able to relate, understand emotions in your own life. Events, happenstance, we shouldn't pay any attention to that. Everything is a part of life. Bad, good, good has to do with comfort. It's like current election, I'm sure getting rid of this guy, but don't want to say I made a mistake. We have lots of friends, only know one person come to me, said I made a terrible mistake, I voted Bush, believed and I was wrong.

INT: Talk about the PLAYER, how did that come to you?
RA: I put together SHORTCUTS, finished writing that script and cast it, initial group. I was going to put in it LILY and TOM WAITS, I had it fairly well set to go and I could not get the money for it. Nobody interested. PLAYER, offered to me, I had just done VINCENT & THEO, PLAYER was a dreadful book and script. I thought, well, I can do this. I thought it was a soft indictment, given to me because I was outspoken, smart-ass, but I think THE PLAYER was soft on what really goes on, the motives of that industry. We're seeing the same thing today with this torture and through the government and who did know about it. It turned out everybody knew about it. PLAYER intriguing to me, how do I make this acceptable, give some thickness, something that's inside something, like Russian dolls. Then get celebrities to play themselves, usually when actors appear as themselves, they're not, become boring, publicity, say thing to you I've said before, mainly in conjunction with people saying why did you do this. That was a good answer. Basically we don't talk about that.

RA: Film about the art world. One of the big problems is you get a script and say well what do these artists talk about? They don't talk about their art unless talking to someone they're going to sell it to, or is going to give them some publicity, but if they're sitting around, they don't talk about their art because they can't. There is no lexicon. I remember doing MCCABE and I got LEONARD COHEN to get his music in the thing, when I finally met LEONARD after we'd arranged all that. He was in my place in California, we were having lunch, I kept bringing it back to his work. He didn't want to talk about his work. I was asking him personal questions about his art, he didn't have an answer he could articulate because he's already articulated it.

RA: PLAYER really grew more than any other film. SHORT CUTS had to be written, it was a document because the only way that could possibly be shot is I had to complete each one of the stories. So I had to know what they were. We started in SHORTCUT we started with LILY TOMLIN, LILY TAYLOR and TOM WAITS and that was finished, do an earthquake each time I got rid of cast members. MCCABE & MRS. MILLER we did dead sequence first, first shot of the film is the first shot we made. That was my choice and I had the ability to do it. Otherwise, snowstorm, which was a fluke, never would have occurred. We were prepared when it did occur, when we got great luck. SHORTCUTS within each episode say between TOM and LILY TOMLIN we were able to do that but not through entire film. MCCABE we had a thrust everybody was there all the time.

INT: Was there improvisation in MCCABE?
RA: Yes. [INT: Did you rehearse?] no. [INT: Do you have a thing against rehearsal] No [INT: What's the procedure?] First take WARREN did on anything was absolutely unusable. Next take he'd get a little more comfortable. He got comfortable in teens and twenties in takes. JULIE CHRISTIE was always best at 1st shot. By the time WARREN starts getting comfortable, JULIE starts getting bored. Different DNA. How do I do this? Do I cut her scene 1 to his scene 14 or do I stop in middle where both acceptable. Dilemma all the time.

INT: Did they ask you to direct?
RA: Project bought to me by DAVID FOSTER and MITCH BROWER. Somehow, they sent it to me and I liked the idea because it was a Western. I first offered the piece to ELLIOTT GOULD to play MCCABE and ELLIOTT turned me down. Found out later GOULD and SUTHERLAND when making MASH had gone to producers and asked to have me fired. They said I didn't know what I was doing and I was paying too much attention to extras. Had I known I would've resigned. I couldn't do a film if I didn't feel people weren't on my side. I was hired director, they could've replaced me.

RA: ELLIOTT came to me during MCCABE, he said listen I have to tell you something, DONALD and I tried to get you fired on MASH. Fact that he told me released any prejudicial feelings that I might have had. DONALD has never said a word to me and I still don't like him. But I did several pictures with ELLIOTT after that. For some reason he wanted to unload that. Our best work after that, THE LONG GOODBYE and CALIFORNIA SPLIT.

INT: Which one was the one about gambling?
RA: CALIFORNIA SPLIT [INT: How did that come to you?] Guy who wrote that was JOEY WALSH, poker player and gambler. He was the 14 yr old boy actor with DANNY KAYE in HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON. Guy who was agent, head of all the studios, he was a gambler. Killed himself. DAVID ?? He agreed to want to make this picture about gambling. Originally, STEVE MCQUEEN. We wanted SEGAL, SEGAL agreed, MCQUEEN stepped out and then we went to ELLIOTT. It was a great couple. ELLIOTT such a driving force in all of those films because he brings in his own. [INT: Was gambling interesting to you?] My father was a gambler. Been something I've been around all my life. An addiction and also a philosophy. What you really put importance on. I was inundated with stories about gambler, one that impressed me the most, ... money on table, wife take what wouldn't be missed, saved, gambler came home, he says he's finished, everything gone, no, wife had 25,000, gave it to him, of course, then he lost it all, then shot himself.

INT: Who was your Dad?
RA: Bernard Clement Altman, nickname Nag. My grandmother, proper woman, If doorbell would ring, her daughter would say so and so is coming to visit, and she'd say get me a cigarette. She didn't smoke, only when visitors were there. [INT: What kind of effect did he have on you?] Big effect, I emulated him. He was very outgoing and used a lot of phrases I find myself using today, 80. [INT: What was it about him?] Friendly, I grew up in Kansas City and it used to snow, terrible. my dad would carry tons of stuff and helped people on the street. Loved helping everybody. Did it for his own, way he considered himself. Don't think it was a lot of altruism. [INT: What was his relationship with you?] Pretty good. My childhood, flying in the second World War, has been pretty ordinary. Not traumatic. No big things that has happened. Rolling down the hill always. Usually in the path of least resistance. I've never had another job really.

INT: How did you get started?
RA: I went into the air corps when I was 18. Became a flyer, B 24, South Pacific. The last place I was before I went overseas was Riverside California. I had aunt/uncle live in LA, I would go see them. It was all about girls for me at that time. I had 2nd cousin, Mary Rector, married to Lemack, radio announcer, when I went overseas, she was secretary for MYRON SELZNICK, I was star-struck. I thought meeting any of those BONITA GRANVILLE... I got overseas and I wrote a letter, I couldn't write to my mother and father, duty letter, then I wrote to MARY RECKNER who I didn't know, wrote kind of funny. I was showing off. She sent me a letter back, so funny you should be a screenwriter, from that moment on that's what I was. I was in the movie business. Day I got that letter, what are you going to do? Oh I'm a screenwriter. My first bit of writing was 2 paragraphs of something that never matured but it was my book, or my story.