Robert Altman

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  * * *

  REZA BADIYI (director): I was invited to the United States in 1955 by the State Department, for an exchange program, and I was brought here from Iran. I was twenty-five. I was sent to Syracuse University because I was graduated from the branch of Syracuse University in Iran. But they put me in a class at a very beginner level about how to approach documentary. At the time, I had over forty-five documentaries in my name. I went to the dean and explained, and twenty-four hours later they told me, “Pack, because you’re going to Kansas City, Missouri. There is a center there where they’re making film for overseas, named the Calvin Company.”

  I got there and they took me to a stage where they were shooting. And I noticed they’re using a camera named Cine Special. Now, in my training in Iran, I learned with a Cine Special, but I graduated to Arriflex. So I asked them, “Why don’t you use Arriflex?” They said, “What is Arriflex?” I said, “There’s a camera that you can look through the lens.” They shook their heads. I said, “By the way, I have one with me that belongs to the Ministry of Iranian Education.” So they sent me back to the hotel with the taxi and I went over there and brought my Arriflex. It looked like a revolution took place, everybody looking through the lens. The director asked me, “Let us shoot one scene with your camera as well as with the Cine Special, and we can compare it.” That director was Robert Altman.

  Robert Altman playing a fallen soldier in a scene from The Magic Bond, a Calvin Company film he directed that was sponsored by the VFW

  That very first day, he asked me, “Where are you staying?” I said I was staying at this hotel called the YMCA. He said, “Oh, no, no, you don’t want to stay there.” So he called his mother, Helen, and by seven o’clock I was moved to a spare room. I stayed there for several months.

  When I first came to their home, B.C. tells me, “You have to have insurance.” So he sold me life insurance, which I still have. Kansas City Life, a hundred thousand dollars. In those days, whenever you’d go on a trip, you’d buy some extra insurance. I didn’t have anybody in America, so I write the beneficiary for B.C. One time Bob and I went on a trip, and I had a million-dollar policy.

  B.C. calls Bob and says, “Did you guys arrive safely?”

  Bob says, “Yes.”

  B.C. says, “Everything’s okay? Nothing happened?”

  Bob says, “No, why?”

  B.C. says, “Shit, son, Reza put the million-dollar policy in my name, and you couldn’t push him out the door or do anything to help me?”

  * * *

  RICHARD SARAFIAN: Bob drew people around him and made them part of his circle. Sometime after we became friends, Bob asked me if I wanted to act in a play he was directing—Hope Is the Thing with Feathers. I was playing some sort of a tramp, a New York–type hobo. It was at the Resident Theatre at the Jewish Community Center in Kansas City.

  SUELLEN FRIED (friend): It was kind of a hub for the Jewish community. It was a large building, like what a YMCA would be. So there were basketball courts and it was this big square building, and there was this wonderful theater in the building. The theater was a way for the Jewish Community Center to connect with non-Jewish people. Up on the roof, it was the whole square of the top of the building, and somebody came up with the creative idea of having an outdoor summer theater. That’s where Bob directed plays.

  It was very hard to get a terrific role because there was always competition. There were marvelous actors and actresses who earned their living in other ways—these were people who would have loved to have a lucrative career, but it wasn’t easy to support yourself as an actor. The Resident Theatre had such a wonderful reputation; to have that on your résumé was something very special.

  I remember meeting Bob at a reception after his first play. There was such a liveliness about him. He had such a zest for everything he did, and such enthusiasm for the process and the experience and the people that he worked with.

  One play we worked on was supposed to end with a kiss. I was not a professional actress, and this was back in a time when kissing and things like that were things you only did with your husband. I was very self-conscious and uncomfortable about kissing this young man who I hardly knew at all. When we got to that scene, I tweaked his nose and I patted his cheek and I did all these little things, everything to avoid the kiss. And Bob allowed it to be just like that. He did not insist. I was so grateful.

  Even then, Bob was such an authentic person in a world of make-believe. I think people, actors, wanted to work with him so much because he cherished authenticity and he was much more interested in bringing to life something that felt genuine. If somebody had something to offer that was real and genuine for them, Bob had great respect for that. He stayed true to his authentic integrity in a world where everything was dramatic and created but nothing was real.

  LOTUS CORELLI ALTMAN MONROE: Joan was doing My Little Heiress at the Resident Theatre. She said, “Don’t you dare come backstage and tell me how wonderful I was.” So she’s backstage and I walked in and everybody turned around. I said, “Oh Joan, you were … adequate!” She later used that line with Richard Sarafian.

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: Bob directed plays there while he was still working at Calvin. I would sit on the seawall, take his notes, tell him what I thought when he was auditioning people, who was good, who wasn’t. I never looked at the people because my idea of an actor or actress depends on if they have a voice or not, and most of them don’t. But one voice was this voice of Richard Sarafian. I heard this voice and I told Bob, “There’s one in there. You got one.”

  RICHARD SARAFIAN: After the Army I went back to New York University but quit after about a month. I had a job working for Time Incorporated. I must’ve done something to charm everybody at the Christmas party. A few days later, I was called to personnel and asked, “Richard, how would you like to work for Sports Illustrated?” I went upstairs, thought about it a few hours, and quit. The reason was that I thought, “For me to relive the moment I became accepted into this high-class fraternity of reporters, I’d become a drunk.” That’s what went through my mind. Of course there was the other lure of Bob Altman and his sister and working in the documentary business. As soon as I quit Time, I got on the phone and called Bob.

  Directing the model Carolyn Cross in a “fifteen- minute editorial fashion show” for the Kansas City–based dress designer Nelly Don

  He said, “Come on out.” I got a job in the Calvin Company as a flunky. I can honestly say that Bob was the instrument by which I got started as a director. With what savings I had I met him in Salina, Kansas. He was doing a documentary for the Missouri Farmers Association. For about a month we went on a drunk. We drank all my money. However, with everybody gone at the Calvin Company, I wrote and shot with a short crew and put together a short documentary for the United Fund. The result was that I was promoted to director.

  LOTUS CORELLI ALTMAN MONROE: Around that time, Joan fell madly in love with Dick Sarafian and left Chet. This was quite a time. Chet didn’t know what happened to him.

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: Dick married me, I think, to be near Bob.

  REZA BADIYI: During the time I was living at his parents’ house, Bob quit Calvin Company. And he said that I have to go with him. He called the State Department and became my sponsor. The first project we did together was in Florida for spring training American League baseball. It became Grandstand Rookie. Bob wanted me to be one of the cameramen. There was another Kansas City gentleman by the name of Charlie Paddock, from the Calvin Company, and he was Bob’s first cameraman. So we all moved to Palm Beach, Florida. Bob had just bought a brand-new station wagon, and on the door was painted “Robert Altman Productions.” That was our production.

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: We went down to Florida when I was divorced—Dad and myself and Bob and his daughter, Chrissy, down to Palm Beach while he did the Kansas City baseball-team show. Reza went with us and he couldn’t drive. He drove the car off a short ledge. Bob kept saying, “Just keep going, you�
��ll pick it up” [laughs]. He finally did learn how to drive. Bob always made everyone feel so confident around him. I think that was one of his gifts.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Delinquents

  *

  The Delinquents (1957)

  “Film Capsules,” The Bridgeport Post (Connecticut), May 21, 1957: “The Delinquents” is a realistic, shocking, frank treatment of the problem of juvenile delinquency. A presentation of Imperial Productions, “The Delinquents” was written and directed by Robert Altman. The cast of young, unknown, but talented performers is headed by Tommy Laughlin, Peter Miller, Dick Bakalyan, and Rosemary Howard. There is not a single manufactured set in “The Delinquents.” The entire production was shot on location sites—interior as well as exterior—in Kansas City. Some 22 different locations were utilized in the picture—ranging from public institutions, through crowded streets and highways, to gas stations, private homes and a drive-in theater.

  * * *

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: I had my first real job, at a collections company. I wrote tough letters to soldiers who owed money to the Arthur Murray Dance Studio. I told Bob, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m not going to ask those guys for money for cruddy contracts they signed.” Bob said, “You’ve got to quit anyway because I’m making a film and you have to come and work with me.”

  He had rented a church downtown, and I mean it was just a broken-down church, no pews or anything—just an office, a table, and an altar. Elmer Rhoden, Jr., a wonderful guy but a real alcoholic—he died of it—he was financing it. Elmer’s dad was president of a theater chain, and Elmer was kind of a philanderer. Wonderful wife, daughter, but he loved this little blonde gal and he wanted to be near her and she was in California, so he wanted to be a producer.

  Working on the script for The Delinquents with his sister Joan and his protégé, Reza Badiyi

  Anyway, I would go and get the money from Elmer. I think I first got about ten thousand from him. Bob immediately took the money and bought two tuxedos, one white and one black, and a ticket to New York. Of course, nothing in The Delinquents called for black and white tuxedos.

  He dictated the script to me in about an hour before he was leaving.

  ROBERT ALTMAN: I wrote a script because I felt I had to. I wouldn’t have gone into the process any other way. I think one of the main reasons for a script is the actors, when they get it, they agree to do it, they tend to want to hold on to it. They want a certain security. They want a safety net.

  Another thing about a script is that it determines what set you build and what costumes you build. And you don’t want to build those things and not use them. So the script is—well, it’s a diagram. The car breaks down in the middle of the highway and the tow truck comes along. And while the tow truck is pulling the car up, these people have a discussion. Well, I have to get that tow truck or rewrite that scene. What happens when they’re waiting for the tow truck, or what they say to each other, we can loosen up in there and see what happens.

  The danger of writing a script is that everybody has the same voice. I think when they don’t have the same voice it makes the film better. So when you have five different sources in there, five different voices, it seems closer to reality. I’m trying to push the actor into becoming a real creator—creating that part. Bringing things to it that the writer and/or myself couldn’t bring. Many of them are not comfortable with the burden of having to become the author. They’re like a deer in the headlights. They go, “Whoa-whoa-whoa, wait a minute.” But if they’re doing somebody else’s line, that somebody else has written, the unkind way would be to say that they’re relieved of the responsibility, and if it doesn’t work it’s not their fault. And it’s true. It’s the director’s fault, and the director has to be the one that fixes it. I prefer actors who take the responsibility. I feel like I’m getting more bang for the buck. Sometimes it’s the smallest of subtleties that you acquire in doing something that makes it real.

  Many writers have hard feelings about what I do to their scripts, but my idea is, it’s not their script. Their script is my tool to work with, and consequently I have been as responsible to their writing as I am to my own. I don’t owe them an apology. Whether it’s their script or my script, it’s just a marker on the path that says, “This is the way to go.” And so you kinda follow that. But you don’t follow it to the point where you walk off the cliff.

  With The Delinquents, it was written overnight, really in a weekend. I just dictated it to my sister. Then when we went to do it, we improvised the scenes.

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: After he finished the script, he gave me three or four names to call for equipment and then told me to call the union in Chicago. He gets on a plane, goes to New York, and he’s gone a week. In the meantime, I get all the catalogues, I order all the lighting, I talk to a lighting man, a cameraman, I talk to the union in Chicago. Awfully nice people. I mean, they must have thought, “this person is so stupid we’ve got to help her.”

  ROBERT ALTMAN: When I got the wherewithal to do The Delinquents, I called the only agent I knew, a guy named Bob Longnecker, who was married to Ruth Hussey. Remember her, the actress? He had represented me as a writer when I was trying to be a radio writer. He said, “Well, there’s this kid I have, Tommy Laughlin.” I cast him from that. You know, later he was Billy Jack.

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: Bob got some actors—Tom Laughlin, Richard Bakalyan, Peter Miller—and he also brings this woman back from California. Helene something, who was about twenty years older than him. She’s the kimono type. I mean really sleazy. Dyed black hair that’s down to her shoulders, but she must have been a terrific lay because he was really smitten with her.

  LOTUS CORELLI ALTMAN MONROE: I was five months pregnant with Stephen when The Delinquents started. I’m playing the mother of one of the girls, and his next mistress, Helene Hawley—her actual name was Pollock—she was going to promote Bob. So Bob hired her to be the mother of the boy involved in this Romeo and Juliet thing.

  It was painful and I was very, very much in love with Bob. It wasn’t working. I couldn’t handle the women, all the extracurricular things.

  REZA BADIYI: Lotus was a regular Kansas City wife. There wasn’t any disagreement ever between them that catches the eye. But it was one of those things that was never openly said. Bob was always facing something, not knowing what was bothering her. One night Bob comes home and she brings the dinner on a tray and puts it in front of him. Usually in those days, people eat about six thirty to seven o’clock. And this is like ten o’clock. She ate and the children are in bed. Then Bob is looking at the food and then looking at her. And she picks up the plate and drops it, and walks out. That kind of thing.

  LOTUS CORELLI ALTMAN MONROE: I was concentrating on the job I was doing. We were separated. When we first had our cast reading, we were sitting around the table and I got through and everybody’s smiling. And Bob said, “That’s the worst reading I’ve ever heard in my life.” It was a stressful time for me.

  His daughter, Chrissy, was hired to be the little sister. Joan was the script girl. Her husband, or ex-husband, Chet, was still around. He was set director. Bob also brought in some Kansas City friends to act.

  SUELLEN FRIED: Even though I was already married and pregnant with my second child, I was young and Bob asked me to be a delinquent. I thought that would be fun. There was a lot of beer available, and we were told just to drink and have a great party. That was the extent of our direction. All the other delinquents—they pretty much all knew each other. Bob had gone to Rockhurst High School, and he may have pulled in a group from there.

  REZA BADIYI: They didn’t let Bob bring back a cameraman from California, so he had to use the local cameraman, Charlie Paddock. I became his assistant. It was a good time—I was also acting as an extra and a stand-in and a go-getter. And sometimes at night after everybody finishes and goes, and they were in the middle of the street, they put everything together and I was the night watchman.

  Bob d
idn’t jump to it with both feet. He worked on the story, developed it. Sat around and everybody read it for a while. And then talked about this and that. And then Bob needed some of the friends to come, like Louie Lombardo, who became a very good film cutter later on. Sarafian was around, just to talk about the story. And of course Joan.

  Joan always was idolizing Bob. It wasn’t just a big brother. Joan is absolutely a believer. She’s one of those kind of people at that age that usually wouldn’t give you an idea unless you asked for it. But in this case, she had many notes and discussed it with Bob. And I remember every time it brings a shine in Bob’s eyes.

  You have to realize Bob was that kind of guy. I learned that the philosophy that he had, it was never “It’s my movie, so everybody shut up and listen to me.” He said, “We are going to work together. Anybody has ideas, bring them to me. If it’s good we use it, if it’s not, we’re not using it. But don’t be ashamed of it.” If you go on the set of a Sam Peckinpah and you want to tell him anything, he kills you right there.

  TOM LAUGHLIN (actor): Very amateurish. It was like neighbors getting together and making a film.

  But I was very impressed with Joan. She did everything. She’d get people in place, she’d negotiate the salaries, she did everything. I think she did everything but make the lunches.

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: I was the script girl, but I did a little of almost everything, and the script was the least of it. I would get the money from Elmer, stick it in the back of my jeans, and bring it to Bob. I used Bob’s Thunderbird as the office.

  The first day of shooting, Bob came up to me and said, “My God, everyone keeps asking me questions.”

  I said, “I’ll work that out.” I got a chessboard and I set it up in the back of the Thunderbird. I said, “You just come over here and stare at that board, and no one is going to bother you, or if they do, you look annoyed.”