My relationship with him was pretty amazing as far as working together. Even though we were father and son, when we worked together he wasn’t my father during those periods, he was the director Robert Altman and I was working with him and for him. I got to spend all this time on a lot of his movies, and I got to learn how to be discreet and how to do things without causing much commotion, and I got to learn what he likes and what he was looking for. I got to a point with him when I was the operator where I became his eyes. I could really tell the way he wanted the camera to move. He wanted it to move the way it would move if the audience was running it depending on what they were seeing and what was happening while it was running. If something blew up and you felt like you needed to back away from it, I could back away from it. And if something intimate went on here and you really wanted to know what it is, I could just move in without hesitating, right into the eyes if I wanted to, and then snap back. That would freak anybody else out. If I were on another movie and I went with how I felt, I would be fired for that.
It’s been a good path; it’s been very interesting. I did eight years as a second assistant, ten years as a first assistant, and now I’m into like ten or eleven years as a camera operator. But a lot of that time I had a lot of problems with drugs, and now I’ve been sober for four and a half, almost five years. I really saw a lot of crazy shit and did a lot of crazy shit and really wasted a lot of time. But now I’m doing great.
MATTHEW ALTMAN (fourth son): I don’t remember him telling us he’d choose his career over us. But his whole life was not about family, it was about his career, which is something I think he came to regret later on in life. We’ve got a very dysfunctional family. I think when he became sick in the last five years or so, and maybe even longer, and when I was in trouble with various things, he regretted not spending more time with us and not paying more attention to how we grew up. He didn’t force us to do anything. He never made us go to college, so subsequently none of us did. I think he regretted that because now we’re all in the same business, which was his business, and that’s not easy.
For one thing, for all the money that we’ve made, none of us seems to be able to support ourselves. And we’ve all had our divorces and our squabbles between us, like everybody else’s family. Bob never guided us or helped us or forced us to learn about money or learn about the stock market or buying houses on our own or any of that stuff. If we ever had a problem, we came to him and he would have a plan and he would fix it. And subsequently it wasn’t to our collective best interest later in life. And we all had our substance-abuse problems and things of that sort, which haven’t helped. But he was always there if we ever needed him, which was a kind of a crutch. I think he felt guilty, especially in the seventies, that he wasn’t there when he was younger. It was all about his career.
On the set of M*A*S*H with daughter Christine, grandson Dana, and Michael Murphy
We went on an eight-day fishing trip to Alaska. We took fly-fishing lessons in the valley someplace for a day or so or two days. He went and bought all this expensive Orvis fishing gear and waders and cold-weather gear. We flew from here to Anchorage. I was fourteen. We took a little pontoon plane to a lake, landed on the lake. He had organized this whole thing. He and I would sit out at night and talk. I don’t remember anything we talked about. I think we smoked a little pot together. And you’d be tired and cold and it was really the best father-and-son thing that I can remember that he and I did together.
I definitely got involved with smoking pot through them, I think. He had a box in Malibu Cove of pot, and I would go in and take some and smoke. I think I was about thirteen. And then my friends from Mississippi came, we all went to Hawaii and then we came back and I think I had a fort underneath the house and that’s when my parents found out that I was smoking pot. They sat me down and said, “We know you’re doing that and we don’t think that’s good for you, but as long as we know you’re doing it under our roof, that’s okay. But you’re not doing it someplace else and being dangerous.” Eventually I learned how to roll a really good joint for my dad.
Even if he wasn’t there, he was always available. He wasn’t there physically but he was always available. He never said no. I loved him very, very much.
CHRISTINE ALTMAN (daughter): I think I was like twelve or something and we took a ride to Las Vegas, and there was some other woman with us. We went and stayed at this hotel. I couldn’t go into any of the casinos, so he taught me how to play backgammon. We were doing okay, and he would go out at night. We were only there three or four days, but by the time we left I could beat him at backgammon. While he was teaching me he’d pay me when I won. By the time it came to leaving we had to leave fast because he was broke. He lost all of his money. The only money we had for gas was the money I had won from him. He had to borrow the money from me to get us out of there. We lost the woman somewhere along the line.
KONNI CORRIERE (stepdaughter): It was like we were down on the ground where it’s kind of mundane, and day to day, but I always envisioned Bob walking, being with us but six feet off the ground, so he was just up higher. He couldn’t speak our language. He didn’t know what we were up to. He had his own way of seeing things, his own way of relating, which was kind of limited, let’s just be clear. He just hovered over the earth but he never came down to earth until he turned sixty.
SUSAN DAVIS (actress and cousin): He said to me, “I’m not a good father.” That got to me. I think it was that he wasn’t around all the time. He taught them a craft, and he supported them. I think maybe Bob expected everyone to have his courage and his sense of drive and it bothered him when they didn’t. I remember him saying to me, “I can’t even tell you which son was on the set,” and they were partying that night or whatever, and something was said about the next morning. I think Bob’s concern was that they hadn’t shown up on time. He said, “Listen, I can have as much as I want, because I’ll be on that set at six in the morning. You won’t.” It was about the work ethic. If you asked a psychologist it would probably be something of maleness that he never dealt with within himself, so he couldn’t pass it on or help the next male onto it.
Flying a kite with son Matthew in Malibu in 1972
CHAPTER 16
Mirrors
*
Images (1972)
Howard Thompson, review in The New York Times, October 9, 1972: This clanging, pretentious, tricked-up exercise, shown last night at the New York Film Festival, is almost a model of how not to dramatize the plight of a schizoid. Then how do you? Simply, clearly, with some sort of progressive story line minus a technical smoke screen. Above all, don’t let the camera have a nervous breakdown ahead of the heroine. … As played by Susannah York, our girl is also some sort of writer, scribbling away furiously in a diary or journal that sounds like Emily Bronte on pot. After a prologue, crammed with opening doors, hallucinations and jangling telephones, Miss York and her spouse, René Auberjonois, slip away to that country retreat, where a dead lover starts reappearing (walking in and out of the film) and a lecherous neighbor closes in. … As for why Robert Altman, the brilliant director of the comedy, “M*A*S*H,” elected to write and direct this mishmash, that’s his own business. It just doesn’t work.
* * *
ROBERT ALTMAN: I wrote a poem once and it went, “I’m looking in a mirror, I’m looking at myself in the mirror, and behind me is another mirror, and I see myself looking into the mirror, seeing myself.” Mirrors always interested me. That’s an idea I used in Images, where the set was filled with mirrors.
It all came from a frightening thing I imagined. You’re sitting on the bed and you’re talking to your wife, who’s in the bathroom. And you’re talking away and she comes out and it’s an entirely different woman you are talking to. What do you do? Do you continue the conversation and think, “I’m wrong,” or do you cover and think this is in your mind? Or do you throw her out of the house because she is a stranger? In writing it, I had the woman sitting on the bed a
nd the guy comes out and it’s a different guy, and that’s the whole genesis of Images.
Hugh Millais and Susannah York in Images
I didn’t know I was doing anything about schizophrenia, yet I was pretty accurate in it. It was an instinctive kind of thing.
KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: People said, “Gee, I didn’t know that you were interested in psychology,” because of Images. And he never even thought it was a psychological thriller. He just made things happen that were of interest to him.
ROBERT DUVALL: These guys hate it when you turn them down. I turned him down on Images. I read the script and it wasn’t right. He said, “Maybe you don’t get it. Maybe you need your wife to explain it.” Bullshit. I don’t need my wife to explain it. I got it, I just didn’t like it.
RENÉ AUBERJONOIS: I don’t think people knew that it was a comedy. In a way he was doing a spoof on those kinds of movies. I wish more people knew how wonderfully weird that film was.
I remember when we were in Ireland and we were shooting the sequence when the character I was playing was dead at the bottom of the waterfall. It was the middle of December, freezing cold, and I was in a wet suit under my suit. I had to go down into this freezing water with this waterfall coming from way up high and try not to blink because I was supposed to be dead. It was a skeleton crew and I got stoned before I did it, and I never ever got stoned before I did work. I was driving back with Bob to the hotel and he said, “Were you stoned when we shot that?” I said, “You bet. Wouldn’t you be?” He didn’t say anything but I understood that was not cool. As much as he had a reputation for being able to drink anybody under the table or smoke anybody up the chimney, he did not bring that to work, and you did not bring that to work. That was not cool.
VILMOS ZSIGMOND: He loved the movie. I mean, schizophrenia in those days was never really presented as well as this. It was underappreciated. I don’t know why. I mean, you cannot trust the audiences many, many times whether that one is a good film, or it is a bad film. And even in those days, our movies were successful, basically. I don’t think that Images was unsuccessful. In those days, all movies made money. It cost nothing to make those movies, you know. Not even two million dollars. And then people went to the movie theater once a week at least, everybody. Not anymore.
BARBARA ALTMAN HODES: I walked out of that show and I looked at Bob. I said, “I don’t believe you.”
He says, “Honey, what are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. A man comes in and his wife, she’s got a little mental problem, probably like me. Then you finally get into her head, right? And you’re with her, you don’t know what’s real or not, but it’s not normal.” Correct me if I’m wrong. A man comes in and takes off his coat and his hat. He leaves his gloves on? He goes in the bedroom, gets undressed, and he’s still got his damn gloves on? Is that normal? That is strange. And of course that makes me think, “Somebody with gloves, they’re going to kill me, you know?” Bob knew that just drove me nuts. When anyone comes in, the first thing you take off is your gloves. I mean, come on.
HENRY GIBSON (actor): He would have been a lousy gift-wrapper. He didn’t like tying strings. He loved to let strings dangle and let you wrap the package in your imagination. He invited his audiences to think, to participate, to explore. Oh my God, was there ever a film that you were more invited to explore than Images? And the actors were exploring till the last day of shooting.
ROBERT ALTMAN: Images I thought was perfect. I said, “Oh boy, this is it. Everybody in the world is going to see this.” Nobody did.
* * *
The Long Goodbye (1973)
Gene Siskel, review in The Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1973: “The Long Goodbye” borders dangerously on being totally mystifying, much in the manner of “The Big Sleep.” One of Marlowe’s best friends is hunted on a murder rap. Marlowe’s pursuit of the truth involves him with the wife, a robust yet half-crazed writer, and a positively ugly loan shark who delights in cruelty. … Elliott Gould, now recovered from his own psychological problems, plays the Marlowe character with surprising finesse and reserve…. All of these elements—the acting, the threat of violence, and the photography—make “The Long Goodbye,” despite its convoluted and too quickly resolved plot, a most satisfying motion picture.
ELLIOTT KASTNER (producer): It was my project and I wanted Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe. My partners at the time were United Artists. David Picker was the head of United Artists, and he didn’t want Mitchum. I then said I would like Walter Matthau or Elliott Gould. I met with Walter Matthau at a delicatessen in Santa Monica after he read the screenplay. He didn’t want to do it because he was frightened, actually. He fancied himself a leading man but didn’t want to step up and be one. From Mitchum to Matthau it went to Gould. I loved the idea because he had a kind of dandruff on his shoulders, if you know what I mean.
Then we went to Altman. He wasn’t in demand at the time. He had made an unpleasant relationship with himself and the major studios. McCabe & Mrs. Miller was a financial failure. The vicissitudes of the industry would come into play. He was a tough sell, but to David Picker’s credit he went with him, and it was brilliant.
DAVID PICKER (studio executive): I could have gone with a bigger name at the time than Altman, but the director I wanted to do it at the time—Peter Bogdanovich—wouldn’t do it with Elliott Gould and I was committed to Elliott.
ELLIOTT GOULD: I’m unemployed. I don’t even know that I’m out of the business, out of this world, and I went to see this fellow who was quite nice to me, who seemed to get it: David Picker. David was running United Artists and he gave me Leigh Brackett’s script of The Long Goodbye. I thought it was quite old-fashioned, but I was charmed by it, and something I would have loved to have done. Picker told me that Bogdanovich said that I was too new and he wanted to go with someone like Robert Mitchum or Lee Marvin. I love Robert Mitchum and I love Lee Marvin, and I couldn’t argue with them. But you’ve seen them and you haven’t seen me.
Then out of the blue, Bogdanovich wasn’t doing the picture and Robert Altman was going to do the picture. Bob called me—he was doing Images in Ireland—and he said, “What do you think?” Now I’m getting moved, you know, because it’s bringing up this stuff. I remember exactly where I was, in this kitchen of this place where I lived in the West Village, at 58 Morton Street.
And I said to Bob, “I’ve always wanted to play this guy.”
Bob said, “You are this guy.”
So that was the beginning.
ELLIOTT KASTNER: I didn’t agree with some of Altman’s perverse casting decisions. I didn’t agree with the baseball player, Jim Bouton.
JIM BOUTON (professional baseball player/author/actor): I had met Elliott Gould at an antiwar rally in New York. His hobby at the time was playing pickup basketball. He wanted to know if I wanted to join his group for a couple of games. I did and we had a good time. We were friendly and he said, “I’m going to California for a couple of weeks shooting scenes for a movie. When I get back I’ll give you a call.”
A week later, at three o’clock in the morning, the phone rings—it scares the crap out of you when the phone rings at that time. It’s Elliott. “I’m here in California and we’re on the phone with Bob Altman. Stacy Keach got sick and can’t play this role. I told Bob you’d be perfect—it’s a guy who kills his wife and runs to Mexico. So throw a toothbrush in a bag and come out here.” It’s like the Yankees reaching up in the stands to some guy and saying, “We’re putting you at third base today.”
I flew out there and they gave me a script. Altman said, “Don’t worry about the script. The situation is that you and Marlowe are old friends. You haven’t seen him in a while. Talk about whatever guys talk about—but at some point in the conversation you have to tell him you need a ride to the border. I don’t care what you guys do, what you say, you just have to ask him for a ride to Mexico.”
Just before the first scene I’m in—I’m in costume, in makeup�
�Elliott comes over to me and says, “Did you get the changes?” It gave me a jolt. “Huh? Changes? What changes?” It was a nice rookie trick. He just laughed and said, “Don’t worry about it.”
Altman always seemed to be smiling. He was always in good spirits, a funny guy, and looking around for stuff that was going on, stuff he could use. When we were down at Cuernavaca, shooting the final scene, there was a funeral coming by. “Sign those people up!” He commandeered the band—he took whatever was going on. And those two dogs that were fucking, that was unbelievable. You’d have to shoot a hundred and fifty miles of film to get that if you tried. He was like, “Cue the dogs!”
My character was faking his murder, so they needed a shot of me lying in a box of ice, naked. Altman says, “You need to come down here and take your clothes off—it’ll be discreet. Just a few of us.” I can handle that. Two days later we had a wrap party and there were drinks and there were coasters all around. Guess what was printed on the coasters? Pictures of me, naked in the ice.
ELLIOTT KASTNER: I don’t think I was wrong about Jim Bouton. A lovely guy, but I thought he was a stiff as an actor.
JIM BOUTON: Pauline Kael gave me a nice review. I cut it out and put it in my scrapbook.
ELLIOTT KASTNER: I didn’t agree with Nina Van Pallandt.
ROBERT ALTMAN: I saw Nina Van Pallandt on the Johnny Carson show. She’d been mixed up with Clifford Irving, who did the fake biography of Howard Hughes. I said, “God, that’s Chandler’s blonde. That’s what he had in mind when he said, ‘Let there be blondes.’”
ELLIOTT KASTNER: I was wrong about the girl because she was marvelous. And I didn’t agree with Henry Gibson as the quack psychiatrist. But I was wrong about Henry Gibson.
HENRY GIBSON: Well, casting me had to be somehow intuitive on his part or for his own amusement. I walked in to shake his hand. He said, “Would you be in my next picture?” We didn’t read, we didn’t talk, so it had to be something intuitive. He’d known some of my work but I didn’t have a great body of work. There was Laugh-In, of course. He didn’t know any of my personal history. “Would you be in my next picture?” Well, of course, you’re ready to go to hell for him at that point.
Robert Altman Page 24
