Robert Altman

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  * * *

  DAVID BROWN (producer): I had read a piece in a defunct magazine, called Manhattan Inc., which was an excerpt from the book The Player. I thought, “How wonderful, this author knows Hollywood.” There was a true authenticity. But I didn’t see how it could become a film. Most of it is an internal monologue, which makes it impossible as a movie. I set it aside, but a little time passed and I had lunch at the Century Club with the man who published the book The Player. The lunch was a social lunch but he mentioned the book. I said I read an excerpt in a magazine and I thought it was quite authentic. I thought about it some more and said, “Why don’t I acquire the rights for twenty-five hundred?” The author, Michael Tolkin, was fired by his agent for taking so little.

  Tim Robbins as the homicidal studio executive Griffin Mill in The Player

  MICHAEL TOLKIN (author and screenwriter): It took me six or eight weeks to write the script. I was surprised how quickly it turned around. I thought a book that is so internal would be difficult to translate, but what I found was the structure of the plot was sound enough that what Griffin is going through is enough. There was enough suspense and enough pressure on the character so it wasn’t internal.

  After my agent had fired me, I went to William Morris. And Altman had just recently switched to William Morris after he came back from Europe. Somebody there gave him the script.

  JOHNNIE PLANCO (agent): I ran into Bob at the Russian Tea Room after he’d been away for five years. I said, “Are we going to work again?”

  He said, “Oh, I just went back to Stan [Kamen].”

  I was hurt because he’d said we’d work together when he came back from Europe. But the next morning he called Stan and said he’d made a mistake. Then he called me and said, “Okay, I’m yours. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m unemployable. They’ll hang up on you if you suggest me.”

  He viewed studios as the enemy. Like somebody scared, he shot first.

  I talked to David Brown for The Player. I suggested Bob. David said, “I hear he drinks too much and is abusive.”

  I said, “David, it’s not true—meet with him.”

  DAVID BROWN: We had a number of directors in mind. Sidney Lumet wanted to make the film in France. That sounded good to us, but little by little we exhausted all the possibilities. At some point Bob Altman called me and said, “You own a property I was born to direct, The Player.”

  I said, “Bob, I agree you were born to direct this, but you have to be a good boy and play ball.” He said, “I will.”

  JOHNNIE PLANCO: They met at seven a.m. By ten, eleven, I hadn’t heard from anyone.

  MICHAEL TOLKIN: We had a meeting with Altman and Scotty Bushnell. He had recently had some kind of surgery. He had a boil on the back of his neck and one of his eyes was rheumy. Scotty was slumped in the couch, sitting behind Bob, who was sitting in the chair. And Altman said he wanted to do it. He had some ideas. Any time a director wants to do something, he says the right things. I think he talked about wanting to use stars as extras in the way the book had thrown in a couple of movie stars very casually. He wanted to amplify that.

  He left the room and David Brown said, “He’s a brilliant filmmaker. He hasn’t made a successful movie in a while. There are cycles, and he is due for a success.”

  Frankly, since we hadn’t had luck with anybody else, this was the best chance that we had.

  JOHNNIE PLANCO: Just before noon, David called and said, “Who are you going to get for the lead?” He told me, “You know, I’ve got Bob for the movie.”

  Robert Altman, from DVD commentary: I’d written Short Cuts, based on Raymond Carver short stories, and I’d been trying to get that picture financed. That’s what I was really working on. I couldn’t get the money to finance that film. The Player was offered to me as a picture they were going to make. I was a director for hire. I needed the job—I saw it was an easy shoot. I kinda liked the idea of it, so I did it.

  DAVID LEVY: It wasn’t a huge budget—it was six million and change: but for the first time in years he had people who had the power on a project say “We want you.”

  Stephen Cole, story headlined “Going the Distance for Short Cuts Director,” the Globe and Mail, October 16, 1993: Sidney Lumet priced himself out of the impending production of The Player, author Michael Tolkin’s anti-Hollywood screed. Hungry for work, Robert Altman begged for a chance to direct a film he felt born to make, offering his services at one-quarter of Lumet’s $2 million asking price.

  JERRY WALSH: One night in New York, Bob said he wanted to go to the movies after dinner. I said, “That’s just amazing. I’ve never gone to the movies with you before. I thought you never went to the movies.”

  He said, “Oh, yeah, I hardly ever go. It makes me too jealous. But I want to see an actor.”

  I’m pretty sure he said that Scotty wanted him to see this actor who was in a movie called Bull Durham about baseball. I’m pretty sure that Tim Robbins is one actor that he was introduced to by Scotty.

  TIM ROBBINS: It was kind of a critical time for me when I met Bob. Jacob’s Ladder had just come out and had tanked. No one saw it. It was as if the universe conspired to create the worst possible environment for a movie about a Vietnam veteran who was having hallucinations. It was two or three weeks before we went into the Gulf the first time, the Gulf War. So the country was not in the mood for a movie that was in any way critical of the military or in any way questioning the military. I was counting on this movie. So it comes out and I was close to broke. I was broke. And I had a new son. And I had a mortgage and all. So all of a sudden I was running out of money.

  He was putting together Short Cuts. I got a call from my agent saying, “Do you want to meet Robert Altman?”

  I go up there, I park my car, I get out and it was very friendly, it was a very warm environment immediately. The people that worked for him, you could tell there was a decency there. You can tell that kind of stuff. He told me about the movie and it sounded great. And he said, “So are you in?”

  I said, “What? Oh. Yeah.”

  And it was as simple as that. I mean I was kind of shocked. Some directors just put you through so much to get a part. I mean, after a certain point, either you have it or you don’t. And some directors need to see audition, audition, don’t trust something. So already you’re starting this idea that something’s not quite right. But with Bob it was immediately, “You’re the guy.” This is the vibe you got from him—”There’s no one like you and you’re going to be great in this movie.” You immediately respond to that positivity, that belief that he had in you and confidence he had in you.

  Well, Short Cuts doesn’t happen. At least not yet. I’m starting to panic now ‘cause I got nothing. There’s a really terrible comedy that’s presented to me for a ton of money. And it’s an offer. I’m not sure when The Player became real, but I know I was terrified facing that decision of turning down this thing and worried that I would not get anything else for a while. I went out to L.A. and actually said yes to the job. Went to see a movie that night, I think it was The Doors. Went home that night and said, “Get me out, I made a bad choice.” I think the possibility existed at that point that The Player was going to happen. But it wasn’t real yet and Short Cuts had already not gotten put together. So it was a choice between the possibility that The Player might happen and this million-dollar offer for a comedy that was not so funny.

  So I find out later, not from Bob but from other people, that around the time that I was having this dilemma, Bob was having a similar choice. They were telling him, “We’ll give you the money for The Player if you use this actor, or that actor, a choice of two.”

  He said, “No, Tim Robbins is my guy.”

  He could have walked away from me and had his film financed, which nine out of ten directors in Hollywood would do. “Sorry, kid, I can’t get it made with your name, you’re not worth enough.” But Bob had given me his word and he had a belief in me that I was this character. And he
turned down the money to do it with these two actors that he didn’t feel were right. Or maybe he just felt that he had already told me that it was me.

  Robert Altman, from DVD commentary: I think that eighty percent of my creative function or work is finished the moment I get the film cast. And from that time on, I’m passing this idea that came to me from someone else over to someone else or another group of people. So I can’t claim any real authorship for it. All I was for it was the fascist that kept everything in line and going while this thing was made. When you really get down to what made the difference, what made this thing better rather than just ordinary, I don’t think we’ll ever find out, because I think it’s a compilation of people.

  TIM ROBBINS: I go out to L.A. and I start going to rehearsals. It’s not really rehearsals, it’s just me and Bob. And it’s just me and Bob in his office smoking pot. I think I first smoked with him the first time I met him, right after that lunch. I’m not sure about that, though, which is the problem with smoking pot.

  We start talking about the movie and about this scene; we started going through the script. And from the start he said, “You know, I don’t really like this script. I think we can do some really interesting things with it, but I’ve asked Michael to change some stuff.”

  And Michael was reluctant. He felt the script was good enough. It was sold to the financiers and I don’t think he saw the need to change it. And I guess I was of the mind that I’m working with Robert Altman, dude. That is all I need to know. I’ll change anything, you know? If he says we’re going to change it, we’re going to change it.

  It’s a live organism making a film, and in Bob’s world it couldn’t remain static, it couldn’t remain the same, it had to keep evolving daily. The basic situations were there, the basic scene structure was there, but I think he thought a lot of it just sounded like written dialogue and it wasn’t organic enough and so we had to figure out how to get there.

  DAVID LEVY: Bob was really loving the picture, but right near the beginning there he felt hamstrung by certain things script-wise, and I remember that he called up Michael Tolkin and said something along the lines of, “You did a great job, it’s really terrific, but now I’ve come to the point where I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.” And when he hung up that phone it was like a tremendous burden lifted from him. He was not going to be a slave to the written word. I hope that doesn’t seem like any kind of diminution of Michael’s contribution at all. I’m just saying Bob really struggled with trying to respect him and what was there and at the same time needing to make a certain departure from what was on the page. That was a pretty glorious experience.

  With Tim Robbins, as Griffin Mill, on the set of The Player

  DAVID BROWN (producer): During the production, Robert Altman was an improviser beyond belief. The writer, Michael Tolkin, complained that he went to the dailies and he didn’t recognize any of the dialogue. For a while, Michael and I bonded against Altman. We slunk away and said, “Why can’t we see the script?” And all that stuff. We were anti-Altman at the same time we recognized his genius.

  Finally I said to Bob, “Why don’t you show Tolkin the working script?”

  He said, “Yes, I can do that, but that’s not what I plan to shoot.”

  He reminded me that Ring Lardner complained all during the picture they made together, M*A*S*H, but didn’t complain when he won the Academy Award for best screenplay.

  PETER GALLAGHER: There’s this scene with Cynthia Stevenson and Tim Robbins in a hallway at the studio, and I was sort of hanging out. I wasn’t in it. I had just finished and I was up in a couple of scenes and I’m just messing around, hanging out.

  “Gallagher!” It’s Bob.

  “What?”

  “I want you to go in there and do something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When?”

  “Next take.”

  And I’m like, “Fuck, okay, all right, where am I? Where has the character been, where’s he going, where are we in the story? What’s happening between them, why would I possibly be there, what would I say to them? My office is over there and the lot is over there, what would I be …”

  “Ready?”

  “Yeah, okay, I got something.” And I go by them and it’s like, “Habeas Corpus, Griffin. Habeas Corpus.” Because that was a movie he was pitching, but Tim’s character was also beating the murder rap, because they didn’t have the body. In that minute it’s like you pull every molecule of every instinct and training and awareness you have to try to contribute something. And it’s not like Bob’s sitting back not watching. He’s breathing in every single moment.

  TIM ROBBINS: At one point Bob said, “There’s going to be people around that are going to be trying to tell us what to do. I just want you to know that if it becomes a pain in the ass and it’s not fun, I just want your word that you’ll walk off the set with me.”

  And I said, “You got it.”

  In other words, I was a coconspirator. And I knew he was up to great mischief and he warned me that there could be ramifications from producer kind of people, or money people. But he said, “As long as we’re united, we’ll be fine.” So that’s pretty cool, to have one of your heroes invite you into his mischievous master plan and smoke a joint at the same time.

  PETER GALLAGHER: It must have been a mindblower to write a great book and write a script thinking the script would be developed in that way. Then all of a sudden this eight-hundred-pound gorilla says, “Yeah, I love your script. Hang onto it and tell me what you think of the movie” [laughs].

  MICHAEL TOLKIN: The story of every movie is the same—script changes, writer grumbles. I was one of the producers of the movie. If I hadn’t been I would have been banished from the set, I’m sure.

  His disdain for plot is something that I think hurt the basic entertainment and commercial potential of some of his films. In the book and the script there is the postcard writer and the police. He lost the perspective of the postcard writer. He trimmed that part of the story in the second and third act, which in the book and the script was keeping suspense while the love story and the business story were playing out. There were three forces—Larry Levy, the cop, and the postcard writer. He cut the postcard writer out of the suspense. I think it would have been five minutes more, if that, of film.

  A director cannot improve the structure that holds attention. It’s just not possible. Only a script can create or hold attention. But writers get into trouble egotistically when they want to think that if a script wasn’t changed everything would be better. It’s a balancing act.

  Robert Altman, from DVD commentary: Making a film is like painting a mural. You’ve got this big wall to fill and you’ve got a subject, and the only difference is, as you go up there and you’re painting it, you’ve got living pigment. So you’ve let me paint a horse over here in the upper-right-hand corner and you turn around and look back and the horse is moving across the stage and you have to quickly paint a fence. You have to kind of control it, but you’re dealing with a living thing that’s really forming itself. So you’re sitting up there doing damage control all the time. But the style in which one paints these films is… their personality, it’s what they do, it’s their artistry.

  * * *

  Dialogue from The Player:

  (Studio executive Larry Levy, played by Peter Gallagher, introduces himself to Burt Reynolds, playing himself.)

  LARRY LEVY: Burt. Larry Levy. I hope you don’t remember me, and if you do, I hope there are no hard feelings. I was only working for Kastner at the time.

  ELLIOTT KASTNER: The line about me in The Player? That’s Altman getting back at me, but I enjoyed it very much. I found it amusing.

  * * *

  DAVID BROWN: People came out of the woodwork to work for him. He was extremely popular with actors. We had Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts—any number of actors who simply wanted to be in a Bob Altman film.

  Julia Roberts playing
a condemned convict and Bruce Willis as her rescuer, in cameo appearances in The Player

  DAVID LEVY: The Player was one of those pictures where every day you felt the magic. I know that word is off-putting and overused, but it was true. Just that kind of energy on set and then at dailies. I mean, you were aware of everything coming together just as it should. Once we started screening it, the buzz in town was just incredible. And even before that we started getting people to do cameos and play themselves, and then people started calling us saying, “Oh, can I be in it, can I be in it?” It was nice because they worked it for day-player scale, and we donated their salaries to the Motion Picture Home, and so it became a thing to do.

  PETER GALLAGHER: I made a point to meet a few studio heads. Not heads, but close—presidents—because we were just trying to learn about the system. About Hollywood. One of these guys asks me, “How did Altman do it? He’s got all these people making this movie now for nothing.”

  I remember thinking, “Well, he just picks up the phone and calls.” I said, “If you give an actor the slightest chance that they might be able to do good work, that counts for a lot. If, on top of that, they’ll be valued as well [laughs], who’s going to say no?”

  MICHAEL TOLKIN: Harry Belafonte was the first person Bob called. He wanted to be able to say to all the others, “I’ve got Harry Belafonte.” He said, “We’re leading a protest march.”

  HARRY BELAFONTE: I was in the Caribbean and a person in the house where I’m staying says Bob Altman wants to talk to me. So I was surprised. Thought there might be a little prank at the end of the line. But it was him. And he said, “Mr. Belafonte, I’m Robert Altman. I’m calling to get you into a picture I’m doing.”

  I kind of paused and waited for the other shoe to fall. And I said, “Really? What movie are you doing?”