Robert Altman

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  To work with a man like Bob, that desire was stronger than the desire to portray the part. The part was okay, but the real joy was to be directed by him. If you work with a great director, often something great comes out. If you have a wonderful part with a bad director, you might disappear.

  Sick? We never saw it. He was always very strong. I never saw him complain. I sometimes saw him very tired but we never stopped because of him. He was very dignified. It was a very difficult film for him.

  HARRY BELAFONTE: When we were in Paris, I had a bedroom that was right down the hall from the main bedroom where he and Kathryn stayed. When his door was open, what you saw was the TV set. He would use the remote from the bed and you could see what program he was watching. One night it was the Winter Olympics, and they showed it in a way where you never saw one full thing. They cut to several events. Bob was into sports. He didn’t care what it was. He was really into it.

  So he was sitting there. I could see the TV set, and it dawned on me. I got the remote in my room, and I aimed it down the hall, and sure as shit I clicked it and the channel changed. And Bob got up and was clicking back to get back to the station. I’d leave it in place a while and I’d click it again. And click it again. And Bob would click it back.

  You have to understand something. Bob was so fucking sharp, there is no con he did not know. He was always so skeptical and cynical in his own great, genuine way, good way. So now, just as the skier took off the ramp, just as he’s about to land, I clicked it. And he said, “Aw shit! Kathryn, this fucking set, what the hell’s wrong with these French?!”

  And I waited. The end of the race, click. And another time when he clicked, I clicked, he clicked it back on, and I clicked it back off again. This went on for half an hour, forty minutes. He was in a rage [laughs].

  It was Kathryn who walked by just when I was doing it. She saw me, and she said, “Is that you, Belafonte?”

  I said, “Me? What?”

  She said, “Bob…”

  Bob looked around and said, “You fucker!” [Laughs]

  He really got to a state of such agitation. He denounced all the French and the French Revolution. Napoleon was a shit. I mean, you name it.

  BUCK HENRY: Prêt-à-Porter was really a mess, but there isn’t an actor in the world I believe who wouldn’t have preferred to be in it.

  PETER GALLAGHER: After Prêt-à-Porter, we were having dinner at Café Luxembourg. And they were pretty cruel; the reviews were tough. I remember asking him, “Does it get any easier?”

  He said, “No. It just gets harder. Just hurts more.”

  And he’s fucking right, you know?

  * * *

  Robert Altman’s Jazz ‘34: Remembrances of Kansas City Swing (Documentary for PBS, Great Performances; 1996)

  * * *

  Kansas City (1996)

  Jay Carr, review of Kansas City, The Boston Globe, August 16, 1996: Although Robert Altman’s “Kansas City” is a labor of love, it’s anything but nostalgic. Rich in texture, it alternates druggy reveries and a harsh clarity about some brutal realities of life in the American heartland in 1934 as it unfolds during a single calamitous day. Although Altman was only 9 the year the action of the film takes place, its world of black jazz and white power politics obviously informed his youth. Here he celebrates the former and pitilessly indicts the latter…. Its framing device is a kidnapping—tinny-voiced Jennifer Jason Leigh, a Jean Harlow wannabe, kidnaps a Democratic Party bigwig’s wife (Miranda Richardson), a sad woman given to swallowing laudanum to forget she’s unloved excess baggage. … Dermot Mulroney’s none-too-bright thug has robbed a visiting gambler, and the local black mob boss—played by Harry Belafonte with an invigorating hardness he seldom has been allowed to display throughout his long career—acts fast to put things right.

  * * *

  DAVID LEVY: Kansas City was a case of him going home. In a funny way, it’s sort of like a bit of drama meets a kind of memoir. It’s almost like he’s operating out of sense memory of his youth there, you know? And so it’s not the stuff of biography, but it is like the kind of melodrama that might have played in his head during his formative years.

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: I can’t tell you how many times during Kansas City he’d come home and say, “A guy came to the set today who I went to kindergarten with.”

  FRANK BARHYDT (screenwriter): Kansas City was unique in that first of all, it didn’t abide by prohibition. Also, it wasn’t affected as much by the Depression. A lot of that is due to the fact they had a political boss here who had connections. Because it wasn’t suffering so much from the Depression, this is where musicians came. There were clubs open and you could drink constantly. Bob remembers going into these clubs—a whole lot of clubs just up and down Twelfth Street—and he wanted to show that in this movie.

  HARRY BELAFONTE: One night we came home from something and we were sitting there and he broke out a joint. He said essential to this film is this character, a black character, and he’s a gangster. And he painted the environment for me and he said, “He’s a lethal son of a bitch.” He said, “I just don’t have the cards in my deck. I can’t get to him. And I wondered if you would work with me on it.”

  Harry Belafonte, as the gangster Seldom Seen, in Kansas City

  Coming from a background where my relatives are deeply immersed in the numbers world, small-time racketeers, I enjoyed this because a lot of my childhood was spent around it. And this picture was taking place in 1934, so I could go back into it. We were talking and I said, “Most movies you see, you always find gangsters are dim. They might have some instinct that’s sharp, but it’s always equated on the side of evil and therefore they’re seen in a rather one-dimensional way.” I knew guys who were learned men who could quote Socrates and philosophers and play chess, were bright men, and could offer political and social analyses, and they could shoot you in a minute. I said, “If you approach him from the elements in his persona that run against his practice and his culture, you have an interesting character.”

  So the picture is now called Kansas City and the character’s name was Seldom Seen. He’s called Seldom Seen because he spent most of his life in prison. Other people hardly ever saw him, and yet he ran everything. And in the middle of this movie he becomes pivotal to the plot. And he says, “Belafonte, I want you to play it.”

  I said, “No. I don’t need to go through all that. This character is so against type. My persona in the world at large is all this peace stuff.” I told him I would hurt the movie to ask the audience to overcome the popular persona to get into this part that was so pivotal to this movie. And he took a draw on his spliff and he looked at me and he said, “Tell me something, Belafonte, when did you decide you were an actor? You can’t play it? And you’re an actor? That’s interesting.”

  Well, man, that laid me out. And I said, “Look, Bob, okay. I’ll give you my best shot, but stand on notice that I told you I thought it was the wrong way to go.” And I got into it. I didn’t want to use a lot of makeup. I went in, I got the costume. I had my shirt made a size and a half, two sizes small. And when I pulled the collar together, it started to cut off the circulation to the face. I pulled the tie up a little tighter, and hooked it so it kept in place. The blood began to fill my face. And I always looked like I was on the verge of an explosion. And that’s exactly how my uncle looked. He always looked like he was going to detonate. And he was a big, big numbers man up in Harlem.

  So I came out for Bob to see, and I said, “Does this get it?”

  And he said, “Let’s shoot.”

  I said, “What? I’ve just gotten in this fucking costume, and I’ve done no prep. I did this for you to see.”

  He said, “Belafonte, I’m ready.”

  It turned out to be—certainly at that time in my life—the best thing I ever did. It was the best relationship I ever had with a director who led me through a development towards the approach of a part that I’d never experienced before. He gave me the chance to do just
what I saw. And by and large, most of the critics on that picture were very, very laudatory, and I wound up getting the New York City Drama Critics Award for the best supporting actor.

  JENNIFER JASON LEIGH: It’s very rare you get to actually work with someone who worked with your parents as artists. He worked with my mom [Barbara Turner] on a bunch of things, and my dad [Vic Morrow] on Combat!. After one take on Kansas City he says, “Oh, just like your dad.”

  It felt great because he knew my dad. And I look so much like my dad, and to have someone say it who has the right to say it was interesting and exciting. Someone else might say it and I would be like, “Who are you to talk about my father?”

  We had a great time making Kansas City. Watching Bob watching jazz was very emotional. It was the music of his youth, which is why he wanted to make the movie. I was so happy to see him move to the music. I really didn’t know how sick Bob was. He kind of keeps that from you. I found out later. When we were making the movie, he’s just a giant.

  JANE ADAMS (actress): He gave my character his grandmother’s name, Nettie Bolt. [A reviewer called her “a snooty Junior-Leaguer trying to stuff charity down the throat of a pregnant black girl, whom she views as a trophy.”]

  Bob told me, “You’re going to be playing my grandmother. She was involved in the Junior League, and they smile even when they don’t feel like smiling. It’s that particular kind of society lady.” We just sort of had fun with that.

  He was very good at instilling confidence, a confidence I don’t always have.

  DONA GRANATA (costume designer): McCabe & Mrs. Miller was the picture that made me decide to become a costume designer. The visuals were so amazing. Then, right before Kansas City, I was ready to throw in the towel with designing. I was very disillusioned. I told myself, “If this is meant to be, some incredible thing will happen and tell me I’m on the right path.” Two weeks later, I got a call from Bob to come interview for Kansas City. It was a life-changing event.

  Bob was such a class act. He had beautiful vision about things, and he inspired you to do your best work. You didn’t even know why. You just had to do really great stuff in Bob’s presence. He never put the pressure of failure on you. He wasn’t tyrannical. Quite the opposite. He wanted you to express yourself and come up with ideas. Every day I just wanted to get in there and keep his vision going.

  Bob had this way of using his hands in the most beautiful fashion. When he directed, it was as if he was conducting an orchestra in front of the monitor. You’d just watch his hands go. He was almost coaxing the actors on somehow. On Kansas City, the two women were instruments in his mind—one was a saxophone and one was a clarinet. It was all integrated—the sounds, the sights, the color. It was a universe he was creating and you got swept up into that.

  Bob had many sides, but he was always Bob. He would be happy with a piece of peach pie and vanilla ice cream, and Kathryn’s fabulous macaroni and cheese. Then he’d get dressed up in his white dinner jacket to receive an honor and he’d look like this total movie star. You’d go to France with him and the whole country was ready to kneel at his feet at Cannes. I watched these young people follow him around in the middle of the night like he was the Pied Piper. Yet at the same time, he was just Bob.

  MICHAEL MURPHY: One night he was waxing a little philosophical. We were driving along and he says, “Isn’t this weird, the way we spend our lives? You get dressed up in these funny clothes and I tell you where to stand” [laughs]. Even when he wasn’t feeling well, he was always fun on the set.

  FRANK W. BARHYDT (screenwriter): He was having trouble breathing. I remember being in his trailer one time and he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do after this. Can’t get insurance.” He was kind of emotional. Made me feel awful. It was a tough time for him. A very tough time for him. However it is you feel when you’re sick. Angry. Like your body is letting you down, I think.

  MATTHEW SEIG (producer): During Kansas City, he got sick, and a group of us were called to his house in the early morning. I don’t think it was light out yet. And we got the call that Bob was sick and the doctor had been there and we should come by. And it was clear that by that time he already knew that he had to take at least a few days off. And you know the whole thing was real shaky. And so Bob says, “Well, we’re not going to work. We got to take three days off. And don’t file an insurance claim because I’ll never be able to work again.”

  Robert Altman surrounded by jazz musicians on the set of Kansas City

  Well, how are you going to not work and not file an insurance claim? We ran out of money. I mean, the budget was like totally shot. We spent the contingencies; there was no money. You can’t just take three days off. The completion-bond people get the daily production reports every day. They watch what’s going on. If you’re not shooting and you haven’t filed an insurance claim, you’re in deep shit.

  He was really sick and he probably wasn’t thinking clearly, but that is the first thing that would come to Robert Altman’s mind—”We’ve got to protect my ability to work; that’s the most important thing.”

  He obviously had had heart problems, we knew that. He had to change his diet and he had to stop drinking, which he did by cutting down to white wine for a while. It didn’t stop things. But it all fell apart in Kansas City. It was so incredible—between Scotty getting sick and then Bob, it was a really cursed production.

  * * *

  Lynn Elber, story headlined “Movie Snub Spotlights Politics of Oscar Campaigns; Robert Altman’s Kansas City Left Out of Race By Distributor,” The Associated Press, January 31, 1997: If Robert Altman’s Kansas City receives any Academy Award nominations, the director won’t have Fine Line Features to thank. The distributor of Altman’s jazz-soaked movie set in the Missouri city of the 1930s declined to mount an Oscar campaign for the film or its actors, including the critically praised Harry Belafonte. While industry trade papers are thick with ads touting such unlikely Oscar contenders as the Sylvester Stallone flop Daylight, academy voters won’t have their memories jogged by Kansas City hype. Nor will they find Fine Line video cassettes of the movie in mailboxes crowded with tapes from other Oscar hopefuls: Altman footed the $18,000 bill to send the movie to some in the Academy, including the performing branch. “I just think it’s such disrespect to Harry Belafonte I can hardly stand it,” said Altman. … Although Fine Line declined to comment officially, a company executive called its action sensible for a small firm saddled with a money loser like Kansas City.

  WREN ARTHUR (producer): He was so hurt by Kansas City. He felt let down by the people who were releasing it, and he felt let down by the critics. They just really went after it. It was my first experience in any of this and I was shocked because I thought Kansas City was a beautiful movie. It was like a really lovely jewel and I thought the performances were great. But everybody went after it with such a passion. And some of them did the same on every film after that, too. Bob got that. His work was always going to be compared to something it wasn’t. Why wasn’t it Nashville? Why wasn’t it Short Cuts? Why wasn’t it The Player? He was really hurt. Not that it stopped him.

  * * *

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: He was frighteningly thin. They were trying all kinds of stuff. They barely got him through Kansas City. That was a big one. It was the heart. It was giving up.

  KONNI CORRIERE: At some point we went to a doctor at Cedars-Sinai and he said, “Have you ever thought of a transplant?” We were elated. Absolutely, positively, one hundred percent yes.

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: The doctors said one of the main sources of hearts for transplants are motorcycle accidents.

  KONNI CORRIERE: On the way home, it was raining. And Bob said, “I hope we see a motorcyclist.”

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: It wasn’t very long. We signed up for the program in September 1995. The wait can go on forever—you have no idea how long it can go on. Then December fourth they called and said, “Come right down.” Konni, Bob, and I went. He’d taken a sleeping pil
l, Ambien, but it had no effect on him whatsoever. He drove us to Cedars-Sinai and they put him in a room. We had to wait until the team went up to San Jose to get the heart. I saw the heart come in—in a bucket, one of those coolers.

  He was really lucky, never had any rejection. He was home by Christmas, walking around Malibu buying presents. It was phenomenal because I don’t know how much longer he could have lasted.

  We kept it a secret. There was a big stigma on heart-transplant surgery, more than on bypass or double bypass. He wanted to work more. He wasn’t through working. So he didn’t want people to know. Until he had four or five pictures under his belt. Then he began slipping it into conversation, and people didn’t seem to get it. Once in a while somebody would say, “Transplant?! Did you just say transplant?!” [Laughs] He’d tell people it was a young woman’s heart, but they never tell you. He made up that story. The original story I gleaned from them was that it was a young man, but we don’t really know.

  LOIS SMITH (press agent): I remember getting a call from a member of the press—it might have been Army Archerd—and he’d heard. I said, “That’s ridiculous. He was just in and out for a checkup.” I don’t think he bought it.

  Army Archerd, column in Variety, December 7, 1995: Good wishes are out to director Robert Altman, who underwent heart transplant surgery Sunday. Altman had known the surgery was necessary since last March, friends say.

  DAVID LEVY: Bob called Army up and said, “Oh, that’s a complete lie. That’s bullshit.” And he demanded some kind of retraction or correction, which happened. He just didn’t want the world to know or think that at that time.

  The return of the king, three weeks after his heart transplant

  “Celebrity Briefs,” USA Today, December 8, 1995: If you heard Robert Altman had a heart transplant, we happily report it’s untrue. Though he has heart problems, he’s fine: He’ll be fishing next week.