Robert Altman

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  I can’t go back up the river and think, “Jesus, I should have done something at that bend—that last bend.” Because I didn’t do anything at that last bend. As much as those thoughts hit me, they’ve become part of what I put into the work that I do. Because it’s the accumulation of guilt. I don’t think it’s serious guilt, because I live with it. If you take me to any of those crossroads and say, “Okay, let’s go back—now here you can do this,” I don’t think I’d do anything different. It would be false.

  * * *

  Dialogue from Popeye:

  POOPDECK PAPPY (Played by Ray Walston): Children. They’re just smaller versions of us, you know, but I’m not so crazy about me in the first place, so why would I want one of them? … Children. They cry at you when they’re young, they yell at you when they’re older, they borrows from you when they’s middle-aged and they leave you alone to die. Without even paying you back.

  CHAPTER 31

  Boots On

  *

  A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

  A. O. Scott, review headlined “Altman’s Casual Chaos Meets Keillor’s Rhubarb-Tinged Nostalgia,” The New York Times, June 9, 2006: A late, minor addition to the Robert Altman collection—but a treasure all the same—”A Prairie Home Companion” is more likely to inspire fondness than awe. This is entirely appropriate, since the movie snuggles deep into the mood and sensibility of its source, Garrison Keillor’s long-running public radio variety show. Beloved by tote-baggers across the land, Mr. Keillor’s weekly cavalcade of wry Midwestern humor and musical Americana has never set out to make anyone’s hair stand on end. Mr. Altman, a more cantankerous spirit (he comes from Kansas City, Mo., a wilder corner of the Midwest than Mr. Keillor’s Minnesota), brings his unrivaled sense of chaos and his mischievous eye for human eccentricity. Together they have confected a breezy backstage comedy that is also a sly elegy: a poignant contemplation of last things that goes down as smoothly and sweetly as a lemon drop. … It’s not a perfect movie, and it does not aspire to be a great one. It’s just wonderful.

  * * *

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: Paul Thomas Anderson was there as a backup director because they wouldn’t insure the movie without one.

  PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON: Any hesitation? None. None at all, because I knew he wasn’t going to die.

  With Lindsay Lohan, playing the downhearted Lola, and Meryl Streep, playing her mother, the singing sister Yolanda Johnson, in A Prairie Home Companion

  Bob’s influence on me isn’t something within his films. It’s not the films themselves. It’s him and the way in which he has made films. Whether the films worked or not was inconsequential to the treatment of the undertaking, the fun and the seriousness and the endeavor. It’s not overlapping dialogue; it’s not zooms. These are just technical things, you know? I know people feel that way, but I always felt that even more, the biggest thing is just the attitude. The attitude about them.

  I just remember laughing with him. I mean laughing with tears rolling down our faces. John C. Reilly had this fart machine that he uses in the movie. No one really seems to know what it is—it’s a fart. We wanted it to be like three farts, but I think it’s two now. We were laughing so fucking hard. Reilly was laughing and everyone else was a bit like, “Guys, come on. Really? Are we doing this?”

  And Bob’s like, “Yes, it’s great, it’s perfect.”

  KEVIN KLINE (actor): Bob loved the infinite possibilities. The abiding potential of some wonderful accident or nonsensical, unconscious bit of behavior to emerge. Extraordinary.

  The script was the script, but anything can happen, anything can evolve, anything can mutate into something else if he sees the possibility because an actor was generating some other thing. It’s not largesse, it’s trust. It’s a willingness not to control, to let things happen that you didn’t plan. Whenever I would ask Bob, “What do you think if I wear my hat during this scene? Do you think the jacket should be on or off?,” he’d say, “Completely up to you.”

  It’s not something I was terribly concerned about—just needed somebody to weigh in. Just to help me decide because I was teetering on the fence. Or I’d have a line, and I’d wonder, “What if I said…” He’d go, “Say whatever you want.” Not in a tone that he’s disinterested in what I’m saying. No, it’s like, “Say whatever you want.” Wow. Fantastic.

  Early on, he was lying on the sofa in his office and he wasn’t feeling well. We were talking about the character I play, Guy Noir. Reading the script, I get the sense that he was a detective but now he’s been sort of relegated to doorman duty at a theater. And as the actor you don’t want to sound too stupid—”So, he seems to be American, mid-forties, early fifties.” No, you want to show great insight. So I’m sharing whatever few insights I might have had. And Bob says, “Well, you know, he’s a nut.”

  I was like, “Oh.”

  It cut to the simple, obvious, core truth—which had eluded me—of the character. He’s a nut. Oh.

  He said to the whole cast, “There’s going to be four cameras, and when the scene is over, it’s not necessarily over. We’re just going to move away and you will keep doing whatever you’re doing because you’re still part of the shot. So just keep living.” Great, so you don’t even know—”This is my close-up, this is my medium shot, this is on her.” It’s just happening. And the fact that we’re in a theater too, backstage, onstage, whatever. Everything was in this kind of wonderfully liberating limbo of reality, unreality. Improvisation. Structure.

  Bob loved saying, “You know, I just sat there. I didn’t have to direct at all. They don’t need me.” It was in a self-deprecating way, feigning frustration. Because he had Meryl and Lily and Lindsay and it just happened. That was his way of complementing a well-written scene with highly skilled, inspired actors. But really, I think it’s his idea. In other words, he doesn’t have to do anything. He just knew where to put the cameras to capture what’s evolving and to allow what’s evolving to keep evolving.

  Robert Altman with director Paul Thomas Anderson, his friend and backup director, on A Prairie Home Companion

  PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON: Bob is at his best working with the best actors. If you’re mediocre, I don’t think he’s going to help you get past how much talent you might have. I don’t think any director could do that, you know? No one talks about Bob Altman films and how well designed they were, you know? They talk about the performances and they remember the people in them.

  ROBERT ALTMAN: Meryl Streep is the best. I don’t have any idea what she’s saying, whether it was in the script or not. I can’t say, “Oh, that was good that you changed it there.” I just accept what she delivers. And Lily, I can see Lily’s mechanics working a little differently than Meryl does what she does. And yet, they’re both doing the same thing—creating.

  MERYL STREEP: He said that? Oh my. I don’t know. I always wanted to work with him. Why? He was the cool guy. There were the auteurs, the grandiose kind of directors and the Europeans and the megalomaniacs. And then there was Bob. Bob just seemed to be the one who everybody wanted to work with, because it was more fun.

  Somehow, until Prairie, things never worked out for us to work together. We worked on Prairie for nine days. [She goes into a stage whisper] Here’s the secret—he probably said that about me because our time was so quick. I didn’t wear him down like everybody else [laughs].

  We really hit it off. I loved the way he worked and I think part of it is that I like to work and so does he. He loves the chaos of it. The more capacious a talent, the more relaxed they seemingly are about letting everybody do their thing and invent. So people feel like, “Man, I can do anything I want on this set.” When actors feel like they’re perfectly safe to make big horrible mistakes, the thing really takes off.

  He wants you to make your judgment as an actor but then be wrong about it. He wants you to make the big messy mistake because he might use it. He doesn’t want people to be careful. He wants the full-throated performance. “Get out there and
sing me the song, babe.” He’s not afraid as a director, so he doesn’t want his actors to be afraid or measured. He had no use for it. He was impatient for just the true things, thank you. Actors love that permission. Give them that and they’ll give you everything.

  It’s sort of like a kaleidoscope—he gets all the colors in there, but as he’s shape-shifting it, he’s not afraid to let the lights fall where they may. I think that’s really it. Other, smaller talents are more jealous of it, and more worried about keeping control. “Are the actors getting together by the coffee machine and talking about a scene without me?” The great ones, like Bob, don’t care about that, and in fact they hope you will.

  Seemingly, he let the pets take control of the pet store. But he was totally in control. He just loved being the sun and having all these planets surrounding him.

  The first day on Prairie we had the dressing room set up, with three actors in it. You quickly figure out there’ll be a master and a midshot and coverage on three people. It’s a long day. Then he says it’s a ten-page scene. I thought, “Well, he can’t do more than three pages a day.”

  Bob said, “We’re going to shoot all ten pages today.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  I said, “Well, by the way, you have twenty-seven mirrors in this room, and you’re going to have your camera in every shot. You’re going to be looking at yourself.”

  He smiled and said, “No, I’m not.”

  Lily and I were in flop sweats. We hadn’t learned all ten pages. The first day usually people say, “We’re going to ease into this. We want you to be comfortable with the crew. Today we’ll just have you getting in and out of the car.” Who knew we were going to shoot ten pages the first day?! Who does that? Bob did.

  * * *

  ROBERT ALTMAN: I think Garrison Keillor and myself are very much in sync in this picture. When we get together, we do talks together, we don’t get along. I don’t think we like each other very much. And so consequently we’re always vying for position for ourselves. But I think it turned out to be a pretty good piece of work.

  MERYL STREEP: Bob and Garrison are both very cranky and they liked being cranky, so in a relationship that can be a challenge. But if there was tension, they kept it to themselves. In front of the kids they didn’t fight.

  * * *

  PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON: The last day we shot the last scene, the one with Kevin with the garbage falling and him playing piano. That was the last thing that we shot. And Bob definitely had a melancholy feeling about him, in his face.

  Because of the way the shot was, we were shooting the whole stage, so Bob was tucked over in Guy Noir’s office. Sometimes you get in those horrible spaces where you just have to be for the shot. And he had a Starbucks coffee in his hand and his coat was zipped up because it was kind of cold in there and he had his glasses on. He was staring at the monitor and he just looked really sad that it was ending. I think we only did the shot twice. I remember sitting there thinking, “Fuck, do it again, do it … do more, do more.” I wanted to do more—not ‘cause it wasn’t good, but I wanted to keep shooting.

  MERYL STREEP: On the surface, Prairie is like Garrison’s show. It seems to be this harmless piece of entertainment. But it has quite a serious intent and sort of a rage underneath it. Both of them brought that rage into it. They recognized it in each other. Bob at that point was rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  ROBERT ALTMAN (October 2006, one month before his death): I didn’t get it until we got to the end. I mean, if at any time in the shooting of this, someone had said, “What is this about?” I could not have said, “This is about death.” Now, in retrospect, I can say this is about death because everyone is avoiding saying that. But that’s what it’s about.

  * * *

  Resurrection Blues (Written by Arthur Miller, staged at the Old Vic Theatre, London, spring 2006)

  MATTHEW MODINE (actor): For Bob’s last experience working as a director, the treatment that he received was cruel and inhuman.

  SCOTT GRIFFIN (producer): I had been a friend of Arthur Miller since my early twenties, and while Arthur was writing this play I read an early draft, which I thought was terrific—a bold, different kind of play for Arthur. It’s his parting shot at the American lust for money. It’s about a South American dictator who decides to crucify a young revolutionary who the peasants believe is the next Jesus Christ, and to sell the rights to televise the crucifixion to Madison Avenue. The only problem is, he really is the next Jesus Christ, and problems ensue.

  Arthur’s wife died in 2002—tragically of cancer—and immediately after, Arthur was encouraged to rush the play into production, which was not necessarily the best move. The script was unformed, complicated, and needed work. The production was not well received.

  Years later, Arthur told me they were doing Resurrection Blues in San Diego. I was going to California, and he asked me to go down there to check it out. The script had come a long way, but the production was directed with kind of a somber tone not in keeping with the piece. It’s a satire, a sharply drawn satire. Arthur asked, “What do you think?”

  I said, “It’s a wonderful play, but who do you have to fuck to get a laugh in this show?”

  Arthur asked me to produce it. I had never produced anything at that time. He was firing major Broadway producers to give me a chance. I began work immediately with Jerry Zaks, who is a very highly acclaimed Broadway director of comedies. We had a reading with Nathan Lane and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Bill Murray and it was a great success. Shortly after that, Arthur became very sick with cancer, though he continued to tighten and tweak and refine the script. We had begun talking to the Old Vic about producing the play there, and Arthur was very pleased with that.

  Bob and Kathryn were like family members of mine. We’d have dinner and I’d be telling them about progress on the play. One day I got a call from Sam Cohn, Bob’s agent, saying that Bob wanted to meet with me. Bob told me his feelings were hurt that I had not asked him to direct the play. I was completely dumbfounded. I only hadn’t asked him because I figured he was going to go off and direct twenty-five movies.

  Jerry Zaks had other commitments going on at the same time. I spoke to Jerry and informed him of Bob’s interest, and Jerry graciously handed the reins over to Bob.

  In that meeting I remember Bob saying, “Do you want me to do this? The issue is not whether I want to do this, the issue is whether you want me.”

  I said, “Bob, of course. Why wouldn’t I want you? You’re one of the greatest directors in the world.”

  He said, “You may think I’m a bigger name. All I am is a bigger target.”

  Shortly thereafter I flew to London and met with Kevin Spacey, who’s the artistic director at the Old Vic, and his partner, David Liddiment. We made the deal to do the play there.

  This is an incredibly difficult play. One of the most difficult plays that Arthur Miller wrote. Arthur always said his job as a writer was to hold a mirror up to society. And he said, “Don’t be surprised if they don’t like what they see.”

  Things just didn’t come together. Bob worked very hard to make sure that they did. When you’re working with someone like Robert Altman, you must put one hundred percent of your confidence and faith in that person’s vision. Kevin Spacey did not share that opinion. So frequently, in my opinion, he undermined Bob’s attempts to make the refinements we needed by imposing refinements of his own, and it confused everyone.

  NEVE CAMPBELL (actress): There were a lot of things going on. There were some challenges with the cast.

  SCOTT GRIFFIN: One of the leads was Jane Adams. One time Jane was sitting with Bob and she said, “You have the most beautiful blue eyes. They say when you look into a person’s eyes you’re looking into their soul.”

  And Bob said, “Oh yeah? Well, don’t look too deep, Jane. You might not like what you see.”

  MATTHEW MODINE: Jane Adams is a good actor but she is so broken as a
human being it makes it difficult to give her direction. She’s in a world that nobody else has a key to enter…. Eventually Bob told me, “Matthew, just kick her in the balls.”

  JANE ADAMS (actress): Bob is brilliant, and he likes to use whatever is happening in real life. I can’t speak for Bob, but I think Bob thought that Matthew’s rage was very useful. I think that Bob would be—and was—pleased that Matthew felt that way about me. Of course Bob would say, “Kick her in the balls.” That’s what Matthew’s character was doing. Arthur Miller was telling a story of a woman who is broken by what she is asked to do, and by the insensitivity of the people asking her to do it. Matthew’s character, the producer, was insisting that a petite female director, my character, shoot a real human being as he was being nailed to a cross.

  NEVE CAMPBELL: Anytime you take on any project, you never know how it’s going to turn out or how the chemistry is going to work. Bob—love him to death—had not done an incredible amount of theater. This play required real kid gloves. Arthur Miller had not finished writing the play, so it wasn’t where it needed to be. It needed someone to really sit down with the play and really sort out what it was trying to say.

  SCOTT GRIFFIN: The root of the problem was Spacey. He’s the Norman Bates of show business. One minute he asks you to come in from the rain, have a sandwich, and talk about his bird collection, and the next minute you’re standing there buck naked and he’s dressed as an old lady, coming at you with a carving knife. At least that’s how he treated Bob.