Todd Hitchcock
AFI Silver Film Programmer
Tuesday, November 21, 2006; 3:00 PM
Robert Altman, the caustic and irreverent satirist behind
"M-A-S-H," "Nashville" and "The Player" who made a career out of bucking Hollywood,
A five-time Academy Award nominee for best director, most recently for 2001's "Gosford Park," he finally won a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2006.
Todd Hitchcock, American Film Institute Silver film programmer who compiled and produced the recent 13-film retrospective of Altman's film career, was online Tuesday, Nov. 21, at 3 p.m. ET to discuss the filmmaker's extensive body of work.
A transcript follows.
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Todd Hitchcock: The internet is abuzz today with obits and appreciations of filmmaker Robert Altman. I look forward to hearing what readers have to say.
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Washington, D.C.: Why was Altman an "American original"?
Todd Hitchcock: I'm going to assume you're referencing the title of the Altman retro AFI Silver screened last spring.
We chose that title both because Altman's approach to filmmaking, I think you'll agree, was an original one. And I would suggest that one of Altman's great subjects was America itself, especially in films like MASH, Nashville, and Buffalo Bill and the Indians.
It was fun seeing that Picturehouse, the distributor of his last film, A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, eventually used this same tag line in the print ads for that film, especially leading up to the 4th of July.
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Fairfax, Va.: I thought I heard Altman was working on a film around now, is that true? Did he complete it and what was it to be?
Todd Hitchcock: I don't have any inside dope on this at hand, but the latest interview I recall reading where Altman talked about upcoming projects was for a film called PAINT, which was previously listed on IMDB.com as "announced" for 2006, but with his passing seems to have been removed. It's a project that he kicked around for quite a while, having to do with the NYC art world, gallery dirty dealings etc. Certainly a mileu Altman could have fun tweaking. If I recall correctly Thandie Newton was someone he had thought about for a role.
One of the most interesting things that I've come across in my reading about Altman has to do with projects that were abandoned or taken away from him: E.L. Doctorw's RAGTIME being the biggest example, after Buffalo Bill bombed, a film called at one time the Yig Epoxy and then Easy and Hard Ways Out that was to star Peter Falk and Sterling Hayden, and somehow mutated into Best Defense with Dudley Moore and Eddie Murphy, and Breakfast of Champions. He didn't make any of those, but they all seemed so promising for his talents.
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Arlington, Va.: Todd -- did you get a chance to talk to Altman while you were working on the retrospective?
Todd Hitchcock: no, I didn't get to talk to him, but I was in touch with his production office Sandcastle 5, who were great folks. They helped point us in the right direction to find prints for some hard to track down titles from the 1980s, Come Back to Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean for example.
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Annapolis, Md.: Was the movie M-A-S-H the precursor to the TV series?
Todd Hitchcock: It was. Altman directorial duties for Fox on MASH was purely work for hire. He didn't have a stake in the TV show, and all the millions it made, whatsoever. In my reading on the subject, he never seemed in the least bitter about this. And he liked to joke that his son, who wrote lyrics to the theme song "Suicide Is Painless," which the TV show of course picked up from the movie and made famous, made more money off the movie and TV show than he ever did.
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Alexandria, Va.: Is it true that actors liked to work with him because of his style? And what was his particular style of making films?
Todd Hitchcock: It would be impossible to say that every actor who worked with him had a great experience. Ironically, Elliott Gould, one of the actors most closely associated with Altman, and Donald Sutherland at one point mutinied on the set of MASH and tried to have him taken off the picture, because they didn't think he knew what he was doing with all the overlapping dialogue and ad libbing.
Altman stayed on, the film was a hit, things were patched up, and Gould, for his part benefitted by continuing to work with the director in some of his very best roles: California Split, The Long Goodbye.
Altman provided his actors unparalled freedom to experiment. Actors like Gould, Bert Remsen, Michael Murphy, Henry Gibson, Shelly Duvall, and others worked with him again and again and again, like a stock company.
Paul Newman worked with him twice, but both films were huge flops (Quintet and Buffalo Bill and the Indians--in my mind, one of Altman's best, very underrated). I'd like to think that Newman really believed in what Altman wanted to do, and wasn't finding it elsewhere in Hollywood of the late 1970s.
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Gaithersburg, Md.: What made the AFI Silver run a retro on Altman films and which were the most popular?
Todd Hitchcock: I'm a big fan, it was a series I really wanted to do for a while, and the combination of the honorary Oscar in March and the release of his latest (now last) movie, A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, in June made it seem like the perfect time to do a retro.
My recollection is that NASHVILLE, MCCABE & MRS. MILLER, and THE LONG GOODBYE were the best attended shows. Hardly anyone came to see CALIFORNIA SPLIT, which saddened me, I really think it's one of his best films ever. It ran for a whole week at Film Forum in NY recently.
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Lake Wobegon, Minn.: What a great loss. The PHC movie is a very interesting paean to the show and, in a sense, himself.
Todd Hitchcock: I really enjoyed PHC, even moreso the second time I saw it. And the whole thing is very death-haunted . . . makes for quite an elegy now, doesn't it?
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Silver Spring, Md.: Why do you think the public is so willing to turn a blind eye to the "stinkers" he's made, and concentrate on his hits? Seems to me that being the director of Dr T and The Women would have earned anyone a one-way ticket to Has-Been- ville.
Todd Hitchcock: that's a great question. How did this guy come back from the 1980s whatsoever?
My only guess would be to say that when you've had success in Hollywood, as Altman certainly did in the 1970s, you have some credit in the bank. Studios are willing to forgive a misfire or two and hope the next one will work. There are so many variable contributing to how a film performs . . . and maybe it's all about how good your next pitch is.
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Springfield, Va.: What do you believe were Robert Altman's most significant contributions to the development of film technique?
Todd Hitchcock: multitrack sound design, "the Lionsgate 8-track sound system", overlapping dialogue. Having reviewed some of the early films, it's still a little rough on MASH and McCabe, but by the time of California Split and especially Nashville, it's working the way he imagined it would.
It's a great technical innovation, whether or not it has many filmmakers pickign up the ball and running with it today.
Paul Thomas Anderson is certainly the name that comes up as the big Altman-influenced younger filmmaker, and rightly so. But to my recollection, it's not really in the area of sound design.
btw, Anderson's next film will be out aroun this time next year, THERE WILL BE BLOOD, about the early days of the oil biz, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Sounds promising.
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Arlington, Va.: Are there any good bios out on Altman that you would recommend? I remember Altman directing a substantial number of episodes of the TV series COMBAT on ABC around 1962 before he became established as a big name movie director. (The series dealt with a platoon -- occasionally centering only on a squad -- of U.S. soldiers advancing through France during World War II after D-Day.) I'd be interested in learning more about Altman's early years.
Todd Hitchcock: Don't have a straight up bio to recommend, but I can recommend two outstanding books of interviews: Robert Altman Interviews, edited by David Sterritt, published by the Univ. of Mississippi in their great, extensive series of collected interviews with filmmakers.
And especially Altman on Altman, edited by David Thompson, pub. by Faber & Faber.
the first collects various interviews from various publications over many years, the latter reads like a single long interview conducted by Thompson of Altman, covering his entire career. Together, the two books really paint a comprehensive picture of the man and his career (and how he chose to talk about his career).
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Washington, D.C.: How was Altman able to encourage such unbelievably jaw-dropping performances from "Laugh-In's" Henry Gisbon and Lily Tomlin in "Nashville." It's like watching Jim Nabors reach into your soul and show you the face of God. How could he do what other directors can't?
Todd Hitchcock: you almost answered the question yourself . . . I can't think of any director who would even think of USING Duvall and Gibson in the ways Altman used them. He saw things in a unique way, and he saw the potential in his actors in a really unique way. And clearly, he gained incredible trust from actors like these.
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Los Angeles, Calif.: Why is "3 Women" never mentioned during discussions of Altman's (minor) works? I think it was well-received at Cannes. Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall both give brilliant performances and I think it does nearly as good of a job as "Nashville" in defining what was the 1970s.
RIP Robert Altman.
Todd Hitchcock: That one's a real audience splitter. To some it's major, to others it's minor Altman. Criterion has one of their typically lavish DVDs out of it.
I enjoyed it, but it's out there . . . I wouldn't say it's for everyone.
I agree with you, though, Duvall and especially Spacek are just outstanding in that one.
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Chicago, Ill.: Today's obits all mention "Nashville," which if I recall came out in 1977. Is there any particular reason why this film seems to have fallen off the face of the earth? I have never, ever seen it broadcast on TV. Nobody ever refers to it and it just doesn't appear to be part of the current language of film. Any reason why that is (if you even agree with me)? Thanks.
Todd Hitchcock: I think Nashville is one of the great films, period. All time. That said, I know there are many for whom it will never measure up to that claim.
The film had ridiculous hype even before it was released thanks to Pauline Kael, who wrote an article based on seeing a rough cut. She really wanted to claim it as the Great American Movie, and many others followed suit.
The TV question is an interesting one, because it was very complicated. The film's about 3 hrs long, which presents it's own problems for broadcast, and also cinemascope widescreen like just about all Altman (cutting it down to pan and scan TV frame would be destroying it). At one point ABC commissioned two two-hour cuts, to run as a mini-series, which were promised to include footage not used for the theatrical cut. But it's another one of those intriguing Altman projects that got shelved.
It would be great to see a station tike Turner Classic step up and show Nashville soon . . .
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Washington, D.C.: What is Mr. Altman's legacy to film in relation to his contemporaries?
Todd Hitchcock: Altman was 81, born in 1925. Norman Jewison was born in 1926, and I think others who would be age peers include Sidney Lumet (1924), Franklin (Plantet of the Apes, Patton) Schaffner (b. 1920) and John Frankenheimer (b. 1930).
What's interesting about this list is they all got their starts in part from working in television, whether live or episodic. A lot of names you might not throw together right off the bat, but there they are.
Altman doesn't seem a fit aesthetically with this group though . . . he didn't break into features until 10-15 years after these guys did, he toiled in TV for quite a while. And when he finally broke through with MASH, it was 1970, he was a free spirit, shall we say, the other guys here were a bit more buttoned down. So Altman gets grouped with all these other groovers who got started in the late 60s/early 70s like Coppola, Scorsese, Ashby, Malick. Guys who "define" 1970s cinema. But Altman is like, 20 years older than these guys.
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Washington, D.C.: What Robert Altman films would you recommend to someone who isn't really familiar with his work, and who maybe wanted to watch 3-4 films this weekend and get a general feel for what he's all about? Also, do you have a favorite?
Todd Hitchcock: I love Nashville, but it might be an awkward place to start.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye are really fun subversions of the Western and Detective genre respectively, very "70s". Depending on your tastes, these could be a great place to start.
But recent Altman is really, really rewarding, and easy to slip into: Gosford Park, The Player, and yes, just out on dvd, A Prairie Home Companion.
I'd also like to give a shout out for Tanner '88. Trailblazing television--think how much the TV landscape has changed the last 20 years, with the reality craze, as well as how mockumentary has become so firmly established as a genre. Now look at Tanner '88 and realize who was ther first: Altman. And during the decade when he was supposedly doing nothing. Amazing.
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Washington, D.C.: The obit in the Times calls Altman one of the most influential directors of the century. I'm curious, can you point out other filmmakers whose work seems largely inspired by/beholden to (or copied directly from!) Altman? I'm particularly interested in the supposedly "influential" qualities of films like "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," which seems even today to be unique in its pacing and style.
Todd Hitchcock: I touched on that a little earlier, but again, I'm not sure there's an inheritor (yet). Paul Thomas Anderson has a real affection for the cast dynamic that Altman employed, and there's a lot of things about films like BOOGIE NIGHTS and MAGNOLIA that suggests kindred spirits. But I don't think it's really like he picks up where Altman leaves off . . .
Another issue is: a lot of Altman's stuff is shaggy. He didn't much care for tight little packages and perfect plot resolution. That's always going to be a tough sell for the business side of Hollywood.
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Todd Hitchcock: I really enjoyed discussing Robert Altman's film legacy with you today.
Thank you all.
And Thank you, Robert Altman.
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