'A charismatic exploding lion'
Casts, crews, family members have much to say about director Robert Altman
When American auteur Robert Altman died on Nov. 20, 2006, his biographer was left with a pile of transcripts. Besides losing a new friend, Mitchell Zuckoff figured he could not finish his book.
Zuckoff had just begun interviewing the director of “MASH” (1970), “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (1971), “Nashville,” (1975), “The Player” (1992), “Short Cuts” (1993) “Gosford Park,” (2001) and “A Prairie Home Companion” (2006). Zuckoff’s editor greenlit an “oral biography” and the former Boston Globe reporter set out on “an Altmanesque tour from birth to death.”
Robert Altman: The Oral Biography (Knopf, $35) lists 144 informants in its “Cast of Characters.” Zuckoff lets Altman’s casts, crews and family do the talking. This author of Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend outsources his task to the likes of Julie Christie, who calls Altman “a great, unique, adventurous, experimental, confrontational, provocative director.”
(Carlo Allegri/Getty Images)
“I do remember he was like a bomb,” adds actress Anouk Aimee from “Pret-a-Porter.”
Zuckoff takes a cue from Altman, who “hated the ventriloquism of a single writer’s voice emanating from many diverse characters.” “He didn’t think much of linear storytelling, and he wouldn’t have wanted his life rendered that way,” writes Zuckoff, who nonetheless structures his chronicle in three acts.
Altman was born in 1925 in Kansas City, enjoyed a comfortable youth, and piloted B-24s in World War II. He came home and directed 16mm industrial films such as “How to Run a Filling Station,” then moved up to television dramas. His five-decade career — which included directing two productions at the Lyric Opera of Chicago — earned him a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in his last year.
“Every actor in the world loved Bob,” raves Barbara Turner, who acted in his “Nightmare in Chicago” and wrote his shot-in-Chicago film “The Company.” Her husband and daughter also acted for Altman.
“He was spectacularly collaborative,” testifies Warren Beatty.
Zuckoff hears how Altman fostered on his sets “camaraderie,” “communal experience,” “collective energy,” “collective thrill,” and “a democratic sense where everybody was rooting for everybody else.”
Altman had an ugly streak, though.
“He liked the feeling of being really angry,” recalls Buck Henry.
“Offending people was something he had a great appetite for,” claims one interviewee.
“He’d go for a person’s weakness and then crucify them,” Altman’s stepdaughter tells Zuckofff.
Composer John Williams witnessed “that soul-destroying gaze of his” in action.
“He had to destroy people to make himself feel real,” says his second wife. Altman once bludgeoned her with a telephone and broke two ribs. The defiant director wished aloud on at least three occasions for studio executives to die of cancer and other ills.
On the lighter side, Zuckoff uncovers kinder anecdotes. A stoned Altman once waited for an interminable red light until he realized it was a battery light on his car’s dashboard. His adopted son Matthew bonded with the lifelong marijuana smoker: “I learned how to roll a really good joint for my dad.” Altman partied hard — drinking, gambling and sleeping around.
“I’ve made one long film,” Altman told the crowd at the 78th Academy Awards.
“He lived the way he made movies,” states Zuckoff.
Altman’s son Michael — he wrote the “MASH” theme song, “Suicide Is Painless” — says “at the end of his life [he] became aware that he was in his own movie.” When Altman died at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, his third wife cracked, “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks.” His stepdaughter reprised his usual sign-off: “See you in the next reel.” And a grandson concluded: “It’s a wrap.”
The director once told his biographer: “The minute I say what a movie is, I’ve narrowed everyone else’s view of it.” A deft wrangler of quotes, Zuckoff adopts that approach for his open-ended oral biography. Like Altman’s signature soundtracks, this babel of transcripts offers a panoramic portrait.
Bill Stamets is a Chicago-based free-lance writer and critic.