Robert Altman: Bob & Ray

"Is it a true list? All those elements are in Short Cuts."

"Yeah, they are. I think it's true. Well, I mean, I don't know how true it is, but the people who market films think it's true."

Speaking of nudity, a shocking twist on the perfunctory topless-actress turn occurs midway through Short Cuts when Julianne Moore plays an extended scene with Matthew Modine while she's nude from the waist down. It's a grabber. "Why did you choose to show her that way?"

"That was the first story I wrote, and I wrote that scene that way because it seemed to me it showed a vulnerability, it showed a nakedness, the closeness of this married couple. It seemed to me to make that whole arrangement much more poignant."

"It seemed very distracting to me," I say, thinking in particular of Fisher Stevens snickering next to me during the screening.

"It was supposed to be. That's playing on the audience. People don't like to say they're distracted by that but, in fact, they are. I don't care who you are, you have to look because it's something you're not used to seeing."

And there was something else I'm not used to seeing. "I liked that you didn't cut away when Huey Lewis unzips to take a piss in the river."

"I won't show any female nudity unless I show some male nudity," Altman says, flat-out.

"Is that a rule of yours?"

"I wouldn't say it's a rule. It's my opinion."

"A new opinion?"

"Well, I did it in The Player. When Tim gets out of the mud bath you very definitely see his genitals."

"Really?" I say, as if I hadn't only just the other day paused, rewound, and slo-moed that scene on my VCR. "That happened on purpose?"

"As Paul Newman said about The Player," Altman says, laughing, '"You get to see the tits of the girl whose tits you don't wanna see and you don't get to see the tits of the girl whose tits you do wanna see!' And that's all movie lore, because most nudity's meant for the opposite reason. It's all an attempt at titillation and, really, soft porn. I think it's ridiculous. What I try to do, especially in a film like this, is be truthful in behavior."

Altman's original title was L.A. Short Cuts and Carver's stories, of course, take place in his native Pacific Northwest. What gives?

"I dropped the 'L.A.' because it made it seem it was about L.A. and it isn't," he says. "But I can't think of another place that all those stories would fit into and, still, when these people cross paths it would be fortuitous. In other words, if you were in Seattle and these people ran into each other, you'd say, 'Oh yeah, they could know each other.' But it's so vast in L.A. and there's a whole transient..."

Before he can finish his thought, Bob gets a phone call.

"For many years you were a heavy drinker," I say out of nowhere when he turns to me again. "And now you've stopped?"

"Yes, I've had to."

"Health?" I don't mean his 1979 movie, H.E.A.L.T.H. --that might have driven him to drink.

"Yes."

"Has that affected your work?"

"I don't notice any difference in my work," he says. "I mean, I never drank when I worked. I alter my mind with marijuana now, when I'm finished working, when it's cocktail time. I can't work and smoke. It's recreational."

"Do you smoke cigarettes?"

"No, just pot. You become dependent on cigarettes."

"And you don't on pot?"

"No, it's a hallucina . . . kind of a hallucinat. . . Oh, I dunno what it does, but it's not addictive."

"I think it is," I say.

"I don't believe it. It doesn't create any dependency in your system, like nicotine or caffeine or alcohol does. They create a real hole in your body that you have to fill."

"They used to say that cocaine wasn't addictive," I remind him.

"Oh, nobody ever said that. Cocaine is very addictive. And anything that's addictive is kind of a waste of time because you're really chasing your first high, you know? You're trying to get back to even. When people are addicted to cocaine or cigarettes or alcohol or coffee or tea, they have to have it just to get back to where they can feel the way people who don't use it feel. So it's a maintenance problem." With a shrug of his shoulders, Altman concludes, "But it should all be the individual's decision."

"I read somewhere that you said that since you haven't been drinking life's more boring."

"Well, it is," he says. "I really enjoyed drinking and I always had a good time. And I still would, but my heart would probably stop on me."

"Are you an alcoholic? Are you in a program?"

"No. I still drink. I drink a bottle of wine every two weeks. I mean, I drink wine with dinner. But I really cut down. I'm more interested in living, 'cause I have a lot of things that I wanna do. If you wanna be an old man you have to give up a lot of those things, 'cause they all kill you."

"You're always working. What do you do during those brief inter¬ims when you're not? Besides smoke pot."

"Look for a job!" he says. "I've always got something going. I have the most fun when I work."

I'm in a dilemma now. I feel I should ask Altman some tedious questions about his long and illustrious career--its exhilarating peaks, its stultifying valleys--but, quite frankly, he's said it all before, many times over and, franker still, who cares? Nashville, M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, The Long Goodbye, California Split, McCabe and Mrs. Miller--enough with the appraising overviews! Perhaps he feels the same way?

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