Robert Altman: Bob & Ray

"Do you read any of the critical, auteurist analyses of your work?"

"I have scanned them," he says. "I've looked at them, many of them, not all of them."

"Do you agree with what they have to say?"

"Oh, yes and no. I mean, they're a little academic. It's interesting for me to see what other people read in my work."

"And do they read correctly?"

"Some things they find are intentional; other things are things that they just discover that were unconscious as far as I'm concerned."

"But true?"

"Sometimes, sometimes not. It doesn't make any difference. You know, I don't analyze my work, and if other people do it's okay. I mean, I can sit down after the fact and say, 'Oh, yeah, look how that ties in with that.' I'm sure that's valid, but that doesn't mean that it has to pass through my conscious mind when I do it. I try not to think about those things. It's like being a painter--everything comes out of your head."

"And from accidents?" I ask him. "I know you use a lot of accidents in your films."

"Well, take this scene that we shot," he says, gesturing toward the screen, on which Anne Archer, in full clown regalia, is giving her license, registration and phone number to motorcycle cop Tim Robbins. "I never knew where I was gonna put it, it was never scripted for the picture."

"What's your relationship with Hollywood right now?" I ask.

"I don't really know what you mean by 'Hollywood,'" he says, "but I assume you mean the major studios. I do business mostly with Fine Line and Miramax, or television or cable or whatever. I just don't have much of a relationship with the major studios, simply because we do different kinds of work. They're mainly in the marketing business, they make films they feel they can market successfully. And I make films that interest me. And I don't think they are particularly interested in the kind of films I make, and I don't think I can make the kind of films that they wanna make. So we're really in different arenas."

"I find it hard to believe Short Cuts isn't the kind of film they'd want to make," I tell him.

"They didn't seem to," he says. "They all passed on it. I wanted to make it before The Player, but they thought it was depressing and long, that it wasn't focused. Paramount had an option on Short Cuts --they could have gone with it two years ago. First of all, I won't do a film I don't have final cut on, and they don't give final cut. I won't let 'em test market a film, and they don't market films they don't test, so there's just no reason for us to be in cahoots. That's the way it's always been and I'm sure that's the way it'll always be." He laughs. "And I don't have a great deal of always left!"

"Do you think the studios will ever want to work with you?"

"Oh, I don't think so."

"Well, this looks like an Oscar movie to me," I say.

"Thank you," he says, smiling. "I hope you're right. I get nominated a lot, but it's always from left field. That's a pretty tight establishment, a pretty dense establishment. And even though last year The Crying Game and The Player and Howards End were all up there, they didn't win anything, any of the big prizes. I don't think they do. I think they're left for the majors. It's their deal."

Geraldine Peroni is tugging at his elbow now, nudging him: Raymond Carver soup's ready to be tasted. It's time to trek up to Todd-AO to listen to the mix. With subwoofers at full throttle.

Altman wants to walk to the screening room, about five blocks away. This afternoon, as always, Broadway is abustle with tourists, vendors, workers on lunch break, Times Square regulars and Altman's entourage all yapping and overlapping--just like a scene from an Altman movie.

"Do people recognize you on the street?" I ask the famous director.

"Rarely. No." And they don't. At least, not this crowd.

"I understand you're about to make a film," I say, keeping up with his brisk pace. "Pret-a-Porter, with Lauren Bacall as Diana Vreeland."

"No, no," he says. "As a Diana Vreeland-type person. We're shooting that in March in Paris."

"Is it a young Diana Vreeland-type or an older type?"

"She's exactly the same age as Lauren Bacall," he says.

"And what's up with your Dorothy Parker film, Wit's End?

"That's a film I'm producing with Alan Rudolph's scripting and directing."

"Jennifer Jason Leigh playing Dorothy Parker?" I wonder aloud. "I can't imagine her in the role." "I can't imagine anybody else," he says. "It's Dorothy Parker when she was 26. That whole Round Table group was very young. Matthew Broderick is playing Charles MacArthur."

"So it's the whole Algonquin thing."

"That's what it is. I'd like to call it The Round Table."

"Too King Arthur?"

"That's the problem."

He tells me that in January he's going to start working on the screenplay for Tony Kushner's Tony-winning play Angels in America, part one of which ("Millennium Approaches") is still Broadway's hot ticket. (Part two, "Perestroika," opens in November.) He'll shoot the saga as two films. "We'll shoot them at the same time," he says, "but they'll be released separately. More than likely, we'll open one and then, within days, we'll open the second one. Or we may open them in twin theaters. Hopefully, people will come out of one and go right into the other one."

Today, the eighth-floor screening room is empty. "I saw Bob Roberts here about four times," Altman remembers, settling onto a cushy banquette in the middle of the luxe theater.

"Do you have anything like this at home?" I ask.

"No, it's a little expensive to maintain. And too opulent," he says, "but I sure do love this big screen!"

"So you rent everything you need?"

"Yeah. In the '70s I had a studio, Lion's Gate, where I had all this stuff. But it became running a business, so I sold it, after Popeye."

I don't ask.

The lights dim, and we watch the first reel and some of the last. The helicopters, the earthquake. I look over at Altman. He's got his eyes shut.

Lights up. "Maybe it's just my memory or maybe I was nervous," Altman says, rising, "but I find that this sounds quite different. Am I right?"

There are some wan replies of "Mmm" and "Yeah." It sounded pretty much the same to me, though no one asks.

"Okay," he says, revitalized, "let's go back and get to work." He turns to me. "Did you get everything you needed?" His eyes are saying, "Please say yes."

"Probably not," I say.

"Then you can make up the rest."

"I have your permission?"

He laughs. "Do you need it?"

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Stephen Saban interviewed Kevin Bacon for the December 1992 Movieline.

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