After the success of The Player, Robert Altman has turned to Raymond Carver's stories as the basis for his new film, Short Cuts. Here he chats about everything from Hollywood and the importance of male nudity in the movies to pot smoking and the likelihood of his ever winning an Oscar.
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"Is it safe to say this film's about fish?" I ask cinematic angler Robert Altman about his latest catch, Short Cuts.
"It could be," he says. "It's a lot about fish. Actually, it's a lot about Raymond Carver. It's Raymond Carver soup!"
More like Raymond Carver bouillabaisse, if you ask me. In fact, there are so many fish references in Altman's new epic that it's bound to be dubbed Fishville.
Last night at Todd-AO Studio East on West 54th Street, a small, strange mix of people came together to see an early, as-good-as-finished version of Short Cuts. I spotted the trollish Wallace Shawn, legendary jazz singer Annie Ross, Daryl Hannah doppelganger Lori Singer, Sliver phoenix William Baldwin, and the Michelle-shocked Fisher Stevens. Altman, who was also there, explained that he was showing the film to check the final sound mix and that the end titles were yet to be added, "so you won't know who the grips were."
After the movie, I was so stunned that the only grip I wanted to know about was Altman's firm one around the Oscar at next year's Academy Awards ceremony. Between the ominous opening shot of helicopters swooping in to poison the Southern California swimming pools with deadly medfly pesticide and the earth-shattering, cathartic climax, 22 major characters careen and collide in nine or so overlapping Carver tales in a slickly edited three-hour tragicomic Disney ride for grownups. It blows all of Altman's previous movies out of the water. Everything up to now has just been bait.
Today, Altman's been told that last night the screening room's subwoofers hadn't been turned on and the news is making him mildly fretful as we sit talking in a semi-darkened mixing studio in midtown Manhattan's Brill Building. "So now," he says, "our assessment of the film isn't valid as far as mixing these changes is concerned."
The changes are being made anyway, apparently, by his busy editor, Geraldine Peroni, and a clutch of technicians sitting at a mixing board fine-tuning errant sounds: intrusive clock ticks, an upstaging respirator--nothing your typical moviegoer would notice over the sound of crunching popcorn. Downstairs in another studio, Lori Singer is bowing her cello once more into her scenes and Annie Ross--whose vocals help mesh the film together--is jazzing up her Duke Ellington-Peggy Lee song "I'm Gonna Go Fishing," which soars over the eventual end titles.
"I don't have to be down there," Altman says. "They're their own best critics."
Despite the subwoofer gaffe, Short Cuts is a very good film, and these final adjustments are just going to make it better. "It's amazing," I tell Altman.
"Everybody seems to respond that way," the director says. "I'm very happy with this film. I've never had the response to any film of mine like I've had to this one. Nashville, M*A*S*H, all those pictures where I had really good response, The Player--nothing's gone this far. About a thousand people have seen it in various stages from when I first started screening it last November. A lot of journalists, friends, people who are smart enough to get it. The other shoe hasn't fallen yet."
"What other shoe?"
"The negative shoe," he says, laughing.
It may never fall. We're sitting in plush theater seats against a wall, just below the booth where scenes from Short Cuts are being projected onto a screen at the other end of the room.
"Has anyone said the film's too long?" I ask.
"Nobody's mentioned the time," he says, "except distributors and exhibitors--who haven't seen it. But time is not an issue; as a matter of fact, it's sort of a plus for this sort of film because it gives it weight. It takes on the proportions of a novel."
"You came rather late to Raymond Carver, didn't you?" Carver died of lung cancer in 1988, after a relatively short, muscular life spent churning out relatively short, muscular stories that developed a slavish following and won him prizes.
"Yeah," he says. "I didn't read him until early 1990. I was on a plane coming back from Europe and I started reading these stories. I'd read two or three stories and I'd go to sleep and I'd wake up and I'd read a couple more. I loved all of them. They're very . . ."
"Short," I suggest.
"Yeah," he says. "And when I got off the plane I thought, Wait a minute, there's a movie in here. They all mixed one into the other in my mind. It's a structure I've been foolin' around with for 30, 40 years. Multiple-storytelling, having an audience follow simultaneous stories, to keep them going in their own minds. When you get audience participation like that you get involvement."
I'm no stranger to Carver. "When you adapted the stories," I say, "you changed them and added things."
"I was never trying to do those stones specifically," he says. "It was never the intention to take a Raymond Carver story and do it as such. It was to take many of these stories, mix the characters up so that the characters in one story are characters in another story . . . Most of Raymond Carver's stories are basically about the same people. I told [Carver's widow, the poet] Tess Gallagher that I wasn't going to do an accurate rendition of the stories. In fact, the Annie Ross-Lori Singer story isn't a Carver story at all. We added that, and the Jack Lemmon story. But they're very in Carver's genre."
"Did Gallagher have script approval?"
"No, but she did approve. And I did stay in touch with her and we sent her what we were doing as we wrote the script. But all she kept saying was, 'I'm grateful that you're doing your art.' Because I was really collaborating with Carver's material."
Bob and Ray.
"It's interesting," I say, "that in The Player Griffin Mill gets away with murder, and now in Short Cuts two, maybe three, characters do the same."
"Oh, I don't imagine they ultimately got away with murder," Altman says. "I'm sure they would've been caught. I don't know about the girl in the river. I have to approach this as not knowing what happens. I'm just showing you what they do. Many people have asked if the Chris Penn character killed the girl in the river. I don't think so. But some people think a movie has to have connections and some sort of false logic. It doesn't."
"What about that list of elements needed to market a film successfully that Griffin Mill brings up in The Player --suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex and a happy ending? Was that list from Michael Tolkin's book or was it yours?"
"Ahhh, probably me; it wasn't in the book."
"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?
"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.