Playboy Interview: Robert Altman

With "Buffalo Bill and the Indians"---his ninth movie since 1970, when "M*A*S*H" became the most successful antiwar comedy in film history---Robert Altman seems virtually certain to rekindle the controversy that raged after "Nashville." Sparked by Paul Newman's startling performance in the title role, "Buffalo Bill" is also apt to be hailed as another myth-shattering masterwork when the more vehement Altman addicts take the floor. All the stylistic hallmarks that make an Altman film unique are there in abundance: the spontaneous, seemingly improvised acting; the breezy, ballsy throwaway humor; the indifference toward traditional storytelling structure; and the eight-track overlapping sound, judged either inaudible or boldly innovative, depending on where one stands in that debate.

No director since Sam Peckinpah has provoked such passionate disputes; perhaps no director ever has taken such undisguised delight in watching himself become a cult figure and quasi legend under the very noses of the incumbent Hollywood moguls, who still consider him a freewheeling maverick with an erratic track record.

Actually, "M*A*S*H" was not only Altman's first but, to date, his only financial blockbuster; his subsequent movies, hits and flops alike, have been less memorable for making money than for making waves. But he has built a formidable reputation as the American director whose vigorous, uncompromisingly personal films have put him in the superstar pantheon with Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini.

Last year's "Nashville" was widely touted in advance as a breakthrough work that would both captivate critics and achieve a huge commercial success. But though it won the Best Film and Best Director awards from the New York Film Critics' Circle and earned five Oscar nominations, "Nashville" failed to break box-office records. No one remained indifferent about Altman's aggressively funny, colorful collage---a kind of grassroots "Grand Hotel" about two dozen oddly assorted characters who while away five days in America's country-music capital before destiny brings them together at the moment of an inexplicable assassination. Music critics, book critics, political commentators, columnists and composers were seemingly compelled to take a position on "Nashville." As New York Times book editor John Leonard noted: "Writing articles about 'Nashville' and writing articles about the articles that have been written about 'Nashville' is almost a light industry."

Altman, born 51 years ago in Kansas City, Missouri, is a product of America's heartland and a renegade Roman Catholic from the Bible Belt. He sprang from English-Irish-German stock. "The usual mélange," Altman calls it. "When my grandfather opened a jewelry store in K.C., he dropped one N from Altman because they told him the sign would be cheaper." His father is still a practicing insurance broker back home. The first and feistiest of three children, Robert used to sneak out of bed to see such seminal epics as "King Kong." After a stretch in a military academy, he piloted a B-24 bomber through World War Two, chalking up 45 missions over the Dutch East Indies before going home to Kansas City and joining an industrial film outfit to learn about making movies. When he decided he knew how, he flew a few sorties into Hollywood armed with radio scripts, short stories and screenplays. In 1957, he coproduced a documentary, "The James Dean Story," which impressed Alfred Hitchcock. For the next six years, Altman was the whiz kid of TV, directing episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Combat," "Bonanza," "Whirlybirds" and their ilk, earning--- and recklessly spending or gambling away---up to $125,000 per annum.

Altman quit TV in 1963 to direct "Countdown," a melodrama starring newcomer James Caan. He was fired from that job, prophetically, for letting two actors talk at the same time because he thought it would sound more natural. It was 1968 before he got another feature, "That Cold Day in the Park," a muddled suspense drama starring Sandy Dennis.

Then came "M*A*S*H," which 15 directors had rejected before Altman claimed it by default. The rest is history---but hardly one of financial triumph. "Brewster McCloud" (1971), an anarchic comedy about a boy who longs to be a bird and crash dives into the Houston Astrodome, itself took a header. "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" (1971) costarred Warren Beatty and Julie Christie as a Plucky pair of American free-enterprisers in a frontier town and got the director's band wagon rolling again. "Images," made in Ireland, was generally ignored, despite a. 1973 Best Actress award at Cannes for Susannah York's performance, and "The Long Goodbye" (1973), with Elliott Gould, brought private-eye Philip Marlowe into the Seventies. "Thieves Like Us" (1974), a warmly vital social drama of the Depression era, was followed by "California Split" (1974), which was a moderate success and, teamed Gould and George Segal as a pair of compulsive gamblers.

Through the highs and lows of his prolific output, Altman has remained a loner. His list of sworn enemies, fast friends and those who haven't made up their minds is impressive, even for Hollywood. His friends include a tight floating repertory company: Shelley Duvall, Michael Murphy, Bert Remsen and Keenan Wynn are among those who would rather work for Altman than eat. Nowadays, it's relatively easy to manage both. Lion's Gate Films, his bustling production headquarters, occupies a two-story California-Tudor warren of cubbyholes and cutting rooms on Westwood Boulevard in L.A.

While he makes no secret of his fondness for booze and pot, Altman has been too busy of late to indulge his vices to capacity. But he does little to dispel his reputation as a hard-living, high-rolling roustabout, and once when an inquisitive lady journalist gingerly broached the subject of his three marriages, he twitted her by jovially responding: "I've had many, many mistresses. Keep 'em coming. I just giggle and give in!" Giggles aside, he has been married for 17 years to his third wife, Kathryn---a former Earl Carroll showgirl and a bright, witty, unstoppable redhead who appears more than capable of fighting the battle of the sexes to a draw. Altman has three children by his former wives; he and Kathryn have a son, Bobby, 15, and have adopted a black boy named Matthew, aged nine. When one tries to picture Altman simultaneously as devoted family man, all-American hedonist, savage social realist, veteran Hollywood rebel and major influence on the films we'll be seeing today, tomorrow and three years from now, the images tend to blur, not unlike the voice track in one of his own movies. To find out how the man keeps it all together, playboy movie critic and Contributing Editor Bruce Williamson headed west toward Lion's Gate with a sheaf of questions. Williamson reports:

"During a casual acquaintanceship dating back several years---drinking with Altman in Cannes, getting stoned with him in New York---I believe I have seen the best and worst of him as a private person who is convivial, erratic, difficult, generous, funny, vulnerable and incredibly, sometimes bitingly, perceptive about people. In physical appearance, he has been compared to Santa Claus, Mephistopheles and a benevolent Captain Bligh, and he fits all three descriptions.

"The day I arrived at his Lion's Gate inner office, a homey baronial den with a pinball machine twinkling just outside, Altman spent the first hour or so rapping with Cleavon Little about his role in the film version of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s 'Breakfast of Champions,' an Altman project they wouldn't be ready to begin shooting for at least a year. What Altman didn't want to do was get on with our interview. It would be better to start talking after I'd seen 'Buffalo Bill and the Indians; Altman decided. If I loathed it, of course, all bets were off. We marked time until Paul Newman arrived, clean-shaved, along with 40 or 50 other people who were visibly itching to see a rough cut of the movie. Later, Altman collared at least half of them to ask point-blank how they had liked it. A mind-blower, nearly everyone, myself included, agreed.

"Altman's reluctance to begin our taping lessened the next day, as a series of phone calls reaffirmed the good vibes about the unveiling of' Buffalo Bill.' Finally, Altman settled down to talk. 'At first,' he said, 'I thought, well, I could probably thwart you, but that would be a waste of time.' He would just give straight stuff, no performances, he promised, maybe fill a couple of tapes .... then we'd have a drink or two and go on with it the next day. That sounded like the best offer I'd be getting."

[Q] Playboy: Isn't there a natural link between your two latest pictures, Buffalo Bill and the Indians and Nashville, in what they say about our passion for celebrities in America? Is it true, as one critic observed, that we're a nation of groupies?

[A] Altman: You people---critics and writers---always pigeonhole these things. Me, I just take a subject and say, Hey, this could be fun; let's make a movie out of it. Buffalo Bill, in many ways, is closer to McCabe & Mrs. Miller than to Nashville, though, like Nashville, it is about show business. Buffalo Bill Cody was the first movie star, in one sense, the first totally manufactured American hero. That's why we needed a movie star, Paul Newman, to play the title role. I don't think we could have made it with a nonstar, someone like, say, Gene Hackman.

[Q] Playboy: Hackman, who is asking $1,000,000 or more a picture, isn't a star?

[A] Altman: Not in the terms that Newman and Robert Redford and Steve McQueen are. In any picture where he can be Steve McQueen, McQueen is worth his $3,000,000, because his pictures can be booked around the world and earn back the tab. Hackman is a fine actor, but I don't believe he's worth paying that kind of money, unless he's in a very good picture. In a bad picture, he just goes down with the whole crew. McQueen can overcome that handicap. The same thing might be true of Redford, who's next in line, then maybe Newman. Jack Nicholson, with an Academy Award now, is probably in their league, and certainly Marlon Brando.

[Q] Playboy: What's the real difference in the star quality these actors project?

[A] Altman: It's something that happens, there's no telling why. It happens with politicians, singers ... they've got to have a certain amount of ability. But primarily they hit on a kind of heroism a mass audience likes to identify with. You can't judge simply by the U. S. and Canada, because it's a world wide market. For Europe and Japan, you put McQueen in some kind of action picture and they'll flock to see him ... or Charles Bronson or Alain Delon, or even Terence Hill, whom most people here have never heard of. The Drowning Pool, which was just a little Lew Archer detective story that didn't do well at all in the U.S., did terrific business in Europe because it had Paul Newman. European audiences are about 20 years behind us. They're still not judging films as art but as entertainment.

[Q] Playboy: Were you required by your backers to cast a major star as Buffalo Bill?

[A] Altman: Yes, because there's $6,000,000 or $7,000,000 tied up in the picture; it's the most expensive picture I've ever made. But we wanted a major star, anyway, as I said, because stardom is part of what we're talking about in Buffalo Bill. Before we knew quite which way we intended to go, I talked to Brando on the phone because of his interest in the Indian thing. I talked a long, long time to Nicholson. But Newman was our first choice.

[Q] Playboy: Was Newman aware that your approach to Buffalo Bill had him spoofing his own golden-boy image to some extent?

[A] Altman: Oh, sure. That's why I wanted him and the reason he wanted to do it. He was very consciously deflating not only Buffalo Bill but Paul Newman, Movie Star. Nobody can live up to that kind of image.

[Q] Playboy: In fact, aren't most of your films exercises in debunking, if not of specific historical characters, at least of classic genres? M*A*S*H was a spoof of war movies; McCabe & Mrs. Miller, of the cliché Western; The Long Goodbye, of detective yarns, and so on.

[A] Altman: Apparently, it's something that attracts me. But I see it only after the fact, and then I say to myself, Well, there I go again. I think what happens is that I research these subjects and discover so much bullshit that it just comes out that way. I have a lot of sympathy for these characters, however; they're the victims of their own publicity.

[Q] Playboy: You had a lot of fun depicting Buffalo Bill Cody as a frontier dandy with a weakness for opera singers. Is the film historically accurate?

[A] Altman: It's based on fact, though we took off from there. Cody was a very handsome guy, very impressionable, a ladies' man. When he started moving into the social whirl, he got mixed up with a bunch of Italian actresses; we used the idiom of opera as typical of the kind of cultural thing he was reaching for and really couldn't grasp. I feel a great deal of sympathy for Buffalo Bill. He was pure, I think. My intention was just to take a more honest look---satirical or not---at some of our myths, to see what they are. It's no accident that the picture is subtitled "Sitting Bull's History Lesson." We like to think of Cody as a brave man, a great buffalo hunter, an Indian scout. Well, he shot a lot of buffaloes. But lots of guys who lived in the West at that time got jobs as scouts; that's like saying you worked on the railroad. Cody was a very sad character. I'd equate him with Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.

[Q] Playboy: Is Buffalo Bill and the Indians intended to be your Bicentennial valentine to America?

[A] Altman: Nope. When I first got the call from David Susskind about doing Buffalo Bill, I didn't know there was a Bicentennial. We're making a statement about a culture that happens to be American; you can probably make the same statement about France or Italy or England. I don't know what aboriginal tribes were chased out of Europe by the Europeans, but I'm quite sure they were treated pretty much the same way we treated the Indians we found here. My attitudes and my political statements, however, aren't nearly as harsh as people seem to think. When Nashville came out, there was this wild reaction: Oh, what a terrible view of America! It's a view of America, all right, but I don't agree that it's terrible. I'm not condemning America. I'm condemning the corruption of ideas, condemning complacency, the feeling that any way we do things must be the right way.

All my films deal with the same thing: striving, socially and culturally, to stay alive. And once any system succeeds, it becomes its own worst enemy. The good things we create soon create bad things. So nothing is ever going to be utopian, and when I make films like Nashville and Buffalo Bill, it's not to say we're the worst country in the world, or God, what awful people these are. I'm just saying we're at this point and it's sad.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel as sad about the country's future as you do about its past and present?

[A] Altman: If I were to make a real judgment about this country, I would say I'm optimistic. I think that parts of the system no longer work, but we're very young; there's a good chance we'll survive all this. It's probably the best place to live that I know. I mean, if you're rich, you can go anywhere. But if you're poor---well, I'd rather be poor here than poor in India. There's always a sense that you can rise above your trappings in this country, whereas even in England, for example, you don't feel the same hope---unless you can become a rock star.

[Q] Playboy: Behind the laughs in Buffalo Bill, there's an implication that kind of manufactured hero still walks among us. Can you spot any on the current political scene?

[A] Altman: Yes, all of them. Any person who develops a public and packaged personality is the same as a movie star, unfortunately. They can't be real, regular people. You take a Teddy Kennedy or a Jerry Brown: He has to maintain the public's image of him, and he finally becomes that image, at which point he's lost a lot of freedom. No way is Teddy Kennedy going to walk around your kitchen with his shoes off and level with you; he's not going to be loose, because he can't afford to be. There's no such thing as a private life anymore. The media are so vast, you're caught up and made an eccentric. It's just like this interview or any interview done with someone like me, to be printed in so many words: The words you guys pick may not give a true picture of an individual, whether it's to sell magazines or political candidates.

[Q] Playboy: Is that why you have been so reluctant to do this interview?

[A] Altman: No, I'm just afraid I'll start listening to myself. I wonder how much bullshit an interview will be, because I have nothing to say about anything. I'm not interested in analyzing myself. What I'm doing right now is a very dangerous thing for an artist to do.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Altman: Because when you start trying to explain what you do ... well, once you find out, you probably won't be able to do it again. Things come out of me only when I relax and let them come as an unconscious, emotional expression rather than an intellectual expression.

I tend to say a lot of arbitrary, contradictory things, and if I don't like a person, I'll get very hostile and say, Aw, fuck it, and purposely try to antagonize him. Yet there's usually some truth in everything anyone says. Again, it's a question of freeing your subconscious.

[Q] Playboy: Do you or don't you use booze to free your subconscious? In a Newsweek cover story, you were quoted as saying, "I work a lot when I'm drunk and trust that all of it will eventually appear in my films." On other occasions, you have insisted you never drink on the job. What's the truth?

[A] Altman: The fact is, I don't drink while I'm working. But I work a lot while I'm drinking. No matter what you read or hear, I never get drunk on a film set.

[Q] Playboy: But when aren't you working? You've made nine movies in the past six years, virtually without taking a vacation. Don't you ever have to stop and catch a breath or recharge your creative batteries?

[A] Altman: Perhaps I should stay home on the beach, but all I say is, I can't remember a time when I haven't been working on a project. I come in every day. whether there's anything to do or not. If I don't have something to do, I create it. This is the life, man. I can be here in the office, get drunk, go next door and edit out a piece of film. It's terrific, like owning the world's biggest erector set.

[Q] Playboy: Someone has suggested that with Lion's Gate you're founding a mini-MGM. Are you?

[A] Altman: If I am, it's in self-defense. Most of my money goes into the place; it costs about $600,000 a year just to keep the doors open. But I'm trying to keep a group of people together who are very important to me. I'm producing films for them to write or direct, to keep them available to me as need arises. All of them could get better jobs. They could improve their incomes, their status by working somewhere else.

[Q] Playboy: Are you referring to their having to buck the anti-Altman sentiment among members of the Hollywood establishment?

[A] Altman: Yes, but that sentiment is understandable. I've never been very nice to the establishment, either. I've always been very outspoken in the press; my tendency is always to be a little loud. I'm a little arrogant and they're a little afraid.

[Q] Playboy: Do you believe your maverick status in Hollywood had anything to do with Nashville's relatively poor showing in the Oscar awards?

[A] Altman: I was thrilled that we got as far as we did with recognition for the film, which had been turned down by all the major studios; Paramount merely picked it up for distribution. But One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest wasn't a major Hollywood production, either---the money was put up by a record company---and Milos Forman is not a Hollywood director. Even Dog Day Afternoon was a New York picture, so maybe what it really shows is that there's a lack of good product coming from the major studios. The main value of these awards, anyway, other than to rub your ego a little bit, is that they may open the door a crack wider for people with ideas that aren't run of the mill.

[Q] Playboy: But with five nominations for Nashville, didn't you expect to win more than Keith Carradine's prize for Best Song?

[A] Altman: Well, the Academy is a private club, so its members can do whatever they want with it, I guess. They declared Nashville ineligible for an editing award. Nashville was more edited than directed, for Christ's sake. They ruled us out on costume design, art direction and camera, and even disqualified our musical score on a technical point. Johnny Green and Jeff Alexander, the old men who run that Academy section, are determined to keep it all to themselves. When Green did a score made up of standard songs of his for They Shoot Horses. Don't They? they had to change the rules that year so he could qualify and be nominated for an Oscar.

[Q] Playboy: In the categories in which Nashville was qualified, did you do any active campaigning?

[A] Altman: Paramount did a little, not much. I wouldn't have wanted them to do any more. I don't know what United Artists spent promoting Cuckoo's Nest, but I'll guarantee you it was over $80,000. That's the trouble, the whole thing becomes like a national election, with primaries. I won the New York primary. Cuckoo's Nest won the foreign primary---six Golden Globe awards---and so on. But nobody knows who votes. I think if a magazine took photographs of each of those Academy members---the ones who actually cast the ballots---and published them all and said who they were, you'd be able to make a pretty good evaluation of what an Academy Award is really worth and how it's arrived at.

[Q] Playboy: Louise Fletcher, who took the Best Actress award for Cuckoo's Nest. was originally supposed to play the role that got Lily Tomlin a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Nashville. Some follow-up stories, commenting on this behind-the-scenes irony, hinted that you had given the role to Lily because she had a bigger name. Is there some misunderstanding?

[A] Altman: Not on my part. That role as the mother of the deaf-mute children was written for Louise, whose parents are deaf. But her husband, Jerry Bick, who was my producer on Thieves Like Us, came to me and said he didn't see how Louise would he able to leave her kids and go off on location in Nashville for eight or ten weeks ... and what was he supposed to do during that time? I felt very guilty then, because there was no money in the part ... we felt all the actors in Nashville were doing us a great big favor, and it seemed to me we were just asking a little too much of Louise. I'm not sure Jerry went back and told her that he had indicated she shouldn't take the part, since they have to live together. But that's when I started considering Lily. In any case. Louise is a deserving actress. I coaxed her out of retirement for Thieves Like Us and we showed film on her to Forman and Mike Douglas to help convince them she should get Cuckoo's Nest.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true that Robert Duvall was supposed to play the Henry Gibson role in Nashville?

[A] Altman: The part was written for Duvall. It was one of the last characters added and turned out to be one of the most important. Duvall came down here and said he wanted to be in the picture and could sing country-and-western. So I said, "Fine, you can write your own songs." Then I guess we broke over money.

[Q] Playboy: In view of everything you said a moment ago about the Academy, how would you have felt if you had won an Oscar?

[A] Altman: Surprised. And I'd be very pleased. Going in as an underdog and winning an uphill battle makes anybody feel good. But, my God, people get crazy; they call you up and say how sorry they are, they were so sure you'd win. It's not a foot race; one doesn't set out to make a movie with that goal in mind. Or maybe some do. Recently. I saw an interview in the L.A. Times with Billy Friedkin, talking about his new picture, a remake of Wages of Fear, apparently meant to top The Exorcist. Mr. Friedkin, who has some kind of chronic diarrhea of the mouth, was very humble, as usual; for the $10,000,000 he's been given to spend, he said, "Well, to be frank---I'm going for a classic." But nobody really cares what he intends to do or what I intend to do; it's what we end up doing that counts.

[Q] Playboy: But a lot of the controversy about Nashville centered on exactly that question: What did you intend to do? How would you sum up the central metaphor of Nashville?

[A] Altman: If you take all those 24 characters in the film, you can break each one down into an archetype. We carefully picked those archetypes to represent a cross section of the whole culture, heightened by the country-music scene and extreme nationalism, or regionalism, of a city like Nashville. When you say Nashville, you immediately focus on an image of great wealth and instant popular success. It's like Hollywood 40 years ago. Kids still get off buses with guitars; two years later they can own a guitar-shaped swimming pool.

Another thing Nashville signifies is that we don't listen to words anymore. The words of a country song are as predictable as the words of a politician's speech. When President Ford announces that the state of the Union is that we're solving problems in the Middle East, we don't listen; we don't read or pay attention to what he says. It becomes rhythm and music rather than meaningful words. No one can quote one thing Ford has said since he's been in office.

Nashville is merely suggesting that you think about these things, allowing you room to think. Many people, I guess, want to know exactly what it is they're supposed to think. They want to know what your message is. Well, my message is that I am not going to do their work for them.

[Q] Playboy:Nashville never became the commercial blockbuster that you and many pro-Altman critics anticipated. Why?

[A] Altman: Well, I can only think it's because we didn't have King Kong or a shark. I don't mean to take anything away from Jaws, but Nashville was not a one-focus thing like that. Also, maybe there was too much critical response; the word masterpiece frightens people away. It's still been more profitable for me personally than any film I've ever made; it's grossed about $8,000,000 and may go to $10,000,000. I think Buffalo Bill is going to be easier for audiences than Nashville, because it doesn't pose a threat: The indictment is in history, so we can always put that blame somewhere else. Nashville's indictment made too many people nervous. The whole community of Nashville disowned it; the country-music people said it was no good, it was a lie; and that kept a lot of those fans away.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't the specific charge they leveled against you that the music was phony, wouldn't pass muster at the Grand Ole Opry?

[A] Altman: This crap about a Nashville sound is mainly a matter of opinion. I wasn't making records, goddamn it, I was making a movie. Take any song in there, I can point out a current hit or failure that's better and worse---musically, lyrically and every other way. The main reason for that criticism was that they saw the names of actors, not professional songwriters, on the songs; and Richard Baskin, who did all the arrangements, was not a country-and-western guy. It's my contention that anybody can write a song. The Nashville people have to claim they're more professional; otherwise, how are they going to justify the $1,000,000 a year they make?

[Q] Playboy: One last question about Nashville. In the assassination scene at the end------

[A] Altman: I know what's coming. When I go around to the universities---where quite a number of kids don't understand my pictures and don't especially like them---they always want to know: Why's he kill her?

[Q] Playboy: Well, why did he?

[A] Altman: When you ask why he killed the singer instead of the politician, you've already answered your question---and discovered my motive. The point is that we can accept the assassination of the politician but not that of the girl. Because we condone political assassination in our culture. We say that's all right, we understand that. Assassination has become acceptable in this society and it's going to spread, the way hijacking did. I think we're in a very dangerous situation. And now, with the Patricia Hearst trial and all its implications, it's becoming almost nightmarish.

[Q] Playboy: What implications do you see in the Patty Hearst trial?

[A] Altman: I mean that the Patty Hearst case was not about her at all, and it's the worst thing that's happened in this country since the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial. You knew she would be found guilty, she had to be found guilty; there was no way that judge and jury could not convict Patty Hearst, because they're afraid, afraid of Hearst power; so now they've stripped that away to prove that money can't protect her. They're afraid of revolution.

[Q] Playboy: You suggest that society as a whole demanded her conviction?

[A] Altman: Absolutely. And I think we're going to see that girl's mother, Catherine Hearst, become so radicalized that I would not be surprised at any act she might perform in the next year or so. It turns out that Cinque, or DeFreeze, was a prophet. "If you go back there," he told Patty, "they'll put you in jail." And, by God, that's what happened. We're now in the full swing of the Nixon-Kissinger heritage, with all their philosophy coming down to us. We're even beginning to look at Gerald Ford as if he were a nice guy and pretty smart.

Patty Hearst had to be convicted for not being a well-trained soldier. She shouldn't have gone on trial in the first place. Jesus Christ, she was 19 years old, thrown into the trunk of a car, locked in a closet, absolutely terrorized; and I think from that point on you've got to discount every single thing she has done. I have spoken to several people who are very strong in the A.C.L.U., real liberals, people who suffered through the McCarthy era, the Hollywood Ten and all that. And when they said they thought this kid should be convicted, I couldn't believe it.

The Hearst case deals with exactly the same kind of collective fear the Rosenberg trial did. The fear then was of communism, that Russia might get the bomb. Now there's terrorism and anarchy throughout the world and everyone is panicky. We're afraid of Patty Hearst because she lived with a guy willingly and wrote letters, made statements. What society is actually reacting to is its fear of hippies, and of sexual freedom, and of revolutionaries, people with beards and long hair who don't keep their pants pressed or wear neckties.

[Q] Playboy: Would you consider making a film that dealt directly with this kind of volatile social problem?

[A] Altman: Funny you should ask, because I'm just concluding a deal with Ed Doc-torow to coproduce a movie based on his novel The Book of Daniel; he'll write the script and I'll direct. It's a fictionalized story about the children of the Rosenbergs, about the hysteria of an era when people are frightened and people get sacrificed.

[Q] Playboy: You and Doctorow are thick as thieves since he presented your New York Film Critics' Award and introduced himself as "Altman's new best friend." You're also making the movie version of his novel Ragtime together. When will that be?

[A] Altman: Not for a while. I've got a first-draft screenplay from Doctorow that is about 340 pages long and brilliant; I'm thrilled with it. The son of a bitch is uncanny, really an artist, and I just like him a lot. I mean, we don't hug or anything, but we talk on the phone almost every day. He came up to Calgary while we were on location and was pressed into service; he makes his screen debut as a Presidential assistant in Buffalo Bill.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't 340 pages pretty long for a screenplay?.

[A] Altman: I think we'll make two films out of it, of about two and a half hours each, then expand that into ten hours of television. This will not be just another movie. It'll be an event.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you once have similar plans for Nashville?

[A] Altman: That's already done and reedited as two two-hour television programs, which will probably air on two Sunday nights to start the 1977 fall television season. Eventually, we're going to do the same thing with Buffalo Bill; we've already made the deal.

[Q] Playboy: Do these projected films for TV indicate that you feel some dissatisfaction with the shorter original versions?

[A] Altman: No, but there are really good sequences from Nashville, for example, that weren't in the movie because you cannot ask people to sit that long in a theater. Some movie buffs will gladly sit for five hours, but people generally won't do it. On television, that's not offensive. You've got breaks. You can eat, stretch, go to the bathroom.

[Q] Playboy: You're working with heavyweights now, between Doctorow's Ragtime and your plans to film Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Breakfast of Champions. Is it intimidating for you to tackle movies based on two such famous novels?

[A] Altman: Well, it's no worse than making a movie about something like the Civil War.

[Q] Playboy: Have you considered making an epic nonfiction film, as it were? Something like All the President's Men?

[A] Altman: To me, doing that movie would be like making an illustrated lecture, because you're not able to deviate from the facts much. I understand the success of it, because everyone knows who the bad guys and good guys are, and you've got that big face of Nixon's looming over all of it. The majority of people in this country---61 percent of them, remember---are exactly like Nixon. They chose him, he betrayed them, and those are the cats who respond to President's Men as much as you and I and the liberals who say, "Aw, shit, I told you so." They've got to love it because it's real, it's revenge. Nixon was the perfect President for this country, but he dumped on them and they're still feeling hurt.

[Q] Playboy: Could you work up greater enthusiasm for making a movie based on Woodward and Bernstein's sequel, The Final Days?

[A] Altman: Well, long before Watergate, we thought about a movie of that kind from a book---not a very good book---called A Night at Camp David. It's about a President who goes insane. We were flirting with buying it, then I suddenly realized it was all actually happening. The book was almost prophetic, but it was not for me.

[Q] Playboy: Are you an activist in politics?

[A] Altman: I get involved. I mean, I give money and support. I supported Gene McCarthy, I supported George McGovern. Right now there's nobody to get passionate about. Intellectually, Morris Udall seemed the best. Jerry Brown is attractive to me; I think he's getting set up for four years from now. But the rest offer nothing fresh.

Actually, I don't think it makes a lot of difference who gets elected in 1976. I doubt that we're going to have a President of any value this term. Probably the next time around will be better. In fact, maybe we shouldn't care who's President. Maybe it should be someone like the chief executive of A.T.&T., a board chairman whose name we don't even know. Because Government today is only a firm that builds highways, maintains a system of courts to keep people from infringing on other people's rights. As for genuine leadership and philosophy ... well, I think we're past that.

[Q] Playboy: Some feminists have tried to make your films a political issue. What do you say when your work is attacked for projecting---and we quote---"an adolescent view of women as sex objects"?

[A] Altman: I simply don't understand that. Again, let's look at the films. Women had most of the major roles in Nashville. I did Images with Susannah York, which was certainly a sympathetic treatment of women. I think Julie Christie as Mrs. Miller is a very accurate portrait of a woman's role in the West if she wanted to survive in that era. Maybe the accusation harks back to Hot Lips in M*A*S*H, but the precise point of that character was that women were treated and are treated as sex objects. They can't blame me for the condition because I report it. We're dealing with a society in which most of the significant activity until now has been initiated by males. If you make a Western or a sports story or a story about big business or gangsters, it's automatically going to reflect the secondary positions women hold.

[Q] Playboy: You retain complete control over your movies, as Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick and a few other privileged directors do. Is there never any pressure brought to bear to make you change a film?

[A] Altman: Oh, sure. But nobody has ever cut a film on me. There was a lot of pressure up front from Barry Diller at Paramount, who wanted me to cut one sequence in Nashville so we'd get a PG rating rather than an R. The Motion Picture Association's ratings board said it would make a deal with us: It would let us keep the striptease scene with Gwen Welles if we would cut the word fucker somewhere else.

[Q] Playboy: Did you give up the "fucker"?

[A] Altman: No, I didn't. We finally took an R. The word itself didn't make much difference to me one way or the other, but I felt I couldn't cut it because that would put the ratings board in a position in which it's not supposed to be. The ratings people are supposed to be advisors, not censors. If they are what they say they are, there shouldn't be any appeal from their rulings. They should just give you an R or a P or an X or a Q or whatever and make it stick.

This whole M.P.A.A. thing is so unwieldy, and also corrupt---though by corrupt I don't mean you can buy them off. But they represent a privileged group of industry people, and if you belong to that group, you get slightly different treatment. More money has gone into some pictures, so they're considered more important and handled accordingly; but there's no way anybody can show me the justification for Papillon's getting a PG rating while Thieves Like Us got an R. There's no consistency. I took an R for California Split because we had 12 fucks and a couple of cocksuckers. But the minute they say they want to trade me a tit for a fucker, that proves to me they're corrupt.

[Q] Playboy: If you are so often at odds with the Hollywood establishment, why do you continue to live and work in the enemy camp, so to speak?

[A] Altman: Well, it's a big town, and I've got an awful lot of people I depend on who also depend on me. It doesn't make a bit of difference where you are, anyway. Nashville was made in Nashville. Buffalo Bill and McCabe were made in Canada. Thieves Like Us was made in Mississippi. My feeling about Hollywood is that all of that has nothing to do with the pictures I make. I'm the catalyst, I guess, for a kind of East Coast---West Coast cultural separation, the Great Divide, which drives the studio people crazy. Because they want money-making pictures, sure, but they also want the snob appeal of critical acceptance and prestige---meaning films that get good reviews.

[Q] Playboy: The New York critics love you, but do you get much support from the press here in Los Angeles?

[A] Altman: I always get a kind of left-handed criticism out here, except from a few people. Charles Champlin on the Times practically runs ads predicting who will win the Oscars and who he believes should win. He never misses. The people who vote read Champlin and think: Oh, Champlin's right, because he's not one of those East Coast people who are always pushing us around.

At the Academy Awards, I ran into Ruth Batchelor, whoever she is; she's a chairman of the Los Angeles critics' group, which was just formed to give out prizes the way the New York critics do. She came up to me and said, "You know, on the first ballot, Nashville won everything, but we use a point system and had to keep revoting." And I told her, "You had to keep revoting until you didn't coincide with the New York film critics." She said, "Well, uh... yes, that's right." It's all pretty silly.

[Q] Playboy: Is it just that they want to be different from their New York colleagues?

[A] Altman: No, I think it reflects the quality of the critics. The same division exists between France and England. They love me at Cannes, while in England they say, "Well, he was just lucky." Generally, I think the Eastern critics are more appreciative of art and exploration in films. I think the California people are more interested in preserving their traditions. I'm not charging that Champlin is a bad critic. But this town responds to him because it feels he represents the industry. It's chauvinistic, like people who live in Chicago rooting for the Cubs or the White Sox. But we shouldn't discuss only New York versus Hollywood. Seattle is a terrific movie town, much closer in taste to the New York anti-Hollywood attitude; and Denver's the same way. I think we're talking about Hollywood versus the rest of the country, not just the East.

[Q] Playboy: How closely do you follow what critics write about you?

[A] Altman: The main function of critics, for me, is that they furnish some sort of guidelines. You don't go to a king, you don't go before a jury of 12 citizens picked at random to judge a film. I don't go to the guys at my dad's country club in Kansas City, because they would be bored to death watching one of my movies. I'm trying to reach the several millions of people in the country, or the world, who are film oriented. The critics, who see virtually all films, are in touch with that audience, so I read what they say. There are certain critics I tend to agree with almost straight down the line.

[Q] Playboy: Do you want to name them?

[A] Altman: I'd rather not, because it might seem to alienate or discredit anyone who's left out. And if I say Rex Reed is my favorite critic, Rex will get intimidated and start writing bad things about me.

[Q] Playboy: We could probably guess that Reed isn't your favorite critic, since he is one of those who have called you a lazy artist, a sloppy worker who improvises too much with too little control. How about Jay Cocks of Time, who has suggested that you should take your work more seriously than you do?

[A] Altman: Jay Cocks has always made personal comments about me; he can't seem to separate me as an individual from my films. I've never met him and can't answer his assumptions.

I probably am a lazy artist and probably don't control things as much as some people would like---but that's my business. And if my style is too loose or improvised for some people's taste, that's their problem---totally. The fact is, I'm not the greatest Hollywood director and all that bullshit, but I'm not the opposite, either. And I am not careless. I may be irresponsible, I may strive for things and not always succeed, but that's never the result of sloppiness. Maybe it's lack of judgment.

[Q] Playboy: Stephen Farber, who recently became New West's film critic, described you as one of the New Has-beens a couple of years ago, just before your reputation started to soar. How did that grab you?

[A] Altman: Well, Farber ought to have his typewriter taken away from him or go get a job working for the oil companies. He is not a critic, he doesn't qualify as a critic. He's a hatchet man and paid assassin, a guy The New York Times knows it can go to if it wants an "anti" piece because there's been too much praise of something. I'm sure Clay Felker hired Farber for the same reason he hired John Simon as New York's critic---because he wanted somebody to really get the shiv out and sell magazines. I don't like Simon at all, but at least I give him credit for being a critic. I can't give that much to Rex Reed, who's basically a gossip columnist, but Farber's worse than any of those guys.

[Q] Playboy: The loudest member of the pro-Altman critical claque has been The New Yorker's Pauline Kael, who created a stir when she wrote an ecstatic review of Nashville based on an unfinished early version. This year, Kael reportedly claimed that she's qualified to review Altman movies in this manner because she knows your work so well she can tell in advance what's going to be left in and taken out. Is that true?

[A] Altman: Did she say that? Well, I suppose she can. Pauline is such a student of film, she probably knows pretty well in which direction a movie is likely to go. In general, I don't mind who sees a film in rough cut. I show them to lots of people without fear of reprisals, though I wouldn't let Rex Reed see one of my films in finished form. He'll have to buy his own ticket.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true that you threw Barbra Streisand out of your office after one such screening?

[A] Altman: Yes, because she was rude.

[Q] Playboy: Do you want to tell us about it?

[A] Altman: She came as a guest of mine with her boyfriend, Jon Peters---to see Nashville, at her request, as a matter of fact---because Peters was planning to direct a rock Star Is Born or something. So we screened the picture for them and for 20 or 30 other people, including some of the actors in the film. Then we came back here to the office; Barbra sat down and all her conversation was about "Jon and I." "Listen," she said, "Jon and I want to know how you did this, how you did that." Finally, I said, "Don't you think you owe a comment to a few of the people in this room?" She had nothing to say. She was so completely wrapped up in herself, she didn't even know what I was talking about. I just asked them to leave.

[Q] Playboy: Aren't there pitfalls in your practice of screening rough cuts of your films for friends, colleagues, sometimes even for critics?

[A] Altman: Well, sure, a little masochism is part of it, you can't delude yourself. But we don't just pull people off the street. I have to be very careful not to load a preview with people I know are duck soup, who will just go for the film no matter what. I'm also arrogant enough to invite people who I'm sure will want not to like it, who really hope to see it fail. I love to make them commit themselves up front, them turn it around on them later. You see, the way I edit films is to start showing them as I'm pulling them together. I don't actually pay much attention to what people say, but I make decisions while looking at the backs of their heads, seeing the movie through someone else's eyes. If I get embarrassed by a certain sequence, that tells me something.

[Q] Playboy: How did you arrive at your free-and-easy approach to film making?

[A] Altman: Well, I don't like to rehearse a scene before we're actually ready to shoot it. If I do, the freshness is gone for me when we go back to it later; everything seems set and kind of dry.

[Q] Playboy: Your unorthodox methods must be a little unnerving for some actors. How did it go with Newman?

[A] Altman: Oh, Paul was sensational. He had no problem at all. Donald Sutherland in M*A*S*H loved working that way and his improvisation was profound; he's a hell of an actor. Warren Beatty in McCabe probably had the toughest time. But Warren was already a star, dealing with an unknown director and properly nervous about it. And Warren doesn't trust anybody very much.

My work is not really as loose and frenetic and unorthodox as everyone seems to think and it's not nearly as improvisational as I get credit for. I suspect that some actors see my films and sense a certain kind of freedom or fantasize about it. But most of the actors who have worked for me don't work for anybody else. Shelley Duvall has given absolutely marvelous performances in four or five of my films; her work in Thieves Like Us is as good as any performance I can imagine. I'm always amazed that other directors don't pick up on her, but nobody has; she can't get a job... I guess because she doesn't have big tits. Ronee Blakley was looking for an agent, so I had a few of them down here to see film on her while we were cutting Nashville. I showed them her hospital scene, her breakdown scene, and they said, "Gee, she's terrific, but ... you know, she's a country-and-western singer." I said, "No, there's nothing country-and-western about her. If anything, she's a hip West Coast girl." They could not get it through their heads that she was acting. They finally said to me. "Well, uh, you've got a way of making real people look like actors." And I told them, "Well, I hope I have a way of making actors look like real people."

[Q] Playboy: Have you done any casting for Ragtime or Breakfast of Champions?

[A] Altman: We have no cast in mind for Ragtime, but Breakfast seems pretty well set. Peter Falk will play Dwayne Hoover; Sterling Hayden will play Kilgore Trout; Cleavon Little will play Wayne Hoobler; Alice Cooper will play Bunny Hoover; and Ruth Gordon will play Eliott Rosewater, the richest man in the world.

[Q] Playboy: Ruth Gordon will play a male part?

[A] Altman: Sure; she's an actor, why not? All the feminists say we shouldn't discriminate. We're using Alice Cooper as the fag piano player, and Ruth Gordon can certainly look like an old man. Our sexual differences tend to disappear with age, anyway; all she has to do is cut her hair and sit in a wheelchair.

[Q] Playboy: You once indicated that Breakfast would be a breakthrough movie sexually, in which you'd let it all hang out. Is that still the plan?

[A] Altman: No, that was one of those early ideas that just didn't develop. I was going to deal primarily with the Kilgore Trout section of the story, where his books were being turned into pornographic movies, but we've abandoned that whole concept.

[Q] Playboy: Which films will you do next?

[A] Altman: I'll be starting with Yig Epoxy, based on a book by Robert Grossbach called Easy and Hard Ways Out. It'll be a studio picture for Warner Bros. all shot on a sound stage, with Falk and Hayden again, Henry Gibson and a big, big cast. The whole thing takes place in one of those huge engineering-firm think tanks. It's a flat-out comedy, a cross between Dr. Strangelove and M*A*S*H, a really funny situation; and I'm going to see if I can make the audience wet their pants.

[Q] Playboy: What does Yig Epoxy mean?

[A] Altman: Epoxy, of course, is glue. A YIG is a sort of radar device, and there's a YIG filter, which is used in aircraft for evasive action with ground-air missiles. They can't find the right glue to hold this thing together; consequently, all these planes crash....

[Q] Playboy: Sounds like a million laughs. What else is on your calendar?

[A] Altman: I produced a film that's coming in, and original by Robert Benton, called The Late Show, with Art Carney and Lily Tomlin. Then there's Alan Rudolph's film Welcome to L.A., which I'm producing, and another thing we're working on for Lily, The Extra, which is about the life of a Hollywood extra, an exploration of people who believe the publicity of their own defeat.

[Q] Playboy: Haven't you had some difficulties with extras?

[A] Altman: I will not tolerate the Screen Extras Guild. If I rent the Shoemaker's shop next door to shoot a scene in front of it, I'm supposed to take out the two guys in there who know how to run all the machines and replace them with two extras who try to act like they know what they're doing. There's no way I can get the same effect. So who am I putting out of work---a couple of unskilled people. I haven't used the Extras Guild since M*A*S*H.

[Q] Playboy: Do you draw any royalties from the M*A*S*H television series?

[A] Altman: None whatsoever. The TV show is still using the M*A*S*H theme song, Suicide Is Painless, for which my son Michael wrote the lyrics when he was 14 years old, and he's made a lot of money out of it. I didn't get a fucking dime out of M*A*S*H, except for my director's fee. Ingo Preminger, who produced it, personally made at least $5,000,000, and God knows how much Fox collected. Yet I can't even get an audience at Fox. They don't want to talk to me.

I sometimes think that if we were all paid less money and nobody could make a big killing, most of these clever manipulators who are in this business strictly for the money would stay away from the movies and leave them to the artists---to people who really love what they're doing.

[Q] Playboy: Let's be realistic. Isn't one of the reasons backers balk at putting money into your pictures the fact that, with more than one person talking at the same time, they find your sound tracks unintelligible?

[A] Altman: I could go back and show you some of Howard Hawks's early pictures and you'd find exactly the same effect. Somebody picked up on it in my films after McCabe because it irritated a lot of people; yet I've got a file of reviews and letters saying the sound track was the best thing in the picture.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't Warren Beatty, the star of McCabe, one of those who were irritated?

[A] Altman: Warren was infuriated, he is still infuriated and he'll just have to stay infuriated.

Sometimes, though, I'm afraid audiences have a legitimate reason to complain, because we record dialog under ideal circumstances. In theaters where the speakers aren't working properly, you get a muddled version of the sound track. But that can happen to any director on any film.

[Q] Playboy: Are there any directors on the scene now whom you especially admire?

[A] Altman: I admire anybody who can get a film finished. Kurosawa's films impress me. I was very impressed with Fellini's La Dolce Vita. I like Bergman, who has always gone his own way and never had a success, really.

[Q] Playboy: You've been called an American Fellini, though John Simon recently hinted that Fellini might learn a lot from Lina Wertmuller.

[A] Altman: Well, Simon has finally found someone to fall in love with and I'm glad for him.

When I first saw Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, I was about ready to quit. He dealt with certain sexual attitudes that are usually kept under wraps and I thought it was a great step. I admire Kubrick, but I can't say I like him. I mean, I don't know him personally. What he does is terrific and the opposite of what I do. He supervises every little detail of his films down to the last inch. But I leave a gap so wide that anything between A and X may be acceptable. With Kubrick, it's between A and A 1.

[Q] Playboy: Whom would you single out from the ranks of the younger directors?

[A] Altman: Well, I think Martin Scorsese's going to endure. I think Steven Spielberg will endure, though it's tough when a picture like Jaws brings you a lot of success and money overnight that may not strictly be related to the merit of your work. I am not knocking Jaws, which was a magnificent accomplishment for a kid that age. But will he now be able to go off and make a small personal film? There's too much coming at you. It's the same with actors. Keith Carradine's suddenly hotter than a pistol since Nashville; they keep telling him, "We've got this great part for a street singer." He doesn't want to do those things.

Ivan Passer is a brilliant director; his Intimate Lighting I consider one of the best films ever made, though he, again, gets caught up on subjects he's not really familiar with and, consequently, fails. Coppola, of course, is a good producer-director. I get bored, as an audience, with John Cassavetes; though John is terrific, I always have the feeling that if he ever made a movie that was generally accepted and successful, it would really worry him. Paul Mazursky at least makes films that are recognizable as Mazursky films, though I personally don't like them; and I can get by pretty well without Peter Bogdanovich. Like Friedkin, he's constantly talking about his movies; he seems to know too much, and I've never seen a film of his that I thought was even passable.

But my idea of total mediocrity is Richard Brooks's last Gene Hackman thing, Bite the Bullet, which is about the worst kind of obvious, commercially inspired movie I can imagine. I guess people like it. I am not acquainted with Brooks, who's done some fine films, but that certainly isn't one of them.

[Q] Playboy: You must be buttonholed by many aspiring young film makers. What do you say to them?

[A] Altman: I tell them that the only advice I can give is never to take advice from anybody. I've had a lot of experience doing industrial films, documentary films, films I hated doing. I've plugged in the lights, cleaned up, cooked the lunches, learned where to waste time and where to spend it. I also tell them they'd better be lucky. You don't need a lot of money to be a painter or to write a song, but it costs minimally $1,000,000 to make a movie and nobody's going to hand you $1,000,000. There probably should be a system of apprenticeships.

[Q] Playboy: Do you hire apprentices?

[A] Altman: Sure, all the time. I don't care whether they come out of schools or off the street. We take a lot of people if they can serve us and we think we can serve them, but many fall by the wayside because they discover it isn't as much fun as they'd thought. They expect they're going to sit around listening in on heavyweight discussions about art; they soon (concluded on page 160)Playboy Interview(continued from page 68) find out that what they're doing is driving 300 miles a day getting film to the airport.

[Q] Playboy: One of the least celebrated chapters of your professional life, before you broke into television, was a period you spent tattooing dogs. Where did you do that?

[A] Altman: Inside the groin of the right front leg. We'd tattoo their state and county license numbers.

[Q] Playboy: Fascinating---but we meant where geographically.

[A] Altman: It started here. After the war, in 1947, I bought a bull terrier from a guy named H. Graham Connar. He had this idea for dog tattooing, which he called Identi-Code. I was writing then with a friend, Jim Rickard; we'd decided to become press agents. Then we got the idea of setting up this whole scam on a national basis. We invented our own tattooing machine, developed a numbering system and moved to New York and Washington. I was the tattooer.

[Q] Playboy: How did you make out?

[A] Altman: Pretty well, for a while. I tattooed Truman's dog while he was still in the White House. We were lobbying in Washington and on the verge of being bought out by National Dog Week---which is a corporation owned by four major dog-food companies---when we went broke.

[Q] Playboy: A couple of years ago, you claimed you were practically broke again. Isn't your financial picture today on an upswing?

[A] Altman: My percentages are bigger, but I seldom see any of the money. I have no wealth of any kind that would allow me to take three months or a year off. It's nice to be able to borrow from the bank now, because they think I can work, but there's never been a time I wasn't in debt. My personal take from Nashville will be a few hundred thousand, which is terrific. But the Government grabs half of it right off the bat and the rest goes to support this Lion's Gate operation.

[Q] Playboy: Aren't you a pretty big spender?

[A] Altman: I'm not an extravagant person, no. I have to travel quite a bit. I live reasonably well. I buy a lot of whiskey and a lot of dinners.

[Q] Playboy: How's your luck at cards? Do you still have a passion for gambling?

[A] Altman: It's not quite a passion, but it's something I really like. I like to play poker, like going to the races, but I can't allocate any time to it. I love betting on football.

[Q] Playboy: Are you a heavy bettor?

[A] Altman: Yeah, within limits. I have good years and bad years. Year before last, I won about $26,000; but I never stop while I'm winning. I may bet $500 or $1000 on a game, but you always lose in the long run because of the percentages. I never bet on the Dallas Cowboys. There's just something about that team I don't like. I'm not sure what it is, though Texas is not my favorite place.

[Q] Playboy: Do you suppose there's a connection between your gambling instincts and your career?

[A] Altman: Only in the sense that if you've experienced life as a gambler, you realize you can get along without great security. Consequently, it doesn't bother me when there's no money in the bank. I have this optimistic attitude that nobody's going to starve.

[Q] Playboy: Maybe having grown up during the Depression helps. What was your childhood like?

[A] Altman: I probably had the most normal, uneventful upbringing possible. My parents were stricter with me than with my two younger sisters. As a youngster, I was not a good student, but I just loved movies. I saw them all, went all the time. I got into a lot of trouble once because I sat through Wallace Beery's Viva Villa! about four times, until my parents came looking for me. I went to military school for a couple of years and lost my virginity, neither of which made me unhappy. It was generally just a regular childhood.

[Q] Playboy: Hasn't your son Michael written a book about your life and work?

[A] Altman: Oh, yes. It's a slender volume, and he even got some of the facts wrong. He came up to Calgary to talk about it during the filming of Buffalo Bill, and I almost threw him off the set, though I sort of admired him for going ahead anyway.

[Q] Playboy: What's the title?

[A] Altman:The World of Robert Altman. Just a nothing book, with a little synopsis of each picture, quotes, interviews, condensed reviews---oh, God, it was awful. I read the proofs in about four and a half seconds, and I think now it's going to be shelved. If ever I did a service to my son Michael, it was to keep that tome from being published.

[Q] Playboy: You mean you've killed it?

[A] Altman: Well, he had some material in there he didn't have rights to, so we just intimated that we might sue Simon & Schuster, who were supposed to release it. Michael seemed to analyze all my films as being failure in terms that were rather interesting, and they had a whole horoscope in there, with an astrological chart that tried to explain why I am the way I am. There's another unauthorized biography being written by some guy who called and asked if I'd assist him.

[Q] Playboy: And did you?

[A] Altman: Jesus, no. Let them wait and write a book about me when I'm dead, if anyone's still interested.

[Q] Playboy: You're now on your third marriage, but that has lasted 17 years. What do you think makes it work?

[A] Altman: Well, I suppose it's a matter of growth. And Kathryn is terrific. If I were married to someone who tried to influence me or push her personal feelings into my films, it probably wouldn't last. Yet Kathryn is the one who brought Breakfast of Champions to my attention. She'd read it first and just said casually, "You could probably make a movie out of this." She's around, she goes to screenings, she sets up a home with Matthew and Bobby wherever I happen to be shooting, she entertains; but she never intrudes intellectually into what I'm doing. We really live quite separate lives, but we live them together.

[Q] Playboy: Before we wind this up, can you tell us which Robert Altman film is your own personal favorite?

[A] Altman:Brewster McCloud. I wouldn't say it's my best film; it's flawed, not nearly as finished as some work I've done since, but it's my favorite, because I took more chances then. It was my boldest work, by far my most ambitious. I went way out on a limb to reach for it. After a while, you become more cautious. People keep telling you you've got to be careful, you shouldn't do that. Nevertheless, I don't think there's a question in the world that the films we'll be making and seeing 20 years from now will be films that none of us would understand today. Music's the same way; if you had put a Bob Dylan song on the radio back in 1941, they would have thought you were crazy, closed the station. And I feel it's the obligation of the artist to keep pushing ahead, to stay within range of his audience but to keep pushing and educating them one step at a time.

[Q] Playboy: When you look into your own future, what do you want to have accomplished?

[A] Altman: I can't imagine getting up in the morning without the same frustrations, the same fears and the same elation I experience every day. All I want is to do what I'm doing. What else would I do?

[Q] Playboy: Then you don't think, as some have claimed, that the ultimate Altman movie has already been made?

[A] Altman: I certainly hope not. I'm just warming up.

"You people---critics and writers---always pigeonhole these things. Me, I just take a subject and say, Hey, this could be fun."

"When I make films like 'Nashville' and 'Buffalo Bill,' it's not to say we're the worst country in the world.... I'm just saying we're at this point and it's sad."

"I've never been very nice to the Hollywood establishment.... My tendency is always to be a little loud. I'm a little arrogant and they're a little afraid."

"Many people ... want to know what your message is. Well, my message is that I am not going to do their work for them."

"I'm the catalyst, I guess, for a kind of East Coast---West Coast cultural separation, the Great Divide, which drives the studio people crazy."

"Barbra Streisand had nothing to say. She was so completely wrapped up in herself, she didn't even know what I was talking about."

"I didn't get a fucking dime out of 'M*A*S*H,' except for my director's fee.... God knows how much Fox collected. Yet I can't even get an audience at Fox."

"I may bet $500 or $1000 on a game, but ... I never bet on the Dallas Cowboys. There's just something about that team I don't like."