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Big film, little film >> Robert Altman on actors, critics and Cookie's Fortune by MATTHEW HAYS
Now he's taking aim at critics addicted to the auteur theory. The idea that suggests every film he makes must inevitably be discussed in terms of his other work is not always appropriate, Altman says. "I don't try anything other than what occurs to me at the time," barks the 74-year-old director. "But I have to face it: everything I do has to be totally compared to everything I've done. There was a review of this film that just came out, and it started 'After the terrible fiasco, and the embarrassing da da da, Altman comes back with...' It wasn't a bad review, but he certainly let the audience know that basically he didn't think I make good films. This happens so much it has become a cliché." Hits and misses A critic might be forgiven, however, for recalling the hills and valleys of Altman's bizarre career. Beginning in TV with shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Altman soon moved on to features and became the new director to look out for in 1970 with the release of M*A*S*H, his experimental black comedy about Vietnam (though studio types insisted on setting it in Korea). Altman has been alternately fascinating and turning off movie audiences ever since with hits (Nashville, The Player, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Short Cuts) and, well, non-hits (Popeye, Beyond Therapy, A Wedding). Altman says there isn't much of a through line to his work. "Twenty years ago I would have said that each film is so different than the other, no one would have known they come from the same hand. But I look at it now and I see them as different chapters of the same book. All the material has to filter through me--eventually it must assume my shape. I guess it's no different for a painter." Altman's latest painting is equal parts broad farce and droll comedy of Southern manners. Patricia Neal plays Cookie, an aging Southern widow whose mind is beginning to fail. Despite the companionship of her trusted manservant (Charles S. Dutton), Cookie decides to do herself in, hoping to join her loving husband in the afterlife. When scheming niece Glenn Close discovers Neal's body, she makes the death appear to be a murder. Suicide, she decides, is so undignified. Besides, Close wants to lay claim to Cookie's considerable fortune, which includes a stately Southern manor. Soon, police are holding the innocent Dutton, who's the prime suspect in the crime. Bungling cops (including Ned Beatty and Chris O'Donnell) and wacky relatives (Julianne Moore and Liv Tyler) all clamber to figure out who did in the eccentric Cookie. Discovering Cher As usual, Altman's ensemble stand out. But because of budget constraints (the film was made for $8 million U.S.), Altman was forced to abandon his usual rigorous rehearsal period. "We didn't have the luxury of having all the actors there all the time. I wasn't able to shoot in sequence, which is very good to do because you can change things as they occur in the screenplay." Altman also says his label as an actor's director is a mystery to him. "I simply don't know why someone has a certain perception of an actor or a performer. I couldn't get up and act if my life depended on it. I don't understand it one bit. For example, I simply thought Cher would be terrific in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, and that people would be surprised. And they were." Saying he could never choose a personal favourite among his oeuvre, Altman also contends that predicting which ones will work with audiences is impossible. "Ultimately, it doesn't make any difference. They are what they are, and I can't do much about that. I just sit there and hope it works. If it doesn't, I just think, 'I wish they'd got it.' But I suppose that's just part of the game we've set up for ourselves. "I can understand why some things are better received than others. But if you really do something that's valuable, that's good, and you've got a lot of power going--good actors, good material--but you've got to see the picture twice, you can't ask an audience to do that. In any really decent piece of work, the first time you see it, you're doing the whodunit game. You're going along and guessing, just taking in the actual occurrences. The second time you see it, you know whodunit, and you're able to wallow in the details and see things that weren't evident before. That's what I like to see. And I'm going to assume that that's what people want to see too." Cookie's Fortune opens Friday, April 16
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Robert Altman doesn't stop bitching. In a round of interviews to plug his latest film, Cookie's Fortune, the man who's considered among an elite circle of the greatest American directors has taken turns sniping at Polygram (for trying to mess with his cut of The Gingerbread Man), the Academy--for their poor Oscar choices (Titanic, Shmitanic)--and Peter Biskind, the tell-all author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, the lurid exposé on various maverick filmmakers (including Altman).