The new Epix documentary Altman premieres Wednesday, Aug 6 at 8 on Epix. It chronicles the films of director Robert Altman, via candid footage of the late Altman discussing his work. It’s framed around each of his actors being asked to define the term “Altman-esque.” To speak about the film we got on the phone with Altman’s widow Kathryn Altman and his Gosford Park actor Bob Balaban by phone from New York. The interview became a little Altman-esque and Balaban was able to offer some insight onto many more films than just the one in which he starred.
Related: Bob Balaban on ‘The Monuments Men’ (Video)
Bob Balaban: Hi Fred, it’s Bob here and Kathryn over there. We’re traveling in separate cars as we talk to you together.
That’s amazing. Sounds like we could have a Robert Altman overlapping conversation right now.
Kathryn Altman: Absolutely.
Bob Balaban: We could.
Where did those interviews with Robert Altman come from? Some were a Q&A in front of an audience, but at what point did you think this material could be the framework for a documentary?
Kathryn Altman: Well, the filmmaker who is brilliant, Ron Mann, he was given carte blanche for Bob Altman’s archives at the University of Michigan. He thought he’d do it all in a couple of days but it took him I think two or three weeks and a couple of assistants, because I had sent 1300 boxes of material to them. So he kept unearthing more and more information and that’s where all of those clips came from. That one interview I think you’re referring to in a large audience, kind of in black and white, that was University of Michigan.
The real pioneering development that everyone talks about regarding Altman movies is the overlapping dialogue. Did he ever feel like he got carried away with it, like he went overboard in some movies?
Kathryn Altman: He never expressed that. I think if he had, he would’ve stopped it. I certainly don’t remember him ever feeling that it’d gone too far. I don’t think it ever caused any specific problems on any level.
Bob Balaban: It’s a technical advancement, but in a funny way it’s not subject to the whims, I think, of time and passing style and fashion because in real life, there is no conversation between people, certainly in a group of people, where overlapping isn’t constantly happening. Also, the way Bob recorded overlapping dialogue, especially in large groups of people, everybody was individually mic’ed and he chooses, it’s very organized. It’s not organized exactly where you’re overlapping, but he can separate you and get somebody not to be overlapping whenever he wants to merely by dialing the dials down. After Gosford Park, he sat around very carefully organizing some of the larger scenes with large groups of people talking to highlight certain things and not highlight certain things. If he wanted you not to be overlapping, he simply looped you in a couple of sections. He was very controlled. It just has the feeling of being organized chaos but it wasn’t chaotic.
You made Gosford Park with him. How close did you get with Altman on that one film?
Bob Balaban: He let me interview him for a little insignificant documentary thing we did for Showtime about 13 years ago, but that’s the closest thing we had to working together [again]. I had visited him on movie sets and we had become friends over the years, but that was the only thing I was lucky enough to actually be in. It was certainly a highlight of my career.
Which films did you get to visit?
Bob Balaban: I visited him on Short Cuts, The Player.
Kathryn Altman: Gingerbread Man.
Bob Balaban: I visited him on Gingerbread Man, thank you, in Savannah, GA with Kenneth Branagh and had the great pleasure of following him around watching him do pre-production work and location scouting, then shooting that evening with Kenneth Branagh, having kind of an 18 hour day together. I’d known him for years but it was tremendous insight into the day-to-day operations in a really intense sort of way.
I’m glad Quintet was mentioned in the documentary, even a small part. I’m a little fascinated by that film. What was the intention behind Quintet?
Kathryn Altman: [Laughs] I wish I could answer that and I wish he could’ve answered that. I could never get a straight answer out of him about that. It was an idea that he had and he didn’t put any label on it. People were calling it futuristic and that type of thing. He got all those actors enthused about it and they didn’t know exactly where it all came from or where it was going, but it was an experience. That was what it was.
Did he invent the game they played in Quintet?
Kathryn Altman: Oh yeah, he and his associates. They almost marketed that game with Parker Brothers. I think if the picture had had any kind of success, they would have.
Did Bob have a chance to find out and was he gratified that Popeye grew in esteem years later?
Kathryn Altman: Of course, because we never felt it was a flop that they felt. I still don’t get it. I still don’t understand the press on that. I am prejudiced, I’m the first to admit it, but I just think that Robin William and Shelly Duvall did a fantastic job. I thought the Harry Nilsson score was superb. I love that score and I know a lot of people that do. So we were delighted it still has such a long life because it’s become everybody’s babysitter. It’s got a huge babysitter following so it worked out very well. I wish it could have been accepted better.
Bob Balaban: I don’t think it was the movie’s fault it wasn’t accepted. I think it wasn’t accepted because it was marketed as if it was the next Annie. It wasn’t marketed as a Robert Altman film. It was some sort of crowd-pleasing mass marketed affair and I think people were not expecting that.
Kathryn Altman: That’s interesting.
Those sets are still up in Malta as a tourist attraction, right?
Kathryn Altman: The set is still standing, yes. They made an amusement park out of it.
How gratifying was that to know that he created something that still stands in the real world?
Kathryn Altman: Well, I think that was probably very gratifying and it was nice of the people of Malta, who were so cooperative and helpful throughout that entire experience. It was a great experience on all levels. People were married, people were divorced, people had accidents, people had babies. We were there almost a year on a 17-mile island.
What did Altman think of the successful “MASH” TV show that came out after his movie?
Kathryn Altman: He didn’t like it. He felt that it glorified war. He really didn’t like it, and he made no secret of it.
Was The Long Goodbye not intended to be a franchise? Philip Marlowe had other mysteries.
Kathryn Altman: I don’t really know how to answer that. Bob, can you help me?
Bob Balaban: I think the answer is no. He was not going to franchise the character, Elliot Gould’s character would have different mysteries every year or two. My understanding of that is no. Bob would never revisit the same character twice, I believe.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was in that film briefly. Did you or Ron Mann ever reach out to him for an interview?
Kathryn Altman: No, his name was Arnold Strong. That was his first movie I think or second. He came to the wrong location, walked into my kitchen where he thought they’d been shooting, which they had the week before. He had his bowling ball or something in his hand and he walked into the kitchen, came in through the patio and he said, “Vhere’s the movie?” I told him he was in the wrong location. It was on the Sunset Strip. He only had that one scene, those musclemen. It was funny.
I understand that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are very protective of their footage. Were they cooperative to release the Altman footage for the film?
Bob Balaban: I guess the answer is yes. The Academy cooperated with the film. I think it’s because of the way it’s used. It’s a respectful documentary. I think they guard carefully the way their image, their brand is portrayed. Also maybe their respect for Robert but I suspect it’s also because it’s in a dignified, fun and wonderful, but respectful documentary.
What would his 40th film have been?
Kathryn Altman: Hands on a Hardbody. Are you familiar with that documentary? It’s a very well known documentary called Hands on a Hardbody and he had a full feature script and a complete cast and a start date.
Bob Balaban: There was never a time in Robert’s life when he wasn’t preparing to do a movie, am I right, Kathryn?
Kathryn Altman: As an adult, yeah, for sure. Probably when he was a child.
What world is Hands on a Hardbody set in?
Bob Balaban: It’s in the south and it’s a documentary made about people who have a contest. The last person standing wins the price.
Kathryn Altman: With their hand on a pickup truck.
Bob Balaban: He made what I heard was just a brilliant script out of it.
Kathryn Altman: It’s a great documentary. You should see it.
I’ve heard of that contest. Has any other filmmaker expressed interest in filming that script?
Kathryn Altman: I think a couple of people tried to but they couldn’t quite pull the cast together to make it work like he did. It did have a run as a Broadway show last season. It didn’t run very long. It was a musical, Keith Carradine starred in it. It was nice lyrics by Amanda Green.
Bob Balaban: I think the trick to it is that Robert could always pull in great star talent and great other talent in a way that he wasn’t just obviously another filmmaker. His specialty, actors always wanted to work with him. Movie stars, anybody who is a serious actor, lived if Robert Altman would call and ask them to be in a movie. That’s how it was.
Would the whole movie have been set entirely around that car and that contest?
Kathryn Altman: Yes. And the characters.
Bob, what are some of your memories of Gosford Park that didn’t make it into the documentary?
Bob Balaban: One was when it didn’t win in any of its Academy Award categories except for Best Screenplay, and Robert cheerfully announced to all of us who had come and gathered to the Academy Awards that he was holding a loser’s party at his house and we were going to get drunk and have a great time. It was jolly and ironic and funny and it was just very warm and lovely.
My other favorite moment during the movie was that we had to have a pheasant hunt in the movie, but you can’t hunt pheasants in May when the movie was being filmed. It’s not pheasant hunting season. So Robert went out with a little mini crew and shot a lot of pheasants getting shot. In this case he had some animals were hurt in the filming, but somebody would have shot them anyway I suppose. Then he throws them with little hairnets around them to hold their little bodies together, and then we went and did the shots of us, in my case, me watching with Jeremy Northam. My character being a vegetarian didn’t hunt, although I wore a fur coat. We sat there while the frozen pheasants wrapped in hairnets would drop all around us and Robert took great pleasure in standing on a very tall ladder with armfuls of frozen pheasants and threw them at us. It was very hard not to laugh, but this is what we did.
Kathryn Altman: That’s funny.
That’s amazing. The Player was very well received by Hollywood, right? It wasn’t seen as a scathing indictment?
Kathryn Altman: I don’t think there was any negative feedback, do you, Bob?
Bob Balaban: No, I don’t think there was any. In Robert’s career, everybody interpreted it with their own yardstick. So the people who valued financial success would say, “Well, Robert had a really interesting career because about every fourth or sixth movie of his would make tons of money, and in between he would have these movies that didn’t make a lot of money.” This was not how Robert saw his career at all, and correctly so. He was just making movies he wanted to make, and some of them did well financially. They were all artistically very satisfying I think, and certainly Robert did. I think the Hollywood community was thrilled that Robert was making a movie that was very loved by an awful lot of people and I think at this point, most of the people he had had run-ins with in high places in movie studios, I think the people in movie studios were thrilled that he had a hit and they loved him. That’s really what I think at this point.
Even hit or not, I imagine they felt it was a loving portrayal of the industry.
Bob Balaban: I think it was probably on an individual basis, but don’t forget, the industry is always getting younger and I think the people in Hollywood when The Player came out were mostly not the same people that would have felt [offended].
I have to say, I still describe movies as “Something meets Something Else” because of The Player.
Bob Balaban: That’s funny, you’re quoting the movie. It’s wonderful for me and I think for us who loved seeing the whole array of Robert’s work laid out in the documentary. It’s so entertaining. As connected as many of his movies were by many themes and stylistic things and other things, they were all very unique. The Player felt like such a departure in a way. It was like a wicked comedy in a very organized way.
Kathryn Altman: I think it was shockingly fun. It was kind of shock and having fun at the same time.
Bob Balaban: The fact that the screenplay was so crisply and satisfyingly laid out, some of Robert’s movies, they always had great stories in them but in some cases, it was much more about mood and atmosphere and I think it was a pleasure for people to watch a movie that was very much about what you see is what you get in a very satisfying way.
It seems like Bruce Willis thought very highly of it even though he only had a cameo.
Kathryn Altman: Wasn’t that nice? I loved the way the filmmaker presented all of that. I thought it was extremely original and very unconventional and very well done.
Bob Balaban: But you’d be surprised. It’s very hard to find the footage that you have of Robert doesn’t exist for a lot of filmmakers. I think part of it is Robert enjoyed talking about his movies in a way and was able to talk intelligently and interestingly about them. I don’t know that all that many filmmakers want to share what they’re thinking about so much.
Right, there wouldn’t be footage of Kubrick talking to audiences.
Bob Balaban: Well, he would’ve had to do it from his house on a remote feed.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
