Altman

I equate films with sandcastles.

You get a bunch of mates and you go down and say,

oh, let's build this great sandcastle.

And you build it.

And if the tide comes in in 20 minutes it's just smooth sand

and that structure you made is in everybody's memory

and that's it.

What does it mean?

Fearless.

I grew up in Kansas City.

When I was 18 I became a flier

and I went overseas to the South Pacific.

I started writing letters and I wrote a letter

to a cousin of mine who was a woman who I didn't know really,

but she was the secretary to Myron Selznick.

Who was one of the big agents, David Selznick's brother.

And I'd written her this kind of funny,

cute letter and she wrote me back and she said,

oh, Bobby, you wrote such a nice letter

you should be... you're a writer.

And I thought, well, yeah, that's what I'll do.

When I got out of the air force my dad was living in California.

He rented a house in Malibu, up in the hills.

And so I move into my father's house.

A guy named George W. George had the downstairs apartment.

I told him, I said, I'm a writer,

and he said, oh I'm gonna be a director.

We should do something together.

So we wrote a story and we sold it to RKO.

They wouldn't let me write the screenplay.

I said well can I come and watch the film being made?

No.

So I decided I'd be a playwright.

I wrote a play.

And I got in a car and I was driving to New York

and I stopped in Kansas City, which is my hometown.

And I ran in to a guy I had known slightly in a bar

and he said what are you doing?

I said well I'm a film... film writer.

I'm writing screenplays and I lied quite a bit.

I said I'm on my way to New York.

I'm doing my [flay-

What are you doing?

And he said I'm directing movies.

I said where?

He said well there's this place here called the Calvin Company.

It's an industrial film place.

So I went over and I was introduced

and lied about what I had done some more and they hired me.

Morning, Mr. Jones.

Morning Charlie.

You want me to fill 'er up today?

Yeah, and one more thing, I'm in kind of a hurry

but I'd like to get an oil change and a lube job.

My film school was working in this industrial films.

I mean, I had to shoot, edit the films.

I learned all the tools.

When I was at the Calvin Company

a guy who's father owned a bunch of...

a chain of theatres in the mid-west, in Roden,

wanted to make a movie.

And, uh, delinquents, a delinquents movie.

And that's what it was called "The Delinquents".

So I wrote it in about three nights.

I stayed up all night and wrote this script.

Golly, do we have to go in?

Well let's just go in for a little while.

If we don't like it we can always leave, okay?

We made it for $65,000 and it was really terrible.

Ah!

Where you going?

But Hitchcock saw that film, he was impressed with it.

So he called me in for a meeting

and he offered me a "Hitchcock Presents".

Hello.

Mrs. Gould.

This is...

Hello.

What do you think you're doing?

I'm going to call her and tell her we're in love

and you're not going to stop me.

Hello.

Hello?

Hello?

What number are you calling?

I did two of those.

So then I got an agent and they got me this job on Whirlybirds.

Two boys robbed the store and slit the owner.

Could be the same ones who killed the old man

at the garage.

Killed!

Could you intercept? Over.

We'll try, Greendale.

We shot them in two and a half days.

Every five days we would shoot two episodes.

Tommy Thomson, who was my AD, would pick me up in the morning

and I'd get in the car and I'd drive out to...

way out in the valley in California

where we were shooting those things.

I'd say what are we doing today?

He'd say oh this is the thing, and the two guys are doing this,

and there's a woman who's cheating on her husband

and she's shot this guy, and there's some baby chickens,

and they have all these eggs that are gonna die

unless the helicopter gets them and there's a dilemma.

Do they take the chickens?

Do they solve the murder?

And I'd say okay, I got it.

I was born and raised in California

and spent a lot of time at the beach.

One day a movie company put out a call for girls who could swim.

So I tried out and ended up getting the part.

I started getting work

and one day I got a call to play a nurse on Whirlybirds.

The director was Robert Altman.

He looked a little hung-over.

When we were introduced he didn't say hello,

he just said how are your morals?

And I said a little shaky, how are yours?

That was the beginning.

We went right into a fulltime relationship.

I never worked again after Whirlybirds.

He had already been married twice,

but those marriages didn't last very long

and he had three kids... Christine, Michael, and Steven

from those earlier marriages.

And I had Konni from mine.

When they got married we moved

and my new school was having this big father daughter dance

and I was so new and completely terrified.

Even though Bob and I didn't know each other that well,

he came with me as my father.

He was so sweet about it.

He just wanted me to be happy.

Soon after we were married we had Bobby.

We bought a house, it was a great house

and we had lots and lots of parties.

Bob loved to throw a party.

I started in "Bonanza" and "The Roaring 20's"

and a lot of those series.

And I became one of the top television directors.

The more television he did

the more he realized all these TV scripts he was given

were just the same old thing over, and over.

A'.

By the time he was doing "Combat"

he tried to use his own experience in the war

to make the show more true to life.

He did one episode where Vic Morrow was shell-shocked,

but that got him into trouble.

Joey?

Medic!

That's my brother, my brother Joey.

And he's, he's dead.

It's all my fault.

Geeze is this guy out of it.

Walking down the road carrying a dead German

and thinking it's his brother.

A man named Selig Seligman produced that series

and he forbade me to make that.

He said I don't want you to do that.

Then he went out of town and...

and, uh,

I didn't have a decent script to go in with and so we did it.

And when he saw it I was fired.

And to edit the show the editor would come...

there was a bar there over there on... on Washington Boulevard,

over by MGM.

I would go sit in the bar

and Vic Morrow would go to the editor

and then come and sit with me

and he says here's what he's doing.

I said well tell him do 'so and so' and 'so and so'.

Then Vic would go back and...

And then that episode got quite a bit of attention.

I think it won an Emmy.

He continued to push for more realism

in all of his shows, but the producers wouldn't go for it.

In an episode of "Kraft Suspense Theater"

he wanted to cast the black actor as a convict on the run.

And when the sponsor refused the idea of a black character

he quit television and bad-mouthed the sponsor.

I felt I had just done all I could do in television,

and I felt I'd better leave.

What does Altmanesque mean?

Playing the long shot.

After burning his bridges in television,

Bob wanted to write and direct his own films.

He thought that would give him more creative freedom.

Around that time we adopted Matthew and our family grew.

But we were running out of money.

When you have six children and can't pay the milkman,

that's pretty bad.

It was our fifth anniversary and he told me for our anniversary

we're flying to Las Vegas for the weekend,

so get ready.

I'm just going to run out to the racetrack

and I'll meet you at the airport at six.

Later, I found out he had our last $200 in his pocket

and he'd bet it all on a twenty-to-one long shot