I received a short, concise e-mail well before any official news had broken. “Hey, did you hear that Altman died?” My stomach sank after I finished the e-mail. I hadn’t heard anything about Altman and instantly went to Yahoo to read about it. Nothing. I then went to CNN, Google and IMDb. There wasn’t anything about anything anywhere. Just as I began to wonder if maybe the e-mail was wrong, I went to wikipedia and noticed that someone had added November 20, 2006 as the date of Altman’s death. While wikipedia often makes headlines for its fabricated content, this time, unfortunately, wasn’t one of those situations.
The news of Altman’s passing shouldn’t have been that surprising; not only was he 81, but he’d had a heart transplant more than 10 years ago and also had cancer. However, the core essence of Altman lay in his spirit, determination and affinity for life. While he might not have necessarily looked young, he had a lively nature and an inquisitive mind that did not in any way belie his true age. The news of his death was a shock to me though because of this; it’s hard to think of someone who shuttles back and forth between New York and Malibu, who goes on location to shoot for weeks at a time and who travels cross-country while doing press tours as ‘old’, even if he did have to sit down to carry on a lengthier conversation in the waning months of his life.
I didn’t have extensive dealings with Altman—we only met in the summer of 2002—but the times in which we did interact were some of the most genuine, spirited, intelligent and pleasant times I’ve had with anyone in the entertainment industry. While I’ve interviewed and met with hundreds of Hollywood actors, writers, directors and executives while writing for Stumped?, six people stand out in my mind as being head and shoulders above the rest; the very epitome of what a human being is capable of achieving professionally and personally. To call this group of people scholars and gentlemen (or gentlewomen) doesn’t begin to capture the true nature, affability and unique charisma that each possessed and the warmth of the way each person reached out to me. The list is short and eclectic: Bob Balaban, Nina Jacobson, Josh Lucas, Tippi Hedren, Debra Winger… and Robert Altman.
I first met Altman in his home in Malibu in June of 2002. I was 26 and had never left my hometown of Chicago to do anything other than go to college or go on family vacations. This changed when I was offered the opportunity to talk to Altman. A fan of the esteemed director’s since I saw The Player in 1992, I leapt at the chance to speak to him. One problem quickly arose that won’t seem like much of a problem to anyone who isn’t in the publishing field: there were precious few pictures of Altman around that weren’t owned by big photo agencies. In order to print the article in the magazine, we were going to have to buy photos of him. When WireImage quoted us a price of roughly $3,000 per photo for a one-time usage, it became apparent that we were going to have to find an alternate method to get artwork of Altman. That alternate method turned out to be that the magazine’s photographer and I would fly out to California and do the interview and photo shoot in Malibu. It speaks volumes about the entertainment industry that we chose that option because it was the cheapest of all the options available to us.
In 2002, Stumped? had been on the national scene for a little less than 18 months and had a circulation that was still being measured in the hundreds. I had just turned 26 and our photographer was four years younger than me. Together, we were going to be doing a lengthy interview and photo shoot with the man who had just won a Golden Globe for Best Director for his work on Gosford Park. While Altman could have blown off my request for an interview, insisted that we do it by phone or that the magazine figure out some other way to get photos of him than to traipse into his house and start shooting, he opened up his schedule and his home to us for the better part of an afternoon, ultimately treating us with the same dignity he would have afforded journalists working for the USA Today or Entertainment Weekly.
In the late summer of 2002, Altman was in Chicago shooting The Company. He chose to tackle the drama about ballet, as he says, because he didn’t know how he would do it—one of the best answers to why a filmmaker has chosen to something that I’ve ever received. While in Chicago, Altman was staying at the Four Seasons Hotel. It is one of the nicer hotels in Chicago and, as such, one of the frequent destinations of visiting celebrities. I had scheduled an interview with Lucas, who was also in town and staying at the Four Seasons. I had just gotten onto an elevator going up to Lucas’ suite when, across the hallway, I saw Altman waiting for people to leave his elevator. At the time, I hadn’t know that he was staying at the Four Seasons and was taken aback to see him. Our eyes locked though the throngs of moving people, he and I the only two people who weren’t exiting or entering our respective elevators. My surprise subsided quickly and I nodded at him. He winked at me and lifted an index finger to his eyebrow and gestured toward me, much like one might have done were they tipping their hat. As the doors to my elevator started closing, Altman smiled at me.
Though this exchange could not have taken more than about 15 seconds and it seems generous to state that his smile lasted for anything beyond a second or two, this is the image of him that will always have in my head; it is the default picture that accompanies any news I hear of Altman, the front page graphic in the newspaper in my mind.
It’s not a story I’ve ever told anyone before because it’s not particularly noteworthy or unique in any conventional way. However, the reason I mention it here is because, with the slightest of nods of the head and a simple smile of both recognition and respect, Altman made my spirits soar. It was exceptionally noteworthy and unique to me. This moves even beyond a sense of ‘you-had-to-be-there’ and enters the realm of ‘you-had-to-experience-the-situation-the-way-I-experienced-it’, a rare occurrence indeed.
Altman was a one-of-a-kind filmmaker whose artistic creations have secured his name a place amongst the names of the greatest directors of all time. Despite the fact that MASH was his highest grossing movie (and that was released in 1970), very few people will argue that his does not belong being mentioned in the same breath as Hitchcock, Scorsese, Capra, Spielberg and Coppola. However, the reason that I am writing about Altman here is not because of his cinematic talents (of which I am an enormous fan, I should point out), it’s because of the respect he afforded me each and every time we met—like when he insisted that a publicist change the entirety of his schedule around so we could have a longer interview and as the publicist vacillated about the feasibility of the request, Altman conveyed his true feelings about the matter by instructing the publicist not to let the door hit him in the ass on the way out of the room as he went to figure out how to accomplish it.
Yes, Altman had some demons, but he expressed that he now saved the majority of his yelling and ire for studio executives and publicists, an honorable philosophy to say the least. Altman’s talents will be missed—could any other director possibly make a feature about twelve Texans who attempt to win a pick-up truck by being the person who keeps his hand on the truck the longest, as Altman was planning?—and you will certainly read in many places and obituaries that “Altman will be missed”, but that platitude doesn’t do the man’s talents, humanity and gentlemanly nature any kind of justice.
The closest I can come to that marker is this: Altman filled a void in America’s cultural life that we didn’t even realize needed to be filled. It truly was the case, as he was so fond of saying, that while everyone else was out there making clothes, he was making gloves. But the point of this piece isn’t that his talents will be missed (though they will), that his picture will engender a standing ovation at next year’s Oscar ceremony (though it certainly will) nor to chastise the legions of film critics who have been tripping over themselves to write thendefinitive piece about Altman’s own unique brand of directing, the truth is this: Altman was a scholar and a gentleman, the highest compliment that I can possibly pay someone and I will miss him and his presence in my life greatly.
