Robert Altman by Mitchell Zuckoff

Author:Mitchell Zuckoff [Zuckoff, Mitchell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780307273352
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-05-26T14:00:00+00:00

On the set of Nashville with screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury in front of Nashville’s Parthenon, location of the film’s climactic shooting

ROBERT ALTMAN: I started casting it, and people would come in. I’d say, “Okay.” Then somebody else would come in—I don’t specifically know who—and I’d say, “God, we need a part for them. They want to be in the movie and they’re good.” So we would make up a part.

JOAN TEWKESBURY: It increased from eighteen characters to twenty-four, and I figured that the audience would be the twenty-fifth character. With every addition a little more sophistication, you know, a little more of the outside world would encroach into Nashville, which was exactly what was happening to Nashville at the time.

ROBERT ALTMAN: It gets back to poetry. What we’re all doing is basically haiku. You’re trying to make a short poem and get everything in. In the first place, in making a film, I have to figure out—I have to deal with the minds and the information that the audience already has. If the audience can’t keep track of all those characters, they give up and your picture’s over. So, I’ve got to get it down to size, to where they can embrace it. I think of all of these things like dinner parties. I go to a dinner party with twelve people and Kathryn and I leave and we’re going home, I’ll say, “Who was that blonde girl that was sitting next to so-and-so?” I may have met one more person, or two that I didn’t know before. But basically I walk away and I don’t even know the people I’ve had dinner with. I think a film is pretty much the same way. There’s that problem in Nashville. But because of being able to stop and see them sing, you learn who that person is because you’ve got that camera on them for a long time. And that singing is sort of a confession for them. It tells you a lot about that individual.

KEITH CARRADINE: Bob had one of his weekend parties and we were all gathered up there. It was a sunny day, and I had my guitar and I was playing songs. Joan was already researching Nashville. In the midst of her doing that, while we were shooting Thieves Like Us, Bob heard my music and Joan heard the music and they basically just incorporated it into the film.

I wasn’t even supposed to be Tom originally. I was going to be Bill, who was played by Allan Nicholls. They wanted Gary Busey to play Tom, which was much more on the money in terms of Gary’s energy and his personality. It would have made much more sense on first blush. Then Gary passed on the movie because he took a pilot called The Texas Wheelers with Jack Elam. When that happened I brought Allan out and Bob moved me into the role of Tom, with which I was never comfortable. I never felt right. I didn’t like him. And that’s Bob’s genius.

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