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Eternal Gambler. Altman responds with similar heat and even physical threat to a variety of foes. "We almost came to blows," reports Allen Garfield, who is excellent as Blakley's manager-spouse in Nashville. "Later, he told me he backed off because he was unsure how strong I was. I told him I backed off because I was afraid of him." Born in Kansas City, Mo., Altman still has a Midwestern twang and an occasional fondness for the sort of frontier brawling he portrayed in McCabe and Mrs. Miller. He is apt to mouth off to strangers in bars, but longtime Altman Stalwart Michael Murphy reports: "I've never seen Bob throw a punch."
Murphy has seen his friend brush with poverty more than a few times since Altman's days as a director of TV series such as Combat and watched him risk his last few borrowed dollars on a 6-to-1 shot at Hollywood Park. An ebullient, eternal gambler, Altman has the veteran's sense of having his money on a winner this time around. He has his next four movies—including a version of E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime—lined up like dominoes. He predicts with Nashville, "I'm gonna make all the money in the world." Then he adds, never forgetting that first things come first: "Boy, this is fun."