(4 of 5)
While Altman is a big-hearted, risk-taking, pot-smoking, actor-loving paterfamilias (he has five children by three wives, including two by Kathryn Altman, whom he married 32 years ago), he is not always Mr. Mellow. When he thinks a crew member has screwed up or an executive has done him wrong, his anger can be ferocious. Volcanic is the word that two former colleagues use to describe his temper. "It's something to behold," says Trudeau.
Given that he depends on the Hollywood establishment to help make and sell his movies, his undisguised contempt for certain Hollywood big shots is also something to behold. Earlier this year, when The Player was being shown to prospective distributors, Altman got in a public spat with two top studio executives over what he considered their disrespectful attitude. Ask Altman innocently about his 1985 movie that Sam Shepard wrote and starred in, and he cannot stop himself. "Fool for Love . . . I mean, I can't abide Sam Shepard." As an actor? "As a person. I just had it up to here with him. But I think that's a really good film -- a really good film."
Altman says that beginning last winter, "about the time all the studios saw ((The Player))," he started being courted by the unlikeliest of people. "Even Disney wants to do something with me," he marvels. Of course, being Robert Altman, he only wants to make the not-obviously-commercial films that interest him. For most of the past decade, he tried and failed to develop a script about the Paris haute couture scene, and now "I'll probably get it done next year -- I imagine directly as a result of the heat on The Player." He is negotiating a development deal for a movie about Mata Hari, and he also wants to film the life of Jean Seberg. L.A. Shortcuts, a script he co-wrote from a set of Raymond Carver short stories, seems to be the project about which he's most enthusiastic.
One recent afternoon in New York City the director, dressed all in black, sat at his desk in his all-black production office, hustling deals. It is a Robert Altman sort of place. Just behind him is the neon onstage logo from his production of Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, giving him a perfect glitzy-tacky roadhouse penumbra. An old cheese and some scraps of baguette sit on the coffee table, and beyond the table sits his William Morris agent, listening in on a phone extension as Altman assures someone else's agents that he really is quite committed to directing A Death in Ireland, a script by the actor Tom Berenger. He hangs up. "These are all projects that interest me," he says of the various movies he's trying to get made. "They say, 'The ((movie principals)) will think you're not doing it for art, but just for the gig.' " Altman's not really angry, just a tad . . . frustrated that at this late date he is obliged to convince agents of his artistic integrity.