Robert Altman Quotations

Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.

If you don't have a leg to stand on, you can't put your foot down.

Maybe there's a chance to get back to grown-up films. Anything that uses humor and dramatic values to deal with human emotions and gets down to what people are to people.

If George W. Bush is elected president, I'm leaving for France.

It's all just one film to me. Just different chapters.

What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.

Men make clothes for the women they'd like to be with or in most cases the women they'd like to be.

We're not against each other. They sell shoes and I make gloves.

Maybe there's a chance to get back to ... grown-up films. Anything that uses humor and dramatic values to deal with human emotions and gets down to what people are to people.

No other filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have; I never had to direct a film I didn't choose and develop. Eleven years ago, I had a heart transplant. I got the heart of a young woman who is in her late 30s. So by that calculation, you may be giving me this award too early, because I think I've got 40 years left, and I intend to use them.

No other filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have. I'm very fortunate in my career. I've never had to direct a film I didn't choose or develop. My love for filmmaking has given me an entree to the world and to the human condition.

No filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have. By that calculation, you may be giving this award too early. Because I think I've got about 40 years left and I intend to use them.

I don't know what a best director is, except that (it is) someone who stands in the same space with the best actors, ... I feel that they do the work and I get to watch. And nothing is better than that.

I always thought this kind of award meant that it was over. I'm here, I think, under false pretences. I think I have to become straight with you. Ten years ago, 11 years ago I had a heart transplant, a total heart transplant.

I think these awards are wonderful. Cinema should get more international. The fine boundary lines don't really exist any more.

I'm here, I think, under kind of false pretenses, and I think I have to become straight with you. Ten years ago, 11 years ago, I had a heart transplant -- a total heart transplant. I got the heart of, I think, a young woman who was about in her late 30s. So, by that calculation, you may be giving me this award too early, because I think I got about 40 years left on it -- and I intend to use it.

The movies set the pattern, and these people have copied the movies,

As a longtime Keillor fan, I'm thrilled to be doing this project with him,

as long as I last and as long as people allow me to do it.

They tested it. And it tested a little more poorly than ours had, ... So they then gave it back to me with -- they said, 'Now here's some things we think you should do.'

It's a variety show. We wrote it as we went along. As we were casting people, he was rewriting constantly. This guy's a genius. We deferred to each other. He's been in charge of himself and his show for 30 years and so have I. So we suddenly had a monster with two heads.

It's a process that I don't believe in, ... And I don't think it's correct for my kind of films.

Every time we try to turn the lights up, they say, 'Turn 'em down!'

How dare we continue to show this kind of mass destruction in movies,

And I said, 'No. You either give this film back to me, or you don't.' I said, 'I've gone through that, I've gone through all this collaboration process.' And they gave it back to me, and I finished the film and delivered it to them.

The Oscar for the films, it'd be nice. But I don't make those kind of films, and I don't think that will ever happen.

I've never had a big hit movie. "MASH" was probably the biggest. I don't make those kind of films, and I never have. I wish each one of them would just do billions of dollars worth of ticket sales, but they never do and they never will.

I was scared that no one would hire me. At that time, there was still a stigma attached to it. A big stigma. Actually, I think I was healthier after the operation than some people who have bypass surgery because I was completely cured. But when you mentioned "heart transplant," you got a very negative reaction. It triggered people's imaginations, and not in a good way.

Most of my films I call arena films. I deal with a confined area -- an arena -- and I try to cover every aspect of it.

We make too much of the good and too much of the bad.

If something works for you, you continue to do it. I did a bunch of pictures for 20th Century Fox when Alan Ladd was over there, but I set the budgets so low that they'd approve and I'd deliver the film. They would have no say in it, which is the kind of arrangement I liked.

They'll never give me an Oscar. And I sincerely, honestly don't care. I always turn up when I'm nominated and it would be nice to get one, but to win one would be bad luck. It comes with too much expectation. It would be the end.

All of my films deal with the same thing: striving, socially and culturally, to stay alive.

I don't know what "Altmanesque" means, though I suppose I'm flattered by it.

That wasn't an ending. It was just a stopping point.

I like audiences to crane their necks.

Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.

The artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end.

Retirement? You're talking about death, right?

Wisdom and love have nothing to do with each other. Wisdom is staying alive, survival. You're wise if you don't stick your finger in the light plug. Love - you'll stick your finger in anything.

I've had it-the agencies, the winking, the networks, the ratings. Anyone who thinks TV is an art medium is crazy-it's an advertising medium.

There was not a lot of dialogue. The titles were just to keep you up. It's the visual stimulation that hits the audience. That's the reason for film. Otherwise, we might as well turn the light out and call it radio.

I was a heavy drinker, but the alcohol affected my heart rather than my liver. So I stopped. I smoke grass now. I say that to everybody, because marijuana should be legalized. It's ridiculous that it isn't. If at the end of the day I feel like smoking a joint I do it. It changes the perception of what I've been through all day.

What is a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.

I'll give you the same advice I give my children: Never take advice from anybody.

Titanic I thought was the most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life. Another film that I think is equally bad was American Beauty. So badly acted and directed. But people like that.

Chance is another name that we give to our mistakes. And all of the best things in my films are mistakes.

Making a movie is like chipping away at a stone. You take a piece off here, you take a piece off there and when you're finished, you have a sculpture. You know that there's something in there, but you're not sure exactly what it is until you find it.

The minute you have more than one voice, you have more possibilities opening up. You have all the molecules in all of those bodies and their make up interacting.

[M*A*S*H] didn't get released by FOX, it escaped.

Why should I keep doing things that I've done before?

Every ad for every film is exactly the same.

People have asked me throughout the years which directors have influenced me. I don't know their names, because I was mostly influenced when I'd see a film and think, "Man, I want to be sure to never do anything like that." So I never learned their names. It wasn't a matter of copying or emulating somebody I admired. It was getting rid of a lot of stuff.

I make no apologies for Popeye. Behind M*A*S*H, it's my biggest hit. It got maligned by the critics because it wasn't Superman. It wasn't about special effects and it wasn't made for 14-year-old boys. The majority of films are made for 14-year-old boys; I don't know where they get the eight bucks to get in. It's hush money from the parents.

I never knew what I wanted, except that it was something I hadn't seen before.

I am not an expert. That is someone else's job. If I were expert, the approach would be all wrong. It would be from the inside. I am a blunderer. I usually don't know what I am going into at the start. I go into the fog and trust something will be there.

You will never see'Altman's Great Film of the Seventies: The Director's Cut' because you have never seen a film of mine that wasn't the director's cut. I have never permitted it.

Happy endings are absolutely ludicrous, they're not true at all. We see the guy carry the girl across the threshold and everybody lives happily ever after -- that's bullshit. Three weeks later he's beating her up and she's suing for divorce and he's got cancer.

Jazz has endured because it doesn't have a beginning or an ending. It's a moment.

What is an ending? Theres no such thing. Death is the only ending.

I love fishing. You put that line in the water and you don't know what's on the other end. Your imagination is under there.

Your own ego is the only trap that I think you can fall into.

I want to see something that I've never seen before, so how can I tell that actor what that is? I'm not trying to construct a document or situation that is what I want, because what I want is something new to me.

I have never made a movie that's attracted a 14-year-old boy.

I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting.

If you have a child who is seven feet tall, you don't cut off his head or his legs. You buy him a bigger bed and hope he plays basketball.

I insist that they do what they became actors to do. I want them to create something and not just hit marks and say words. So they all love that because they're playing. It's called playacting. Their contributions are not only welcomed, but are accepted and used.

[The Player is] not a truthful indictment of Hollywood. It's much uglier than I portrayed it, but nobody would've been interested if I'd shown just how sadistic, cruel and self-orientated it is.