Creation in Chaos

The main lesson of his first 15 years in Hollywood, says Director Robert Altman, 45, was to "get comfortable in my own failure." A bit too unorthodox for those orthodox days, he had been fired by Jack Warner and tangled with a lot of lesser producers. Richard Zanuck, chief of 20th Century-Fox, says that he would never have hired Altman for his last picture if he had known that Altman had previously made That Cold Day in the Park. Elliott Gould compared Altman to General Custer: "He always seemed on the verge of some sort of external defeat." But since his last stand, no one is bad-mouthing Bob Altman, least of all Zanuck, Fox or Gould. The picture was M*A*S*H, and it is one of the runaway hits of 1970.

What used to trouble Hollywood about Altman was that he turned the totalitarian trade of film directing into democracy, if not anarchy. Far from strutting around on the set with a riding crop, Altman is likely to operate the clapstick himself and encourage suggestions from second assistants and electricians. An Altman film is more like an improvisational encounter group than a showcase for stars and plot. Sally Kellerman, who played Nurse Hot Lips Houlihan in M*A*S*H, reports that "even my analyst said it did more for me than a man could." Working for Altman, says Sally, is "like recess at grammar school."

It is not surprising, therefore, that 16 members of the M*A*S*H cast and crew, including Sally and John Schuck (who played Painless the priapic dentist), are now happily reunited in Houston shooting Altman's next film, Brewster McCIoud. Altman says that it is "an adult fairy tale'' about a man who lives in the Astrodome and learns to fly. "It's about insanity. It's about cruelty; but the main physical substance is bird s..t." And the droppings (made by prop men from sour cream, mustard and paint) are as plentiful as the blood in M*A*S*H.

Selling Tool. "Nobody really knows what this film is about but me," says Altman. And he is not saying, because "if you spell it all out, it becomes too much on the nose, too obvious in the actual shooting." Stacy Reach, for example, knows little more than that he is the 120-year-old third Wright brother; he is supposed to wing it from there. A screenplay to Altman (who used to write them) is just "a selling tool" to get financing, and afterwards, "not much more than a production schedule." In the middle of shooting McCloud the other day, someone who wanted a copy of the script had to search for ten minutes to find one.

That sort of creative chaos drove M*A*S*H's two name players, Gould and Donald Sutherland, up and practically over the wall. "I told them," Altman recalls, "that there were going to be no movie stars. I told them of my improvisational philosophy, and they got a little bugged when they saw it happening." Sutherland says, "I never understood exactly what he wanted." They watched Altman make some improvements, like building Hot Lips' part up from a nine-line bit, but the master stroke of adding the loudspeaker as a character came only in Altman's post-production work.

Both stars now recognize the genius of M*A*S*H. Gould is flattered that Altman has asked him to do another film for him. "My God," says Sutherland, who is now in great demand, "it changed my life." But as someone who has "never been much of a group person," Sutherland could have done without all the Esalenesque "camaraderie" that surrounds an Altman location. For example, the nightly get-togethers where everyone gets a little "riffed" (cast argot for squiffed) and, with unheard-of egalitarianism, comments on the "dailies" (rushes). At a typical recent evening postmortem on McCloud, there was talk about Kellerman's role as a fairy godmother, which she plays naked except for a trench coat. Free-associated Altman: "Sally in the film is a bird, basically. The minute you put underwear on her you lose that pure quality . . ."

War Hater. Born in Kansas City, Mo., Altman got his service experience as a pilot in the Pacific in World War II. He went to the University of Missouri for a few years, then wound up in the industrial-film business. A feature he did on juvenile delinquency, The Delinquents, was bought by United Artists and led to TV work for Alfred Hitchcock.

Series like the Kraft Mystery Theater and Bonanza taught him to shoot in the current mode--fast, and for all his mad winging, cheap. (He brought M*A*S*H in for $3,000,000, which was $500,000 under budget.) But he soon got typed as an action director and difficult. He directed the 1961 episode of Bus Stop, starring Fabian, that stirred some of the first complaints against TV violence. He also got into trouble for doing an antiwar script for Combat. "What's the matter," he asked his executive producer, "are you afraid your kids will grow up hating war?"

Altman refused to accept strictures or film properties that he did not believe in, though as he says, "You don't get credit for the bad pictures you don't do." Finally, with M*A*S*H, he did a good picture, and for the first time in his career found himself out of debt and sought after. With success, he does not intend to play it safe.

On location with M*A*S*H, after Sally Kellerman's breakdown scene, Altman took her outside and asked, "Do you remember the scene in The Misfits where Marilyn Monroe breaks down about the stallions? Well, what you just did was better." Then he took Sally back and had her do it again to see if it was a fluke. It wasn't. In much the same way, McCloud is Altman's chance to see whether M*A*S*H was just lucky or truly inspired.

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