Pudgy's Pipedream

McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971)

PUDGY’S PIPEDREAM

From those first fifteen minutes of flickers in THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1903), up to Kevin Costner’s OPEN RANGE (2003), with Robert Duvall, and awaiting Brad Pit in the unreleased THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (2006), with Casey Affleck –Westerns as a genre have been a staple for World Cinema. It is difficult to discuss the artistry of Robert Altman, regarding his approach to the genre with his McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971), unless one takes a whack at understanding the genre itself.

For 25 years Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, and Dustin Farnum rode the range in silence, moving their mouths without the hub-bub of the spoken word, fired their shiny pistols sotto voce and only the white acrid puffs of gunsmoke told us the story. The bad guys clutched at their chest, grimaced, and thudded like a feather into the dust. They all gave way, passed on the chaps and chalice to Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, William Boyd, and John Wayne, who together and separately cranked out hundreds of 3-day programmers and serials. Their films were tailored for the 10 year old boy in all of us.

There have always been “dramatic” Westerns as well, like Raoul Walsh’s THE BIG TRAIL (1930), starring the long-haired reed thin John Wayne in his first big role in a feature film –who still had to film 75 quickie westerns before he could inhabit the skin of the Ringo Kid in John Ford’s STAGECOACH (1939), or Henry Hathaway’s THE THUNDERING HERD (1933), with Randolph Scott, or Cecil B. DeMille’s UNION PACIFIC (1939), with Joel McCrea, or Howard Hawks’ VIVA VILLA (1934), with Wallace Beery. James Stewart gave us a few laughs in his first western role, the dramedy, DESTRY RIDE AGAIN (1939), with Marlene Dietrich. All these films had two-fisted white-hatted heroes, growling dastardly villains, and the women were just around for romance and recreation, implied only of course.

During WWII, and immediately afterward, the complexion of Westerns became somewhat darker, and the themes more “naturalistic”. In 1943, Howard Hughes, assisted quietly by Howard
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Hawks, gave us THE OUTLAW, starring Jane Russell’s fabulous breasts, with Thomas Mitchell and Walter Huston talking tough and waving pistols around, and William A. Wellman directed THE OX-BOW INCIDENT (1943), with Henry Fonda, giving us a stinging parable about prejudice and vigilante justice. There appeared the epic western; DUEL IN THE SUN (1946), with Lionel Barrymore, and John Ford gave us MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946), with Henry Fonda as a Wyatt Earp with real issues, FORT APACHE (1948), 3 GODFATHERS (1948), and SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON (1949) –all with John Wayne. The venerable Howard Hawks weighed in with his RED RIVER (1949), with the Duke and Monty Clift.

Alan Ladd starred in his first Western, WHISPERING SMITH (1949). Gregory Peck shook things up as a conflicted bandit leader in YELLOW SKY (1949), with Richard Widmark. Joel McCrea got busy in the 40’s too. He appeared in BUFFALO BILL (1944), THE VIRGINIAN (1946), RAM ROD (1947), and COLORADO TERRITORY (1949), with Virginia Mayo, in the western re-make of HIGH SIERRA (1941).

In the 1950’s two things happened –movie westerns began to grow up with women getting better roles in them [Note JOHNNY GUITAR (1954), with Joan Crawford, and CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA (1954), with Barbara Stanwyck] –and television came of age with the “B” Western formulas transferred to the small screen and a 30-minute format. Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry all had their own shows, with millions of little saddle pals, club houses, side kicks, villains, and chaste heroines (Roy even married his). Some of these shows transferred directly from radio dramas like THE CISCO KID, SERGEANT PRESTON OF THE YUKON, THE LONE RANGER, and even GUNSMOKE. New shows cropped up too, like BUFFALO BILL JR., ANNIE OAKLEY, THE ADVENTURES OF RIN TIN TIN (clear back to the silent films), and WILD BILL HICKOK.

On the “big” screen, John Ford gave us the jewel in his cavalry trilogy, RIO GRANDE (1950), with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, and he slipped in THE WAGONMASTER (1950), with Ben Johnson in one of

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his few leading roles, if you don’t count MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949), where he played a cowboy who tried to rope King Kong’s cousin. James Stewart played Tom Jeffords in BROKEN ARROW (1950), for director Delmer Daves. Jeff Chandler did a great job playing Cochise. There was a sequel, a bit of a “B” picture, called BATTLE AT APACHE PASS (1952), with Chandler again playing Cochise, and John Lund playing Tom Jeffords. Another John, Lupton, starred as Jeffords in the television series BROKEN ARROW (1956-1960). At first Ricardo Montalban played Cochise. Later he was replaced by Michael Ansara.

James Stewart’s career took a giant leap forward in the 1950’s. He partnered up with director Anthony Mann, and they made five films together. Those films still stand tall as dramas, with very disturbing protagonists. Steward began to demonstrate that he had a darker side, that he had a temper, and that he could be “dangerous”. The films were WINCHESTER ’73 (1950), with Dan Duryea, BEND OF THE RIVER (1952), with Arthur Kennedy, THE NAKED SPUR (1953), with Robert Ryan, THE FAR COUNTRY (1954), with John McIntire, and the one I like best, THE MAN FROM LARAMIE (1955), with Arthur Kennedy again. These films were the absolute apex of Stewart’s very best, even great, westerns. He did make several more as the years went on –but he was never again as lethal, as vital, as piercing, as interesting as he had been in the Mann films. NIGHT PASSAGE (1957), with Dan Duryea and Audie Murphy was enjoyable, but it lacked grit.

Randolph Scott began to specialize in Westerns in the 1950’s, basically the last decade of his film career. He and director Andre De Toth paired up for (4) better than average programmers; HANGMAN’S KNOT (1952), THUNDER OVER THE PLAINS (1953), RIDING SHOTGUN (1954), and THE BOUNTY HUNTER (1954). In the virtual twilight of his career he partnered up bravely with maverick director Budd Boetticher. The made seven films together, the magic number. These movies were very much above average for the genre, with Scott working hard to keep playing the “leading man”; giving inspiration later to aging actors like Clint Eastwood.

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The Boetticher films were SEVEN MEN FROM NOW (1956), with Lee Marvin, THE TALL T (1956), with Richard Boone, DECISION AT SUNDOWN (1957), BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE (1959), with Craig Stevens, WESTBOUND (1959), RIDE LONESOME (1959), with James Coburn and Lee Van Cleef, capped off with COMANCHE STATION (1960), with Claude Akins. Scott and Joel McCrea both finished off their distinguished careers appearing in Sam Peckinpah’s RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962), with Warren Oates.

The beautiful, muscular, and demure Alan Ladd came on as a bad boy in BRANDED (1950), with Charles Bickford, RED MOUNTAIN (1957), with John Ireland, played a bored Jim Bowie in THE IRON MISTRESS (1952), then literally stunned the world in SHANE (1953), with Walter Jack Palance, wrestled with Charles Bronson in DRUM BEAT (1954) [It was always humorous watching little guys beat up Charles Bronson in the movies. He had to work so hard to make it look convincing; like an episode of BONANZA where Michael Landon whipped him, and I loved watching him hold up Anthony Quinn and pretend to lose a fight to the death in GUNS FOR SAN SEBASTIAN (1968)], and Ladd looked fatigued and disinterested in THE PROUD REBEL (1958), and THE BADLANDERS (1958), with Ernest Borgnine.

Gregory Peck stood very tall as Johnny Ringo in THE GUNFIGHTER (1950), did the pedestrian ONLY THE VALIANT (1951), was vindictive and angry in THE BRAVADOS (1958), with Stephen Boyd, and was flat wonderful in William Wyler’s THE BIG COUNTRY (1958), with Charlton Heston.

Charlton Heston put his own unique stamp on Westerns [I love a bumper sticker I saw the other day that said, NRA –MY PRESIDENT IS CHARLTON HESTON], playing War Bonnet in THE SAVAGE (1952), [outmuscling Rock Hudson in TAZA, SON OF COCHISE (1954)], playing Buffalo Bill Cody in PONY EXPRESS (1953), with Forrest Tucker, ARROWHEAD (1953), with Jack Palance fresh from SHANE, played William Clark in THE FAR HORIZONS (1955), with Fred MacMurray as Lewis, and THREE VIOLENT PEOPLE (1957), with Edward G. Robinson.

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Kirk Douglas stripped off his shirt and pointed his chin westward in THE BIG SKY (1952), with Arthur Hunnicutt, MAN WITHOUT A STAR (1955), with Richard Boone, THE INDIAN FIGHTER (1955), with Walter Matthau being bad to the bone, swinging a bull whip, played Doc Holliday in GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL (1957), and THE LAST TRAIN TO GUN HILL (1959), with Anthony Quinn, who was the first actor in a western to say the word “butt”.

Director John Sturges directed GUN HILL, and he was excellent with westerns, starting with a bang in ESCAPE FROM FORT BRAVO (1953), with William Holden, then GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL (1957), with Kirk Douglas & Burt Lancaster, SADDLE THE WIND (1958), with Robert Taylor & John Cassavetes, THE LAW AND JACK WADE (1958), with Robert Taylor & Richard Widmark, GUN HILL in 1959, and capped with the incredible remake of Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI (1954), which he titled THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960), virtually launching the careers of Steve McQueen, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson.

Burt Lancaster ran and leaped and smiled through several excellent 50’s westerns, starting with APACHE (1954), giving us a sensitive portrayal of a proud Native American, with John McIntire as Al Sieber, a real Army scout in the Geronimo campaign –who was played brilliantly by Robert Duvall in GERONIMO: An American Legend (1993), then Lancaster did VERA CRUZ (1954), with Gary Cooper & Charles Bronson, capped with the Sturges film GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL (1957).

Leave us not pass over Gary Cooper, one of the most consummate actors ever to sit in the saddle on the silver screen. He attracted notice as Wild Bill Hickok in Cecil B. De Mille’s THE PLAINSMAN (1936), with Jean Arthur, was laconic and mysterious in THE WESTERNER (1940), with Walter Brennan as Judge Roy Bean –Coop got a LIFE magazine cover out of the publicity,[Remember the frumpish Edgar Buchanan as Judge Roy Bean on the television series?], was in De Mille’s UNCONQUERED (1947), with Robert Preston, DALLAS (1950), then in another one of my many favorites, DISTANT DRUMS

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(1951), with Arthur Hunnicutt; going on to the celluloid hall of fame as Marshal Will Kane in HIGH NOON (1952), with the tight-lipped
Grace Kelly, then gave some of his vitriolic vigor to MAN OF THE WEST (1959), with Lee J. Cobb, and he was in the very dark sleeper hit, and lost film, THE HANGING TREE (1959), with Karl Malden.

Robert Mitchum was happy to hit the trail too, starting out in a half dozen Hopalong Cassidy westerns like LEATHER BURNERS (1943), and COLT COMRADES (1943), became a bone fide western star in Robert Wise’s BLOOD ON THE MOON (1948), with Robert Preston, slipped in the B-programmer, MAN WITH A GUN (1955), and capped the 50’s playing pistolero Martin Brady in THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY (1959), with Julie London.

Clark Gable, considered one of the many “Kings” of Hollywood, called “Moose” by his friends [Or so Keenan Wynn informed me in 1976, referring to those halcyon days as an MGM contract player], did some fine westerns in the 50’s too. There were films like ACROSS THE WIDE MISSOURI (1951), directed by William Wellman, with Ricardo Montalban as Ironshirt, LONE STAR (1952), with Broderick Crawford (always ill-at-ease in Westerns), THE TALL MEN (1955), directed by Raoul Walsh, with Robert Ryan, and the next year Gable was in another Raoul Walsh film, THE KIND AND FOUR QUEENS (1956), with Eleanor Parker.

John Ford directed THE HORSE SOLDIERS (1959), a near-miss with John Wayne & William Holden. Howard Hawks presented us with the classic RIO BRAVO (1959), with John Wayne, Dean Martin as the drunk, Walter Brennan as the side kick, and Ricky Nelson as the kid. Hawks audaciously remade it “better” as EL DORADO (1966), with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum as the drunk, Arthur Hunnicutt as the side kick, and James Caan as the kid. That kind of a remake is rare. John Sturges pulled it off too.

William Holden, always at home on the range, started out wearing the leather vest in ARIZONA (1940), with Jean Arthur, TEXAS (1941), with Glenn Ford, THE MAN FROM COLORADO (1948), with Glenn
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Ford, STREETS OF LARADO (1949), with side kick William Bendix, and did an excellent job in director John Sturges’ ESCAPE FROM FORT BRAVO (1953).

Glenn Ford, who actually loved making westerns, didn’t consider it “work”, appeared in some very good ones, like director Budd Boetticher’s THE MAN FROM THE ALAMO (1953), with Hugh O’Brian, THE AMERICANO (1955), with Frank Lovejoy, THE VIOLENT MEN (1955), JUBAL (1956), with Rod Steiger [who was quite the intense anti-hero in RUN OF THE ARROW (1957), with Brian Keith], THE FASTEST GUN ALIVE (1956), with Broderick Crawford, the very good 3:10 TO YUMA (1957), a minor classic with Van Heflin, COWBOY (1958), with Jack Lemmon, and THE SHEEPMAN (1958), with Shirley MacLaine.

This little lexicon and honorable mention of Westerns in the 1950’s, barely touches the output of Hollywood. There was a plethora of second run “B” and B+ westerns released by all the studios. In those days one went to a theatre and saw an “A” picture, and then at intermission there was a newsreel, a cartoon, prevues, and we sat through a lesser second run picture as a bonus. Actors like Forrest Tucker, Rod Cameron, Audie Murphy, Rory Calhoun, Jeff Chandler, Sterling Hayden, Dale Robertson, Jock Mahoney, Scott Brady, Bob Steele, and Don “Red” Barry made hundreds of these interesting and less significant films.

In the 1960’s, Westerns began to mature, to tackle more adult themes, to offer more violent and less pristine plots –and they began to shake the hackneyed alkaline dust from their drugstore chaps, to swing their lariats wider and broader, snapping the latigo and humming in the air. One began to notice the “change” in the genre after viewing John Huston’s UNFORGIVEN (1960), with Burt Lancaster & Audrey Hepburn. Glenn Ford was enigmatic in the good remake of CIMARRON (1960), with Maria Schell. Director Sam Peckinpah gave us tiny touches of the end of the trail scenario in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962), letting Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea retire on a high note. Director Richard Brooks, after his


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successful effort on THE LAST HUNT (1956), with Robert Taylor, gave us realistic end-of-the-century thrills and western adventure in
his outstanding film, THE PROFESSIONALS (1966), with Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster. This film had rousing action, strong characterizations, and a well-written script. Then director John Sturges gave us the grown-up remake of his GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL (1957), with his powerful film, HOUR OF THE GUN (1967), with James Garner and Jason Robards. The Sturges movie, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN , was completed in 1959 and released in 1960, and it truly paved the way for the European Westerns still to evolve on the cinematic horizon. Director Sam Peckinpah confused most of us with the oddball unbalanced MAJOR DUNDEE (1965), with Charlton Heston & Richard Harris, although it was rumored that that film was improperly “gutted” by an indifferent film editor, following the foolish dictates of an ignorant studio. But this moment in film history was followed by Peckinpah’s scathing instant classic, THE WILD BUNCH (1969), with William Holden & Robert Ryan, a film that set the watermark for balladic film violence in a very gritty story of revolution and the death of the old West and its myths, with the coming of the twentieth century. Charlton Heston sucked it up and gave us a wonderful performance in Tom Gries’ WILL PENNY (1968), with Ben Johnson. I liked a sleeper film, RIO CONCHOS (1964), with a raging Richard Boone, and a wooden Jim Brown.

Director John Ford was still around in the 60’s, but obviously at the end of this tether. In 1959, not involved in any kind of project, he showed up one fine day on the set of the John Wayne produced and directed film, THE ALAMO (1960). He just plopped himself down in the director’s chair, and started telling the cameramen what to shoot. The Duke became very upset. He loved the old man, his mentor in so many ways, but he sure as hell did not want to give up the pet project of his whole career, and his directing debut, just for sentimentality. So he let John Ford shoot some of the second unit action sequences. Finally Ford was called away on a new project, and John Wayne waved good-bye with a sad knowing smile.


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Ford directed SERGEANT RUTLEDGE (1960), with Jeffrey Hunter, and featuring an Oscar-worthy performance by Woody Strode [who was still angry about being so obviously “overlooked”, even in 1976,
when I met him and worked with him on the set of THE LONGEST DRIVE (1976), with Kurt Russell], then the limp TWO RODE TOGETHER (1961), with a distracted James Stewart, and a nearly deaf Richard Widmark, following with the heroic, laconic, and ultimately for me disappointing THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962), with a revitalized James Stewart, a distracted John Wayne, and the wild-eyed quirt-wielding Lee Marvin, capping his career and the 1960’s with an earnest effort swan song in CHEYENNE AUTUMN (1964), featuring Ricardo Montalban, Gilbert Roland, and Sal Mineo, whose writhing death scene lasted four minutes [Mineo was still remembering being shot dead by macho cops in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955), was still “red” hot from playing White Bull in Disney’s TONKA (1958), was still very dead in the middle of GIANT (1956), and was still twitching from a deadly gunshot wound in EXODUS (1960). Mineo, it seems, specialized in long agonizing “death” scenes. How sad that he was stabbed to death in his own driveway in Hollywood in 1976].

As every moviegoer is aware, Marion Morrison (aka John Wayne) was very busy during the 1960’s, but he certainly was not interested in any project that smacked of being “revisionist”; rather he took the rag-tag remnants of John Ford’s actor’s company, and all the sure-fire formulas that Ford taught him, and he began to produce and release a long series of what later came to be called, “The John Wayne Formula Westerns”. He inaugurated the decade with THE ALAMO (1960), with which he began his directing career, and nearly bankrupted himself. [In 1993, while in Texas with my new young wife, she took me to San Antonio to see the real Alamo; which has become a book store and gift shop. Texas Rangers stand around inside, and demand that visitors remove their hats while perusing the curios and souvenirs. Obviously this did not “feel” like the Alamo I had in my mind, where Fess Parker as Davy Crockett had died at, where Sterling Hayden perished at as Jim Bowie in THE LAST COMMAND (1955), and where the Duke punched out a thousand Mexican soldiers. So my

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lovely bride, Melva, drove me north and west to the town of Bracketville, TX. On a huge ranch outside of town, where John Wayne
had built the set for his version of THE ALAMO, and it still stands there today, as a tourist attraction. The rancher, sensing a good thing, built a whole Western town on the ranch, and those sets were used a lot in the mini-series LONESOME DOVE (1989). So there I was, and there it was, the Alamo of my mind. I climbed up on the parapets, and one could hear the sound of Mexican trumpets playing the death knell, one could see thousands of colorful Mexican uniforms covering the landscape as far as the eye could see. God, it was good to finally have found the “real” Alamo.].

John Wayne followed that financial disaster with NORTH TO ALASKA (1960), a kind of a remake of a remake of THE SPOILERS, which was Rex Beach’s classic tale shot in 1914, 1923, then in 1930 with Gary Cooper & William Boyd, in 1942 with John Wayne, Randolph Scott, and Marlene Dietrich, and then in 1955 with Jeff Chandler, Rory Calhoun, and Anne Baxter. [In NORTH TO ALASKA, there is a famous bathing scene with Capucine. Many of us used to argue or whether or not we actually did see the nipple on one of her breasts in a mille-second cut.], then THE COMANCHEROS (1961), with Lee Marvin stealing the picture with a lurid cameo, followed by the quite funny and clever McLINTOCK (1963), with Maureen O’Hara, in her fourth film romancing John Wayne, THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER (1966), with Dean Martin, THE WAR WAGON (1967), with Kirk Douglas and Keenan Wynn [who wore his favorite cowboy hat –the original Confederate officer’s hat worn by Leslie Howard in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939). Keeno, while still at MGM in the late 1950’s, had “borrowed” it, just before the whole studio system rolled over and presented its tender belly to television. Wynn wore that hat while working with me on THE LONGEST DRIVE (1973)]. Then came 1969, and the Duke released the disappointing THE UNDEFEATED, with the very Butch Rock Hudson –and then Wayne surprised us all portraying a “character”, Rooster Cogburn, in TRUE GRIT, with Robert Duvall and the grinning Glen Campbell, directed by old friend Henry Hathaway; garnering an Oscar at last for the Duke.

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Let us not overlook the contributions from Paul Newman, who as it turned out was damned good in Westerns, starting out with THE
LEFT-HANDED GUN (1958), as William Bonny [I just saw recently a special on Billy the Kid on the HISTORY CHANNEL. Historians now realize that the Kid was actually right-handed. The only extant photograph of him turned out to be a reverse print.], followed by playing Juan in THE OUTRAGE (1964), with Laurence Harvey, a remake of Kurosawa’s RASHOMON (1950). Then he was incredibly good in the classic western, HOMBRE (1967), directed by Martin Ritt, and with Richard Boone. He capped the decade with the popular and flawed BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969), with Robert Redford.

Now the 1960’s were infamous for yet another facet in the checkered history of the Western. In 1964, completely juxtaposed to all those nearly existential conflicted-hero films heretofore mentioned, Italian director Sergio Leone cajoled American television actor, Clint Eastwood, into coming to Italy and Spain and filming a series of “revisionist” westerns. Leone had this masterful “idea” that movie audiences would like to see more Akira Kurosawa remakes as westerns, on the coattails of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960), and THE OUTRAGE (1964). So first up Leone remade Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO (1961), calling it FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964), released in America in 1967. Then he remade SANJURO (1962), cleverly titling it FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965), released in 1967; following them with the ambitious epic, THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (1966), released in late 1967), and then created the even more ambitious capstone for his career as a “western” director in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968).

These few films were so successful world wide that they started a cinematic avalanche, and the movie going public was bombarded with easily 100 spaghetti Euro-Westerns, directed by men like Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Sollima, and dozens of others. These films were hyper-violent, extremely stylized, usually dubbed poorly –and all basically ticky-tacky clones of each other. A lot of name American and European actors were eager to collect the onslaught of cash and appear in them. Actors like Lee Van Cleef, Warren Oates, James
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Whitmore, George Kennedy, Alex Cord, John Phillip Law, Robert Ryan, Edd Byrnes, Gilbert Roland, Joseph Cotton, Arthur Kennedy, James Garner, Burt Reynolds, William Shatner, David Jansson, Yul Brynner, Dennis Weaver, and Richard Crenna. Oddly, perhaps because these films were shot by international crews, using international actors, where several languages were spoken on the set, and no one really understood each other –but the results were a pastiche of styles and a lack of any cohesiveness. The gunshots were always unrealistic, sounding like the Sugar Pops pistols from 50’s television, the sets were all out of proportion, the stagecoaches were too small, the horse’s tails were too long, and the women were almost all whores or victims. They were usually melodramatic, like the early Asian samurai films, actually returning to the old Hollywood western themes –and not infusing the genre with anything akin to an alternative or fresh vision.

Enter Robert Altman, an American maverick director already in his forties, who loved to work unconventionally; who liked to approach every kind of genre with fresh eyes –wanting to create a film that revised, redefined, and even transcended that particular genre. Before his unexpected overwhelming success with M.A.S.H. (1970), he was approached by a neophyte producer, David Foster, who owned the rights to a Western novel, McCABE, by Edmund Naughton. [I would have read it as preparation for this review, but there was only one printing in 1959, and it is currently out of print. Even a used paperback can cost up to $50.00.] Foster brought the book to Altman and they decided to make a movie out of it. Foster felt the book was “masterfully written”, but Altman felt a bit differently.

Robert Altman said,” It was one of the worst western stories you ever heard. It had all the clichés –the gambler and the whore with the heart of gold. So I wanted to take the standard Western theme, and do it real –and that realism would destroy all the myths of heroism. I decided to use very little from the novel.”

David Foster was allowed to view a rough cut of M.A.S.H., while Altman was still in post-production with the project. Foster decided it

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was going to be a “monstrous hit”. So he and Altman concluded that it would be fiscally and creatively pertinent to let M.A.S.H. to get up
some box office steam, getting Robert Altman’s name associated with success and big bucks before they actually pitched McCABE. In the interim, Altman had time to make BREWSTER McCLOUD (1970), with Bud Cort & Sally Kellerman, and he cast most of the actors in it that he had used on M.A.S.H.

Dennis Schwartz, a poet and film reviewer for OZUS WORLD MOVIE REVIEWS wrote,” McCABE & MRS. MILLER is strikingly lyrical and perfect in mood. It is a dreamlike film that is hauntingly memorable, that is magical in scope, and sadly touches McCabe’s yearning to find love and a place to put down roots. The result is a poetic Western without heroes, where John McCabe and Constance Miller’s wishful dreams are seen as either foolish romantic notions or drug-induced inspirations –ones that never had a chance of coming true.
This film is a visual Altman poem to the West, a real place, full of actual people living in it. The gives us a brownish picture, with a light hue surrounding it –like someone breathed gently on a frosted window. It is a soft and ghostly masterpiece, one of the most perfect films ever made.”

The author of five books of poetry, in 1998 Schwartz was still finding himself “touched” by Robert Altman’s cinematic imagery.

From BLUE RAIN

A poem has something to do
With how nature
Is a part of us.

Your raw bone,
That one you threw
At me,
That shattered the glass
That is my elixir.

Your black palms
Exposed me 14.
In a dharma

For what I am,
With snow quietly
Falling
And
The Gray Wars
Sucking
The heart
Out of the ground;
And death
So curiously
In every limb
Pulled up,
In every drop of water
The fisherman couldn’t catch.

Dennis Schwartz 1998

McCABE & MRS. MILLER has been called “a sad frontier lament.” In a way it is also very existential, part archaic tableau and part rough unsentimental poetry –placing us in a rugged environment where we witness a town being erected all around us, and we feel like we too are swinging a hammer sometimes, and trudging in the mud. The film is very visceral –all wet leaves, raw pungent lumber, acrid piles of ore, rusting metal, horse sweat, dog piss, damp clothes, oil lamps, sex being sold, Chinese food being fried in homemade woks, sweet opium, unwashed men, and cheap whiskey.

Reflecting on this unique film, I began to see the movie in my mind unfolding in wild free verse, a whole new movie swirling up, where if I look hard enough I might find Walt Whitman sitting at a back table in Sheehan’s, or Charles Bukowski lurking behind the red velvet drapes at Mrs. Miller’s Social Club, or Jack Kerouac scoring a drug deal in the shadows of little Chinatown. Yes, I can see it now –the entire plot of the film presenting itself as a poem.





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BEARHUNTING IN A CATHOUSE

In 1901, in early fall,
Somewhere in the North Cascades,
Just a few feverish years after
Washington became a state,
A stranger rode up
Into the thickly timbered foothills
Wearing a huge bearskin coat
And a dude’s derby
And a Swedish pistol,
Clutching wet reins tethered
To a second horse struggling behind him.
“It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone
Who is just reaching for the sky
To surrender.”

John McCabe
Did not travel up from Bearpaw
To the rough-hewn mining town
Of Presbyterian Church
To dig for zinc, no,
He came with a red flannel Indian blanket,
To be used for a table cloth,
And a deck of well-worn playing cards,
And a pocketful of cheap stogies,
To fleece the populous, to skin back
Those hundred lonely men
And relieve them of their cash
And their old dreams.

He came softly
Like a shadow,
A dream master selling
A new tomorrow,
A golden time where most of those
Rugged ragged mortals
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Could come to him
With greenbacks extended,
Desiring drunkenness,
Women and a dry place
To play poker and roll bone dice.

McCabe took their money,
A lot of it,
And bought wagonloads of lumber
And three sad whores;
A big woman with tits like water melons,
A wild one with a scar, like a birthmark on her face,
And a young girl that looked innocent
But who would turn out to be as unstable
As an unbroken filly.
He put them up in dirty canvas tents,
And he hired half the town to erect
McCabe’s Palace, Emporium, Restaurant,
And Social Club.
He made it known
That whatever these men desired,
They could scratch their itch,
Get pissed as an Irish monkey,
Get their cookies,
And gamble all night
At his place.

Sheehan could see
That this McCabe had
The right stuff,
And he begged him to partner up.
“We could own this town together
And make sure no one else opens up
A saloon without our permission,
And us getting a cut,”
The saloonkeeper postulated.
“Partners is one of those things I came up here
To get away from,”
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McCabe mumbled, adding,
“If a frog had wings
He wouldn’t bump his ass so much.”
Sheehan smiled and nodded
Without comprehension.

Enter
Mrs. Constance Miller,
5’2” with piercing blue eyes,
A tiny waist
And dishwater blond hair
All teased up into a thousand ringlets;
Riding proud
On a machinery crate,
Pulled up from below
By a huge belching steam engine
That could roll along on trails
Without tracks.

“Mr. McCabe,
I’m a whore, a damned good one,”
She said directly,
“And if you let me
I will run your whorehouse for you,
Get some quality girls up from Seattle,
Take care of all their feminine particulars,
Keep the town from getting clapped out,
And split the profit 50/50.”

McCabe was stunned,
But not stupid.
He shook her tiny hand,
And built her a bath house
As directed,
And a two-story bordello,
As requested,
And became filthy rich
As anticipated;
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Becoming the town’s first citizen,
Like a mayor
If they had one;
So that when he smiled,
Flashing that gold tooth,
He had damned good reason.
“Like any dealer he was watching for the card
That’s so high and wild,
He’ll never need to deal another.”

So much we never knew,
We never found out, like
If McCabe actually killed Bill Longtree
Over a card game,
Or what the hell was Mrs. Miller’s story –
Why she still clung
To her married name,
Why a woman that looked like her decided
To embrace the world’s oldest profession,
How she was introduced to
And became addicted to
The Chinese yardstick, the opium pipe,
And why she refused to be
Emotionally involved with anyone,
Even McCabe,
Especially McCabe.

But John the Dude became
Much too successful
And his good fortune
Was heralded
By mule train, lonesome travelers,
Lumberjacks, miners, and farmers;
McCabe was the one-eyed jack,
And he counted his gold at night
Like a cranky troll,
Tired of begging for love
And demanding respect,
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Standing alone in his room mumbling,
“If just one time you could be sweet
Without money to it.”

He was but a simple man,
Swirled up in events
And emotions
Bigger than he was.
He would have loved her,
If love was what she needed.
She moved in mystery,
And even her glee seemed put on;
Only her sadness held water.
He could not tell her the things
He felt.
“I got poetry in me. I do.
I don’t have the education
To put it into fancy words,
But I sure as hell
Feel it.”


One rainy day
Two well-dressed strangers came to town,
Mr. Sears and Mr. Hollander,
And they offered to buy out
McCabe’s holdings
For five thousand dollars.
They were well heeled lackeys
For a monstrous mining conglomerate,
Harrison & Shanaughnessy,
Fat capitalists who ground up men
Like ore.

McCabe tried to play them,
To negotiate for a bigger pay off,
Even though Constance had warned him,
Because in her travels
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She had seen their kind before, and she knew
Those men were not
Playing;
They were naturally lethal, rabid, and ruthless.
At first impervious John
Would not listen,
And by the time her wisdom sunk in
And he chased after the buyers,
It was too late
For deals and apologies,
Too late for a little guy
To hang onto his big plans.

With hat in hand,
McCabe went to a lawyer,
Who seemed to listen to his plight,
But who did not understand the gravity
Of his critical situation.
“I just don’t want to get killed,”
McCabe said simply.
The lawyer pontificated, and raved on
About justice and politics and a senator ship,
And McCabe found no help, no buffer
From the shit storm that was brewing
Just over the hill, too soon,
Too soon.

Too soon came the day
At twilight
When the three ruffians rode into town;
One was a giant in a white buffalo coat
Carrying a Sharps,
Wearing a flat black hat
With small silver Conchos in the leather brim,
Calling himself
Dog Butler;
One was an Indian,
At least part,
21.

Who never smiled, carrying
Death in his dark eyes;
One was a disturbed cherub,
Blond locks chopped square
Under his European Dutch Boy hat,
With a large Navy Colt
Strapped low on his young hip,
And madness
Oozing from every pore.

McCabe marched over to Sheehan’s,
Cigars in hand,
Gold tooth sparkling,
This time ready to negotiate, to accommodate;
But Dog Butler
Was rude and had a mouth full of white teeth
Big as a horse’s beneath
His shaggy moustache,
And he looked McCabe
Right in the eye and said,
“I don’t make deals.”
McCabe gathering up his cigars,
Stammered and mumbled,
And beat a hasty retreat.
Butler turned to Sheehan saying,
“That man never killed anyone.”

These men were manhunters
And guys like McCabe
Were always their prey,
Three on one,
Like a wolf pack.
Later that night, bored and drunken
The feral Dutch Boy
Practiced his quick draw
On shadow figures,
Until a toothpick of a cowboy
In a ten gallon hat,
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With big holes in his wool socks
From shuffling all day over new boards
In McCabe’s cathouse,
Found himself on that bridge over to Sheehan’s,
Facing the crazy-eyed punk.

“Show me your gun,
Or I’ll shoot it off your hip,”
The pink-cheeked gunslinger whined.
Reluctantly
The cowboy reached for his tired old pistol,
That he never could hit the side of a barn with,
And suddenly saw two puffs of white smoke
As the kid’s Colt bucked
Two burning bullets into his bony chest.
Over the knee-high ropes he went,
Crashing hard
Down onto the ice over the creek beneath,
Staying alive just long enough
To wonder why
No one did anything, or said anything
To help.
They all had stood mute, watching
With only a casual interest,
Like the kid had only shot a varmint or a coyote.
The cowboy sunk slowly
Into the icy water with big chunks of ice
Breaking up all around
His lanky frame.
Who knows who finally dragged him out?
Maybe no one did, but for sure
Someone claimed his horse and kit.
Life seemed cheap here
And monumental sadness
Formed deep lines
On every face.

McCabe went to Constance,
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Who was giddy on poppy smoke,
And he looked for the love
That would never appear
As he peeled off the bucks
That assured him space
Alongside her beautiful face,
And the momentary illusion
Of sanctuary
Within the warmth
Of her bed.

Morning came dark and overcast,
And he woke up alone
As snow blanketed the urban landscape
And filled the chilled air
Like frozen dandelion fleece,
Falling without sound,
Yet carrying the weight of behemoths
As it piled upon itself in deep drifts,
Beautiful and dangerous
In its whiteness.
She had already found
A pipe to suck,
And her fear for his safety
If it had ever really existed,
Were now only will-o-the-wisps,
Blowing lightly into the dark timber,
No longer carried
In her glassed over eyes
As she found her safe inner room
Again.

McCabe darted
Like a woodchuck
From cabin to shed,
Wearing his black canvas slicker
A damp derby and his Swedish pistol, and
Carrying a shotgun.
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He made it to the church
And ducked inside,
Only to be confronted
By the crazy preacher, denying
Him shelter, picking up
Pudgy’s shotgun
And pointing it at him,
Pushing him back outside,
Knee deep in fresh wet snow,
Alone,
With only a handgun.

Butler tracked him to the church,
Kicked in the front door
And blasted the first thing
That moved,
Which happened to be the preacher,
Who broke a lantern
As he spun broken to the puncheon floor;
And now the church was ablaze,
The shepherd was slain
And God was not amused.

Pudgy dodged in and around
The tar and tin, naked lumber, and zinc ore hillocks,
And stopped breathlessly
Cowering in the bath house;
Just as the kid entered
With Colt drawn.
McCabe slammed two slugs
Into his young back,
But the Dutch Boy was snake-quick
And he snapped off a shot
That nailed John in the gut;
The first nail
Of what would become the lid
On the rest of his life.
“He was just a Joseph looking for a manger.”

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He found his way to a tool shed,
And the Breed passed by a window
As McCabe’s missles
Found asylum in his leather-fringed back.
Hell, back-shooting was not
Disgraceful or unmanly—
It was necessary.
But the Dog leveled his Sharps
And brought McCabe down
At 150 yards.
Butler trudged his way through the powder
To finish off the fool.
McCabe lay prostrate on his back,
And as the Dog bent over him
He shot Butler in the face
With the lethal derringer
That had killed Bill Longtree,
Or so it was said.

And then our rambling tale
Produced three endings,
Although death only kissed
One on the mouth.
The miners put out the church fire,
And in an odd way,
Produced a new beginning,
A sense of community;
Saving a church
That no one had ever attended,
Now just a building full of char,
Sans minister, sans hosannas.
Constance lies prone on a slab
In Chinatown,
Puffing on her opium pipe
And staring serenely at a small ceramic pot
Shaped like a golden egg—
Her tiny smile revealed
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That she knew the way of things,
And still
Shed no tears.
McCabe was mortally wounded,
After dispatching the killers three,
And he did not have the stamina left
To propel himself to safety
Inside a building,
To a fire and freedom.
No,
He went to his knees
And the merciless snow buried him
Up to his shoulders
And then his neck,
As the wind piled ice crystals
Onto his blue lips and closed clenched eyes.
He was so cold
That he couldn’t stop shivering,
Until he wasn’t cold anymore,
And he thought he could see
A dark figure coming for him,
Calling his name.

Glenn A. Buttkus 2006

Jean-Luc Godard once said,” Cinema is not the reflection of reality, but the reality of the reflection.”

Stanley Kubrick said,” The artist’s transcendence must be within his own work. He should not impose any artificial barriers between himself and the main spring of his subconscious. I don’t think that writers, or painters, or filmmakers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel.”

At one point Robert Altman was tickled when he received a phone call from Stanley Kubrick, who had screened McCABE. Kubrick asked Altman about the striking shot that he had captured, when McCabe while on the suspension bridge walking to Sheehan’s, stopped in the twilight and lit his

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cigar. It was like looking at the North Star on a clear light, all focus and all natural. He inquired as to who shot it. Altman replied,” Hell, I did. Vilmos was gone for the day, so I just aimed the camera and shot it –just a lucky shot. Kubrick at first thought he was being kidded. With a camera, Kubrick was a meticulous planner, and Robert Altman was a free spirit.

Altman said,” I go to the set in the morning, and unless a scene requires a lot of props, I won’t even tell the crew what I’m going to shoot first. I know what the set-up is, and which actors are required. But I have to see what occurs. And I like to shoot in sequence if possible. It makes for a lot of editing –but I like to go on a journey with the actors.”

He did shoot McCABE in sequence, fall to winter, in Vancouver, B.C. –before it became “fashionable” and fiscally expedient to do so, with his sets barely masking high rise condos on three sides of it. This was years before 21 JUMP STREET and the X-FILES made their cinematic nests there. Kubrick certainly could understand the camera’s point of view (POV). When he shot SPARTACUS (1960), most of it was filmed on the back lot at Universal, not far from the Hollywood Freeway. During some of the great battle scenes, if the camera had been raised a single inch, we would have seen Buicks and Volkswagons zipping by.

He called his town Presbyterian Church, and Altman built the set as the town grew. They grew together, organically, symbiotically, and as the hammers banged out their echoes, and the big-toothed saws hummed their tunes, we felt that we too joined in, rolled up our sleeves, helped with the framing and construction –like being a passenger on one of those dinner trains where they act out a mystery while you eat, and many of the audience members are made a part of the drama or comedy. On McCABE many of the carpenters and extras were young American men who had fled to Canada to avoid conscription for the conflict in Southeast Asia; somewhere called the Republic of Viet Nam. Altman liked using them, allowing them to “reconnect” to their own history, through him and through the film.

MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS

In Bruegal’s ICARUS, for instance; who everything turns away
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Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
And had somewhere to get to, and sailed calmly on.

W.H.Auden

Adrian Danks from SENSES OF CINEMA wrote,” Those classical or archetypal elements (gambler/stranger who shakes up the town, and the whore with the heart of gold) are undermined by the film’s opaque view of its characters within pictorial tableaux that emphasize their relativity to the unfolding drama. In the respect that parts of, inlaid images within McCABE & MRS. MILLER resemble a painting by the 16th century artist Peter Bruegel, broken up into interlocking tableaux, and brought up to date into cinema, by the deployment of favorite Altman devices like the zoom, the pan and multi-tracked sound –these devices serving to distance the events and characters from the viewer while opening up the frame, and the relationship between the frames, to the scrutiny of the spectator.
Altman’s films and the individual frames within them truly encounter the notion of a canvas, and the opportunities that the breadth of such a canvas offers its audience for the activities of scanning and choosing. Altman’s style, akin to a painting style that retains its imperfections, flaunts its brush strokes, and provides a tapestry of observations rather than a balanced or obviously composed image.”

When Altman costumed his actors he wanted very little “cowboy garb”. He felt that these characters were fresh from Europe, and they would still be wearing the clothes they were used to. So bowlers, derbies, and workman’s caps replaced the requisite Stetsons and sombreros. Then when he chose to shoot the film in an almost sepia tone, making most frames appear to be a tintype or ferrotype –where a positive photograph was made from a collodion process on a thin iron plate, having a thin darkened surface –I think we viewers had the sensation of leafing through our great grandparent’s photo album. David Gilmour remarked that many of the

29.

tableau scenes reminded him of a Lautrec painting – with which Mrs. Miller often looked like a Lautrec impression.

Robert Altman said,” I do look at a film as closer to a painting, or a piece of music; it’s an impression, an impression of character and total atmosphere. The attempt is to enlist an audience emotionally, not intellectually. You know, jazz has endured primarily because it does not have a beginning or an ending. It’s a moment.”

Film buffs love to compare movies, and endlessly speculate about who influenced who, and who stole or borrowed from who. Adrian Danks felt that “McCABE was reminiscent of John Ford’s THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962), and pre-emptive of Jim Jarmusch’s DEAD MAN (1995) –and similar to Anthony Mann’s THE FAR COUNTRY (1955).” I think THE FAR COUNTRY did have some strong similarities. It took place in a Yukon mining town run by a ruthless gambler, who made his own justice, John McIntire, and his woman, a madam, played by Ruth Roman, who ran several saloons. But James Stewart was still more the Hollywood hero, and in the end he prevailed; goodness and honesty prevailed. I am not sure that goodness or honesty even showed their profile in McCABE; certainly no heroes did.

For my nine bucks a much more parallel film would be Delmer Daves’ THE HANGING TREE (1959), with Gary Cooper playing an ex-doctor/gambler with a short temper and a lightening fast gun. Karl Malden was Frenchie, the twitchy opportunist, cheat, liar, and villain. George C. Scott played a very crazy preacher without a church, and Maria Schell played a blind pilgrim and love interest for Coop. This movie was very dark, brazen, and stark. It has become one of those “lost films”. I had to scrounge around for literally years to come up with an expensive VHS copy.

In McCABE, some people have compared the shooting of the young cowboy, Keith Carradine, to the tragic killing of “Stonewall” Torrey, played by Elisha Cook Jr, by the stone cold Jack Wilson, played by Walter Jack Palance in SHANE (1953). Both innocent characters just seemed to find themselves inadvertently in “the way” –and both were dispatched brutally, without provocation. Both were goaded into making a first move in front of witnesses, so that the gunfighter could murder them.

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Roger Ebert wrote,” Life is cheap here. The film shows one of the most heartbreaking deaths in the history of the Western. A goofy kid ( Keith Carradine ) has ridden into town [at first mistaken by McCabe to being one of the conglomerate’s enforcers], and visited all five girls in the “house”. Now he has started across a suspension bridge. A young gunslinger approaches from the other side, and cold-bloodedly talks him into being shot to death. The kid knows he is going to get shot. He tries to be friendly and ingratiating –but his time has come. The town looks on impassive. We realize at the end of the film that this episode on the bridge is the whole story in microcosm. Some people are just incapable of not getting themselves killed.”

David Gilmour noticed the similarity between McCABE’s bath house scene, where the five new Seattle chippies scrub up and frolic, and the bath house scene in THE WILD BUNCH (1969). In both films those bath scenes represented the only actual nudity. No, actually –a patron in McCABE does expose a whore’s breast in a cathouse scene later.

It is always difficult to trace actual influences on any director. They all watch movies too, and steal from each other shamelessly; with a personal and creative twist of course. One film buff postulated that Robert Altman must have seen Segio Corbucci’s film, IL GRAND SILENZIO (THE GREAT SILENCE) (1968). It had a similar setting, washed out cinematography, and a downbeat ending. It was one of the better Euro-Westerns with a musical score by the great composer Ennio Morricone. In the film, the protagonist, named Silence, because he was mute, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant –was gunned down in the snow during a climactic showdown gunfight at the movie’s end –and our hero was killed; murdered by the sneering villain, Klaus Kinski, playing Loco. All was left unresolved, with lots of red blood on the white snow, and to the shocked audience it appeared that the “bad guy” seemed to prevail. Another film historian felt that when Jude Law was killed in the end of Anthony Minghelli’s COLD MOUNTAIN (2003) –he was a lone black figure dying cold in the white snow; denying his paramour, Nicole Kidman, any hope of happiness, or a Hollywood future.


31.

McCABE’s script was originally entitled THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH WAGER. In 1970, I remember seeing some of the earliest promo-ads for the film, double paged ads in Variety, with that title. In that script a lot of the townspeople had placed bets on McCabe’s survival rate. I think it’s too bad
that aspect was cut. I would have made all the characters more focused, clearly aware of McCabe’s peril and plight, and much less callous and impassive. But then the actual entity, the real Presbyterian Church contacted Warner Brothers, and complained that they did not want their “name” lent to film title, from a movie about gambling, corruption, whoring, murder, greed, and violence rotating around a frontier brothel.

Another realistic Western that was similar, perhaps even homage to McCABE, was director Michael Winterbottom’s THE CLAIM (2000), with Wes Bentley and Milla Jovovich. In that film the mining town was called “Kingdom Come”. The movie was shot in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in the Rockies not far from the future set of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2006). By the way, even that film had its predecessor –Andy Warhol’s LONESOME COWBOYS (1969) with Paul Morrissey; full of sweaty chaps strapped on hot over naked buttocks; swarming with gay caballeros.

So by the late summer of 1970, Robert Altman had a lot to review and mull over and consider as he approached the holy genre of the “Western”. A number of other film projects were underway using other director’s visions of existential, anarchical, anti-westerns. They were all in production parallel to McCABE, and were also released in 1971. Such is the synchronicity of art. It tends to move in creative clumps, in fervent flows. But it is also plausible that Altman got wind of some of these other projects.

Director Dennis Hopper gave us THE LAST MOVIE (1971), where he cast himself as a movie stuntman who was left behind on a western set in Chupadero, Peru. Fellow directors Sam Fuller, Henry Jaglom, and George Hill took bit parts in the film. Hopper’s buddies, Peter Fonda, James Mitchum, Kris Kristofferson, John Philip Law, and Russ Tamblyn –and his current squeeze at the time, Michelle Phillips, all appeared in this dismal mish-mash of a movie. He even resurrected Rod Cameron to play Pat Garrett in the movie.


32.

After Gregory Peck starred in the powerful classic western, THE STALKING MOON (1968), directed by Robert Mulligan, with Eva Marie Saint and Robert Forster –Peck found himself appearing in the still-born effort, THE SHOOT-OUT (1971), directed by the usually reliable Henry Hathaway in his 80’s, with Susan Clark. Peck was completely out-acted by
Jeff Corey who played his scenes in a wheelchair. I kind of liked the turgid, sweaty anti-Western, DOC (1971), directed by Frank Perry, with Stacy Keach as Doc Holliday, and Faye Dunaway as Big-Nosed Kate.

Altman also would have been very aware of a John Huston project filming in what would ultimately be called an “Altmanesque” style, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN (1972), with Paul Newman, [Once and for all erasing the image of Walter Brennan in THE WESTERNER (1940), and Edgar Buchanan in the 50’s television series) and Stacy Keach as the wild –eyed straw-haired Bad Bob the Albino. John Huston released his other western project, MAN IN THE WILDERNESS in 1971, with Richard Harris, who was still healing up from playing A MAN CALLED HORSE in 1970.

Altman certainly would have been aware of director William Fraker’s project, MONTE WALSH (1970), shot like a Frederic Remington painting, with Lee Marvin & Jack Palance. In addition there was a Blake Edwards project that became a very poignant and well-directed film, WILD ROVERS (1971), with a wonderfully grizzled William Holden, and a surprisingly effective Ryan O’Neal –pursued by Joe Don Baker & Tom Skerrit for their mean rancher Pa –Karl Malden.

There was the Peter Fonda directorial debut, THE HIRED HAND (1971), starring himself, with Verna Bloom and Warren Oates. The cinematographer was Vilmos Zsigmond. He probably shot this film first in the spring and early summer of 1970. He used filters well in this film too, but generally it is a lighter, more colorful palette. Kirk Douglas showed up in the odd satire dramedy western, A GUNFIGHT (1971), sporting Johnny Cash and two endings. Burt Lancaster filmed two excellent and solid westerns in Europe in 1971 –Michael Winner’s LAWMAN (1971), with Robert Ryan, and another on my “favorites” list, VALDEZ IS COMING (1971), with Susan Clark, and John Cypher as an arrogant ruthless racist rancher who ruled with an iron fist, backed up with a plethora of pistoleros.

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I doubt that Altman paid much attention to John Wayne’s hat in the ring. The Duke released BIG JAKE (1971), with Richard Boone; another in an endless string of “old fashioned westerns” starring Wayne’s stock acting company. Of course, Wayne’s big film of the year before, CHISUM (1970), where he played a very sympathetic version of John Simpson Chisum, still clung to our cortex like old peanut butter on the roof of a dog’s mouth. Chisum, historically, was one of the most ruthless members of the Sante Fe Ring. I feel that Barry Sullivan came closer to portraying reality as Chisum in Peckinpah’s PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973) –and all his scenes were edited out of the studio release for his sterling efforts; even though his name remained in the end credits. That baffled many of us until we finally viewed the director’s cut.

The Lincoln County range wars were just one historical example of how huge conglomerates, mostly the reactionary rancher barons, pulled political strings to lobby for their own power and greed. We saw it repeatedly in many western films –though many of us did not recognize the demonology for what it actually was. It was right there in DUEL IN THE SUN (1947), SHANE (1953), THE BIG COUNTRY (1958). Later we saw even more blatant representations in HEAVEN’S GATE (1980), and TOM HORN (1980). Many an innocent was sacrificed on the bloody alter of capitalism. These plebian parallels certainly have endured down through the ages, both in the world’s art and international history –and of course it presently saturates the pages of our newspapers, and the press releases on the 6:00 O’clock News.

Rudy Wurlitzer, author of the film script for PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973) wrote,” Ranchers were the oligarchic interest in Westerns –trying to control the territory, from SHANE through HEAVEN’S GATE. They were gritty motherfuckers. The Sante Fe Ring was a collection of ranchers who wanted to exercise their control in the region at the expense of the New Mexico homesteaders. They were capitalist cabals, totally right-wing and reactionary.
Peckinpah, Leone, and Hellman forced the Western to evolve, but they pushed it in the direction where studios, which were in the deep pockets of oil companies and big media corporations, did not want to go –toward individualism and anarchy. The Western approached meltdown.”

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Robert Altman had to have been acutely aware that the Western, as a genre, was in a profound state of metamorphosis –possibly even in the first stages of its death throes, as he forged forward to rewrite a hackneyed novel and an
archaic tradition; flirting with the genre, only to disregard it and mostly ignore it. Altman was a bad boy.

Alex Cox of THE GUARDIAN wrote,” John Ford made John Wayne into an archetype of manly beauty and individualism. It was perhaps America’s best vision of itself –and like many an ideal, it proved to be apt for corruption, cheap commercialism, and betrayal.”

David P. Dorr of THE DVD JOURNAL wrote,” McCABE, like most post-60’s Westerns is about the death of the frontier. John McCabe, every bit an icon of American ambition and individualism, simply can’t compete, or keep pace with the march of commerce –and the people of Presbyterian Church, Mrs. Miller included, are cruelly swept along, dislocated, and discarded in its uncompromising course.”

Looking at Robert Bernard Altman, we see a director who has already had an incredible ride with his career, careening like a carnival roller coaster, casting him as iconoclast, then loser, then pariah, and then revered patriarch as the studio smart alecks second-guessed him over the decades. In many ways he has reconstructed, even reinvented himself several times. Like Fellini, Altman started out as a screenwriter, and for many years slaved away unknown as an industrial filmmaker. He emerged as a “director” on 1950-1960’s television. No one really knew who he was until he was 45 years old, after he directed M.A.S.H. (1970). Then for a fine decade he made some artistic and sleeper classics. But after he released POPEYE (1980), he was simply written off as a has-been and a loser at 55 years old. Like his acquaintance, Michael Cimino, Altman was a blazing comet for a time –but even comets finally pass through our solar system and disappear. He was considered box office poison, just another once creative fizzled sparkler; nothing of the “dynamite” left in him. Yet in his over 50 year career, he has been nominated for an Oscar as “Best Director” five times, though he never won. In 2006, in his 80th year on this planet, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences got off their political posteriors, and recognized him for his “body of work”, giving him an Honorary Oscar.

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Altman was born in Kansas City in 1926. His father was a wealthy insurance salesman and “gambler”. Robert was raised Catholic. He was sent to the Wentworth Military Academy for junior college. At age 20, in 1945,
he enlisted in the fledgling U.S. Army Air Corps. He quickly became a pilot and he flew B-24’s. He flew many raids and bomb runs over the Dutch East Indies and Borneo. He flew 46 missions, which at the time he felt “didn’t seem to be any big deal.” –but he says now of that experience,” It was a hell of a thing.” While training in California, for the first time he got to visit and get an eyeful of the bright illumination that was Hollywood in the 40’s; a virtual city of lights, a haven of “movie stars”.

In 1946, when Altman separated from the Army, he refused to join the reserves. He felt that he had done his duty, and he wanted nothing more to do with them. The Army, not used to dissent or attitude, detained him and held up his discharge –putting pressure on him to knuckle under, to get with the program. Altman stood fast, would not budge in his resolve, giving a preview of the artist he would become. This action on his part probably kept him out of Mig Alley in Korea. He looked around, finding himself in California, so he stayed in Los Angeles. He tried to be an “actor” for a time. He appeared in a night club scene in Danny Kaye’s comedy hit THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (1947). Then he turned to writing. He was a co-writer on BODYGUARD (1948), with his friend Richard Fleischer –who directed it. It starred Lawrence Tierney, who had starred big in DILLINGER (1945), and decades later would still be around to star as the big boss, Joe Cabot, in Tarantino’s RESERVOIR DOGS (1992). Altman relocated to New York City in the late 1940’s, to try and become a real “writer”. He worked with collaborator George W. George for several years, and then moved back to Los Angeles.

Suddenly having a brainstorm, he invested all his immediate funds, and a lot of his friend’s money, in a dog tattooing company called IDENTI-CODE. As a publicity stunt he tattooed President Harry Truman’s dog. But by late 1950, the company was bankrupt. Depressed and beaten down, he moved “home” to Kansas City.

There were no actual “film schools” in Kansas City at that time, so he joined the CALVIN COMPANY, the world’s largest industrial film company. He
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started out as a writer, but quickly became a director. He is credited with directing 86 films since 1951, but the IMDb numbers seem a bit fuzzy. While at CALVIN, he directed 65 industrial films, with titles like MODERN FOOTBALL (1951), KING BASKETBALL (1952), HOW TO RUN A
FILLING STATION (1953), THE DIRTY LOOK (1954), and BETTER FOOTBALL (1954). He learned to shoot rapidly on schedule, and with a limited budget. Three different times he quit and traveled off to Hollywood, still trying to make it as a writer –and three times he had to return to CALVIN with his creative tail between his legs, frayed and pulled out of shape. They were smart enough to keep rehiring him, but they also reduced his salary with each return. Probably this experience in humility and corporate machination helped shape Altman into the maverick he became.

In 1955, while still residing in Kansas City, he directed his first feature film, THE DELINQUENTS. He utilized a lot of local community theatre actors, with only “a couple professionals”. One kid he brought in from the coast was named Tom Laughlin –who later had his 15 minutes of fame as BILLY JACK (1971) [the same year Altman directed McCABE & MRS. MILLER], reprising the role he created in the Indie feature BORN LOSERS (1967). Presently it is rumored that soon Laughlin will run against incumbent Arnold Schwartzenegger for governor of California. The studio released THE DELINQUENTS in 1957. That same year Altman directed the semi-documentary, THE JAMES DEAN STORY.

From 1955-1964, Altman became a television director. He was a member of a very vigorous group of young directors, who themselves would move on to feature films; men like Stanley Kramer, John Frankenheimer, Arthur Penn, Sidney Lumet, Sam Peckinpah, and Sidney Pollack. Altman directed ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS (1955), SUGARFOOT, BRONCO, PETER GUNN, U.S. MARSHAL, HAWAIIAN EYE, THE GALE STORM SHOW [I wonder how it was working with the zany Zasu Pitts?], DESILU PLAYHOUSE, ROUTE 66 [Remind me sometime to tell you what a prick George Maharis was in person. I met him on a TV show set in 1976], MAVERICK [Which actor had the lead in this episode? Hopefully it was the wonderful James Garner, and not Efrem Zimbalist Jr, Jack Kelly, or Roger Moore], LAWMAN, SURFSIDE 6, (7) episodes of BONANZA, (9) episodes of THE ROARING 20’s, (7) episodes of BUS STOP [With Rhodes Reason doing a fine Don Murray impersonation, and Marilyn Maxwell
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standing in for you-know-who], (3) episodes of COMBAT, the premiere episode of THE GALLANT MEN, and THE KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATRE.

In terms of the Baconian degrees of separation, a bit of trivia exists for Altman. He worked with the excellent Vic Morrow in COMBAT (1962), and then with Vic’s daughter, Jennifer Jason Leigh in SHORT CUTS (1993), and KANSAS CITY (1996) –and with Vic’s ex-wife, Barbara Turner, who is Jennifer’s mother, in THE COMPANY (2003).

By the 1960’s, Altman began to show definite signs of being malcontent, and he railed against Jack Warner’s “system”.

Altman once said,” Any one who thinks television is an art medium is crazy –it is an advertising medium.”

In 1968 he directed COUNTDOWN, a moderately good science fiction masquerading as science fact about our first moon flight, with James Caan and Robert Duvall. Ring Lardner Jr., wrote the script for something he called M.A.S.H. in 1968, while fresh American blood was flowing hard in Southeast Asia in a shit hole called South Viet Nam. The project was brought to Robert Altman only after fourteen other “more acceptable” directors had scrotum shrinkage and had turned it down. So M.A.S.H. (1970) became the cornerstone of his career. He followed it with one of his near-misses, BREWSTER McCLOUD (1970), with Bud Cort and Sally Kellerman along with most of the rest of the cast from M.A.S.H. –using the myth of Icarus as a modern symbol. It was a bit too “far out” for most of the public, even though several critics thought it was “brilliant”.

When producer, David Foster, brought the novel, McCABE to Altman, they wisely waited for M.A.S.H. (1970) to peak in popularity, which it did, before they had the stones to pitch McCABE to Warner Brothers. WB liked the project. George C. Scott, hot at the box office after his Oscar win in PATTON (1970), was the studio’s choice to play John McCabe. But as it turned out, Scott was busy in England making the TV remake of JANE EYRE (1970). So Stacy Keach and Jon Voight were also considered. Altman wanted Elliott Gould to play McCabe. Now that would have been interesting, but I don’t think he could have captured McCabe’s dim
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wittedness like Warren Beatty did. Word got around that Beatty was shopping for a script that he could do with Julie Christie, his current companion at the time. Beatty was considered a power broker after his phenomenal success in BONNIE AND CLYDE (1968), and his participation would greenlight the production.

It has been reported that there was a lot of conflict on the set between Beatty and Robert Altman. Beatty was considered a “control freak”, and he, of course, wanted the film centered clearly on his performance. [Which ultimately and ironically it turned out to be.] But Bob Altman took directorial umbrage, bristling against the cajoling by Beatty. Altman felt that in McCABE, the film, the “main character” was the town of Presbyterian Church itself –and on top of that in all his movies, the director was the only “star”. Beatty struggled to make Actor’s Studio moments, and he demanded meticulous explanations for his every action, wanted the back story handed to him –and wanted to have all his motivations explicated for all of McCabe’s behavior. Altman didn’t like to stop the energy and the flow of a scene just to do “asides” with Warren Beatty. Beatty was very confused, even appalled that Altman wanted, even expected each of the cast members to improvise; and he felt compelled to re-write some of the script –so that,” At least there would be some filmable dialogue every day.” Kindly and very professional, when Robert Altman recorded the voice-over commentary on the released widescreen DVD of McCABE –he never once mentioned any of this “conflict”. He actually praised Beatty’s performance, saying that he thought Beatty should take more credit than he has for the success of this picture.

Altman followed McCABE with the complicated drama, IMAGES (1972), with Susannah York, then his paean to detective fiction, a modern Marlowe film, THE LONG GOODBYE (1973), with Elliott Gould, and actor/director Mark Rydell [who I was fortunate enough to work with that same year, 1973, while he was in Seattle filming CINDERELLA LIBERTY, with James Caan. Rydell laughed a lot during my two scenes, and patted me on the shoulder, and gave me the old, “Look my up if you ever get to L.A.”. I did, of course, try to “look him up” when years later I moved to Hollywood; but I never got past leaving several furtive messages with his agent. Maybe it was because my two scenes were mostly cut from the final release of the movie. It wasn’t in the cards, kid.] Of course there had just been another
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modern version of the MARLOWE tale done by director Paul Bogart in 1969, starring James Garner and some unknown Asian actor called Bruce Lee. Then Altman did his paean to crime films, THIEVES LIKE US (1974), getting powerful performances from young Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, and John Schuck.

Alice Liddell, film buff from Dublin, Ireland, wrote on IMDb,” Altman used realism to emasculate the artificiality of genre. McCABE & MRS. MILLER came from a period in Altman’s filmmaking when he was taking hoary male genres, encrusted with formulae, and deconstructing their assumptions, as in M.A.S.H., his great anti-war film, McCABE, his anti-western, THE LONG GOODBYE, the anti-detective film, capped by THIEVES LIKE US, his anti-gangster film.”

Altman moved on to direct his gambling film, CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974), with Elliott Gould and George Segal. I am surprised that Segal did not do more Altman films. Then Mr. A’s career shot beyond the stratosphere with NASHVILLE (1975), becoming his most lauded, applauded, and awarded film. It was nominated for 5 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director –winning one for Best Music; original song, I’M EASY by Keith Carradine. At the Cartagena Film Festival, it won two of the Golden India Catalinas for Best Director and Best Film. In France, it won a Cesar Award for Best Foreign Film. It was nominated for a record 11 Golden Globe Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture –winning only one for best original song. The Director’s Guild of America gave Altman a DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Motion Picture. The Writer’s Guild of America gave the film a WGA Award as the Best Drama, going to Joan Tewkesbury. The National Board of Review gave it two NBR Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. It won a Grammy for Album of the Best Original Score for a Motion Picture. It won a Los Angeles Critic’s Award for Best Screenplay, going to Joan Tewkesbury. It won three New York Critic’s Awards –Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actress (Lily Tomlin). The Kansas City Film Critics gave it two KCFC Awards for Best Director and Best Film. In 1976, those folks at Cannes gave it zip.

Altman once said, in regards to his many awards for all his films –waving at the myriad of accolades displayed in his office,” Look at all this shit. I mean

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it’s nice to have –for your credentials. But it’s like anything else –it lasts about as long as a kiss.”

After all his success with NASHVILLE, in 1976 he created LION’S GATE FILMS to produce his future projects. Next he directed BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS, OR SITTING BULL’S HISTORY LESSON (1976), with Paul Newman leading the pack of Altman regulars, supported by Burt Lancaster, debunking myths and canonizing “the Show Business”. Then he released 3 WOMEN (1977), starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek. He had a real ball making A WEDDING (1978), but audiences had a lukewarm response at the box office. Next up was a serious near-miss, QUINTET (1979), with Paul Newman. So for his following project, he down-sized to a small comedy, A PERFECT COUPLE (1979), with Paul Dooley –and again hardly any one saw it in a theater. He showed some of his old stuff using a large ensemble cast in HEALTH (1980), with James Garner and Lauren Bacall.

Later in 1980 Altman flew to Malta to shoot POPEYE, featuring Shelley Duvall as a fetching Olive Oyl, and starring a fresh new face from television’s MORK AND MINDY, Robin Williams. Personally I loved this movie. It had laughs, and heart, slick satire, wonderful cinematography, and humable music by Harry Nilsson. But audiences everywhere “hated” it, critics panned it –and it tanked. For Altman, the bottom fell out of his bass boat, and all the rarified air rushed out of the dirigible that was his career. Many of the big bucks czars, the glorified sphincter muscles that ran Gulf-Western and companies like that all wanted to write Robert Altman off as a “liberal puffed-up loser.”

His career took a deathly nose dive, like a Cessna sans prop. No one wanted to bankroll an “A” picture for Altman. He had soared high for a decade, and now for another decade (1982-1992), he encountered hard times. He lost LION’S GATE studio, and was kept from scaring up hardcore production funds for any of his future projects. He had to exist as an “Artist in Exile”, having to shoot films, because he continued to direct movies, for “no money” –sometimes in 16mm. I think he would have used a damned camcorder rather than walk away or quit. He wouldn’t give the bastards the satisfaction. He made movies for cable television. He lived in Paris for a while. During this turbulent raw period he did manage to direct, COME
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BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME, JAMES DEAN, JAMES DEAN (1982), with Cher and Karen Black, STREAMERS (1983), with Matthew Modine, based on the David Rabe play; followed by a little gem of a film, one of my
favorite unknown of his movies, SECRET HONOR (1984), with Philip Baker Hall playing Richard Millhouse Nixon; then FOOL FOR LOVE (1985), from a Sam Shepard play, starring Sam Shepard and Kim Basinger; BEYOND THERAPY (1987), a television film, BASEMENTS (1987), the dreadful O.C. & STIGGS (1987), a segment of the esoteric sadly disjointed miss-mashed ARIA (1987) [You know, I don’t think 1987 was his favorite year.], then the magnificent mini-series TANNER ’88 (1988), with his old pal, Michael Murphy [who God help us, looked an inch from death in the recent X-MEN III (2006)], another television film THE CAINE MUTINY COURT MARTIAL (1988), with an intense Brad Pitt playing his version of Bogart’s Captain Queeg; followed by the dramatically, visually, and historically stunning, VINCENT AND THEO (1990), with Tim Roth playing Vincent Van Gogh.

In 1992 the dry spell was over. Altman released THE PLAYER (1992), with Tim Robbins and half the actors in Hollywood –and suddenly badda-bing badda-boom, all was “well” again. The critics loved it. It had very strong box office receipts, and Robert Altman was back on top again, rising like a silver phoenix from his forced exile. Awards showered the film and the director. At Cannes, the film won for Best Director and Best Actor (Tim Robbins), and it was nominated for the Golden Palm. It was nominated for 3 Oscars, including Best Director –winning none. In England it was nominated for 5 BAFTA’s, winning two; Best Director and Best Screenplay. In France, it won a Cesar for Best Foreign Film. It won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture; Robbins won as Best Actor, and Altman had been nominated for Best Director. It won Best Picture with both the Kansas City & London Critic’s Awards. The New York Critics awarded Altman their Best Director prize, and the Writer’s Guild of America gave it a WGA Award for Best Screenplay. Interestingly, no one in the “Show Business” seemed offended by Altman’s vitriolic attack on them with that film. All is forgiven if a project “makes a huge f—king profit”.

The flowers bloomed, the heavens parted, agents began to genuflect, and Robert Altman became a “Player” once more. Anxious moguls shoved large amounts of cash in his face. People made appointments with him. He had to
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rehire clerical staff. The roller coaster began to slow down and click its way back upward. The tracks seemed to run on and up clear out of sight. He directed SHORT CUTS (1993), a fine ensemble piece; then READY TO WEAR, aka PRET-A-PORTER (1999), a confused ensemble piece, with two embarrassing performances by Tim Robbins and Julia Roberts, showing their weakness for improvisation; the charming and dramatic KANSAS CITY (1996), with Jennifer Jason Leigh; a sleeper thriller, THE GINGERBREAD MAN (1998), with Kenneth Branagh and Robert Duvall, then the very funny COOKIE’S FORTUNE (1999), with Glenn Close; the fairly successful and clever, DR. T AND THE WOMEN (2000), with Richard Gere, and then the very successful and much heralded GOSFORD PARK (2001), with Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, and Emma Thompson; followed by an excellent dance film, THE COMPANY (2003), with Neve Campbell and Malcolm McDowall –certainly as good as Herbert Ross’s THE TURNING POINT (1977), with Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine. Just this week Altman opened his next ensemble piece, A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (2006), with Kevin Kline and Meryl Streep.

Altman made his London theatrical debut this year, 2006, directing Arthur Miller’s RESURRECTION BLUES. It was mounted at the London Old Vic theatre. Kevin Spacey is the artistic director these days, and he has had a troubled tenure. In this play they cast Maximillian Schell, James Fox, and Matthew Modine. This odd mixture of acting styles never did gel with British audiences, and the play folded. In the meantime, as mentioned previously, Robert Altman has become an octogenarian, been given an honorary Oscar, and was voted the 17th greatest director of all time by ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY.

I think most of us understand that making movies is always part magic, part luck, and part kismet. Director Robert Bresson once wrote,” My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper, is resuscitated by living persons and the real objects I use, which are in turn killed again on film –but placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, it comes to life again like flowers in water.”

Gregory P. Dorr of THE DVD JOURNAL wrote,” Robert Altman’s style is an acquired taste –and even those who have acquired it often find it grating.
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Loosely structured and heavily improvisational, Altman’s movies ramble underneath layers of overlapping chatter and unprojected mumbling, and dwell on inconsequential and/or amateurish tangents, and mercilessly linger
on scenes long after other directors would have called “Cut!”; cruelly exposing the worst actors, and sometimes even embarrassing a few quality performers.
Altman’s films, you see, are really more about texture than narrative. However, McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971) –one of the best Westerns of the 1970’s –is one of the finest marriages of subject and style for the enigmatic director. Altman perfectly captures the atmosphere, the weather-beaten landscapes, the tumult and discontent of a growing rural community in an uncertain industrial time, the fickle sympathies of the consumer, and the toll of maverick achievement.”

Adrian Danks wrote further,” On the surface, McCABE & MRS. MILLER represents the most conventional of western forms and stories. But it’s the emphasis Altman places on ambience, atmosphere, and the transgressive potential of such generic elements and formula that proves to be transformative. The film becomes iconoclastic and starts to probe the structures, ideologies, and basic content of established forms –like the endless mumbling of Beatty’s McCabe –and the ways the film de-emphasizes and cuts away from what might appear to be some central concerns of the narrative. This is particularly evident in the closing stages of the film, where the beautiful and brutal snowbound fight to the death is shown, become “cold” long shots, and are interspersed with images of townspeople attending to their burning church –and eventually Mrs. Miller drifting away into an opium haze.”

I remember when I saw William Wyler’s THE BIG COUNTRY (1958), I became a bit upset when the director chose to shoot the climactic fist-fight scene between Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston in long shots, very long shots, like we were on the back of a crow winging over it. As viewers, we were pushed back, and we had to strain to see more of the action. We were actually forced to look at the immensity of the landscape, and we noticed how much less significant was the fighting between those two tiny figures struggling in the background. He chose a similar set of shots later in the climax of the movie, when Burl Ives and Charles Bickford squared off, and began to stalk each other with Winchesters around the snakeback twists of
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Blanco Canyon –shooting the majority of the scene in long shots, coldly letting the blood flow way off in the distance, giving forced perspective to
the plight of the two “big” men reduced to flea specks midst the largeness of the landscape placed squarely in the foreground.

Robert Altman, in response has said,” I love working on ensemble movies. Having multiple narratives make my job a lot easier. If something doesn’t work, it just means that I can cut away to something else. People talk about my signature –but I ask them haven’t they ever seen any of Howard Hawk’s films? They’re filled with overlapping dialogue. Everything I’ve learned has come from watching other directors –Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, Huston, and Renoir. [I watched Howard Hawks’, HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) the other day, and sure enough many of the scenes are full of rapid overlapping dialogue. One scene in particular between Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, and Ralph Bellamy really challenged the ear, nearly defying localization and clarity –still the scene worked like crazy.]
The minute you have more than one voice, you have more possibilities opening up. You have all the molecules in all those bodies and their make up “interacting”. People say that my films look a lot like they depend on chance –that’s because they are chance. Chance is another word we give our mistakes. And all the best things in my films are mistakes. I mean mistakes are the stuff of life. What people die of eventually is a creeping common sense, a realization that the only thing they don’t regret is their mistakes. And they are the stuff of art. I’m 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. Hell, I’m a blunderer. “Blunder On!” is my creed. I usually don’t know what I’m going into at the start. I just go into the fog and trust something will be there.
I refuse to do my audiences work for them. I want them to crane their necks. I will even block your view in order to force you to look more closely. My movies are like my kids. It’s the least successful ones you love the most. I have been in this business long enough to have acclaim and disclaim –and they are both imposters and identical to me.”

David Milch, creator of the HBO series, DEADWOOD, wrote,” Altman moves his camera in and out of spaces [a bit like Michelangelo Antonioni, reminiscent of that marvelous final scene in THE PASSENGER (1975), where Jack Nicholson napped in the hot African afternoon, and the camera
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panned down his torso slowly, to his room’s open window, to the bars in the grate in that window, and finally clear through the metal grates to watch his
assassins arrive.] –shooting the outdoors from inside, and the indoors from outside. He places great stress on the traditional spaces –bridges, stairways, doors –he shoots through doors, windows, and railings, as well as trees, through clouds of smoke, or snow, or rain and darkness –all ways to hide people from one another.”

Robert Self of SENSES OF CINEMA wrote,” Altman’s films are idiosyncratic, pessimistic, ironic, exuberant, and experimental. For every positive perception of an Altman film, it is countered elsewhere by a negative reaction. His films substitute structure for story, and form for representation. They depict debilitated individuals living in constrained circumstances of powerlessness and subservience. They depict a cynical view of the commercially motivated idealism of contemporary culture. They reflexively indict the entertainment industry as complicit in the malaise of contemporary American culture. These patterns of discourse in Altman films have consistently offended the audience for post-classical Hollywood’s high concept form of entertainment. And they simultaneously display an open and poetic mode of storytelling, a continuing perception of social identity as fragile, fractured, and fragmentary –and a critical self-consciousness about the nature of narrative communication itself.
Classical narrative cinema assumes the possibility of social discourse, and asserts a unified social identity grounded in the secular humanism that optimistically posits “man” as the position of intelligibility, meaningful action and ethicality. Modernist cinema presupposes on the other hand, the world as splintered and centerless, meaning as imprecise and indeterminate, morality as divisive and illusory. It asserts that the human being is neither an autonomous individual, nor a meaningful entity, but rather a process of divergent and contradictory forces, both internal and external. It suspects the power of communication in the face of human greed, alienation, estrangement, and self-destruction. Rather than encouraging viewer’s identification with a coherent character psychology, it delineates a variety of contradictor subject positions that critique privileged intelligibility.”

Recently Robert Altman stated,” Retirement? You’re talking about death, right? Wisdom and love have nothing to do with each other. You’re wise if

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you don’t stick your finger in a light socket. But in love –you’ll stick your finger in anything. I am in love with making movies.
I am not very patient, particularly when working, but that’s because I have all those people that have got to do something in a little time, and I am very aware of that. I sometimes get impatient with the crew. But I don’t shout at actors, and in my entire career I have never fired an actor. Actors have the hardest job. I admire them, although I don’t understand them at all. To get in front of an audience of strangers, and to just be your self, no; I could never do that. I have a vivid fear of exposure.”

Jason Anderson of EYE WEEKLY wrote,” Ever wonder why it’s so damn hard to hear what people say in a Robert Altman movie? “Because that’s the way it really is,” says the director,” You can never hear everything that’s said.” In McCABE & MRS. MILLER, with its archaic slang and mixes of accents, and overlapping speed, the dialogue can seem murky –and this can flummox a viewer. And only a filmmaker as irascible as Altman would instruct the reigning heartthrob of the day, Warren Beatty, to mumble his way all through the picture.”

Roger Ebert of the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES wrote,” It is not often given to a director to make a “perfect” film. Some spend their lives trying, but always fall short. Robert Altman has made a dozen films that can be called great in one way or another, but only one of them is perfect; and that one is McCABE & MRS. MILLER. This is one of the saddest films I have ever seen, filled with a yearning for love and home that will not ever come –not for Mr. McCabe, not with Mrs. Miller, not in the town of Presbyterian Church –which cowers under a gray sky heavy with rain or snow. The film is a poem –an elegy for the dead.
This is not the kind of movie where the characters are introduced. They are already here. They have been here for a long time. They know all about one another. The camera will not first stare at first one and then another, like an earnest dog –but it is at home in their company. Nor do the people talk one after another, like characters in a play. They talk when and as they will, and we understand it’s not important to hear every word. Sometimes all that matters is the “tone” in the room.” Director Richard Lester, after his hectic success with his early films, A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (1964), and HELP! (1965), he used these techniques very efficiently in his classic historical comedies, THE THREE & FOUR MUSKETEERS (1973-74).


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John C. Puccio of DVD TOWN wrote,” There are folks who consider Robert Altman the best American director of all time –and others think of him as a one trick pony. McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971) is in the hit-or-miss category. You love it or hate it. Or in my case I love it and I hate it. It’s the kind of film that everyone should see “once”. Despite its colorful cast, the film is not about characterization –it’s about mood and tone, and setting the atmosphere. One sees echoes of a Jack London story, or even traces of a Damon Runyon story, A DANGEROUS GUY INDEED, where a guy with a scar on his face moving into a new town is mistaken for a tough guy.”

As I watched McCABE this time, after 20 years, it struck me that the new HBO western series, DEADWOOD, just starting its third season this summer, has a lot of parallels to the Altman 1971 ground-breaking film. There is this rough lawless town full of horny miners, run by ruthless saloon keepers and whore masters, with a Chinatown in its midst. David Milch, the series creator, executive producer, and the head writer on DEADWOOD was interviewed recently. He said,” Deadwood is a spiritual kin to the town of Presbyterian Church. There are accidental echoes galore –muddy soupy streets, candle lit interiors, the teeming church services, the crazy preacher, several saloons and whorehouses, the hub-bub of hoof beats, and constant overlapping conversations. The admission that in all societies throughout history, violence, like shit, invariably rolls downhill.
Like Altman I am not content to fixate on the plight of one individual. We prefer to see the big picture, the pointillist mural that takes shape, and when the artist asks the audience to take a few steps back from the canvas –they see it too. So filmmakers like that are not just storytellers –they are dramatic anthropologists, devising a collective organism in order to scrutinize it.
In McCABE & MRS. MILLER, Altman depicts details showing how a society is built from the piling of illusion upon illusion, and the agreement of illusion. Illusion itself is another kind of intoxicant –giving people permission to do things they know could lead to trouble. An agreement that creates a community is an agreement upon an illusion, or an agreement upon an intoxicant. Our own founding document jumps off from,” We hold these truths to be self-evident” –which to me seems a rank agreement upon

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illusion –not that there actually “are” self-evident truths, but we all agree upon an illusion that these are truths.
So I think that DEADWOOD is a way of speaking to McCABE & MRS. MILLER across time (32 years) –one work of art with another. I answer Altman’s work because I have an affinity to it. St. Paul said,” The idea of community is central to understanding, and we mistake our deepest nature if we fail to realize that we are part of some larger organism. The illusion of individuality is probably more pernicious than any other. The failure of certain individuals to explore that fact is the source of their tragedy.”

Julie Christie, actress, said of Altman,” Robert’s cool is part of his belief system. He won’t be bound by rules, and he doesn’t expect you to be either. He doesn’t like safety, even in conversation –and he doesn’t expect people to be sheep. He used many of the American Viet Nam defectors. He liked them because they were resourceful. They picked out their own costumes out of big baskets. They wrote their own lines. It was just outstanding his lack of fear about losing control. Suddenly his actors appear to be “real people”. That is his special magic.
Robert has an unusual acuity about politics, the workings of capitalism, the surreal hypocrisies of that, which contributes a whole lot to the anger he has –and to the cutting edge of his films. He never goes at something head on. He’d die rather than play it straight. There is something sideways about him –and it doesn’t make him easy –it makes him dangerous; and it makes his films interesting. He is like an ancient provocateur.”

Infamous film critic, Pauline Kael, wrote,” Robert Altman spoils other directors for me. Hollywood’s paste-up slammed together jobs come off a faulty conveyor belt, and are half chewed up in the process. I think I know where just about all the elements come from in most American movies, and how the mechanisms work –but I don’t understand how Robert Altman gets his effects, any more than I understood how Renoir did, or how Godard did from BREATHLESS through WEEKEND, or how Bertolucci does. When an artist works right on the edge of his unconscious, like Altman, not asking himself why he’s doing what he’s doing –but trusting to instinct (which in Altman’s case is the same as taste). A movie is a special kind of gamble. If Altman fails, his picture won’t have the usual mechanical story elements to carry it, or the impersonal excitement of a standard film. And if he succeeds,

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aesthetically, audiences still may not respond, because of the light prodigal way in which he succeeds is still alien to them.”

Audiences hell, even some critics don’t “get it”. Mike Ruderman of THE DUAL LENS wrote,” In McCABE & MRS. MILLER all we really do is watch how a town works circa 1902. Yes, everyone is doing a splendid job acting and interpreting their roles in front of the camera. But I just kept thinking that there was more to tell. There are a number of actors in the movie that are playing rather small parts that go in no particular direction. I know that Altman does this a lot, so I had to keep my curiosity at bay. But it really didn’t matter, because I found myself staring at the clock and wondering how much longer the movie was. I hate it when that happens. The acting was fine. The filming was very typical Altman –gritty and dark, almost documentary-like in its stoic camera placement. And that music! I happen to like Leonard Cohen –but this! No thanks. The movie did nothing for me.”

Orson Welles once remarked,” The camera is much more than a recording apparatus. It is a medium via which messages reach us from another world that is not ours, and that brings us to the heart of a great secret. Here magic begins.”

The cinematographer on McCABE & MRS. MILLER was Vilmos Zsigmond. He fled Hungary in 1956, along with his cameraman buddy, Laszlo Kovacs. After arriving in America, they put their foot in the door by selling footage of the Russian invasion of Budapest to CBS News. He studied at the Academy for Theatre and Film Art in Budapest.

Zsigmond has lensed 72 films since 1963. In the early 1960’s trying to “fit in”, he went by the name of William Zsigmond, and his buddy went by Leslie Kovacs. Zsigmond paid his dues working on low budget pot-boilers like HOD ROD ACTION (1965), and PSYCHO A GO-GO (1965). He was glad to go solo and became a head lenser on NAME OF THE GAME IS KILL (1968). His first major credit was working with new director Peter Fonda on THE HIRED HAND (1971), which I believe he shot just before he winged to British Columbia, Canada to work with Robert Altman on McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971). While the cinematography was generally praised on McCABE, and the film and Altman were nominated for
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Oscars –Zsigmond was not yet a member of the cinematographer’s union –so he was not eligible for an Oscar nomination.

He then worked with director John Boorman shooting DELIVERANCE (1972), with Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight. Following that he rejoined Altman to shoot IMAGES (1972), and then THE LONG GOODBYE (1973), where he met director Mark Rydell, who was “acting” in the picture. Zsigmond squeezed in SCARECROW (1973) for director Jerry Shatzberg, and then that summer he worked for four months in Seattle for director Mark Rydell on CINDERELLA LIBERTY (1973), with James Caan, Marsha Mason, and Glenn Buttkus [blink and you miss me as “the sailor on the ward”]. I recall how disappointed Vilmos was with the weather in Seattle –it was gorgeous and hot. He and Rydell had hoped for those famous Puget Sound gray skies to help set the mood for that film.

Next up Vilmos worked with Steven Spielberg on SUGARLAND EXPRESS (1974), with Goldie Hawn and Ben Johnson. He lensed OBSESSION (1976), for director Brian De Palma helping to create homage to Hitchcock. Following that he outdid himself, winning an Oscar for working with Spielberg up in Wyoming on CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977). He was nominated for another Oscar the next year working with director Michael Cimino on THE DEER HUNTER (1978). In 1979 he shot WINTER KILLS (1979), with Jeff Bridges, and THE ROSE (1979), with Bette Midler. Then he pulled out all the cinematic stops while shooting Michael Cimino’s HEAVEN’S GATE (1980). His camera work was exceptional; really it was the star of that film. That film, it seems has been a stigma on many careers –but not his.

Following that he reunited with Brian De Palma for BLOW OUT (1981), with John Travolta, then shot THE RIVER (1984), with Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek, THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK (1987), making friends with Jack Nicholson, FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY (1989), with Paul Newman, then working with director/star Jack Nicholson on THE TWO JAKES (1990), and he appeared as himself in VISIONS OF LIGHT (1992), did MAVERICK (1994), with Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster. Following that he shot one of my “favorites”, the dark and mysterious THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS (1996), with Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas, LIFE AS

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A HOUSE (2001), with Kevin Kline, and soon his most recent project, THE BLACK DAHLIA (2006), will be released.

Zsigmond while working on McCABE chose to use a number of filters on the cameras, instead of trying to change the film’s “look” later in post-production. Gambling daily with the dailies, Vilmos would “flash” the film stock –exposing every frame to a bright blink of light, giving it an “aged” look as the film faded a tiny bit.

Gregory Dorr wrote,” Vilmos Zsigmond mixes Altman’s penchant for grainy, verite-like spontaneity with some gorgeous landscapes and sunsets –and some truly empathetic imagery.”

Zsigmond created McCABE’s look, its cinema-aura, to resemble old photographs –lots of dark shadows and sepia tones, like a spruced up one-reeler flickering in a carnival movieola, or lovingly leafing through one’s great grandparents dusty photo album. All the colors for the costumes, and the sets, both interiors and exteriors –were carefully chosen to compliment earth colors –greens, browns, grays, and blacks, splashed with reds, oranges, and whites. A shipment of rusty ore was brought in to be piled up all around the set of the town –to provide just the right “coloring”.

Roger Ebert wrote,” The cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond, embraces the freedom of the wide screen Panavision image. He drowns the characters in nature. It is dark, wet, cold, and then it snows. The action unfolds mostly inside in very dark rooms, lit only by lanterns and log fires –just enough light from a gas lamp to make a gold tooth sparkle or a teardrop glisten.”

It is lamentable if a viewer can only scare up a VHS copy of McCABE. For when you pan and scan an Altman film –the shots lose all connection with one another –and the visuals fall completely apart.

In the 1970’s when I was an actor living in Hollywood, less than a mile from the classic Paramount gates, I used to drive my 1968 Chevrolet Impala SS convertible with the 396 mill and a 4-speed transmission, set up with Hearst linkage, from the City of Angels to Seattle, 1275 miles, several times a year. I would come up for a few weeks and crash with family or friends. I had a tape player in the hot rod, and I would fill all those lonely miles with music
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–the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Billy Joel, and my man, Leonard Cohen. I had several of his albums, and I played them over and over. The poetry in his lyrics stirred strong emotions. Often I would have the top down, and I would
weep as the wind pulled my long hair back, and my steel-belted radials would sing along with Cohen’s lilting, haunting, weary voice –creating hot concrete jazz.

I guess Robert Altman had a similar love for Cohen and his musical poetry. Originally he planned on not having any specific film score for McCABE. He just wanted those characters who were musicians to play here and there –the fiddle, guitar, mouth harp, and banjo. But while working in post-production, doing some editing checks, hovering over his film and multi-tasking he happened to be playing one of Cohen’s albums –and suddenly he realized how Cohen’s music and poignant lyrics complimented the action. But he did not expect to be able to procure the rights to the music –since the film was released by Warner Brothers and the album was released by Columbia. So Altman just picked up the phone and called Leonard Cohen. Cohen had seen, but had not liked M.A.S.H. (1970), but thank goodness, he had seen and did like BREWSTER McCLOUD (1970). Cohen arranged with Columbia to license the music cheaply, and even turned over some of the profits from the film’s soundtrack album to Altman. Later it was revealed that Cohen actually did not like McCABE very much –but he honored his deal.

Gregory Dorr wrote,” Vitally important to the film is the folksy, haunting song score by Leonard Cohen –which while it has been know to grate on some viewers –flawlessly sets the film’s gloomy and elliptical mood with its spare guitar, resigned vocals, and weary lyrics.”

Adrian Dorr wrote,” Leonard Cohen’s songs, often criticized as banal or half-baked, are integral to the tone and structure of the film. They drift in and out, sometimes coalescing with the images or the story, while at other times providing a rough counterpoint –this contributing to the dream like quality of the film. One could say it is imperfectly but perfectly scored by the melancholy and broken tenor of Cohen’s voice.”

Jason Anderson wrote,” The Leonard Cohen songs Altman used in the score, lend McCABE an articulacy that Beatty’s character otherwise lacks.”

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I consider Leonard Cohen to be a poet –that just also happens to be a musician and song writer. The juxtaposition of his lyrical imagery and very
imaginative music has always touched me deeply. Because he does not have a great singing voice, most of us tend to listen harder to the content of his lyrics and his poetry. Back in the 1960’s, when I began to write a lot of free verse poetry about civil rights, my twenty-something angst, and the war in Viet Nam –I approached several of my actor buddies who also happened to be singers, song writers, and musicians. I asked them to read my poetry, and see if any of it could be scored with music, that maybe the poetry could also be song lyrics. Each time my poems were returned to me and I was told,” We’re sorry, Glenn, but there doesn’t seem to be any music in your poetry.” Christ, I kept thinking, that couldn’t possibly be true. When I recite my poetry aloud, in my trained actor’s timbre, I could hear whole symphony orchestras, and Blues slide guitar, and piano riffs. What the hell was their problem?

Fraser Sutherland wrote about Leonard Cohen’s latest volume of poetry, BOOK OF LONGING, “One of the consummate singer-songwriters of our time, Leonard Cohen presents a special challenge to readers. Songs have music to make them poems; poems must make their own music. Alone with his poems on the page, we need earplugs to block the unmistakable rumble of Cohen’s half-spoken half-sung voice; waltz-like and yet dirge-like, tender yet menacing, heartsick yet tough-minded.”

Leonard Cohen was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1934. He has long been considered the Canadian equivalent to America’s Bob Dylan. It has been said of him,” He is an acclaimed poet and Hall of Fame songwriter –a soulful ladies man, a spiritual seeker and gloomy prophet in a troubled world.”

Cohen once said,” I didn’t want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I wrote.”

From I WROTE FOR LOVE

I wrote for love,
Then I wrote for money.
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With someone like me,
It’s the same thing.

From WHEN I DRINK

A woman lies down with me
And every desire
Invites me to curl up naked
In its dripping jaws.

From LOVE ITSELF

All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.

From A THOUSAND KISSES DEEP

I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed,
I’m back on Boogie Street.
You lose your grip and then you slip
Into the masterpiece;
And maybe I had miles to drive
And promises to keep.
You ditch it all to stay alive
A thousand kisses deep.

Barbara Casey of the TORONTO STAR wrote,” Cohen focuses on desire as the most powerful instrument of transcendence. In effect –the erotic is made holy –and hasn’t it always been part of Cohen’s mystique that he makes carnal pleasure seem like a higher calling? He combines the languages of the sacred and the profane is his declarations of devotion.”

LOVERS

During the first pogrom they
Met behind the vanes of their homes –
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Sweet merchants trading; her love
For a history –full of poems.
And at the hot ovens they
Cunningly managed a brief
Kiss before the soldier came
To knock out her golden tooth.

And in the furnace itself,
As the flames flamed higher,
He tried to kiss her burning breasts
As she burned in the fire.

Later he often wondered
Was their barter completed?
While men around him plundered
And knew he had been cheated.

For a time Cohen was engaged to actress Rebecca Mornay, and in the late 60’s he had a thing with Joni Mitchell. In 1994, he entered the Zen Center on Mt. Baldy in California. He studied with Zen Master Sasaki Roshi. Cohen’s Zen name is “Zikan”, which means,” silent one “. Fellow students were actors Michael O’Keefe, and Peter Coyote. Later he was ordained as a Buddist monk.

Cohen said,” Zen monks are a tiny band of steel-jawed zealots, who considered themselves the marines of the spiritual world.”

From MY TIME

Why do you lean on me here,
Lord of my life,
Lean me at time’s table
In the middle of the night,
Wondering
How to be beautiful?

From POEM

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I heard a man
Who says words so beautifully
That if he only speaks their name,
Women give themselves to him.

From MISSION

Beloved, I’m yours
As I have always been,
From marrow to pore,
From longing to skin.
Now that my mission
Has come to an end,
Pray I’m forgiven
The life that I’ve led.

Much of his famous song lyrics and a lot of his early poetry can be found in his book, STRANGER MUSIC. My personal copy is all dog-eared from my pawing through it. Cohen has been a kind of “actor” as well, racking up a half dozen film roles. He appeared on MIAMI VICE (1986). In McCABE & MRS. MILLER Robert Altman used three of Cohen’s songs; THE STRANGER SONG, SISTERS OF MERCY, and WINTER LADY. Interestingly, Cohen has never written an actual film score, but his music and lyrics have been used in 48 films since 1966. Altman used BIRD ON A WIRE in his film, A WEDDING (1978). His music was included in RENALDO AND CLARA (1978), with Bob Dylan, and in PUMP UP THE VOLUME (1990), with Christian Slater, his song IF IT BE YOUR WILL was used. His music was in EXOTICA (1994). Director Oliver Stone used three of his songs in NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994). Lars Von Trier used SUZANNE in his film, BREAKING THE WAVES (1996). In WONDER BOYS (2000) we heard the strains of WAITING FOR A MIRACLE, and even in SHREK (2001) we heard HALLELUJAH.

LETTER

How you murdered your family
Means nothing to me
As your mouth moves across my body.

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And I know your dreams
Of crumbling cities and galloping horses,
And the sun coming too close,
And the night never ending,
But those mean nothing to me
Beside your body.

I know that outside a war is raging,
That you issue orders,
That babies are smothered and generals betrayed,
But blood means nothing to me,
And it does not disturb your flesh.

Tasting blood on your tongue
Does not shock me,
As my arms grow into your hair.

Do not think I do not understand
What happens
After the troops have been massacred
And the harlots put to the sword.

And I write this only to rob you.

That when one morning my head
Hangs dripping with the other generals
From your house gate,
That all this was anticipated,
And so you know,
That it means nothing to me.

Robert Altman is credited for most of McCABE’s film script, but his collaborator was Brian McKay, who met Altman after he wrote a script for BONANZA (1959). Altman directed the episode. McCABE was the only movie script that McKay ever worked on. He did a lot of teleplays though, like MANNIX, KOJAK, and CHARLIE’S ANGELS. Considering that so much of the film’s finished dialogue was improvised by the actors, it is
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ironic that Altman and McKay were both nominated in 1972 for a “writing” award by the Writer’s Guild of America.

Lou Lombardi was only frequent collaborator with Robert Altman. Lombardi was an editor and second unit director. He first met Altman in 1957, when Lombardi was an assistant camera operator on THE DELINQUENTS, filmed in Kansas City. Then he was the assistant to the producer on Altman’s THE JAMES DEAN STORY (1957). On McCABE he was the film editor, and at one point he complained that the soundtrack was “muddy”, and he asked Altman to fix it. Altman refused and later, it was said, claimed that the bad soundtrack was Lombardi’s fault.

Lombardi did a fine job editing THE WILD BUNCH (1969), and THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (1970) for director Sam Peckinpah. Altman had used Lombardi on BREWSTER McCLOUD (1970), then McCABE (1971), followed by THE LONG GOODBYE (1973), THIEVES LIKE US (1974), and CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974) –so they must have patched up their differences. He also cut THE LATE SHOW (1977), with Art Carney, and UP IN SMOKE (1978) for Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong.

Joan Tewkesbury was the script supervisor on McCABE. She went on to be a writer and director. She wrote THIEVES LIKE US (1974), and NASHVILLE (1975), as well as THE EYES OF LARA MARS (1978). She directed OLD BOYFRIENDS (1979), and a slug of made-for-television films.

Henry Warren Beatty played John McCabe. Somehow in the midst of all that turmoil on the set, he came up with a memorable McCabe; naïve, dim-witted, wannabe con man, fair gambler, dreamer, tongue-tied, poor lover [shades of Clyde Barrow; it does seem odd that Beatty such a lothario in real life could find the soul of those conflicted nearly impotent characters. He was a very complex man, this actor named Beatty.], and loner. It seems that Robert Altman kept him ill at ease while shooting, never allowing him to feel a part of the populous –and it works for the character.

Gregory P. Dorr wrote further,” The main reason this film works is Warren Beatty –always projecting an unsettled detachment, the actor is the ideal foil for Altman’s easily overacted style. His McCabe always looks and behaves
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like he’d rather be somewhere else. While Julie Christie awkwardly tries to play out and loud, butting up against Altman’s introspective lens, Beatty’s reserve pulls the entire film inward for a more intimate portrait than a more boisterous performer would have allowed.”

Beatty loved to demand multiple takes on all his scenes. Once, when Altman was ready to wrap his shooting for that day, the “star” insisted on more takes. Altman left in a huff, and had his assistant director shoot the takes –and Beatty did 30 more takes of that scene. There was a lot written and spoken about the Beatty/Altman conflicts. At the time their dislike for each other threatened to halt the production –perhaps even scuttle the whole project entirely. I wonder in the middle of the personality wrestling if Beatty ever tried to use his clout to get Altman fired? Beatty has talked very little about his experience on that film, and as previously noted, in post-production, Robert Altman had the professionalism not to slur Beatty in any manner.

The climactic shoot-out scene at the end of the film took 9 days to shoot. Because Beatty had insisted so many times prior to additional takes in his scenes –when it really began to snow Beatty didn’t want to film in it. Altman insisted, and uncharacteristically for him, he ordered 25 takes of the scenes.

Warren Beatty was born in 1937. His mother had been a drama teacher. He and his sister, Shirley MacLaine, were raised for stardom. He received offers for football scholarships after high school. He turned them down. He studied acting with Stella Adler. He was nominated for a Tony working on Broadway in A LOSS OF ROSES. He has had a kind of long and spotty film career, and he has only had 29 film appearances since 1957. His first few roles were on early television; like KRAFT TELEVISION THEATRE (1957), STUDIO ONE (1957), SUSPICION (1957), and PLAYHOUSE 90 (1959). He began to be “noticed” with a reoccurring role on THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS (1959-60), where he had the opportunity to romance Tuesday Weld. His first major film role was that of a gigolo in THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE (1961), with Vivien Leigh. His first critical success was in Elia Kazan’s SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961). He had a torrid affair with Natalie Wood during that shoot, and immediately after. He was good as the dim-witted handsome grifter, Berry-Berry in ALL FALL DOWN (1962), with Anglea Lansbury and Karl
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Malden, where he got to romance Eva Marie Saint. I liked him in LILITH (1964), with Jean Seberg. I am still trying to figure out what Arthur Penn’s
MICKEY ONE (1965) was all about. He did a limp little comedy, one of many for him, PROMISE HER ANYTHING (1965), with Leslie Caron. He had a torrid affair with Leslie Caron at that point, and was “named” in her divorce papers.

Early on, Beatty did hit a few career bumps. He tested for the role of Tony in WEST SIDE STORY (1961). I’m sure Ms. Wood would have been delighted if Beatty had won that role –that went to Richard Beymer. In 1963, he thought he had a lock on the leading man’s role in THE STRIPPER, with Joanne Woodward –but Richard Beymer upstaged him again. After Elia Kazan recommended him, John F. Kennedy wanted Beatty to portray him in the new film project PT 109 (1963). Beatty turned down a trip to Washington, D.C. to meet JFK. He didn’t like the part –felt that the script was “weak”. The film, starring Cliff Robertson, did flop at the box office. Later, JFK did meet Beatty and they were fast friends for a part of a year until Kennedy’s death in 1963. Then Beatty hit the big paycheck with his piece of Arthur Penn’s BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967). So by the time he filmed McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1970), he definitely had box office clout.

Beatty was actually the first choice to play Michael Corleone in THE GODFATHER (1972) –but he turned it down. Al Pacino has been grateful ever since. He was the first choice to play the lead in THE WAY WE WERE (1973) –but he gave up the part to Robert Redford. It is said that Beatty turned down the part of the Sundance Kid in BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969), the part that thrust Redford into super stardom. Beatty liked being “nice” to Redford, turning down one of the leads in THE STING (1973), with Paul Newman, and the lead in THE GREAT GATSBY (1974). He did have a measure of success with his unique role in SHAMPOO (1975), creating a whole sexy mystique for those hair dressers out there who were not gay. I liked him in THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974). Critics panned him in the convoluted THE FORTUNE (1975), with Jack Nicholson. But he sprung back at the box office with his remake of ANGEL ON MY SHOULDER (1946), with Paul Muni, that he called HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1978), with Dyan Cannon.



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Ever the Lothario, he has romanced some of Hollywood’s and the world’s most beautiful women, like Tuesday Weld, Natalie Wood, Joan Collins, Leslie Caron, Madonna, Julie Christie, Liv Ullmann, Brigitte Bardot, Carly
Simon [do we hear strains and echoes of YOU’RE SO VAIN?], Elle Macpherson, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Candice Bergen, Cher, and Brit Ekland –and these are just the ones we know about. He lived with Julie Christie, albeit often in separate houses, from 1967-1973. He met Annette Benning in 1990, while they were filming BUGSY (1991). They have been married happily since and have four children.

The 1980’s started out like gangbusters for Beatty as he won an Oscar for directing REDS (1981), with his paramour Diane Keaton, and Jack Nicholson. Then he treated us with the downer flatulent triumph of ISHTAR (1987), with Dustin Hoffman, which tanked like a lead zeppelin; but perhaps unfairly so, for in retrospect the film is a very humorous zany concoction of adventures that might appeal to the fans of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (2005). He showed some spirit as the wooden comic strip hero DICK TRACY (1990), with Madonna, and very funny turns by Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman. After the success of BUGSY (1991), he and wife Annette Benning presented us with the lame remake, LOVE AFFAIR (1994). Then he shook his booty and performed a rap song in BULWORTH (1998). His last film was the lukewarm, TOWN AND COUNTRY (2001), with two of his ex-paramours, Goldie Hawn & Diane Keaton. He was approached by director Quentin Tarantino to play the role of Bill in KILL BILL: Volume I (2003) –but he turned it down because of the “violent” nature of the film. Gosh, Mr. Beatty, what was BONNIE AND CLYDE, a musical?

John McCabe: You boys gotta make up your minds if you want to get your cookies. Cause if you want to get your cookies, I’ve got girls up here that will do more tricks than a goddamn monkey on a hundred yards of grapevine.

Beatty is probably a better director than he is an actor. He directed himself quite well in HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1978), REDS (1981), DICK TRACY (1990), and BULWORTH (1998). Now if he could just emulate his old pal, Robert Redford –he might direct a film without himself in it; and he might
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show us something more. He was voted the 29th greatest movie star of all time by PREMIERE magazine.

Warren Beatty once said,” I’d rather ride down the street on a camel, nude, in a snowstorm, backwards –than give what is sometimes called an in-depth
interview”. He also said,” I think real charity is taking an ugly girl out to lunch.”

I heard, or read somewhere that Beatty is a stutterer, and that interviews are very stressful for him. So that kind of makes he the Mel Tillis of the thespian film star set –illustrating that God does have a sense of humor. For anyone who stutters, they can sing or memorize lines, and the stutter often will disappear –because they are not being “themselves”. This would partially, perhaps, explain why Beatty insisted on actual dialogue while shooting McCABE –and why he disliked any level of improvisation. Of course I might be wrong. I was twice last month. Beatty lives on Bad Boy Drive, aka Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills; so named because Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson lived there too.

Julie Christie played the hopped-up harlot Constance Miller in McCABE. Her performance, for me, in the first few scenes, did seem a bit pushed –like she was a bit nervous working with such a free-form director.

McCabe: Well, you’ll have to forgive me, my kitchen ain’t in operation yet, but I could take you up to the restaurant up there if you’re hungry enough.
Mrs. Miller: Oh, I’m hungry enough. I could eat a bloody horse!
McCabe: Well, at Sheehan’s place, you probably will.
Mrs. Miller: Ah, the frontier wit, I see.

During the next scene at Sheehan’s, while she was making her business pitch to McCabe, she was really wolfing down the grub. Altman knew that he had to make the first take work, because she couldn’t have done a repeat performance that day.

McCabe: All you’ve cost me so far is money and pain –pain, pain, pain.

Robert Altman said,” Julie is my incandescent, melancholy, strong, gold-hearted, sphinx-like stainless steel little soldier.”



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Considering her fairly small amount of screen time, Christie made a strong impression, and she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in 1972.

Gregory P. Dorr wrote further,” There are many poor moments in the film –like most of the half-hearted irrelevant love story between McCabe and Mrs. Miller –not helped by Christie’s stagey Cockney accent –a whore with an Eliza Doolittle mouth.”

Roger Ebert added,” Study the title, McCABE & MRS. MILLER; not “and”, as in a couple. It is a business arrangement. Everything is business with her. What sorrows she knew before she arrived are behind her now. Everything else is behind her now, too –the opium promises. Poor McCabe. He had poetry in him. Too bad he rode into a town where nobody knew what poetry was, but one –and she was already lost to it.”

Al Pacino called her,” The most poetic of all actresses.”

Julie Christie was born in India in 1941. She was the daughter of a tea planter. Her Welch mother was a very good painter and artist, and a childhood friend of Richard Burton. Julie went to England and France for her education. She is fluent in both French and Italian. She studied at London’s Central School of Speech Training. She was not fond of working on the stage. She was considered for the role that went to Ursula Andress in DR. NO (1960), but she was dropped because she was not busty enough.

She has had 45 film appearances since 1961. She made her film debut in CROOKS ANONYMOUS (1962), gained critical acclaim with her role in BILLY LIAR (1963), with Tom Courtney. She won a Best Actress Oscar playing Diana Short in DARLING (1965), with Dirk Bogarde. That was a good year for her. She played Lara in DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965), and a prostitute in YOUNG CASSIDY (1965), with Rod Taylor. She had turned down the role of Lara several times before finally accepting it –starting a lengthy string of great films that she would “turn down”. David Lean loved her work, and he called her his “Sunflower”, because of her sunny disposition.


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1967 was another landmark year for her. I thought she was excellent as the brain-washed wife in Trauffaut’s FAHRENHEIT 451 (1967), with Oskar Werner, and she did FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (1967). She romanced Terence Stamp while making that film. Then she met Warren Beatty.

They met in a reception line to meet Queen Elizabeth II. She was there with Terence Stamp, and he was with Leslie Caron. They lived together steadily for seven years –though they steadfastly maintained separate domiciles. While together she turned down his proposal(s) of marriage. He wanted to settle down. He wanted children –she didn’t. So he then felt free to see other women.

Christie said,” I’m terribly dependent on him, like a baby to its mother –so we travel backwards and forwards to be with each other. Men don’t want responsibility –and neither do I. For instance I never want to direct –always a foot soldier, and never a general.”

In 1968 she did a stellar job in Richard Lester’s PETULIA (1968), with George C. Scott. Then she slipped in THE GO-BETWEEN (1971), with Alan Bates, before she traveled to the North Woods to shoot McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971). She was wonderful in Nicolas Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW (1973), with Donald Sutherland –filming some of the hottest soft core sex scenes ever projected. I remember that delicious rumor at the time that Donald Sutherland was hung like a mule, and that some of the films were not “simulated”.

She worked with Warren Beatty again on SHAMPOO (1975), where she had that party scene; being hustled by a wealthy crone, she was asked what she would rather be doing than attending that party. She smiled, nodded at Beatty, and said, “I’d rather be sucking his cock.” It is the sort of scene that lingers in the mind. She also worked with, and for Beatty in HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1978). Both of these films were done after she and Beatty was no longer an item.


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Who can forget her being raped by a computer with Fritz Weaver’s voice in DEMON SEED (1977)? It was written that she turned down the lead female role in REDS (1981) –even though Beatty wrote the part for her. This would
have dragged her out of her odd film hiatus. She did no films from 1978-1981.

Like Warren Beatty, Julie Christie has quite a reputation for turning down plum roles. She was Charlton Heston’s first pick to play his leading lady in THE WAR LORD (1965), but Universal wouldn’t pay her price. Then, as mentioned, she repeatedly turned down the part of Lara before David Lean finally wooed her for DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965). She turned down one of the leads in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1967), which probably did not hurt her career. She was a good friend of Sharon Tate’s, and Roman Polanski offered her the lead in ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968), which she turned down. She turned down the lead in THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? (1969), the role went to Jane Fonda. She turned down the lead in ANNE OF A THOUSAND DAYS (1969), with her mother’s friend, Richard Burton, and the role went to Genevieve Bujold. She turned down the lead in NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA (1971). At one point she was up for the lead in CHINATOWN (1974), but the role went to Faye Dunaway. While Beatty was being courted to play Michael Corleone in THE GODFATHER (1974), she was being considered for the part that went to Diane Keaton. Later she wanted to work with Al Pacino, who was slated to star in MARATHON MAN (1976), but she dropped out of the project when Pacino was replaced with Dustin Hoffman, and her part went to Marthe Keller; who the next year co-starred with Al Pacino in BOBBY DEERFIELD (1977) –such is Hollywood.

She turned down the lead in THE GREEK TYCOON (1978), with Anthony Quinn, giving up the role to Jacqueline Bisset. Christie was cast in AMERICAN GIGOLO (1980), but she dropped out of the project when the original star, Richard Gere, was replaced by John Travolta. Then when Travolta dropped out, and Gere returned, she lost the role to Lauren Hutton. Christie did star with Richard Gere later in Sidney Lumet’s film POWER (1986). What a thrill ride some careers can be!

In 1982, she got it together and returned to films –to our great delight. She did RETURN OF THE SOLDIER (1982), HEAT AND DUST (1983),
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POWER (1986), MISS MARY (1986), DRAGONHEART (1996), played a dynamic Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh’s HAMLET (1996) [although my favorite film Gertrude was Glenn Close in Franco Zefferelli’s HAMLET
(1990)], AFTERGLOW (1997), with Nick Nolte, TROY (2004), HARRY POTTER III (2004), and the witch-like controlling mother in NEVERLAND (2004), with Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet.

Hugh Millais played the bearhunter Dog Butler. His towering presence and keen portrayal left me wondering about his career. Actually he only had 8 film roles, and McCABE was his first one in 1971. Altman used him again in IMAGES (1972), and I remember him in DOGS OF WAR (1981), with Christopher Walken. He was a British actor, and at 6’7” tall, he did demand a lot of space on the screen.

He was a very colorful individual. He squandered his inheritance on an expensive racing yacht, in which he traveled the world for years. He drank and went to bullfights with Ernest Hemingway [Say, if any of you get a chance to catch my pal, Adrian Sparks in his one-man stage production, PAPA –do not hesitate. Sparkie brings Papa Hemingway back to life and puts him in your lap, and in your face. PAPA is making the rounds in regional theaters this year. It has opened in San Francisco recently, after a successful Los Angeles run and revival. There are rumors that ACT Seattle could be its next play date.]. Millais dined with Gary Cooper and Rita Hayworth, who were making THEY CAME TO CORDURA (1959), and basically hob-nobbed with royalty and movie stars for 20 years before spending some time being an “actor”. He became wealthy again by building and selling resorts in Spain. He is the author of HUGH’S WHO: The Namedropper’s Cook Book (2004), that is already rare, hard to find, and out of print.

Millais said,” Life is just 75 years, zero labor, and 40,000 bottles of wine.”

Robert Altman, like many good directors, built up a stock company of actors and crew he liked to work with –that he could trust to work comfortably within his unique creative parameters. Most of this repertory group of thespians had started out working for him on M.A.S.H. (1970). All of them loved to improvise, and were good at it. I think Altman liked to watch more than he liked to direct. I wonder how he and Robin Williams got on during
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the filming of POPEYE (1980)? One odd thing I discovered about this Altman group of actors was that many of them also had a Gene Roddenberry STAR TREK connection as well.

First up is Rene Auberjonois, who played Sheehan, the Irish saloonkeeper in McCABE. He played Sheehan like some kind of large voracious gossiping selfish rodent. He has been a very busy character actor. He has had 153 film appearances since 1962 –and 75% of them have been television roles. He met Robert Altman on M.A.S.H. (1970), playing Father Mulcahy. It was his third film role. Later he turned down the role of Mulcahy on the television series, M.A.S.H. He has done a lot of theatre as well. He won a Tony for COCO (1969), working with Katherine Hepburn.

Altman then cast him in BREWSTER McCLOUD (1971), McCABE (1971), and IMAGES (1972), with Susannah York. I remember him in THE EYES OF LARA MARS (1978), with Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones. He stood out in WALKER (1987), with Ed Harris. He was in the TV film, Gore Vidals’s BILLY THE KID (1989), with the excellent Val Kilmer. He was in STAR TREK VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). He was in the laconic eccentric western, THE BALLAD OF LITTLE JO (1993), with Suzy Amis. Only to become Constable Odo, the shape-shifter on STAR TREK; DEEP SPACE NINE, from the pilot episode in 1993, through 130 more of them until the series satisfying finale in 1999. He was in Mel Gibson’s THE PATRIOT (2000), and did an arc of several episodes on STAR TREK; ENTERPRISE (2002). At one point he taught Drama at Juliard under John Houseman.

Next up would be John Schuck who played Smalley in McCABE. Robert Altman saw him in a play in San Francisco and cast him in M.A.S.H. in 1969. He has had 84 film appearances since 1970, and 90% of them have been television roles. For Altman, he worked in M.A.S.H. (1970), BREWSTER McCLOUD (1970), McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971), and then had a prominent dramatic part in THIEVES LIKE US (1974).

Within the confines of his Roddenberry connection, he appeared in STAR TREK IV: The Voyage Home (1986), and he joined Auberjonois in STAR TREK VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). He did a (3) episode arc on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE in 1994, did (1) episode on STAR
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TREK: VOYAGER (2000), and he had (2) episodes on STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE (2005).

Schuck has a well-trained singing voice, and he played Daddy Warbucks in the Broadway production, and the touring company of ANNIE. He also toured in ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, with Bernadette Peters, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, PETER PAN, and THE MOST HAPPY FELLA. He is probably best known as Lt. Charles Enright on the television series McMILLAN AND WIFE (1971-1977), with studly Rock Hudson and Susan St. James.

One of my favorites of the Altman Stock Company was Bert Remsen who played Bart Coyle in McCABE. His accidental and tragic death scene stunned us with its randomness and profound sadness. Altman did not “discover” this fine character actor –he was just grateful to include him in several of his films. Remsen always walked with a cane, because in 1964, while working on the set of NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS, an 84 foot crane collapsed and fell on him –breaking his back.

Remsen had 166 film appearances going back to 1956, and like his compeers, 75% of them were television roles. Altman sprung onto the silver screen from the television industry too, and he liked actors who had that experience. They could work fast, and usually were trustworthy. Remsen had roles in PLAYWRIGHTS ’56, THE U.S. STEEL HOUR, MAVERICK, with James Garner, MAN WITH A CAMERA, with Charles Bronson in 1958, M SQUAD, with Lee Marvin (1959), YANCY DERRINGER, JOHNNY STACCATO (1960), with John Cassavetes, TALES OF WELLS FARGO, with Dale Robertson, WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE (1960), with Steve McQueen, THRILLER, ROUTE 66 (1961) [I once had an occasion to meet George Maharis. I was visiting my pal, Gig Young, on the set of aTV series, who was working with the very young John Savage; and I just plopped myself down in one of the empty canvas chairs. Maharis came up to me, and said in his most arrogant and prickish manner that I certainly had no goddamned business sitting in the co-stars set chair. What a “gentleman” he was!], PERRY MASON, with Raymond Burr, PETER GUNN (1961), with Craig Stevens, (4) episodes of RAWHIDE (1961), with Clint Eastwood, (4) episodes on ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, SURFSIDE 6, LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, 77 SUNSET STRIP, with Edd Byrnes, DR. KILDARE
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(1962), with Richard Chamberlain [Who later had the good sense to travel to England, and basically do an internship, and learn his craft; becoming the finest American classical actor. I had the privilege of working with him at
the Seattle Repertory Theatre in his American Shakespearean debut of RICHARD II.], THE OUTER LIMITS (1963), THE FUGITIVE, with David Janssen, TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH (1964), VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW (1965), and (2) episodes on THE FBI, reuniting him with Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

Damn, he was busy –and all before Robert Altman hired him for BREWSTER McCLOUD (1970), McCABE & MRS. MILLER, THIEVES LIKE US, CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974), NASHVILLE (1975), BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS, Or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976), and A WEDDING (1978). He did these films and he still found time to squeeze in roles in S.W.A.T., THE ROOKIE, POLICE WOMAN, COLUMBO, CHARLIE’S ANGELS, STARSKY AND HUTCH, (4) episodes on WONDER WOMAN, KNOT’S LANDING, CHIP’s, HART TO HART, CAGNEY AND LACEY, REMINGTON STEELE, with Pierce Brosnan, (4) episodes on DYNASTY, some time on THE YELLOW ROSE (1984), a fine limited series with Sam Elliott and Cybill Sheppard, TRAPPER JOHN, M.D., reconnecting to Altman even though he did not appear in M.A.S.H., MATLOCK, and DALLAS (1987). He made his Roddenberry connection on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (1994), and capped things off with roles on BAYWATCH, ogling Pamela Anderson, and MELROSE PLACE (1998). I swear that if he hadn’t died in his sleep at the age of 74, in 1999 –there would be 25 more credits in his resume –at least. He was always a likeable very popular fellow, and his fellow cast members loved his great stories.

Two actors debuting in McCABE, Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall, went on to become major players in the Robert Altman Stock Company. Keith Carradine, I love his work, played the Young Cowboy in McCABE. His lanky naiveté and winning goofy smile made his sudden demise even more emotional for the viewer. McCABE was his first film role. He has had 104 film appearances since 1971. He did a BONANZA (1971), a couple episodes of KUNG FU, with his brother David Carradine in 1972. He showed up as a full-blown co-star in Robert Aldrich’s EMPORER OF THE NORTH POLE (1973), with Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine. Then he played Bowie, one
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of his best roles, in Altman’s THIEVES LIKE US (1974), with Ms. Shelley Duvall and John Schuck, showed up as sexy Tom Frank in Altman’s NASHVILLE (1975). His recording of I’M EASY, went to #17 on the U.S.
Music charts in 1976. In 1976, he worked for Altman disciple, Alan Rudolph in WELCOME TO LA, and was excellent in Ridley Scott’s THE DUELLISTS (1977), with Harvey Keitel; and PRETTY BABY (1978) with Susan Sarandon and Brooke Shields. In 1980 he appeared with brothers David and Robert in Walter Hill’s THE LONG RIDERS, featuring some way slick slide guitar solos by Ry Cooder. Carradine gave a strong performance in the TV film A RUMOR OF WAR (1980), with Brad Davis and Brian Dennehy. He was back with Walter Hill again in the intriguing SOUTHERN COMFORT (1981), with Powers Boothe and Peter Coyote, worked once more with Alan Rudolph in CHOOSE ME (1984), with Geraldine Chaplin, and was very freaky in the Seattle-based Noir thriller, TROUBLE IN MIND (1985), with Kris Kristofferson, very interesting as the one-armed baseball star, Pete Gray, in A WINNER NEVER QUITS (1986); reunited for Take III with Alan Rudolph for the strange film, THE MODERNS (1988), with John Lone; played Marvin in THE BALLAD OF A SAD CAFÉ (1991), losing a bare knuckle fistfight to Vanessa Redgrave, did Take IV with Alan Rudolph on MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE (1994), with Jennifer Jason Leigh, then did a strong cameo as Buffalo Bill Cody in Walter Hill’s WILD BILL (1995), with Jeff Bridges doing a brilliant Wild Bill Hickok (one of his best performances); finding time to be excellent as the Mountain Man, Bigfoot Wallace in Larry McMurty’s mini-series DEAD MAN’S WALK (1996), with David Arquette; then saddled up again with brother David for TNT’s western, LAST STAND AT SABER RIVER (1997), with Tom Selleck; then portrayed one of the faceless husbands in A THOUSAND ACRES (1997), with Jessica Lange and Jason Robards as the Lear character. In 2003, Carradine did a STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE; joining Auberjonois, Schuck, and Remsen in the Roddenberry Club. He was quirky in the PBS production of Robert Redford’s (3rd) Joe Leaphorn thriller, COYOTE WAITS (2003), with Wes Studi and Adam Beach (who is now playing Iriah Hayes in Clint Eastwood WWII epic, FLAG OF OUR FATHERS (2006)). I think Carradine was bang on wearing the wide red Buccaneer sash, with those twin pearl-handled Colts stuck in it, butts out first, as Wild Bill Hickok in the first (4) episodes of the first season of the ground-breaking HBO series, DEADWOOD (2004; and he polished saddle leather, and strapped on a hip
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pistol to play Captain Pratt in Steven Spielberg’s western mini-series, INTO THE WEST (2005).

One interesting sidebar of trivia about Keith Carradine relates to the talented and unique actress Martha Plimpton; remember her romancing River Phoenix in both THE MOSQUITO COAST (1986), and RUNNING ON EMPTY (1988)? She is Carradine’s daughter, from a relationship Keith had with her mother, an actress in New York City in 1970. Carradine was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Actor, for playing the title role in THE WILL ROGERS FOLLIES. Presently he can be seen semi-regularly, alternating with brother David, hosting the History Channels show, WILD WEST TECH.

Keith Carradine once said,” Awards –they don’t mean anything to me –until I win one!”

Shelley Duvall played Ida in McCABE. She had a very fragile beauty, an awkward thin attractiveness, a prominent overbite, and eyes that one could never forget. In the film, when her husband, Bert Remsen, was killed, after only a few weeks of marriage, she being a mail order bride –it was only logical in that town at that time that she would then need to become one of Mrs. Miller’s “girls”. In the touching scene where Constance helped to prepare Ida for her first john, we could witness the callous indifference that most women on the frontier were treated with. A woman alone, if she wasn’t independently wealthy, either had to remarry pronto, or she was forced to peddle her butt to a horde of horny miners.

Constance: It’s not so bad. You might even like it! You did just fine with Bart.
Ida: But with him, I had to. It was my duty.

Pauline Kael wrote,” Shelley Duvall may be the closest we’ve ever come to a female Buster Keaton. Her eccentric grace is like his –it seems to come from the inside out.”

Duvall has had 50 film appearances since 1970, when Robert Altman discovered her selling cosmetics at Foley’s at a mall in Houston, Texas. He cast her in BREWSTER McCLOUD (1970), with Bud Cort, and then in
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McCABE (1971), BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS (1976), 3 WOMEN (1977), with Sissy Spacek, and then giving her the role of Olive Oyl in POPEYE (1980), with Robin Williams, in his film debut. I loved her
in the film. She was very effective as Ms. Oyl. It is hard to believe that was the same year she played Jack Nicholson’s terrified wife in Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980). I wonder if she went to Malta with Altman first?

She let her whimsical side loose when she produced and starred in many of the episodes of FAERIE TALE THEATRE (1983-1985). She followed that up with TALL TALES AND LEGENDS (1985), and SHELLEY DUVALL’S BEDTIME STORIES in 1992.

The final Altman “Stock Company” member –perhaps the one in best standing, was actor Michael Murphy, who played Sears in McCABE. He has had 87 film appearances since 1963. He has been hired by Robert Altman 13 times, and that is more Altman projects than any other actor in film history. He met the director on an episode of COMBAT in 1963. Altman went on to use him in the TV film, NIGHTMARE IN CHICAGO (1964), in COUNTDOWN (1968), with James Caan and Robert Duvall, the TV film, THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK (1969), M.A.S.H. (1970), BREWSTER McCLOUD (1970), McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971), NASHVILLE (1975), TANNER 86 (1988), a TV series; then THE CAINE MUTINY COURT MARTIAL (1988), with Brad Davis as a youthful Captain Queeg, KANSAS CITY (1996), and TANNER ON TANNER (2004). Clearly this makes Michael Murphy the “King of the Club”. As far as his membership goes, the only glaring omission, all that was missing was at least one role, or appearance in a part of the vast intergalactic STAR TREK franchise.

Murphy said,” I adore Robert Altman. If you’re getting married or divorced, or someone dies –you want to talk with him about it. He is so strong; he sees the big picture. An extraordinary man.”

Murphy lives in Toronto, Canada, even though he is an American. He used to be an English teacher. His two “big” film roles were first the philandering husband in AN UNMARRIED WOMAN (1978), with Jill Clayburgh and Alan Bates, and Woody Allen’s pal in MANHATTAN (1979).

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If all that brilliant casting in McCABE was not enough, Altman also cast the young William Devane as the Lawyer; all mutton chops, naked ambition, and double-speak political rhetoric –arrogant, self-serving selective listener; an ambitious educated dullard. Devane has had 89 film appearances since 1967. I really enjoyed him as JFK in MISSLES OF OCTOBER (1974), with Martin Sheen as RFK. He was Janeway, the turncoat in MARATHON MAN (1976), with Dustin Hoffman, was great in the anti-Viet Nam picture, ROLLING THUNDER (1977), with Tommy Lee Jones. Devane had a line in the film, as an ex-POW who had lost a hand to a wound,” When you can’t stand the pain of them twisting your rope-bound wrists backwards up between your shoulders, you beat them by –learning to love the rope.”

He played the Burt Lancaster part in the TV remake of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1979), taking time out to romance co-star Natalie Wood, with Steve Railsback doing his Monty Clift imitation. Devane spent several seasons on KNOT’S LANDING, then was exceptional in Clint Eastwood’s SPACE COWBOYS (2000), with Tommy Lee Jones and James Garner; saddled up for the TNT remake of MONTE WALSH (2003), with Tom Selleck and Keith Carradine; then stopped by to play the Secretary of State on THE WEST WING (2003), and has spent a couple of “days” playing the Secretary of Defense on the TV series, “24”, with Kiefer Sutherland [he worked with Donald Sutherland on SPACE COWBOYS].

Devane has won several awards playing polo, a honor he shares with his pal, Tommy Lee Jones. One can usually find him in downtown at DEVANE’s, an Italian Restaurant that he own in Indio, CA; near Palm Springs.

Evan Pulgino of THE CAMERA EYE wrote,” McCABE & MRS. MILLER is a truly remarkable motion picture. On the surface it is the most effective anti-Western ever made. It has an undeniable sense of place. The deaths are shameful, empty, and cold. The film’s greatness lies in its astute character study and heartbreaking ending. This is a film that only gets better with repeated viewings.”

Doug Pratt of DVD/LASER.COM wrote,” The film is a beautiful dirt-under-the-fingernails microcosm of how America was settled, and how it grew –and since it was set in the Pacific Northwest, it is also a reminder that the growth was witnessed by a generation which, though shrinking –it is still
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alive. It suggests how very close we are to the past, and how we should be looking backward with the same passion that we look forward –if we are to keep what is valuable about our country –and not allow it, like McCabe, to slip away unnoticed.”

John J. Puccio wrote,” I do admire Altman for establishing a good sense of community among his many players, and I found parts of the movie intriguing –a series of small haunting impression that steadfastly remain in memory. But I really thought it was a one hour story fleshed out to two languid hours. It ambles leisurely along, at its own pace attempting to be lyrical in the style of Cohen’s tunes. While this may enrapture some viewers, it can get mighty tiresome, mighty fast, to others –like me.”

I found this fine film to be stark and somewhat existential –and almost too “realistic”. Not much of the mythos of the West was intact. We tend to forget that when we have worshipped a genre, like the Western, for a long time, for eons it seems; it is based on literally decades of conditioning. McCABE is more like a tale told by one’s great grandfather –gritty, mundane, sad, and completely unembellished.

John McCabe and Constance Miller were strange bedfellows. They built their huge fortune around a visceral appeal to one’s basest nature –to the urgent promptings of the flesh; like gambling, whoring, and the unabashed hording of filthy lucre. The mining town in named Presbyterian Church, and it grows like a parasite, feeding off of their manic industriousness.

In that town, in those days, a man stood or fell on his own merits, or lack thereof. These men tended to be hard-hearted survivalists, oblivious to the pain of others. A human life had much less luster than a twenty dollar gold piece, or even a dusty amber bottle of rot gut whiskey. People just died cheaply, and dirt was barely thrown on them before someone else went down; all this without respite or sanctuary; just a frontier maze played like blind man’s bluff.

There was a church, yes, but it was only a husk, an attractive outer shell. God never did dwell within it. It was just a work in progress, unfinished and empty. There was a preacher, some kind of minister, but he roamed amongst the mud-spattered multitudes mute, angry, disgusted, scowling –nearly
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driven to madness by the Gomorrah he witnessed about him; an overwhelming load of sin, debauchery, and cruelty, that weighed heavy on
him, like an itchy hair shirt –and it twisted him and changed him into some kind of ineffectual wild-eyed recluse.

When McCabe was facing down the killers three, and fleeing for his very life, and he ducked into the church, the crazy preacher forced him back out into the snow and the naked maw of danger, forced him with his own rifle in the trembling hands of the mad minister. In McCabe’s darting eyes we saw the desperation of a man who is entirely alone. There was no help anywhere. Law and law enforcement was non-existent. God and the fellow citizens turned several blind eyes torward the hunters and their prey, who were blatantly playing out their bizarre fates on the streets of their town.

We sat in the darkness and witnessed Pudgy McCabe rushing about in a panic, back-shooting his pursuers, and we were able to give a silent hurrah as we always did when any Western protagonist dispatched the bad guys swiftly, albeit dishonorably. For John McCabe never pretended to possess honor –just a strong instinct for survival; the quintessential man, so very alone with his struggles and his plight.

How ironic, how sad that McCabe was unsupported, even by his acquaintances, “friends”, and employees –and that fate started that church fire that required dozens to rush to extinguish it. When the fire was out, the church was gutted; only the exterior stood, giving the appearance of piety. The townspeople put out a lot of effort to save a church that they never had attended, and that now no longer had any kind of preacher to minister to their vapid spiritual needs. So there at the end, as they cheered, celebrating their own accomplishments –what did they save? What did they actually accomplish?

John McCabe lie dying, up to his neck in the swirling snow, and all three killers were sprawled out grotesquely, their mean bodies twisted hard in death’s embrace –and the townspeople felt no palpable sense of mourning –not for the preacher, not for McCabe. Pudgy seemed to die that very moment the fire was put out in the church, and a new flame, a spark of community began to live. The folks felt a sense of reaffirmation, or reconnection. Sitting in the theater, I heard a thin rumble in my chest, a muffled voice demanding
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earlier on that those damned roughnecks just let that hypocritical Protestant edifice burn to cinder; that they open their many eyes and see the tragedy
unfolding before them, and that twenty of them take their many weapons and turn them on the murderers among them, blasting Butler and his henchmen to dog meat –but Robert Altman never let that happen. Johnny McCabe was meant to bleed out frozen on the stoop in front of his buildings. Altman coarsely stripped away all of the myth, and simply left us with blood staining the new snow, and the whispered tones of wind announcing a non-spectacle as McCabe’s life essence slipped away almost unnoticed, except by us; and Constance Miller floated above the melee, as a detached spirit, a disconnected entity. For her, life was simply hell, and only opium could control the flames that licked at her heart.

So perhaps it was McCabe’s death, his sacrifice, which created the compost of community. Ironically, it seemed to be his dreaming and his avarice that built the solid foundation for the town’s first real spurt of growth –his arrogant naïve gambler’s short-sighted vision that produced the many lumber wagons, the newcomers, and the women. He was the 120 day wonder whom most would not remember when they finally had a town newspaper, and chronicled their history. But for me, John McCabe’s dead eyes in that snow bank will haunt my memory forever.

In 1971 I did find the film to be challenging and interesting; but I did not warm to the death of many Western themes. In 2006, after satiating myself on a three-decade Robert Altman celluloid feast –I think I finally “get” what he was trying to do. I guess Roger Ebert saw it immediately, and that is why he has a Pulitzer Prize and I write rag-tag rambling reviews that only a chosen few ever read. Today I would rate this film at 4.5 stars.

Glenn Buttkus 2006