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By AnonymRobert Altman
All of my films deal with the same thing: striving, socially and culturally, to stay alive.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Chance is another name that we give to our mistakes. And all of the best things in my films are mistakes.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Every ad for every film is exactly the same.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Happy endings are absolutely ludicrous, they're not true at all. We see the guy carry the girl across the threshold and everybody lives happily ever after -- that's bullshit. Three weeks later he's beating her up and she's suing for divorce and he's got cancer.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
I am not an expert. That is someone else's job. If I were expert, the approach would be all wrong. It would be from the inside. I am a blunderer. I usually don't know what I am going into at the start. I go into the fog and trust something will be there.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
If George W. Bush is elected president, I'm leaving for France.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
If something works for you, you continue to do it. I did a bunch of pictures for 20th Century Fox when Alan Ladd was over there, but I set the budgets so low that they'd approve and I'd deliver the film. They would have no say in it, which is the kind of arrangement I liked.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
If you have a child who is seven feet tall, you don't cut off his head or his legs. You buy him a bigger bed and hope he plays basketball.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
I'll give you the same advice I give my children: Never take advice from anybody.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
I make no apologies for Popeye. Behind M*A*S*H, it's my biggest hit. It got maligned by the critics because it wasn't Superman. It wasn't about special effects and it wasn't made for 14-year-old boys. The majority of films are made for 14-year-old boys; I don't know where they get the eight bucks to get in. It's hush money from the parents.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
It's all just one film to me. Just different chapters.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
I've had it-the agencies, the winking, the networks, the ratings. Anyone who thinks TV is an art medium is crazy-it's an advertising medium.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
I've never had a big hit movie. "MASH" was probably the biggest. I don't make those kind of films, and I never have. I wish each one of them would just do billions of dollars worth of ticket sales, but they never do and they never will.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
I want to see something that I've never seen before, so how can I tell that actor what that is? I'm not trying to construct a document or situation that is what I want, because what I want is something new to me.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
I was a heavy drinker, but the alcohol affected my heart rather than my liver. So I stopped. I smoke grass now. I say that to everybody, because marijuana should be legalized. It's ridiculous that it isn't. If at the end of the day I feel like smoking a joint I do it. It changes the perception of what I've been through all day.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
I was scared that no one would hire me. At that time, there was still a stigma attached to it. A big stigma. Actually, I think I was healthier after the operation than some people who have bypass surgery because I was completely cured. But when you mentioned "heart transplant," you got a very negative reaction. It triggered people's imaginations, and not in a good way.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Making a movie is like chipping away at a stone. You take a piece off here, you take a piece off there and when you're finished, you have a sculpture. You know that there's something in there, but you're not sure exactly what it is until you find it.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Maybe there's a chance to get back to grown-up films. Anything that uses humor and dramatic values to deal with human emotions and gets down to what people are to people.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Most of my films I call arena films. I deal with a confined area -- an arena -- and I try to cover every aspect of it.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
People have asked me throughout the years which directors have influenced me. I don't know their names, because I was mostly influenced when I'd see a film and think, "Man, I want to be sure to never do anything like that." So I never learned their names. It wasn't a matter of copying or emulating somebody I admired. It was getting rid of a lot of stuff.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
That wasn't an ending. It was just a stopping point.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
The artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
The minute you have more than one voice, you have more possibilities opening up. You have all the molecules in all of those bodies and their make up interacting.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
The Oscar for the films, it'd be nice. But I don't make those kind of films, and I don't think that will ever happen.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
[The Player is] not a truthful indictment of Hollywood. It's much uglier than I portrayed it, but nobody would've been interested if I'd shown just how sadistic, cruel and self-orientated it is.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
There was not a lot of dialogue. The titles were just to keep you up. It's the visual stimulation that hits the audience. That's the reason for film. Otherwise, we might as well turn the light out and call it radio.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
They'll never give me an Oscar. And I sincerely, honestly don't care. I always turn up when I'm nominated and it would be nice to get one, but to win one would be bad luck. It comes with too much expectation. It would be the end.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Titanic I thought was the most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life. Another film that I think is equally bad was American Beauty. So badly acted and directed. But people like that.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
What is a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Why should I keep doing things that I've done before?
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Wisdom and love have nothing to do with each other. Wisdom is staying alive, survival. You're wise if you don't stick your finger in the light plug. Love - you'll stick your finger in anything.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
Your own ego is the only trap that I think you can fall into.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
You will never see'Altman's Great Film of the Seventies: The Director's Cut' because you have never seen a film of mine that wasn't the director's cut. I have never permitted it.
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By AnonymRobert Altman
[From a May 1, 2004 article entitled "Still Up to Mischief" from The Guardian reporting on and quoting Altman] Still, it's worth noting that by the age of 20 this whistle- blower had resisted two of the most powerful institutions - church and army, both. He is an atheist, 'And I have been against all of these wars ever since.
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