24 Notable Quotes By Robert Altman
Men make clothes for the women they'd like to be with or in most cases the women they'd like to be.
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.
Jazz has endured because it doesn't have a beginning or an ending. It's a moment.
It's all just one film to me. Just different chapters.
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.
If George W. Bush is elected president, I'm leaving for France.
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.
I'll give you the same advice I give my children: Never take advice from anybody.
I want to see something that I've never seen before, so how can I tell that actor what that is? I'm not trying to construct a document or situation that is what I want, because what I want is something new to me.
I never knew what I wanted, except that it was something I hadn't seen before.
I love fishing. You put that line in the water and you don't know what's on the other end. Your imagination is under there.
I like audiences to crane their necks.
I have never made a movie that's attracted a 14-year-old boy.
I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting.
Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.
Every ad for every film is exactly the same.
Chance is another name that we give to our mistakes. And all of the best things in my films are mistakes.
All of my films deal with the same thing: striving, socially and culturally, to stay alive.
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.
I insist that they do what they became actors to do. I want them to create something and not just hit marks and say words. So they all love that because they're playing. It's called playacting. Their contributions are not only welcomed, but are accepted and used.
I make no apologies for Popeye. Behind M*A*S*H, it's my biggest hit. It got maligned by the critics because it wasn't Superman. It wasn't about special effects and it wasn't made for 14-year-old boys. The majority of films are made for 14-year-old boys; I don't know where they get the eight bucks to get in. It's hush money from the parents.
I 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.
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.
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.
