Robert Altman Quotes - Page 2

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.

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.

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.

Retirement? You're talking about death, right?

I like audiences to crane their necks.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

I 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'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.

Every ad for every film is exactly the same.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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