Robert Altman music and my movies

Robert Altman talks about working with composers like John Williams, Mark Isham and other musicians and performers to create music for his movies.
Excerpts from movies McCabe and Mrs Miller, Images, Gingerbread Man, Cookie's Fortune,  illustrate the way he works.

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Robert Altman Music and My Movies

Robert Altman: [00:00:00] Normally either two things happen on a film. I know before I start the film I know exactly what the music's gonna be, or I don't have any idea if I know exactly what it's gonna be, then I do exactly that. If I don't have any idea, it's always a problem cause I just fret and change my mind and, and go back and forth.

And then, and, and then I'm, I really have to, I really need the help of. A composer. And anyway, it's either one, it's one way or the other. On this picture I'm doing now, I've got Dave Stewart who's gonna come down here, and I don't, I know what the instrumentation's gonna be. I don't know what the music's gonna be, but it's, it's gonna be all slide guitar and this Mississippi Delta kind of blues music.

 On Kansas City, of course, we knew what that was gonna be [00:01:00] because music was as important as the film. The Gingerbread Man, my idea there, original idea was to try to, I've done this several, more than once, more than maybe three times I've tried to do a film without any music. And in the Gingerbread Man, which was a thriller I, I really went at the movie that way.

Now, part of that was to keep my myself saying I had to make the scenes in such that they would stand up without music, but I also had a hurricane throughout that whole picture coming in, and at various stages of that, So I used the, the, the sound effects of the thunder, rain, wind shutters, banging all those kind of noises that are indigenous to, to storms.

And then on, then within that we used [00:02:00] tones that were actually, what's that machine, you know, the. Synthesizer. Yeah. Yeah. They're at one of those where we just make up sounds and we tried to, which were musical sounds really, but we hid them within the music, within the winds and the, and and added them to the, to the whistling under the doors and the creaking and all that when the picture was finished.

I was very happy with that, but it was a little too tough on the audience not to have a, the, the. The advantage of a score. So then I went to Mark Isham and Mark took this existing score, if you'll call it that, put his score around those sounds of, of Anthony's. And so it was we got a very, very unique sound out of it because of the evolution of it.

Had I started just with Mark, it wouldn't, he would not have written the same kind of [00:03:00] music. This thing is all a growing process. The same thing happened pretty much in in shortcuts. In shortcuts. I had all the songs of, of the, the, the group and all of Annie Ross's songs that we did, which were were many.

It really was one of the best uses of hers in years. Really reacquainted a lot of people with her. With her, yeah. But with the, but then when, for the scoring of just the scenes in the movie, I really stripped out the vocals and I stripped out all the melody. And I took the rest of the, the the, the, the rest of that music from that same band without the melody and used it as score.

And it worked very, very, very well. But at, but then at the end I had, I got Mark I should to come in and do the opening credits. So you got into the picture in a more conventional way. And I suppose the ending credits. The ending [00:04:00] music. So, so there's just different ways of doing it all the time, other than I haven't really just finished a picture and then turned it over to a composer to score in a conventional way in a very long time.

Probably the best score that I've ever had done in that manner was for images. Johnny Williams yeah. Did a with the London Symphony, did a just fantastic music. Yeah. And one that if somebody heard now, they wouldn't characterize as John Williams. There's so much more that he could do than sometimes they get him.

Well, he did, he, he used this Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashta who used all these. Sounds, I mean, he'd, he'd throw riffs at the piano and on, on top of the piano strings. He'd he'd use [00:05:00] glass, he just use anything and made these really eerie weird sounds, which was not which Johnny actually scored.

He actually had written them in the score. I have a score his original score of Frank in my sum player. And you, you see suddenly where notes go, you know, in the score. He, it would suddenly say, hiss like a snake. And these are all of these sounds that were incorporated into his. End of that image is score that Stone did.

Have you ever heard that score? 

Robert Hershon: Yeah, I did. I was, I was struck by the movie and I didn't, had no idea it was John Williams until I later went back and looked at his credits and then listened to it again. Get a picture of what John Williams is, but if you really look at what he's done for such a long time and then then realize the fact he was a jazz pianist, 

Robert Altman: you know, he does all this Spielberg stuff and I, that he's, that's about all he does really.

And [00:06:00] that's a very. It's what that is, but on these things, I worked with John Williams back in television days and we did a lot of experimental stuff. He had worked on, I dunno if it was Hallmark Hall of Fame or something, but he'd done some beautiful stuff way back then. That's when television had great scores.

Robert Hershon: Oh yeah. I talked to Jerry Goldsmith about it and this, the music on TV used to be real music. Absolutely. May just also, there's another part to music in your movies. It's funny, I, I just looked at McCabe and Mrs. Miller again, and to tell you the truth, I really had not been in love with Leonard Cohen music before I saw that movie.

And then from the opening credits about another man to lay down his cards again, you know yeah. 

Robert Altman: The stranger, 

Robert Hershon: yeah, the strangest smoke curling up around his shoulder. Changed my entire view. It was a very ballsy thing to do cuz music was like right out his, his, his voice was almost narrating some of the action in a way.[00:07:00]

Robert Altman: Yeah. Well that just was one, one of those fortuitous things that I, I think the reason that happened is that I had that I was, I'm crazy about Leonard's music and his songs and I had two year before McCabe. A year and a half before when I was shooting a thing called Cold Day in the Park I just, I had that album and I discovered Leonard about that time and I just wore out about four albums.

 And then when I went to do McCabe, it never entered my mind until I'd finished the picture. I was in Paris and I heard somebody at some party put on a Leonard this album. I heard it and I thought, shit, that's the music for my movie. And I flew back to Vancouver and we recorded that stuff and his stuff and put it in and and I ended up, that's, you know, you saw it.

Yeah. It's funny, you know, I mean, I think a lot of people would be afraid to give music back kind of out front of place, but I think it, I [00:08:00] dunno if you agree, but I think maybe if you're secure in the power of what you have on the screen, that you can pick something that will add to it rather than, than run it over.

Well, that's, yeah, that's true of all the elements that go into make a film. The the, the, the, I've done a lot of, I've done musicals. I mean, Nashville was a musical, you know. Yeah. Perfect Couple was a musical. I mean, that music was performed in the film and it was a musical film. It scored it Nashville was that way.

And there's others that don't come to mind. Rarely have I gone to a really, a conventional score. What, in your while you were growing up, I mean, you said you just seemed to maybe, I don't know if, [00:09:00] where it affects you more than some other directors, but it, it seems you always. You would have a for if, you know, if it was a child, and if, you know, it's sort of an abandoned child with a lot of compo, a lot of directors who just like toss it to a a direct composer with three weeks to go before you know, the, the final edit it hits and just have 'em slap something in.

But, you know, it seems you care about how it goes in and you, you, well, I think it's a, it's a, it's a great big part of the pie. You know, it's got a, it's a big wedge of the pie. Of the whole thing. And I know in and I do work on this a lot and, and I try not to make it just, I try not. If I think I have to have music to make a scene, Carrie, then I think there's something wrong with the scene.

Amen. You know, So I, that's why I get myself in this trap a lot of times because I think, well, suppose I didn't have any music. I can't, I, I don't want to have to [00:10:00] depend on music to do it. And the music, I like to make indigenous to the film like we did in Kansas City. We did it in shortcuts. We did it in Nashville.

We did it in Perfect Couple. We did it in I don't know, whatever else, but, oh, in the California split. Sometimes I go for use bad music in California, split. I had this, this, this woman who plays piano up in Reno or played piano up in Reno and sang in one of those just bistro bistros and just these standard, you know, the standard tunes.

Bye by Blackbird. And, and, and I used that as the, the music. And I wasn't trying to get good music. In Nashville, we wrote all those songs. The cast did. I wasn't interested in, in every one of 'em being a great song because [00:11:00] the songs that come out of Nashville aren't great songs. I mean, there's a small percentage of them that are, so if you're gonna reflect Nashville and it's music, If you just do what you think, oh wow, this is great.

This is great, this is great. You're not reflecting Nashville, cuz most of the stuff that comes out of there is, is pretty bad. And and so I, I just use music not as a support, just this simple. I try not to have it something that is, supports the film or backs the film up, but it's something that is an an inseparable part of the film.

It is just for last question, if you were just looking out as far as some of the movies you've seen, has there been a couple of scores you've seen in movies or, or one or two uses of music and movies that you've really admire or loved? Well, there's lots. I don't, but you know, if, if [00:12:00] you're involved in the movie, you're look at all that becomes one thing.

Yeah. And I don't remember this. I thought the glass score for for K Kdo was terrific. And I kind of was aware of that, but not really. It's, that's what I think is so amazing about a score that hangs up even by itself is that it really is created to be, to almost to be noticed, but not be noticed.

It's supposed created to be felt. And then if later you, you listen to it, you say, Jesus hangs together on its own. It's sort of a little miracle cuz that's not really the design of this score was to, to create a cd. The design of the score was to, to work with whatever is is on the screen. It's to support the music.

Yeah. I am image. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Allen works on the way he works with well, you, you're gonna talk him. I, I did talk to him. I was one, one of the most interesting conversations I've ever had about music. What, it's one of the most interesting conversations I've [00:13:00] ever heard. He doesn't he doesn't necessarily show mark the the film.

He calls him up and says well that's something, B and mark those cues. And then, and then Alan will take him and put him in this part of his movie or he said, no, I'll move it down here and use it in this part. But he does it in a quite a different way. Yeah. And so he's very, he's very good. And Mark, mark is terrific with all this stuff.

I think I, I, I deal with him whenever I can. Yeah. He's one of the nicest, most confident people I've ever met in my life. Oh, yeah. I think comes from having kids and having a. I think it's what really helps Mark out is the fact that he, he has, he's a tour jazz musician. Yeah, that's right. And keeps him from getting tweaked.

Yeah. You know? Nice. Okay. Well thanks a lot for taking the time. Just, just a hell of it. I mean, is this is.[00:14:00]