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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.

Robert Altman

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Robert Altman
Age: 81 †
Born: 1925
Born: February 20
Died: 2006
Died: November 20
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Librettist
Screenwriter
Theatrical Director
Writer
Kansas City
Missouri
Cutting
Feet
Tall
Head
Plays
Child
Legs
Hope
Bed
Play
Basketball
Children
Seven
Bigger

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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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[M*A*S*H] didn't get released by FOX, it escaped.
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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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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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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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What is an ending? There's no such thing. Death is the only ending.
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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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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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I'll give you the same advice I give my children: Never take advice from anybody.
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Why should I keep doing things that I've done before?
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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.
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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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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.
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If George W. Bush is elected president, I'm leaving for France.
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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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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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I don't know what Altmanesque means, though I suppose I'm flattered by it.
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That wasn't an ending. It was just a stopping point.
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I have never made a movie that's attracted a 14-year-old boy.
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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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