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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.
Robert Altman
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Robert Altman
Age: 81 †
Born: 1925
Born: February 20
Died: 2006
Died: November 20
Film Director
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Kansas City
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More quotes by Robert 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.
Robert 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.
Robert Altman
Why should I keep doing things that I've done before?
Robert 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.
Robert Altman
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.
Robert 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.
Robert Altman
I like audiences to crane their necks.
Robert 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.
Robert 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.
Robert Altman
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.
Robert Altman
[M*A*S*H] didn't get released by FOX, it escaped.
Robert 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.
Robert 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.
Robert Altman
I don't know what Altmanesque means, though I suppose I'm flattered by it.
Robert 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.
Robert Altman
That wasn't an ending. It was just a stopping point.
Robert 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.
Robert Altman
What is an ending? There's no such thing. Death is the only ending.
Robert Altman
I have never made a movie that's attracted a 14-year-old boy.
Robert 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.
Robert Altman
