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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.

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
Everybody
Divorce
Guy
Weeks
Suing
Happy
Cancer
Ludicrous
Lives
Carry
Endings
Girl
Across
Threshold
Three
Absolutely
Happily
True
Later
Beating
Ever
Week
Bullshit

More quotes by Robert Altman

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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.
Robert Altman
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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
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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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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
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That wasn't an ending. It was just a stopping point.
Robert Altman
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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.
Robert Altman
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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.
Robert Altman
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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.
Robert Altman
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I have never made a movie that's attracted a 14-year-old boy.
Robert Altman
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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.
Robert Altman
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I'll give you the same advice I give my children: Never take advice from anybody.
Robert Altman
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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.
Robert Altman
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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.
Robert Altman
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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.
Robert Altman
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We make too much of the good and too much of the bad.
Robert Altman
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If George W. Bush is elected president, I'm leaving for France.
Robert Altman
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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
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Why should I keep doing things that I've done before?
Robert Altman
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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
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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