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

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
Escaped
Released
Foxes
Didn

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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.
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We make too much of the good and too much of the bad.
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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.
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That wasn't an ending. It was just a stopping point.
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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.
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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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I like audiences to crane their necks.
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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'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 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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What is an ending? There's no such thing. Death is the only ending.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If George W. Bush is elected president, I'm leaving for France.
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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.
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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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