CHAPTER 28
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Cookie’s Fortune (1999)
Janet Maslin, review headlined “From Altman, a Salome Story with Southern Sugar and Spite,” The New York Times, April 2, 1999: The sweet assurance and guerrilla wit of Robert Altman’s vintage ensemble films make a serenely captivating return with “Cookie’s Fortune.” In this seamlessly copacetic treat, Mr. Altman once again dreams up a well-rounded community of symbiotic oddballs, then effortlessly lures the viewer into their world. With a fine cast working on a single, nicely eccentric wavelength, he and the screenwriter Anne Rapp turn picturesque Holly Springs, Miss., into a hotbed of grudges, power struggles, family secrets and historical footnotes, all presented with the same rueful overview.
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ANNE RAPP (screenwriter): My ex-husband used to work with Bob Altman on his movies. He was an assistant director. They both loved the ponies and went to the racetrack a lot. Somehow that’s how our relationship started. I had been working as a script supervisor for fifteen years, but I never held script for Bob.
A short story that I wrote was published. It was a one-page story—most of the fiction in Gordon Lish’s publication was short fiction. I was script supervising on a movie in New York. Bob was cutting Kansas City in L.A. His editor at the time was Geri Peroni, and I was able to sublease her apartment in New York because she was in L.A. with Bob. So we were conversing once a week about her mail. That was my very first published short story—so it was a very exciting time for me. I sent her one with her mail one week. I guess Bob picked it up and read it. He called me and said, “I love the story and I love the way you write.” We had a conversation about how movies are much more like short stories than novels. I sent him a few more and he loved them.
Liv Tyler and Charles Dutton in Cookie’s Fortune
I said, “Give me some time and let me write some more.”
He said, “No, I need to read some more now.”
I spent all weekend working on a bunch of stories I had written in Mississippi. Bob was on a plane to the Berlin or Venice film festival with Kansas City and he read them on the plane and he called me from France.
He said, “I loved the stories and I want to put you under contract to write for me.”
When Bob first hired me I was in the middle of this short story about an old woman on her way out who misses her husband and is lonely and is starting to struggle up the stairs. She makes the conscious decision that she is ready to join her husband in heaven. She’s estranged from her family, but her nieces who discover her body are ashamed—and they cover up the suicide and it backfires.
He said, “How does it backfire?”
I had it one way, but Bob’s the one who said, “Here’s how you make it cinematic.”
I abandoned the short story and wrote the movie.
The making of that movie, from script to finish, was the best time of my life. I’ve never had as much fulfillment in my heart about something I’ve done and created.
PATRICIA NEAL: The years pass and Roald is gone. If I have the story correctly, my daughter Lucy sees Bob Altman at Cannes. And he was so happy to see her—he knows her immediately. It was fantastic. They became good friends.
He told Lucy everybody was cast except my part, as Cookie. And she said, “My mommy is perfect for it.”
She had a party and she invited him to look at me, and he decided then that Lucy was right. I had a great time doing it. I really did. He was a very good man. He just let you do what’s natural. Had I ever played a suicide before? Oh God, I think I’ve killed myself lots of times.
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Dr. T & the Women (2000)
Andrew Sarris, review headlined “When a Man Loves Too Many Women,” The New York Observer, November 19, 2000: Robert Altman’s Dr. T & the Women, from a screenplay by Anne Rapp, reunites the team responsible for Cookie’s Fortune (1999), which I did not like very much. Hence my delay in catching up with Dr. T, since I do not enjoy bashing a director as admirable as Mr. Altman. To my surprise, Dr. T is quite wonderful, and not the least of its delights is the much-abused Richard Gere, in the seriocomic role of a Dallas gynecologist who finds himself engulfed in the world of womanhood until he can no longer think straight. … Dr. T does get a break of sorts by going out hunting with the guys, but these interruptions in Dr. T’s woman-dominated routines are even more ridiculous and frustrating than the rest of Dr. T’s chaotic life. Some critics have complained that Dr. T & the Women is misogynistic, but I think it is no more so than Buster Keaton’s brilliant Seven Chances (1925). Mr. Altman is never condescending to the women, only somewhat fearful of their amazing power and persistence.
ANNE RAPP: I never had any sense that Bob was a misogynist in life or in his work. I know Bob loved women and wanted to be around women. He was more comfortable in the world of women than in the world of men. He would be the first to tell you that. I think what happened was when Bob wrote the scene with Hot Lips in M*A*S*H, it was something that no one had done before. It was a shocking thing and no one ever let go of that. I think critics look for a place to call Bob misogynistic. They look for that with Bob because of that one scene. He did the same thing with Julianne Moore with Short Cuts—all Bob did was something that nobody had done before. How many scenes have you seen with women naked on top? Another director would have had her spill wine on her top and have a sexy scene with her topless or in a lacy bra. Bob did something different.
At the Toronto Film Festival, before we even started, before anyone even asked a question, Bob said, “I just want to say one thing. If anybody in this room has a question about misogyny, I want to just point out that this film was written by a woman.” Everyone in the room laughed. He just set the tone right there.
Announcement headlined “Women in Film to Present ‘Mentor Award,’ to Robert Altman,” November 15, 2001: From Altman’s first project to his upcoming release of Gosford Park, he has mentored hundreds of women—from producers, to writers, to costume designers. Altman has also directed numerous celebrated actresses in such films as M*A*S*H, Images, 3 Women, A Wedding, Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player and Prêt-à-Porter. “It is especially fitting for Women in Film to honor Robert Altman with the 2001 Mentor Award since he has been at the forefront of discovering, nurturing and showcasing some of the most important women working in entertainment for more than five decades,” said WIF president Hollace Davids.
ROBERT BENTON: Altman was a very complicated person. Altman’s history with people is like this. When they did the first picture together, Cookie’s Fortune, he loved Anne Rapp. She did a great job. The second picture, Dr. T & the Women, everything she did he changed. It was as though he couldn’t stand that everybody loved the script of Cookie’s Fortune. He was not going to let that happen again.
He is like the scorpion in the story of the scorpion and the frog. The scorpion says, “I can’t get to the other side of the river. Will you carry me across on your back?” The frog says, “What? I can’t do that, you’ll just sting me.” The scorpion says, “Why would I sting you? We’d both drown.” The frog says, “Okay.” Suddenly, in the middle of the river, the scorpion stings the frog. As he’s drowning, as he’s going down, he says to the scorpion, “Why?” The scorpion says, “I can’t help it. It’s my nature.”
ANNE RAPP: Bob has a reputation as being difficult on writers. You won’t hear that from me. I would show him something, and if I did nine things horribly and there was one little seed, one little character, one line that worked, his eyes would light up and he’d say, “That’s it, you hit the nail right there! Now take that and go write that.”
I would walk out of his office and feel like I kicked ass. Any other Hollywood meeting I was in, they’d rake you over the coals about those nine things you did wrong. Bob had that ability to make you walk out of his office and feel like running back to your computer. He had an amazing way of dealing with artists in vulnerable positions.
Everyone thinks Bob goes in there and purposely changes it and lets the actors do something different. What he does is tell the actors, “You can do whatever you want in the scene. If you love the script, do it.” Luckily enough, on Cookie the actors liked the script enough that they could do the script.
I was making less money than I was making as a script supervisor. But look at what I was getting to do: He gave me something that was priceless, to get two movies made in three years. Screenwriters write their whole life and don’t get anything made. He started an entire career for me. He gave me the chance. There’s a part of me that would have done it for nothing. The reason Bob didn’t pay people very well was he often had to scrape to get his movies made. He went the total independent route for the better part of his career. He was making movies on a shoestring, so everybody is going to get shoestring wages. A lot of people bitch and complain a bit because you can get paid in this industry very well. I would hear grumbling and complaining, but it was never an issue for me. He knew that in the movie business, everyone is going to change you and exploit you to the best of their ability. But he never did. He never took advantage of me.
I felt like a good writer for the three years when I was with Bob. I have had nothing but doubts since.
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Obituary in the Los Angeles Times, March 8, 2000: Tommy Thompson, veteran producer of television’s “The Lucy Show” who also worked extensively on the films of Robert Altman, has died of a heart attack. He was 73. Thompson died Friday during location shooting of the Altman film that he was co-producing, “Dr. T and the Women,” starring Richard Gere.
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Robert Altman, from DVD commentary on Dr. T and the Women: It’s so expensive to make these films that if you don’t have success you’re suddenly going to be in a position where you can’t make ‘em. You’re not going to be able to raise the money to make the films. That would be a disaster in my life, because that’s all I do, it’s all I care to do, it’s all I desire. It’s where I get my kicks. It’s where I exercise my mind. To suddenly find out that you can’t do that anymore, because people don’t like what you do, can be quite dreadful.
DAVID LEVY: His time in the wilderness, if you will, was maybe a bit humbling, and while he remained very, very true to his principles, he wasn’t interested in going back to the wilderness, okay? He wanted to keep working and keep making pictures. I can cite you a number of times in the last fifteen years when he walked away from projects he could have had because he didn’t like the direction they were going or the way things were smelling. But by the same token, he wanted to keep working, because for him work was play and he wanted to stay in the game. I think he was maybe more observant, maybe more considerate of the other elements in what I’ll call the business process of things than he had been earlier. Because the world was his oyster and then that went away, I think he was just a bit more considerate of the money and the suits, because one must be if you’re going to continue to get to do this.
ANNE RAPP: Bob made a movie every year. Every time he had one ready to go, all he was doing was talking up the next one. He didn’t linger on the past, on successes or failures. I always told Bob he’s like a farmer. When it’s the season you plant and you water and you harvest. If you have a great crop it doesn’t mean you don’t plant the next season. And if you get hailed out one year you don’t spend the next year licking your wounds over it. You get back out there and plant the next year’s crop. A good farmer and a good artist just keep turning out the work. I’m not one of these people who revere the Salingers who disappear for twenty years. And then everybody’s like, “Oh my God—the artist is back!” Bob never went into the cave.
David Thompson, story headlined “Robert Altman’s Decade of Astonishments,” The New York Times, June 11, 2000: “Short Cuts” (1993) may be his last major work, and we may not have much reason to expect more from a man his age. But old man Altman is about as easily classifiable as the Luis Buñuel of his own 70’s. In other words, watch out, and remember that he has been written off too many times for critics to feel secure.