CHAPTER 30

Fatherhood II

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JERRY WALSH: The influence of Kathryn on him in terms of their children really began to have an effect. He extended himself for his children in his later years in a way that he hadn’t before.

PETER GALLAGHER: Bobby was an operator on The O.C., so I’d see Bobby all the time and I’d do impressions of Bob saying, “Cut! Cut!” Bobby in a way reminds you so much of Bob. I was on the phone with Bob a week or two weeks before he died, and he said, “How’s Bobby doing?” I said, “You’d be so proud of Bobby. He’s doing an awesome job. He’s such an important part of this whole team.” There was a softness and a naked kind of love in the way he said it. I don’t know that he would have allowed himself such vulnerability earlier in his life.

STEPHEN ALTMAN: He mellowed in the last, I don’t know, ten, fifteen years of his life, perceptibly. Everybody was like, “Oh my God, what a change!” But he had to stop drinking. I think the alcohol didn’t really settle with him correctly.

After he mellowed, it got very good. We were collaborators, and once I got my act together, we started being friends and enjoying each other’s company. I learned how to play backgammon, and that was his favorite thing. I would roll his joints for him and so I wasn’t the longhaired slob that he was embarrassed to be seen with. But even with all that, the collaboration and the trust and the “What do you think, Stevie?,” he always did things his way, no matter what. I still think he always kind of thought of me as a kid running around in diapers at the same time.

I remember him pushing my oldest son in the stroller, and it was just like, “Oh, this is fun.” You know, walking with the wife in the Tuileries and strolling along and him being the granddad. Of course I said something rude like, “Oh, is that the first time you ever did that?” And he’s like, “Yes, it is.” But we were all good-natured about it.

With son and favorite camera operator Robert (Bobby) Reed Altman

MICHAEL ALTMAN: He certainly mellowed a lot. He used to be a tyrant, but he became a rather amiable character towards the end. He became very enamored of his family in the last ten years of his life, and that was because they wouldn’t go away. He just kind of grew attached to everybody. And you know it kind of got bigger. But the five of us kids—the boys and Konni—early on, kind of like created our own family unit for lack of any other one. It was the only semblance of family that we had. And I’m not saying that with any kind of remorse or anything like that, it’s just the way it was. It was fine. Me and Steve grew up with our mom and my stepdad and the summer vacations and holidays were out with my dad—you know, swimming pools and movie stars. And then the rest of the time it was refried beans and pot roast, which was great. We didn’t know the difference. Basically, you know, there’s the same amount of laughter and tears in both households, right?

The last few years we would have these get-togethers and I would catch him sitting in the corner just looking at everybody with this grin on his face. And he would say something like, “Look what I made.” It was like one of his better movies. And that’s kind of how he looked at it. He became very enamored of the whole drama that he lived in. Like at the end of his life he became aware that he was in his own movie.

Kathryn and Robert Altman on the red carpet at the Berlin Film Festival in 2006 (above) and at a gala to honor Jack Lemmon, in 1993

KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: In the last ten years I think he realized how he’d been as a father. I wish he could have been a little more involved, but every time he had a chance he would play with them. They had their warm periods with him and memorable family games and funny songs. We had a couple of camping-out things. We did as much as you could do, living with a genius who was making a picture every second.

ROBERT ALTMAN: Looking back, I have great guilt about my lack of attention to my own children. I don’t think I did well by my own children, who I think I had a responsibility to. I don’t think I lived up to that responsibility. I think I was too busy looking after me. Kathryn and I talk about it now.

To keep the marriage together I’d take the family with me where I went on location. And consequently these kids were in different schools, and we sent them away to school, and they went to schools in Canada, and none of them went to college. Because the minute they were old enough to hold an apple box they were working. Consequently none of them are really supporting themselves, and it’s sad. And the sadness is that this is my fault. Yet I don’t know how I could have changed it. I was—what I was doing—was much more important than that. To me.

I can’t go back up the river and think, “Jesus, I should have done something at that bend—that last bend.” Because I didn’t do anything at that last bend. As much as those thoughts hit me, they’ve become part of what I put into the work that I do. Because it’s the accumulation of guilt. I don’t think it’s serious guilt, because I live with it. If you take me to any of those crossroads and say, “Okay, let’s go back—now here you can do this,” I don’t think I’d do anything different. It would be false.

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Dialogue from Popeye:

POOPDECK PAPPY (Played by Ray Walston): Children. They’re just smaller versions of us, you know, but I’m not so crazy about me in the first place, so why would I want one of them? … Children. They cry at you when they’re young, they yell at you when they’re older, they borrows from you when they’s middle-aged and they leave you alone to die. Without even paying you back.

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