Robert Altman

            On Friday morning I continued gathering images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 145 so far. 

            I weighed 89.05 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since February 11. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the third of four sessions and only about four times was it still in tune when I finished a song.

            Around midday I added a second coat of “blue bliss” coloured paint to the top and sides of the lower shelf in the bathroom. I finished a first coat for the underside. I think the top is fine now but the underside needs another coat, which I should have time to add on Tuesday. 

            I weighed 90.3 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. Their washroom has been out of order for a few weeks but they are legally required to provide a washroom for customers. I asked one employee but he didn’t know while another simply said he wasn’t allowed to let me use the employees’ washroom. I asked to see the manager but the guy said he wasn’t there. I think I’ll call the city to complain. 

            I bought seven bags of red grapes that were on sale, a pack of raspberries that weren’t, some bananas, a bunch of scallions, and a pack of toilet paper. 

            I weighed 90 kilos at 18:50. That’s the easiest I’ve been on the scale in the evening since February 11. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:37. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive my first interview on CIUT, sometime in the middle of 1995. I was promoting the launch of Orgasmagazine. 

            I sautéed some garlic, two scallions, added two cans of kidney beans, the rest of my marinara sauce, the rest of a jar of tomato pesto and some Calabrese hot paste. I ate the chili with two slices of toasted Bavarian sandwich bread while watching the mini-documentary on the first season of Combat.

            Jo Davidsmeyer says Combat was the greatest WWII TV series. There was conflict between the producers in the first season and directors like Robert Altman. He would feature members of the squad in stories for an anthology feel but the producers wanted to feature the entire squad working together. Altman put his unique stamp on every show. There was a lot of praise for Vic Morrow’s acting and his attitude. He said he was a comet and not a star. He became Pierre Jalbert’s acting teacher during the show but Jalbert shared with Vic his technical knowledge about film making. Shecky Greene quit halfway through the first season because he was making very little money on the show compared to what he could rake in doing stand-up in Vegas. Jalbert says he still gets letters from women who say that thanks to Combat they’ve come to understand their veteran fathers better. 

            Robert Altman started experimenting with sound in high school with cheap tape recorders. After WWII he tried acting and appeared in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He wrote a musical called The Rumours Are Flying, which ran briefly on Broadway. He co-wrote The Bodyguard, Christmas Eve, and Corn’s a Poppin. He co-created and directed the short lived TV series Pulse of the City. His feature film directorial debut was The Delinquents in 1957, which he also wrote. He started directing episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and for a while made a career of TV directing until he was offered M.A.S.H. He said M.A.S.H. wasn’t released but escaped. It was his highest grossing film. He directed That Cold Day in the Park, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, A Perfect Couple, Quintet, Short Cuts, The Long Goodbye, Brewster McCloud, California Split, Thieves Like Us, The Gingerbread Man, The Player, Gosford Park, Nashville, The Company, Images, 3 Women, A Wedding, Popeye, Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean, O.C. and Stiggs, Fool For Love, Beyond Therapy, Vincent and Theo, part of Aria, Secret Honour, The Laundromat, Ready to Wear, Cookie’s Fortune, Dr. T and the Women, and A Prairie Home Companion. He won 5 Academy Awards. He won an Emmy for directing the miniseries Tanner 88. Warren Beatty wanted to kill Altman during filming of McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Altman worked best with improvisational actors. He didn’t like the TV version of M.A.S.H. because it wasn’t anti-war. He said wisdom is knowing not to stick your finger in a light socket while love is sticking your finger everywhere. His influences were Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, Huston, and Jean Renoir. I could see the Fellini influence when I saw Nashville. Nashville is Robert Altman’s Amarcord. He said Titanic was the worst film he’s ever seen. He co-wrote the song Black Sheep with John Anderson. He co-wrote the libretto for McTeague. His son Mike Altman, at the age of 14 wrote the lyrics for “Suicide is Painless”.