Director Robert Altman dies at 81

Movies that mattered
Tom Skerritt, who got his break from Altman on the 1960s TV series “Combat!” which led to his role in “M*A*S*H,” said the director’s death left him with “a big void I’m feeling this morning.”

“I was just trying to write down briefly what it was,” Skerritt said by phone from Seattle, describing Altman as a mentor. “‘No one can match the sense of joy in filmmaking he gave. I’m sure others who’ve shared the Altman experience have longed for an experience the equal of what Bob gave us, that only Bob could give us.”’

“M*A*S*H” mattered, Skerritt said, because of “the timing, the anti-war sentiment,” when it came out in 1970. It took place during the Korean War, but clearly was an attack on U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

“He said to me, ‘This is a two-ticket film.’ I asked what he meant by that, I’d never heard that before. He said, ‘Well, make it really interesting the first time, give ’em a little humor, a little of the opposite and just blast through it and make it interesting enough for them to want to come back and buy a second ticket to pick up on what they missed the first time.’ He knew that about it and he was right. It was a second-, third-, fourth-ticket film.”

‘Somebody who embraced people’
Born Feb. 20, 1925, Altman hung out in his teen years at the jazz clubs of Kansas City, Mo., where his father was an insurance salesman.

Altman was a bomber pilot in World War II and studied engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia before taking a job making industrial films in Kansas City. He moved into features with “The Delinquents” in 1957, then worked largely in television through the mid-1960s, directing episodes of such series as “Bonanza” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.”

Married three times, Altman is survived by his wife, Kathryn Reed Altman, and six children. He also had 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Although Altman was known for his independent streak, he was also a generous-spirited man, said Sally Kirkland, who appeared as herself in “The Player.”

“He was somebody who embraced people,” she said, “very warm, very approachable, so down-to-earth.”

“Short Cuts” co-star Bruce Davison recalls Altman’s insistence that the cast members join him in watching the rushes every day, and that he’d have wine and cheese waiting for them.

“The best directors I’ve found are those who are ensemble players, not those guys who have great vision and make everyone hammer into that mold. ... He wanted you to participate — we came up with a lot of dialogue on our own, it was that kind of collaboration.

“He was Buffalo Bill,” Davison added. “That’s who he was.”

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