Peeking under the tutu

Director Robert Altman discusses getting attacked by the far right, working outside of Hollywood, and exposing the naked virtues of ballet in "The Company."

By Amy Reiter

Jan 6, 2004 | Director Robert Altman has taken audiences into the meticulously detailed, utterly alien worlds of Korean War doctors ("M.A.S.H."), wannabe country singers ("Nashville"), Hollywood power brokers ("The Player"), fashion ("Ready to Wear"), and mid-20th century British upper-crust ("Gosford Park"). But even he admits that his new film, "The Company," was a stretch.

"I didn't know anything about the ballet," he says, adding that when he read the script, "I didn't understand a word of it." All of which seems to have made the project more appealing to the 78-year-old Altman, who appears to relish throwing caution to the wind.

He likes, for example, to be naughty. In the New York hotel room set up for our interview, two armchairs have been arranged in a conversation-conducive configuration in one corner, but the drapes have been pulled and the dark room is dominated by a king-size bed, which, for some mysterious reason, has been turned down. When Altman enters, he gleefully exclaims, "Well, look at this!" before eyeing this reporter. "Is everything fair game in this interview? I could pull an Arnold! I could grope you!"

Gently rebuffed, Altman sinks into his chair and assumes an avuncular air. In the past, though, he hasn't always been able to charm his way out of his salty off-the-cuffs. His quips to the British press about the post-Sept. 11 flag-waving fervor at home included, "When I see an American flag flying, it's a joke," and calling George W. Bush "an embarrassment." Scolds at the Wall Street Journal and Fox News and others like Oliver North took aim. This followed his unfulfilled promise in 2000 that "If George W. Bush is elected president, I'm leaving for France."

Altman talked with Salon about why he made those comments, as well as the difficulty his new movie will have in reaching the coveted teenage boy demographic -- "It's not gonna get any 14-year-old boys, unless they're gay" -- and the less subtle pleasures of watching ballet ("It's a fuckfest!").

What inspired you to make a film about the ballet?

[His screenwriter Barbara Turner] called me and said she'd written a script and would I read it. And I said, "Well I'm very busy now and I don't read well, and anyway, what I think of the script doesn't have any bearing on what other people would think of it, but I'll try." Then she kept nudging me. Finally I read the script, and I didn't understand a word of it. I said, "I don't even know what this is. What are you talking about?" I was supposed to do another film at that time, and I said, "Well, I just can't do it. I don't know anything about ballet and it's just not really right for me."

And then I got thinking, should I just do things I already know about? I'm getting a little bored. And I thought, that's just what I should do, I should jump into the abyss. So I called the abyss back and jumped. I went in as blind as you could be.

You collaborated closely with the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, which really stars in the movie. Were you surprised at what you found in that world?

I was constantly surprised, and I was also moved emotionally and motivated and humbled by these dancers and the dedication that they had. They just amazed me. And there's a melancholy about it because you realize that at 35 they're finished. Actually at 18. These girls start at 6, and then suddenly at 18, they look back, and they now walk like a duck and their whole social intercourse with people is totally changed because they can't have a relationship with someone who can't accommodate their regime. And yet they can't give it up because it's something they've done all their lives. Then at a certain point, they start teaching kindergarten kids and 8-year-olds to dance at Long Beach or someplace. I just find it very sad. There's no chance that any of them can make any money out of it or get any security. Most of them have double jobs anyway. I kind of fell in love with them.

Did you intend to contrast the pain of the artist and the beauty of the work?

I don't really know. I didn't set out to do anything in particular. I just kind of jumped into this world and what I was saying to myself and to everybody all the time is that what I wanted to do was to get around behind them, to turn over rocks, look under the rocks and see what's there, not just what they show people. You know, it's very two-dimensional, the dance. You sit in the audience out here and the dancers are up there and you don't see behind them. If they didn't turn around, they could have clothespins holding their costumes up. So I wanted to three-dimensionalize it.

And also, it's very sexy. Oh yeah. I mean, these people are buck naked out there! It's like they spray a little thin suit on. These guys sit there with these [he gestures down in front of himself] big packages in front and the girls are [pauses] well! That's why I think all these rich old men support the ballet. Their wives get into it, and they say, "Oh, I'll do it! I'll put my bow tie on." They sit there, and all these pas de deux are all about sex. It's a fuckfest! But that is an enormous part of all choreography. And it's really interesting.

You definitely address that in the film, and how the dancers carry that sexuality with them offstage as well.

It becomes so incestuous, they can't really penetrate or allow the outside world to penetrate them because you couldn't have a relationship with the schedule that they have. So they tend to start carrying on with each other. Half the male dancers are straight and half of them are gay -- that's just an arbitrary guess. So these girls, they come in, and they get with the straight ones, the lifters. That's the one they're having all their touchy-touchy stuff with. So they fall in love with one of the lifters and they become an item. Then they're so together all the time that there's almost no way that can endure. There's a couple of married couples that dance, but it's rare that they stay together.

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