Like kids trying to please their papa, the actors and everyone else involved in an Altman film, it seems, scramble to prove themselves. Surely this is why Altman has masterminded so many textbook examples of fine ensemble acting.

For Altman's only biographer, Patrick McGilligan, it's one of the primary themes of the director's life and work, which he hammers home in his monumental 652-page book "Robert Altman, Jumping off the Cliff." In the book, McGilligan meticulously documents the "family atmosphere" on Altman's sets -- the "nightly movies," the "requisite dailies" the whole cast would watch and critique, the "communal popcorn, drinking and dope smoking" and the "parties and entertainments." It's all part of an elaborate "courtship ritual" designed by Altman to seduce his charges.

If one's to judge by comments from actors, collaborators, Altman himself and the countless others who've written articles about the man, McGilligan is right on the money. And though his Altman wears no halos in the book (the author variously describes the director as a womanizer, a boozer and an impatient, prickly egoist), it's McGilligan's intention to enshrine Altman as one of the greatest directors of our time -- perhaps the greatest living American director, with the exception of Woody Allen. In McGilligan's account of Altman's risk-filled life, the filmmaker comes off like a latter-day Zeus, with all the foibles of the original Olympian and a few of the powers -- such as the ability to fling thunderbolts.

"That's such shit," Altman said of McGilligan's book when I spoke with him in the summer of '99. "Oh, that is so apocryphal, I can't even tell you. That guy [McGilligan], I just think he got drunk and did it. He ended up talking to a bunch of aunts of mine."

Then, he leaned back in his chair and unleashed full spleen on McGilligan, whose unauthorized biography had led me to admire Altman even more than I had previously. Why did he dislike the biography so?

"He's got me in Paris, at one time walking down the street -- following Orson Welles who was my 'hero,'" he explained. "Not even close. I'm not even a big fan of Orson Welles. I think he's got his place. 'Citizen Kane' was OK, but I wouldn't put it down as one of the great films of all time. And here's this whole thing that's just wrong. I wouldn't be ashamed of it if it were true. It's just wrong."

The episode Altman alluded to is a very small piece of the whole -- it takes up about a paragraph, even though there are longer spiels where McGilligan quotes friends of the director who vouch for his early hero worship of Welles. It seems such a small point, but evidently it was enough to royally piss off Altman. In fact, he spewed a bit more about McGilligan before I got up the nerve to suggest that a memoir from him might set the record straight.

"I don't know," he sighed. "If I can't work for some reason and my brain's still alive, I might do something like that. But I don't know how interesting it would be. It's been a pretty even existence for me. Besides, I'm not sure my version would be the correct version either."

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Robert Altman was born in Kansas City, Mo., on Feb. 20, 1925, a Pisces near the tail end of Aquarius -- a party sign if there ever was one. Conditions were right to back up the verdict of the stars. Altman's father, B.C., an ace insurance salesman for Kansas City Life, could sell a policy to a corpse, and may have once or twice. By turns an inveterate gambler, family man, regular Catholic, whiskey-drinker and skirt-chaser, B.C. sounds something like his son -- except for that regular Catholic business.

Altman's mother, Helen, was devoted to her son and his two younger sisters, Joan and Barbara. A convert to Catholicism, she was more refined and arty than her husband, and she had a passion for social functions. As B.C. was usually off selling insurance or playing poker, Altman grew up in a house full of women -- sisters, aunts, his mother and her friends.

The Altmans were decidedly upper-middle class. Of German-American stock, they were one of the leading families of Kansas City. Altman grew up privileged and a little spoiled. After all, he was the only boy and the eldest child.

When he spoke to me about "Cookie's Fortune" last year, he was full of fondness for that middle-American lifestyle he knows so well. "I was very comfortable in that town," he said, referring to Holly Springs, Miss., where "Cookie's Fortune" was filmed. "I had a lot of déjà vu shooting and living there. Those houses -- those craftsman houses they built in the '20s. I lived in one that was really very familiar -- similar to the kinds of houses that were in Kansas City when I grew up. We'd sit on the front porch in swings, the kids would run up and down the street and catch fireflies and put them in bottles. It was very neighborhoody." Hence the recurring Altman motifs: the large extended family, the generally prosperous Americana, the roguish behavior of the males and so on.

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