Robert Altman on accents, outfits, and funny hats (McCable & Mrs Miller)...

[Blue_Food]

I thought it was worth typing up these few paragraphs from Altman on Altman (ISBN 0-571-22089-4) edited by David Thompson, where Bob discusses his research and approach to wardrobe on McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971):

The costumes in McCabe are not what you usually expect in a Western.

I told Warner Brothers to send up a truckload of Western clothes, because I wanted it to be as if I were making an immigration film. It had occurred to me that cowboys didn’t wear those hats we’re familiar with from so many pictures. Almost nobody who conquered the West was American; they were first generation immigrants from Italy, Ireland, France, England Holland, most of the Northern countries. They spoke with Swedish accents, Irish accents, Italian accents. They certainly didn’t all sound like George Bush from Texas – I mean , that came years later. And they came with their silverware, their knife, fork and spoon, items of clothing and watches, all from Europe. So the only cowboy hat I put on anybody was the one on Keith Carradine’s Character.

I’m convinced that the reason people made Westerns with everybody wearing those cowboy hats was because that’s what they saw from the photographs of the time. But we found out that a photographic plate at the time was so expensive that you would have a photographer in his shop, and when he hears that some guy’s just ridden into town wearing the funniest hat you’ve ever see, he just had to take a picture of him. And that’s the record of the time that’s been passed down.

There’s no question that the actors look very authentic in their clothes.

I got all the actors out one morning on location and told them all to pick out their wardrobe. I said, ‘You all get one pair of pants, a pair of boots, two shirts, one jacket, a vest or sweater, and one hat. Then you go to the prop department and there’s stuff to pick up like silverware.’ You could tell a lot about the actor by the character of the clothes they selected. The more experienced the actors, the more they went for the character clothes. I remember Jean Auberjonois picked the most torn, ratty kind of stuff, so he looked like a ragman. Then I told them, ‘Now, over here there are needles and thread and patches, because you’re living here during the winter, these are the only clothes you have and you wouldn’t last twenty minutes with a hole in your sleeve. You’d freeze. So sew them up!’ For two days everybody was sitting there repairing their wardrobe. But the message came through that there was a reality to what it was; it wasn’t just a wrapping. It gave them a focus and a utility emerged from that.

Hope some of you find it useful, if not interesting/entertaining!

DP

 

[chriscurl]

Very cool, thanks!

I thought it was worth typing up these few paragraphs from Altman on Altman (ISBN 0-571-22089-4) edited by David Thompson, where Bob discusses his research and approach to wardrobe on McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971):



Hope some of you find it useful, if not interesting/entertaining!

DP

 

[AJ Brooks]

That is great.

So did every actor get a wardrobe credit as well?