1971, Keith Carradine was a struggling young actor with only one film under his belt when he was called to Robert AltmanWestwood office for “McCabe & Mrs. Miller.” “I didn’t even have an agent yet,” Karradin told indifire. Carradine arrived at the office complex and was sent up to Altman’s apartment, where he knocked on the door and heard the hottest director in Hollywood – who was fresh from the box’s success for “M*a*s*h*” a year earlier – invite him inside.
“I opened the door and he stood next to the bed with a bathrobe and a white t-shirt,” Carradine said. “He posted this package with brown paper and string around it, and he said,” I just came back from Colombia. “This is the 70s, so I think, what is he who loosens here?
Carradine’s “audition” lasted just under a minute. “He said,“ Did you read the script? “I said,” Yes, “said Carradine.” He said, “Did you read the part?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Do you want to do it?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Okay.” And that was my audition.
The first meeting would ultimately give an actor director collaboration centrally to three of the best American films in the 1970s: the beautiful and haunting western “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” where Carradine played a sweet, naive and finally convicted cowboy; “Thieves like us” (1974), Altman’s remake by “They Live by Night” with Carradine as a bank robber; and ‘Nashville“(1975), a spreading ensemble with Carradine as a self -absorbed folk singer.
The remarkable thing about Carradine’s performances in these films is that he is so natural and convincing in everyone that he seems to play himself in all three, but still the parts could not be more different than each other. Carradine admits that it was probably a bit of him in the character (listed in the credits as simply “cowboy”) that he played in “McCabe.” “At the age of 20, I was all innocent and wide -eyed and ready to take this adventure,” Carradine said about her state of mind when the first meeting Altman. “That’s what he wanted in that role – he wanted that kind of innocence.”
Carradine said that Altman’s ability to read people and capturing her essence on film was his greatest talent as director of actors. “I don’t remember giving me any kind of specific direction, and I don’t remember seeing or hearing him do it with someone,” said Carradine, even though he remembered a disappointing moment when he arrived at a place with his long hair – which Altman had told him he could keep – and learned that he would have to cut it for that part. “My face just fell because I had grown it for two years, and Bob said, ‘Kid, if this is where your ego is in, is in the wrong place.’ I have never forgotten it. ”
According to Carradine, Altman tended to shoot in continuity when possible, a strategy that had a special advantage of “McCabe”, which was partly about a new city that sprinkled in the middle of nowhere. “Bob dressed all the construction guys who built the city in period clothes, and he told everyone who worked that if they had a place where they wanted to sleep, they could camp out and make it their place,” Carradine said. “So there were people who actually spent the night there and stood up to put on their period clothes, and it went on in the background all the time Bob shot the movie. You saw the city grow.”
The next time Altman threw Carradine it was in a lead role, like the volatile Bowie in “Thieves like us.” Carradine had no idea he was acting in a new recording until he came across Nicholas Ray’s “They Live by Night” on TV Night “Thieves” opened in New York. “After the show I went back to my hotel and turned channels, and I heard Cathy O’Donnell turn to Farley Granger and call him Bowie,” Carradine said. “The next day I asked Bob about it and he said, ‘Oh yes, we’re a new recording.’
In Altman’s film, Cathy O’Donnell was played by Shelley Duvall, who had appeared in the director’s “Brewster McCloud” and “McCabe” and would continue to work with Altman again in “Nashville”, “Buffalo Bill and Indians”, “3 women” and “Popeye.” “Thieves like us” were her first large part, and her scenes with Carradine are among the most moving in Altman’s Oeuvre, sweet and fun and tragic at once. “She was amazing,” Carradine said. “The fact is that all I had to do was show up and be present, because she had such honesty and energy and an inability to be unclear on the camera. All I had to do was go with.”
Seeds for Carradine and Altman’s next collaboration were planted under “Thieves Like Us” shooter when Altman and “Thieves” screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury heard their star play some songs at a party. “I had my guitar and I played some songs that I had written, and among them were” I’m Easy “and” it doesn’t worry me, “said Carradine, referring to two compositions that would be used for brilliant use in” Nashville. ” After hearing Carradine’s songs, Tewkesbury Folktrioen Bill, Mary and Tom with Carradine wrote in mind to play Bill – although things worked a little differently in the end.
“I would originally play the role that Allan Nicholls played – Bill,” said Carradine. “The original Tom would be Gary Busey. Gary Busey received an offer to make a pilot for a half-hour comedy show with Jack Elam called ‘Texas Wheelers’ and he lost from ‘Nashville’ to make the pilot. When he dropped it, Bob moved into that role.
Carradine struggled on the set and felt he didn’t like Tom and didn’t know how to play him, but when he asked Altman for help, his director was dismissive. “He looked at me and said,” You are fine, “and went away,” Carradine said. Carradine was more frustrated than ever, but he realized after the fact that Altman knew exactly what he was doing.
“What you see in that movie is a guy who doesn’t like himself,” Carradine said. “I wish I could take credit for designing it, but it was only Bob who caught me, this young actor who was still uncertain enough to feel like the role I played could reflect on me in any way. I didn’t want people to look at me and thought it was as I really was. I had a problem with it, and it was in the movie.”
Carradine was, with her words, “stunned” when he was nominated for an Oscar for the song “I’m Easy”, thinking he had no hope of winning when he resisted songs performed by icons like Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand. “I had no prayer, are you kidding?” Said Carradine. “I was up against Berry Gordy and the Motown machine. Diana Ross gave her performance live from Amsterdam in a sled where it was snowing with all this production, and I sit there myself on stage by Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with my guitar.”
Carradine was terrified and performed on the broadcast and just wanted to get through the song without blowing it – and then he won. “I had nothing prepared,” Carradine said. “I wrote nothing or planned what to say, because I just thought I was lucky to get through the show.” At that time, the song had not even been released as a record, but after the Oscar win, David called Geffen Carradine to release a strongly produced version that was more detailed than the version he sang in “Nashville.”
When that record came out and started getting some airplay, the record company that owned the Soundtrack rights to “Nashville” realized too late what they had and released the Soundtrack version of Carradine’s song -which means he competed with himself on the radio with two versions of the same hit. “I ended in the top ten, but I think if there had just been a single record out there without that confusion, maybe I’ve gone gold.”
Carradine says that although he might not have realized how lasting “Nashville” would be, he knew he was working on something special at that time – and he knew that when Altman threw him in “thieves like us” he had received an incredible gift. “I felt as if Bob had given me the role of a lifetime,” said Carradine, “and I knew I was working with one of the big directors, so I was in a pretty hard place. And I knew when we shot ‘Nashville’ that we did something really good – I didn’t realize how Good.”
A couple of years before Altman died in 2006, Carradine was in New York with her then girlfriend, now Mrs. Hayley and they met with Altman and his wife Kathryn for dinner. “We went to Elaine’s, who was one of Bob’s favorite hangs,” said Carradine. “I managed to have a moment alone with Elaine where I slid her my credit card and said:” Don’t let Bob pick up the tab “because no one ever bought him dinner. It just wasn’t done. At one point I turned to Bob and said,” Bob, I just want to say something. “He looked at me, what is this? And I said,” I just want to say thank you. “And it gave him a break. I will never forget it.”
Indieviews’70s presented by Bleecker Street ”RELAY. “Riz Ahmed plays a” fixer “in world -class that specializes in brokers lucrative payments between corrupt companies and the individuals who threaten their ruin.RELAY“” Sharp, funny and smart entertaining from his first scene to his last twist, ‘Relay’ is a modern paranoid thriller as Harkens back to the genre’s 70s heyday. “From director David Mackenzie (” Hell or High Water “) and also in the lead role Lily James, in theaters August 22.
