The 25th anniversary 4K restoration of Alan Rudolph’s Breakfast of Champions, an adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s cult novel starring Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Barbara Hershey, Glenne Headly and Lukas Haas, is out now in theaters. A pioneer in the American independent film movement, Rudolph began his professional career as an assistant director before being hired by Robert Altman to work on The Long Goodbye and later his masterpiece, Nashville. The two remained lifelong friends and collaborators as Altman served as producer on many of Rudolph’s future projects. His films are noted for their fluid style, unpredictable humor, and glowing performances, often peculiar ensemble-based stories exploring the paradoxical complexities of being human, and he’s perhaps best known for Welcome to L.A., Remember My Name, Choose Me, Trouble In Mind, The Moderns Mrs. Parker, The Vicious Circle, Afterglow and Breakfast of Champions, nominated for the Berlin Golden Bear in 1999. (Photo by Joyce Rudolph.)
Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the 25th anniversary 4K restoration of Alan Rudolph’s big-screen adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, starring Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Barbara Hershey, Glenne Headly and Lukas Haas, cult favorite writer-director Rudolph shared some of the things he loves most in life. — N.D.
My Wife, Joyce
My first choice is my wife, Joyce. I’ve known her for quite a while, but you can never quite know her. We’ve been married a long time, but because we both had careers in film – she was a top still photographer – we were often apart for long periods of time. I always think about our marriage in terms of net and gross, because there were what seemed like years where we didn’t even pass each other in airports. But it’s all part of life’s rich pageantry, and it adds up to something solid. I love her and she’s probably the only person I would jump in front of a speeding Covid for. And she’s guileless. She’s completely natural. She’s sort of the opposite of me, but we overlap where it counts. She loves everyone until they cross her and she wants to go everywhere. I’m just the opposite. Making movies is like being a sugar cube on an ant hill, and I’ve seen enough ants. But she wants to meet everyone.
I can’t honestly tell you where we met, but I remember that I saw her in my rear view mirror, sitting in the back seat of a car, and I’ve been pursuing her ever since. She nurtures my life. I’d probably be face down in a gutter somewhere if it weren’t for her. I look forward to every moment with her. I started painting in the past 20 years, and if I had to paint us, it would be one of those classic Renaissance paintings of the maiden floating and the guy with the horns chasing her, but never catching her. She can light up any room.
She’s tiny, but she’s done some huge movies as a still photographer, like The Terminator, Major League and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, plus several films with Robert Altman. She did four or five of my movies, but I usually couldn’t hire her, because she was so busy. (However, she did work on Breakfast of Champions, my film that is being re-released.) She did Short Cuts with Bob, and he pulled me aside one day and, with those X-ray blue eyes, he said, “Joyce is my favorite person on the set.” I appreciated that. I thought he was going to say, “Because I just love her stills,” but he said, “She’s a very, very good still photographer, but I love her because of the spirit and the energy she brings, without ever drawing any attention to herself.” And that’s a pretty clear definition of her: she’s a light. She’s the light. And I’m the gray.
The Thrill of Creative Filmmaking
There’s nothing like the thrill of filmmaking. I was blessed – or some might say cursed – with making little films that few people ever saw. But no one ever told me what to do. I rarely ended up with the film I set out to make; it was the film I was able to get made, and then I turned it into something I wanted.
But the actual alchemy of making films, the buzz around it, is amazing. In my case, the number one thing I’d always hear from a crew or actors was this: after we finished, they would say, “Oh, now I get it!” Which, of course, didn’t help me at all!
I started making films in earnest with Bob Altman, who would just throw you in at the deep end. If you sank, he’d find someone else, but if you swam, he’d let you swim any way, any place, anywhere you want. He had a phrase, “The best advice is, don’t take any,” so he never taught anybody anything, but you learned everything. I got to make my first two legit films with him. He let me just find my own way; he was very supportive. But I never had his forceful personality. I told him, “Bob, you have an army. I’m an army of one.” He said, “Well, fight the battle.” So I just always quietly did it my own way, and always searching for the creative thrill of when you can capture on the screen something that you can’t really articulate to anybody, but you feel somewhere inside yourself. When it clicks, it truly is greater than the sum of the parts.
Sam Fuller had a great quote: “Life is in color, but black-and-white is more realistic.” The artifice of movies made more sense to me than what was passed off as reality, so when I started making films, I realized I didn’t want realism and I made no attempt at it. Audiences had to connect emotionally to my movies, or else they might as well have gone back in the lobby to get more popcorn. That feeling of connection is so elusive, and you can tell when it’s working. And when it’s complete and it captures you and you can just see there’s a hypnosis involved … man, that’s better than pizza!
The Quinault Rainforest
I love the Quinault rainforest in the Olympic Peninsula, which is about four hours’ drive away from where I live. Joyce and I moved up to Seattle 40 years ago and I have a view of the Olympics from my window, so I feel like it’s just right there.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and even as a kid, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. When I’d watch World Series games from the East Coast, I’d see people wearing coats and long shadows in October and I thought, “What is this?” My only memories that stuck from youth in L.A. were when it rained, or the one or two times that it ever snowed. I wanted weather in my life, so when I got my driver’s license, I’d drive in an old Plymouth up to the rainforest outside of Seattle. Joyce and I would go there at least once or twice a year. The reason I love it is that it rains; it gets 12 to 14 feet of rain per year. The greens are so amazing, you couldn’t properly capture them in a painting, and I wouldn’t even try. You don’t know where you’re going, and you can get lost and found at the same time. It’s as quiet as nature will allow; nature can make a lot of noise, but it still feels quiet. There’s waterfalls, rivers, mountains. The smell is as good as it gets.
Once, Joyce and I went with a friend of mine from L.A. who has an equal passion for the place. He and I just love the smell of wet moss, so we went walking in the forest, mist everywhere, and came across a big patch of moss. We looked like beggars as we bent straight down to smell it. Joyce has the funniest photo of both of our asses sticking up in the air while we’re leaning into the moss. About 10 minutes later, I started to feel this really hot, burning sensation on my stomach. I couldn’t figure out what it was, and it got worse and worse. I took off my shirt and my jacket and saw that I was swollen like a softball – the mossy mound was a yellowjacket nest!
So, I’m a little more careful with moss these days, but the rainforest is still magical to me. I can imagine any adventure, whether I’m Tarzan or Admiral Byrd. Not unlike filmmaking, it’s immersive. It’s everything all at once and all the time.
Featured image, showing Alan Rudolph on the set of Breakfast of Champions, is by Joyce Rudolph; all images courtesy Alan Rudolph.
