Keith Carradine Regis Dialogue with Phil Anderson, 1991 Phil Anderson: Well anyway, thanks for coming yourself. I want to start, I have a small question and I have a big question. Small question is simple. How did you get involved with the Material Girl video directed by Mary Lambert? Keith Carradine: They called me up. Phil Anderson: Why do you think they asked you? What do you think they needed from you? Keith Carradine: I don't know. I was requested by her ladyship and Mary Lambert, the director. Apparently I was their first choice to play the part, this Howard Hughes-esque character who was supposed to be this mysterious wealthy owner of the studio for which she is one of their stars. There was something about what I had done, I guess, that they saw, that they thought was right for this. So they called me up and I said, "Yeah. Sure, what the heck?" Phil Anderson: Well I asked that because who wouldn't? Keith Carradine: Well, actually, there are a few people that might not. Phil Anderson: It seems that throughout your career, people seem to think you stand for something. At certain points in your career, you stand for different things. But in this and in many other things, you seem to stand for a kind of purity or a sense of morality, whereas in other times you're quite evil, quite sneaky. You're not on trial here, but I have some character references I found. There is a current article in American Film about you, based on The Ballad of the Sad Café where the author Will Schneider says, "Carradine relishes a full day on a ski slope, sews is a top-notched kid-sized Spider- Man costume, saddles a horse deftly and rides easily, and hasn't raised his voice at his agent once in their seven-year relationship." Another reference I found that people in your family apparent describe you as the white sheep of the Carradine family. You're now on Broadway playing a man who was famous for saying, "I never met a man I didn't like." Here's The New York Times two weeks ago, "The tall truths of a yarn spinner, a great American legend." What reviews I found of the Will Rogers Follies seemed to be confusing you with Will Rogers in saying you're just the right person in a moral sense, as well as acting ability to do it. May 26, 1991 1 Keith Carradine: It's a little weird. Phil Anderson: Yeah. Well, that's you. Then I found a quote from Joan Tewkesbury who wrote Nashville, which we're going to see next, a clip from it, where she said she based one of the characters in the movie on you. It's not the character that you played, it's the character of Kenny who is a mild-mannered, very pleasant young guy who turns out to be the assassin. She said here is the reason why she chose it. She said that you were, "One of the most genuinely kind human beings I think I've ever know in my life." Nevertheless, you've played Tom, a self-absorbed folk rock singer/composer who's come to Nashville to record an album, but he's also just decided to break off from this famous trio he's been a part of. Did that feel like ... Did you have any personal associations with Tom for that part? Keith Carradine: That was one of the most difficult characters I've ever had to play because particularly at that point in my career, I was I guess about only five years into my professional career, still pretty young and very insecure about myself in many ways, about the true nature of my own character, whatever that was. Playing someone like him felt dangerous to me. I was worried about being associated with someone like that. I was worried that people would think that was what I was really like. It made me very uncomfortable to play him. I didn't like him. But that's where Altman was so smart, because what he got onscreen, he got someone who didn't like himself. Phil Anderson: Well, here is Tom. We've got the clip from Nashville, one of the more famous moments. You still get royalties on that song? Keith Carradine: Yeah. Phil Anderson: Really? Good. Keith Carradine: I think I just made three or four cents right there. Phil Anderson: How did you come to the attention of Robert Altman? Keith Carradine: In a typical way. I had an agent who was trying to get me started and he knew about this picture that was being put together at Warner Brothers, which was McCabe and Mrs. Miller. He had talked to the producer and said, "There's a part in here for this young cowboy that's supposed to come to town. It says that he plays May 26, 1991 2 a banjo and I've got this client who plays the banjo." Then he called me up and told me about it, and I said, "I don't play the banjo." He said, "Well, you better learn." Keith Carradine: Some time went by and eventually they arranged a meeting. It was with Altman at his offices in Westwood. I went to the office. Somebody said, "Oh yeah, Bob is upstairs. You could just go up those stairs and take that door there." I walked up, knocked on the door, a voice said, "Come in." I walked in and it was a bedroom. He was standing there opening up this box and pulling up this pre-Colombian sculpture that he just brought back from ... He had been to the Cartagena Film Festival in Colombia and he was opening up this sculpture. I was just about six months out of having done Hair on Broadway. At that point, my hair was down to about here. He took a look at me and he said, "Well, so what are you doing?" I said, "Well, I just finished doing Hair and I just finished doing my first movie with Kirk Douglas and Johnny Cash." He says, "Oh. Well, we're going to do this thing up in Vancouver. It's not much of a part, but you want to do it?" I couldn't believe my ears. I said, "Well, yeah!" He said, "Well, your hair is pretty long." I said, "Oh, yeah." Because in those days, I thought it was important to have it, my hair. He said, "Well, okay. Why don't you come up and play it?" That was that. That's the way he works. He spoiled me because I didn't have to perform for him, I didn't have to do a reading or anything. But he basically casts behavior. He'll look at a person and decide whether or not they posses the qualities that he's looking for. That was the beginning of our relationship. I went up to Vancouver and showed up on the set. He says, "Well, come on in here." He took me into this room, sat me down in a chair and he said, "Okay." This guy pulled out the scissors, and my face just must have fallen and I went ashen. He said, "Hey. Listen, kid. If that's where your ego is, it's in the wrong place." Made a lot of sense. Phil Anderson: There's a myth about Robert Altman's directing style that his sets were free floating, freeform, filled with a lot of improvisation, very lax and casual. Did you experience that or do you think that's a miscalculation? Keith Carradine: Well, I think that that's a misimpression that is created by his work process. When he rehearses, when he's putting the scenes together, he encourages improvisation, if that's what you like to do. If you are not comfortable with that, then he just assumed you stayed with the script. But he does encourage improvisation in that regard. When you're working out the scene, and when he's staging it and deciding where he's going to put his camera, then he encourages that freedom and a maximum of input from actors, whatever they feel about the words that are being said, how they want to move, all of that. Then once everyone's comfortable, then he sets it and it stays pretty much the same. The improvisations aren't really happening on camera. Phil Anderson: You were fairly new to the business then, but did that feel comfortable for you, or were you scared about having to put more input? Keith Carradine: It scared me to death. I wanted to be told what to do. I was very nervous about it. I felt completely at sea if I May 26, 1991 3 was having to just make up, because I hadn't studied, I hadn't gone to acting classes where you do that as an exercise on a regular basis. It was all very foreign to me. I preferred sticking with what was scripted. That was fine. That was ... He didn't discourage that either. Phil Anderson: Nashville was clearly a celebrated project because it was perceived as being his big bicentennial statement, a big judgment on America. At the same time he also used the Nashville scene, which is getting to be fairly popular among the wider public at the time, as a skillet and as a framework.