Dr T and the Women

"Bob is like a matured shaman" said Gere about his director Robert Altman. "He knows the incantations!" A confirmed buddhist and most ardent defender of the Tibetan cause, Gere has also kept that perfect " Pretty Womanizing" type which makes men very jealous and women immediately more receptive. And that they had all the reasons to be since the press conference of Robert Altman's latest movie screened in the official competition section had a lot to do with... women.

Why did you issue a request to the press concerning the ending of the film?

Robert Altman: The ending is almost a biblical ending. The structure of this film is quite different from most movies and consecuently I think it is very important that the audience receives this film with that surprise.

Do you think Dr T understands women?

Dr T loves women too much, I don't think he understands women; the short cut way of saying this is that for most of his life he's been looking at women from the wrong end. But that's my story and I am going to stick to it!

Richard Gere: The whole idea of it is that it is ironically a guy who knows women very well. He's spent his whole life with women, when you see the movie you see he's dealing with emotional issues of women as mush as physical issues, and most of these women have lives where men just don't listen to them, and I think part of the problem is that literally, Dr T is a man who sees his relationships with women in terms of taking care of them, fixing them, making everything OK, and what he discovers in the process of the film is that that has a suffocating effect on the women that he loves. He loves them too much. So we can see that the hysteria complex that they have in the film is literally a malady where women start to go crazy because they are loved too much. There is no oxygen left for them. They are totally being taken care of. That is the essential irony of this character and also of his relationship with women. It is a symbiotic nature of love where women are drawn to men who take care of them. They haven't kind of found their own feet yet and established their own territory. The only two women who seem to be happy, frankly, are Liv Tyler and Kate Hudson. They go off together. They kind of escape from the world itself.

Mr Altman, do you know these extravagant women that you portray in the film?

RA: I was born to a family of women, I have two sisters, I grew up with women. I mean I have fit most of my life in society in company of women and I like women. The interesting thing is the women have the children, so consecuently, they don't move very much, they stay to take care of their family, and the men can say: "Oh that was fun but I'm going off somewhere else" - whatever they do. But the women have to keep the center of the family unit. Consecuently, in order to survive, they have to defer to the men as they do in society a great deal, but basically I think that they are much smarter than men (Richard Gere nods), they have more depth, they are less surface-oriented. In screening this film I'd just like to say that we have found that men and women see this film quite differently. The men tend to see it as it goes more on the dirty joke level, but the women get it right now. The only criticism that we get from women, is: "Is that politically correct? Women shouldn't be portrayed this way, because you make fools out of them." But I love these women, they are all women that I know, they are my family, and I think that if anyone thinks that we don't treat women properly, I think they have the wrong political agenda. I mean, women have to write about this...

RG: ...part of the comedy is that women can be crazy too!

RA: ...absolutely! And isn't it the best part of them?... No! (smiles)

RG: Obviously there is a satyrical aspect to the film, it is not intended as a kind of naturalistic movie. And thank God, because if we all had hats like that, we'd never get to see each other! (smiles) You know, Bob pushes everything a little bit, it is always a little bit more, I think all of his movies have had this element of pushing things a little bit to expose the truth that is below the surface. But I think the other element that is unique with Bob is that he never has any moral judgment on his characters. He doesn't say "This is good or this is bad", he doesn't put a kind of moral overlay on things, he allows people to just present themselves as we all do in life doing the best we can.

Mr Gere, How do you get your gracefulness, your ironic detachment, your calm, your graceful way of moving through the world?

RG: I think a lot of that is just getting older! (laughs) To tell you the truth! It might have something to do with the practice of spirituality. The reality is more in the detached observation sometimes than in getting caught up in the moment. I think Dr T is an interesting character for me because he is so straight and so normal, and I've laughed about this with my mother the other day because I said to her: "That is the son you always wanted! " (laughs) The one who is a doctor, has a country club, and plays golf, and all these things that I don't. I got to be a normal guy, you know, I married early, I got great kids, a kind of a normal family that is recognized, but I've never had a normal life in that way whatsoever. So for me it is kind of a joy to play this character with Bob, always with a bit of irony to it, but with emotional contents. I think this is what in the end for me lifts this up above some satyrical films, that is there is a strong emotional contents to it, and the ending does have a kind of transcending effect. Even when we were shooting it, it was a bit strange, in the desert, and kind of detached from the rest of the story, but absolutely determined by the story, and in a kind of spiritual, transcending way. I like the fact that the structural demands of the story took us to that point, and not to a more predictable one.

Was it long and difficult to cast the right talent for the right part in casting the women?

RG: We were surprised to find that neither of us was strong enough to get the financing for the film. So it was some kind of a wonderful awakening that we were incapable in one's instinct to get a movie on. And when Bob came to me with this one, I almost immediately said yes. One, it was him. Two, it was a beautifully structured script. And when we met and talked about it, it seemed that we were totally on the same wavelength. And the truth is we rarely spoke about the movie at all because it was so clear for us how to do it. But, if you knew the script in the context of how Bob makes films, it is kind of a no brainer, it is so perfect. In the casting process, I remember clearly Bob saying: "I want to be extremely careful about this, because each woman's character is so unique and totally memorable, with no confusion."

RA: The big problem is not casting, I wanted women who represented all kinds of women. We were doing an exaggeration of upper Texas Dallas society. Dallas is a very strange place. There are no mountains and there is no sea. There is no reason for a city to be where Dallas is. There is a big freeway and a lot of big corporate buildings, Dallas is a city of accountants. They make money and that is all they really think about. The women who are basically stuck there go shopping, and when they go shopping they get dressed up, the exaggeration of the costumes, the extraordinary number of hats is just a slight exaggeration. I won't say which ones, but two, one in particular of the women who play a rather major role as the patients, is not an actress at all, she was a Dallas socialite. And she had no problem acting because that is what she does all her life.We were trying and asking her to act as anybody else other than herself.

RG: The opening sequence of the film which is that whole crazy casino, probably half of the women out there were not actresses...

RA: Well... We had 50/60 actors from Dallas, and they are women who can't pursue their careers because their husbands and families dictate them that they have to live in Dallas. Most of them are working in teatres and have this desire to express themselves, and I was amazed, all the women you see in this film, in the casino, in the sanatorium, they were all Dallas women....

Robin Gatto