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Hi Alan,

Thanks for being part of this. Kitsap Creative is a zine-style publication for and about the people making things happen creatively in this county — artists, makers, directors, musicians, builders of all kinds.

These questions are yours. Take as much or as little space as you need. There are no wrong answers — just your story in your words.

We’ll share a draft with you before anything goes live.

Your father was on Paramount soundstages every day of his life — child actor, DeMille’s AD, TV director. You’ve said you were “born into fantasy,” that walking into those giant cold stages as a kid and seeing that blinding light on the horizon felt like “the only reality.” When did you realize that was going to be your life too, and not just your father’s?

You’ve said Kind of Blue was your film school — that without that album, you’re not sure you could have made films. You prowled Tower Records every Friday, made unlabeled cassette tapes, walked Manhattan watching movies unfold on the sidewalks scored in your head. Most directors talk about being shaped by other directors. You were shaped by Coltrane and Miles Davis. What does music give you that cinema by itself can’t?

You’ve talked about music being “the hub of the wheel” — and you’ve done extraordinary things with it. You re-edited the entirety of Remember My Name to Alberta Hunter’s blues, cutting a third of the dialogue because she was “more articulate than I could ever be.” You built the Equinox soundtrack from the most obscure bins you could find at Tower Records — Africa, Iran — and your producer said, “That’s not in the script!” You wrote 80 percent of the Trouble in Mind score in Mark Isham’s basement in a single day. For you, does the sound come first and the movie follow it? Or do they find each other?

There’s a story about Welcome to L.A. — you’d been putting off showing it to Altman, your mentor, because it wasn’t finished. Then Bergman called, interested in Keith Carradine, and you said yes immediately. Altman ended up in the room too, watching it alongside Bergman — but he knew you’d said yes to Bergman after telling him no. We’d love to hear your version of how that played out.

You’ve called yourself “Captain Autonomous-Anonymous” — and you’ve said that when you started, the term “independent filmmaking” didn’t even exist as a label. “Give me a little budget and I’ll be happy working over here in my little corner. But don’t you ever touch my fucking corner!” You figured out how to escape the studio system before anyone had a playbook for it. What did that actually cost you?

Altman told you, “The best advice is, don’t take any.” He never taught you anything, but you learned everything. You’ve described him as “caustic and wicked and wonderful” — imposing, those X-ray blue eyes, a guy who flew B-24s at 19 and was afraid of nothing. What’s the one thing about Bob that nobody else seems to get right when they talk about him?

Keith Carradine has been in your films across five decades — Welcome to L.A., Choose Me, The Moderns, Ray Meets Helen. That’s not just a working relationship; that’s a creative marriage. What does Keith bring into a room that changes what’s possible?

You’ve made films under what most people would consider impossible circumstances — tiny budgets, no studio support, problems at every turn. But you’ve said that’s actually the work. Not inspiration striking, but solving the problem in front of you — financial, editorial, creative, whatever it is. Is that how it’s always been? Is filmmaking fundamentally problem-solving?

You bought a house on Bainbridge Island without telling Joyce. She was on the set of Major League in Milwaukee when she unknowingly became an islander. You’ve said you prefer rain — that it’s “life’s greatest liquid” and blue skies are “an anathema to filming interesting movies.” You’ve been here over 30 years now. What has this island done to the way you see — and hear — the world?

You started painting during your 15-year hiatus from film, and someone told you, “Your paintings look like your movies.” You agreed. But you’ve also said painting will never replace filmmaking, which is “your oxygen.” What does a canvas give you that a screen doesn’t? And what can’t it do?

Joyce. You’ve said she’s the light and you’re the gray. That if you had to paint the two of you, 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.” Altman pulled you aside once and said she was his favorite person on set — not because of her photographs, but because of the spirit she brings without drawing attention to herself. What’s it like making art for a lifetime alongside someone who sees it from the other side of the lens?

You’ve said, “People just don’t surrender to my movies, ever. They keep waiting for a regular movie to break out, and when it doesn’t they just hate them. I don’t know any other way.” After five decades of making films on your own terms — is there a movie of yours that you wish more people had found?

You’re on Bainbridge. You’re painting. You’ve made 22 films. What are you thinking about now — what’s still unfinished?

Is there anything we haven’t asked that you’d like to talk about? The floor is yours.