All All. Sign In. True Independants. American filmmakers who got their start and some of whom have remained outside of Hollywood and New York. List activity. Robert Altman. Director Producer Writer Gosford Park He entered St.
Peters Catholic school at the age six, and spent a short time at a Catholic high school. From there, he went to Rockhurst High School. It was then that he started exploring the art of exploring sound with the cheap tape recorders available at the time. After his discharge from the military, he became fascinated by movies and he and his first wife, LaVonne Elmer, moved to Hollywood, where Altman tried acting appearing in the film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty , songwriting he wrote a musical intended for Broadway, "The Rumors are Flying" , and screen-writing he co-wrote the screenplay for the film Bodyguard and wrote the story uncredited for Christmas Eve , but he could not get a foot hold in Tinseltown.
After a brief fling as publicity director with a company in the business of tattooing dogs, Altman finally gave up and returned to his hometown of Kansas City, where he decided he wanted to do some serious work in filmmaking. An old friend of his recommended him to a film production company in Kansas City, the Calvin Co. After a few months of work in writing scripts and editing films, Altman began directing films at Calvin.
It was here while working on documentaries, employee training films, industrial and educational films and advertisements that he learned much about film making. All in all, Altman pieced together sixty to sixty-five short films for Calvin on every subject imaginable, from football to car crashes, but he kept grasping for more challenging projects. He wrote the screenplay for the Kansas City-produced feature film Corn's-A-Poppin' , he produced and directed several television commercials including one with the Eileen Ford Agency, he co-created and directed the TV series The Pulse of the City which ran for one season on the independent Dumont network, and he even had a formative crack at directing local community theater.
His big-screen directorial debut came while still at Calvin with The Delinquents and, by , he left the Calvin Co. He was hardly the producer's first choice - more than fifteen other directors had already turned it down.
