“Nobody Ever Gave Me Anything”: Alan Rudolph on Robert Altman, Bruce Willis, Kurt Vonnegut, and Resurrecting Breakfast of Champions

Among the most inspired choices for a 4K restoration this year would have to be Alan Rudolph’s Breakfast of Champions. Despite coming out in the middle of Bruce Willis’ Armageddon/The Sixth Sense heyday, the 1999 Kurt Vonnegut adaptation died a quick death at the box office, which certainly wasn’t aided by the critic class who thought at the time American Beauty was somehow a more scathing critique of the country’s false promises and personal repression. A genuinely bizarre film, bolstered by an outstanding cast and an abrasive form, Breakfast of Champions arrives at just the right moment for reclamation. 

In his earnest romanticism and wild stylization, Rudolph, for lack of a better comparison, could at times come off as the child of Frank Borzage and Seijun Suzuki, which made it extra exciting that he sat down with The Film Stage in what turned out to be his first-ever Zoom call. It certainly meant a lot for this Film Stage contributor, who along with being a considerable fan of Rudolph’s body of work, remembered the poster art of a grinning Uncle Sam-dressed Willis alongside the frowning child of Angela’s Ashes being amongst the most ubiquitous advertising images of that iconic film year.

The Film Stage: When Breakfast of Champions was made and released in the late 1990s, do you remember what you were thinking was the general state of the country at the time? Because watching this film, I feel like it’s actually a lot angrier than a lot of your other work in.

Alan Rudolph: Well––since, I think, the ’60s––I’ve always been angry with this country. If I could actually have picked a time with disregard to a response or a pocketbook to release the film we made I would have probably picked exactly when it’s going to open up at these few theaters, which is a couple of days before the election in 2024, because yeah: I was angry with the country at the time when you probably weren’t born. [Laughs]

I was a little kid. 

Yeah, we had just come through the Reagan years––not just, but enough of them––and then we got disappointed again. And I actually thought that most people wanted to look under the tent, and I was shocked to see that they didn’t at the time. This film, against your headlines in your local paper, seems almost friendly compared to what’s actually out there. And it’s funny: this is the first interview I’ve ever done for Breakfast of Champions. When the film came out, no one wanted to talk about it except me. It came and went so fast, there was no one to talk to. I appreciate Ron Mann for having the guts to even show it in public these days. I still remain it’s probably my best accomplishment or my most satisfying film in some ways.

I’m actually curious if you’re aware of Luc Moullet, who’s a filmmaker and critic, and is still alive actually. He was a critic for Cahiers du cinéma at one point. He called Breakfast of Champions one of the best films of the 1990s. I was curious if you were aware of that.

No, I don’t know him. What’s his name? 

Luc Moullet. He’s admittedly on the obscure side. 

Well, then, that makes sense.

Yeah, his films are very much worth seeing. He’s a really brilliant critic and filmmaker.

What do you make of that?

Well, I think that fits with the offbeat tone of his films. He also has a very outsider perspective that I think is similar to yours, so I could see how, in a way, you two are kindred spirits. I mean, watching the film, I saw it for the first time when I was doing prep for this interview, and I was really surprised by the movie tonally. It feels very unlike anything else that was coming out at the time, and I think probably Moullet was able to recognize the originality of it.

Well, I should send him a bottle of champagne but he’s French, so he probably has a few. If he liked this film, he’s probably in hiding. But, you know, I thought the country was ready for a big shake-up. The history of this film, it’s funny––and I’m just realizing it for the first time; maybe after this string of interviews I’ll be numb to it––but this is now chapter three of this film for me. I wrote the screenplay for Altman in 1974 or 1975, right after we did Nashville. He had some writers working on it. I guess someone had approached him with the book and no one could crack it. And he told me, who was just a novice––I was working as an assistant director––he said, “Take a stab at this. I need a screenplay as soon as you can come up with one.” And I said, “What are my marching orders?” He said, “Don’t follow the book. Whatever you do, don’t follow the book. It’s impossible to follow, so figure out a story and then we’ll go from there.”

I met Vonnegut––and this was when I was in my 30s––after that, and Vonnegut said only one thing then. He said, “Don’t follow the book. The book and the film are going to be separate. They should never try and imitate each other. Take your inspiration and run with it.” So that’s what I did. I focused on the characters. Because otherwise it would have to have been a study, I think, of Vonnegut. And I knew Bob [Altman] didn’t want that. And the picture didn’t get made. And Bob moved on. And I moved on. And with David Blocker, the producer of it, when I had gotten a paying job once, we bought the rights for a year or two or three, but they were expensive and nobody was interested.

Then I found out––you probably can research this––but I found out that a whole host of directors had tried to crack this thing and nobody could. Everyone said it was impossible. But I actually had a clear understanding of what to do with it, which was to use the book as inspiration and then expand. So because the book is such a mordant view of America and its values and its lies and its treatment of its humans, and it’s hilarious, I thought that I would use the book as a starting point of my reflection of the state of the country and hopefully keep it hilarious. And your friend Luc was the only one who seemed to appreciate that. [Laughs]

Alan Rudolph

You brought up adaptation. If I’m correct, the vast majority of your films were original screenplays. So was there any intimidation in going about the process of adaptation, or were you just completely uninhibited?

If you’ve never met Robert Altman, you can only imagine what his force was like, especially then. And then, it was still the old studio system and Bob was the only one breaking the rules and getting away with it on his own terms. So I had a career as an assistant director, which is a full career for people who don’t have any creative urge. But I knew that was a dead end and I didn’t want to be one anymore, but I got enlisted by Altman. And then I went to work with him. And I remember the first week I came home to my wife, who is a still photographer on Breakfast and other films. And I said, “I think I’m working with Picasso. I think this guy is going to change everything.” So when Altman gives you [advice], follow your instincts, you figure, “Oh, that’s the best advice I could get.”

And when Kurt followed it up––not when I was making the movie, but when I was in New York and I was intimidated by having lunch with him––he didn’t really care what I did with it as long as I didn’t try and follow the book. And I said, “Well, you know, I’ve decided not to follow the book because you’re a main character in it, and to do that would be to do almost a biography, and that’s not what we’re after.” I said, “I’m going to focus on the characters.” He said, “Good idea,” and ordered more booze. So yeah: I think I just ran with it. I was too dumb to know any different, I guess.

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I ran across a line you gave while doing an interview for your last film, Ray Meets Helen, where you said that every American is eccentric. In watching this film, I thought about how much pressure there is to live a so-called “normal life” or just get through the day in a way. So was that line very present in conceiving this film?

Yeah, I guess it’s in my DNA. I mean, there’s no such thing as a normal person because normalcy, standard rules––which I guess are the fabric of a controllable society––you can’t tell me ten people you know who are normal. It’s people who are conforming to a version of what they’re supposed to be. I took on the big enemy in 1998 when we made the movie, before the Internet, so the attitudes were slower and different and maybe more honest. But I took the big enemy, the big symbol, as advertising. Because advertising takes the most fragile, important thing you have as an individual––your identity, which seems to be a sub-theme of the book––and it replaces you with their version of your identity, which is a lot easier, sweeter, saltier, tastier, easier to understand, more palatable and less thinking involved. And then pretty soon you become the robot that Kurt was always writing about, that you just do what they tell you to do and I guess in his mind you become the machine.

The year of the first Independent Spirit Awards [1986], we were at the first Spirit Award assembly and we went there with Trouble in Mind, and some guy stuck a mic in my face and said, “What do you think of the Independent Spirit Awards the first year?” And I said, “Well, I don’t get it. If people are so independent, how can they all get together?” And I thought it would be a lot better if it was called the Original Film Awards instead of the independent one. I still believe that, and I think that’s in this film and maybe in all my films––eccentricity in our human behavior is one thing. We get more eccentric as we’re pushed by artificial factors to become the way the factors want us to be. But also I’ve seen life for various reasons, even as a kid, as an absurdist enterprise.

I mean, I used to love those Ealing Studio films with Alec Guinness, you know, those absurd but straight-faced comedies. I guess that’s what connected me to the novel. I mean, the novel was intimidating and I think anybody who read it for the first time back then when it came out, it’s like good music or an acid trip or whatever: it changed your thinking forever. There was before Breakfast and after Breakfast. When I wrote it for Altman, I assumed, okay, he’ll just do what he wants with it. When Bruce Willis called me in 1998 or ’97 and said, “I just bought the rights to Breakfast of Champions. I want to go as quickly as possible. You have a screenplay. When can we start shooting?” Now, you know, you don’t get those calls. And I thought, “Well, I’d probably, on my own, read the book again, start from scratch, see what I’ve learned.” But there wasn’t any time, and I’m kind of glad there wasn’t. I just dove in. And you know, Bruce, who… poor Bruce, although I don’t think he’d like anybody to feel sorry for him right now. He is a complex guy and I had worked with him once and he’s a pretty straight shooter. We probably don’t agree politically on anything and yet in his soul, he’s a very full, rich, funny, articulate, literate kind of guy.

And he said, “I want to make a funny movie, a comedy.” He said, “I’ve been going through some things and I really want to make a comedy. And this made me laugh. Let’s go.” So we went and I decided I can’t make this about the ’70s. I don’t want to make a movie about the ’70s in 1998, whenever we shot it and we don’t have a lot of time. So I made it a reflection about the country I saw then. And people didn’t see the country is in such bad shape––at least maybe not on the surface it wasn’t. I don’t remember now what it was like then, but underneath it’s the same corrosive forest as, you know––the rich get richer, the racial divide is sharper, the lies keep flowing, and the pawns become robots. And free will is the only thing that’ll save you. So here it is. And now I’m talking about it 25 years after we made it. And except for the technical side, it was more money than I had had for a film before. I think it was 9 million or something. But the technical side could have been maybe slightly tweaked. But I probably wouldn’t change a thing if I was going to make it today. 

I did tell Bruce once, before we started, “This guy’s a car dealer, but he’s a symbol. He’s a symbol of all the things that lead to fame and fortune and shallow thinking.” And I said, “I would look at him as a politician. I look at him as a politician that has spewed lies and falsehoods to get to where he is. And then he suddenly wakes up and realizes that there’s nothing there. And he’s looking for an answer in a hurry and not knowing that you have to develop it from within.” And I don’t know if that registered with Bruce at the time, but that’s the way I looked at it. I said we could make the same movie about a sports figure or a newscaster or even a welder, but the most famous, richest, and known man in town who everyone trusts is kind of a falsehood. So now it’s even, maybe it’s prescient, maybe it’s not––I don’t know. 

You brought up the technical aspect of the film, which has a lot of experimentation with animation. At the time, were you very intrigued by the advent of computer-generated imagery that was really starting to become more present in film?

No, I don’t even know how to Zoom! I never learned how to type. I couldn’t tell you where my cell phone is. The animation in the film, the little we did was an offshoot or an enlargement of Kurt’s drawings, which are such an important thing. He showed you drawings as opposed to writing about things, and you picked up, “Oh yeah, I get what he’s trying to say.” And I tried to show you behavior. Comedic behavior, but behavior as opposed to trying to dig for the serious reasons because they are always the same. I mean, history is no different than it is today. It’s always the same joke. And I’ve never been technically that astute because the budgets have been so low. So you just make up ways to do things. I would say our budget for special effects––or whatever, “visual effects”––was less than they pay for coffee in a visual-effects room these days. We kind of made things up as we went along. We had to make all of our commercials, except for a handful. 

You know what product placement is in the movies? Some companies will pay you to put their product right in the foreground, which I never would want to do. And on these low-budget movies, people would say they’ll give you $10,000 to do it. On those films I would say I don’t care [and turn it down]. This one, I asked for all the product placement. I said I would even use commercials for companies, put them right there on screen, the full things. Everybody got excited thinking we’re going to get a lot of financial support for this. But no one would touch us. No one. We shot it in Twin Falls, Idaho. Bruce told me to look at it and it was perfect. It has, their main drag, it has every franchise known to man. And that was part of the theme. And then when, somehow, they caught wind of what we’re trying to do, not one of them would let us show them on film. We asked for a car dealer––you know, General Motors––to give us permission. They wouldn’t let us. If you’ll notice, every emblem had to be taken off of every car in the movie. So I guess people knew it wasn’t friendly then.

I’m curious, looking back at your filmography, do you see it as really representative of a far different point in film history? Because I think that when I observe how many films you made and how many of them, especially with big-name actors and all while maintaining your very unique sensibility. I find it almost kind of unbelievable. It seems like directors these days aren’t given as many opportunities as you or Altman were to experiment.

If I could go inside your brain, I would get in there and rewire that thought, because: given opportunities? Given opportunities? You think people call me up and say, “Can you make me a strange little movie for no money right now?” If they did, I’d probably have made ten more movies. I had this discussion with someone yesterday. He said the movie business is terrible and people are out of work and nobody knows what to do. I said, “Because they’re followers.” Because they got into the assembly line and now when the assembly line has a new boss in town, streaming, they don’t know how to react. But no, nobody ever gave me anything. I have at least two or three films where you can’t find them anywhere. That’s why I’m doing this now, because this has never streamed before. There was one DVD of it that I bought at Warehouse Records the day they closed for 99 cents, so I could have physical proof I made the film. But now did you get to see the new timing we did on it?

Yeah, I was sent the screener link for it. I thought it looked great. 

Yeah, I haven’t seen that yet in one piece, because I don’t know how to hook it up to my TV screen. Movies, to me, their faces have to be bigger than yours right now before it’s a movie. I used to say this a lot; it’s not the film you want to make that you make, it’s the film that you’re able to make that you make. I got a few films I wanted to make made. And the other ones were just ones that we could get made, and then some of them became, “I’m so glad that happened by force or accident or luck or whatever it took.”

But no one ever calls you up––not me, at least. That’s why you can’t find these films: because I used to say I was the Claude Rains of American directors, The Invisible Man. I have no regrets about it; I’m not sad about it. And I think I gotta look up this Luc Moullet fella to see what he has to say about it.

I’ll say it’s not just him. Amongst cinephiles or my friends in the cinephile community I’ve met through the Internet, you’re considered one of the best directors of the ’70s onwards. And in particular they love Remember My Name. I know that movie’s had such a troubled history and especially on home video and being unavailable to see. People really still have found a way to see it regardless. That movie––to cinephiles, I know––is considered one of the very best movies of the 1970s.

Well, thank you. I thought it was my best movie for years. But we only had six prints of it and five of them got lost. It was on Turner Classic Movies. I don’t know how technically that works. It’s never been on DVD. No one will try and resurrect it because there’s some little music-rights thing, which I can’t even imagine [clearing]. And I just was carrying around a film that was a ghost film. Nobody had seen it. And when we made Choose Me, that was a deliberate effort. I mean, there was more than just making a low-budget movie; I was trying to reconnect to Remember My Name, the process, and everything that Altman had started I wanted to follow through on it and I went after that little film with a vengeance.

Breakfast, I wish people had seen it, liked it. I mean, I didn’t know people could say that about you in print or in public. My friend, the novelist Tom Robbins, says you don’t have a career––you have a careen. And I think that’s probably more accurate than anything else. You just bounce around. And when the new technology and way of doing movies came in, I didn’t want to do the thing I never did before, which is wait in line and pitch and ask. So I just started painting. Like everyone threatens to do––only I did it. [Laughs]

Thank you for your time; it was a real honor to speak to you. Good luck with the re-release of this film. I think it is gonna have a real new life with this restoration.

Oh, Ethan. I gotta take you with me, man.

The 4K restoration of Breakfast of Champions opens in limited release on November 1 via Shout! Studios.