Robert Altman

Robert Altman is recalled as the filmmaker behind A Wedding, a film in production in Chicago, and as a figure whose work reminded Andy Warhol of projects he and others had tried to pursue in an earlier period. The diary offers no direct portrait of Altman; his significance here lies in the way Warhol uses the film to measure past creative ambitions against work then under way.

A Wedding in Production

During a dinner account, Warhol notes that Dina Merrill was appearing in A Wedding, which was being filmed in Chicago. He describes the film as having only a small amount of storyline. This brief assessment is the diary’s most concrete description of the production, presenting it as a current film project rather than recounting its plot or Altman’s role on set.

A Comparison with Earlier Ambitions

Warhol’s sharper observation is that Altman was doing things that Warhol and an unspecified group had tried to do in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The remark places Altman’s work in a retrospective frame: a film being made in the present prompts Warhol to look back at creative efforts from an earlier moment. The diary does not identify those efforts, so the comparison remains suggestive rather than specific.

The Limits of the Portrait

Altman appears only through this passing reference to his film and Warhol’s comparison. There is no recorded conversation between them, no account of their relationship, and no further description of Altman’s career or methods. The entry therefore preserves less a biography than a small record of how Warhol recognized an echo of his own earlier ambitions in another filmmaker’s work.