C’s:

 

Robert Altman (director): “We do research tor a Western picture through photographs or drawings that
people made at that time. . . . You see a picture of a cowboy with a big hat. The assumption is that everybody
wore these big hats. Well, a glass plate tor a camera cost about two dollars in those days, so you didn't go around
and take snapshots everywhere A photographer was very caretul about what he took a picture ot. My con-
tention is that some guy comes into town and he's got this big hat on, everybody in town runs down the street
and they run to the photographer and say, ‘Hey, there's a guy out there with the goddamnedest—looking hat
you've ever seen. (30 take a picture of it.’

”Most of the American West was populated by first—generation Europeans—Irish and some ltalians, English,
Dutch. All the clothes they had would have been European. . . . I actually got wardrobe of that period from
Warner Bros, took it up to Vancouver and hung it up on racks, then assembled my cast and said: “Everybody
gets to have one pair ot pants, two shirts, one vest, sweater, light coat, one heavy raincoat, one hat, and then
there's objects that you can go and pick around." Everybody picked their own wardrobe. Of course, all this
wardrobe had holes in it and was tattered to make it look aged and old. From this, | could tell the personality of
each actor—the guy who wanted to be the most tlamboyant picked the most flamboyant stuff, and so on.

”I said, ‘Now, the needles and threads and patches are over here, and you've got two days to sew up your
holes, because otherwise you'll die trom cold up here.’ So they repaired all their clothes—because people didn't
run around with clothes with holes in them—and suddenly that wardrobe became part of their characters, and

they became part of the wardrobes character. And everybody was eccentric, and yet everybody was the same."

McCABE AND MRS. MILLER (1971) - ILSE RICHTER, COSTUME DESIGNER