Photo illustration: Vulture; Photo: 20th Century Fox/Everett Collection
Sissy Spacek was 27 when she shot 3 womenbut she might as well be 17. That's how believable she is as Pinkie Rose, a naive cypher working at a rehab spa in a California desert town who acts like a sheltered teenager. It's her initial departure that makes Spacek's gradual transformation so striking. When Pinkie begins to emulate Millie (Shelley Duvall), her more authoritative and relentlessly chatty colleague, she takes Millie's adult life to the extreme: she starts smoking, wears makeup, dates their married landlord Edgar (Robert Fortier), borrows Millie's car without asking, and generally turns into a sassy pill. Spacek's voice becomes a little deeper, her mannerisms more expressive. Just think, she didn't even have a suitable script.
Spacek has already starred in Badlands And Carrie When 3 women was released in 1977, but nothing prepared her for director Robert Altman's loose production. Despite the hyper-specific dialogue and Bergman-esque existentialism, the cast and crew largely worked to the general outline that Altman had laid out. Spacek may not have been as uneducated as Pinkie, but she nonetheless received an education in unconventional filmmaking.
Today, 3 women figures prominently on Spacek's lengthy resume. It's hypnotic from start to finish, and the artistic, ambiguous ending involving Edgar's death is still as breathtaking as it was when Jimmy Carter was president. Spacek essentially plays a dual role—say, light Pinkie and dark Pinkie—and seeing her mutate from one to the other (and back again) is to see a masterclass in characterization. Duvall received the lion's share of the film's accolades, including the Best Actress prize at Cannes that year, but Spacek is no less mesmerizing. Like New York Times' Vincent Canby wrote in his reviewshe “adds a new dimension of creepiness to the waif she played so effectively in Carrie” With the 75-year-old Oscar winner in the new psychodrama by Lynne Ramsay Die my lovewe called her to reminisce about this cult film.
Origin story 3 women is that it came to Robert Altman in a dream, and it was you who were in that dream. Do you remember he told you this?
Yes, I even have a small drawing. I usually keep a small notebook when I'm working on each film, and the bulk of his dream involved us being underwater in a pool and me sitting on a couch at the bottom of the deep end of the pool. This is what my drawing was like: me as a figure sitting on a sofa. I did a movie with Alan Rudolph, Bob's protégé. We made a film together called Welcome to Los Angelesand that's how Bob met me. He looked through the dailies and I got into his head. That's when he had a dream, and that was enough for me. Was I in your dream? I bet I will!
Has another director ever told you: “You were in my dream, and now here’s the role”?
No! I just love Bob. We had a wonderful, wonderful, fun relationship. Oh my god, let's talk about the acting director.
You can tell this just by watching his films – by the way he handles his characters, where he places the camera.
He was the first director who never had to wait. You always had to wait for the other actor to stop talking before you started talking, right? But he put lapel microphones on everyone. That's how it is, but it wasn't then. This way you could talk whenever you wanted if you decided you wanted to say something.
So he comes to you with this dream, and then he writes, as I understand it, a treatment – but never a complete script. What was the treatment?
This was the setting of every scene. This was what had to happen and A little dialogue. But it was all in a nutshell, and his assistant at the end of the day typed up what we actually did. She took notes all day, God bless her. We took the pages we drew that day of filming and put them into the script. So by the end of the film we had a complete script. But there was so much freedom there. Pinkie Rose, my heroine, was quiet. I just devoured Shelley Duvall, God bless her sweet, sweet, wonderful soul, and wanted to be her. She had pages and pages and pages. He wrote a lot of her dialogue because her character spoke continuously and she was part of that process. She said, “Sissy, I'm going to have to rewrite this 100 times.” That's how she learned her lines. She was so expensive, but she really carried this movie on her back. I loved working with her. We lost touch for a while after she first moved back to Texas, but reconnected just a few years ago and were in regular contact before she passed away. She was a gentle soul.
Oh, that's good to hear. She had, I guess you could say, a difficult path to Hollywood.
Well, she made most of her films with Bob, who adored her. The whole team did it. By the time I came to work with him, she had already worked with Bob many times and just took me under her wing. We had so much fun together and she worked really hard. There was real magic in her personality. She could make anyone do anything to her. Fairy tale theater.
I know what an incredible project I've invested myself in.
And she knew every young star working in film and television. We all loved her. So, Shelley, if you're listening, we still felt the same way about you.
It was really touching to see all this tribute pour out when she died. She received great recognition, which she did not always receive during her lifetime.
She had such a wonderful childlike quality about her. We share a deep, deep connection: We were both from Texas and loved Texas.
You just talked about dialogue in 3 women. There was a lot of improvisation, right? We usually associate improvisation with comedy. That's not what this movie is about, although it can be quite funny at times. How do you like improvisation?
It was smooth as silk. It was wonderful. And I was young. I guess I didn't have that much experience and those films were more traditional. When you work as a young person, you just go with the flow. In fact, I think Shelley did most of the heavy lifting. She had these big circle skirts on, and at one point she closes them in the car door.
Yes, I like it.
And it was just an accident that they let happen. So that's how it was.
What was your final understanding of Pinkie and who she is when we meet her in the film?
She was unformed, like most people. Of course I was. I grew up in a small town. Bob based a lot of these characters on who we were, and I really just skipped over Shelley's character, kind of imitating her. I think that's what young people do. I remember when I moved to New York at a young age, I got off the bus and it was raining and everyone ran to this awning and crawled under the awning to dry out. I looked and saw a beautiful girl with Twiggy eye makeup and I just thought: I want to be her. And the next day I painted Twiggy's eyes. It didn't work for me the way it worked for that girl.
Through the mimicry you speak of, your character essentially reflects the aesthetic and tone of Shelley's character, Millie. Did you notice this in real time while filming?
Exactly. Pinky does interesting things like kids do, like when they worked in the geriatric ward of a nursing home by the pool. She goes completely underwater and thinks it's funny. Then, when she eats a sandwich and has a drink with Millie, she blows into the straw to make a noise, just like a small child would. And when they're at the bar, she drinks beer from top to bottom. Or she walks through the saloon doors like she was seen in cowboy movies and falls on her butt. She's trying to impress Millie and Millie is annoyed.
While the beer was at the bar, Robert Altman spontaneously asked you to cut it all out, and apparently it didn't go very well on the first take. Do you remember this story?
I remember when I walked through the doors of the salon, I fell and broke my tailbone.
Oh my god.
Then I walked around with one of those little beanbags.
Okay, I didn't know that. I was thinking about the story Altman told about how you threw up after drinking beer for the first time.
You know what? I must have blocked it.
He talks about this in audio commentary on the film. Then he said, “Do you think you can do it again?” And you said yes. What we do when we're young, right?
Isn't this true? But if he said, “Jump off the building,” I probably would have done it.
Throughout the film, we see Pinkie kind of catch up with Millie – she becomes her, and then the coma sets in, and she returns to that childhood role, which in the end leads to a stillbirth. Because of these contrasts, did it feel like you were playing two different characters?
Fully. I was shooting a pistol with Robert Fortier, who played Edgar, and something in Pinkie's eyes changed. Her whole look, her whole essence changes. She surpassed Millie. She won over Millie, but then became cynical and cruel. I remember Shelley being very touching in the stillbirth scene. And I don't think she ever planned anything. She was in the moment, so like you said, it was happening in real time. I learned a lot from the person she was and the actress she was.
I'm a little surprised to see that Bob has been outspoken about how he interprets the ending over the years. Remember when you talked about what the film's ultimate message was?
No, I don't remember this. Tell me.
So, do you believe the women killed Edgar? This is the part that he talks about quite openly, even though it seems ambiguous when you watch the film.
It was probably led by Pinky, who had such a tight lead. I don't know. What do you think? You can only believe what he says, right?
That's the thing – I can't separate myself from what he said, which is that yes, they did kill him, and his body is buried under the pile of tires that the camera pans to in the last shot.
My God! Today I learned something. I wonder if this was part of his dream? Or I wonder if he led us in that direction or if he realized what it could be after he saw the footage.
He also talks about a more existential question: What if the last man in these women's lives left, and now there really were only women left? And in a broader sense, what if the last man on Earth disappeared?
Rule the world of women! What a world it would be.
Tell me about the situation. You shot in Palm Springs. Everything looks so dry and arid. How did you spend your time when you weren't filming?
Looking for shade. I'm very fair and freckled, so I put on sunscreen and tried to match yesterday's skin color. I remember seeing many full moons there in the evening. I've never been a desert girl. I am originally from the humid northeast part of Texas, and although there are some very dry areas in Texas, I have always worn hats and bonnets. It really spoke to the loneliness and strangeness of the film. I have to say that I didn't always understand the big picture of what was in Bob's head, and I don't think Shelley did either. We were his happy and sympathetic pawns with which he played on the chessboard. He was one of the great film artists.
It's nice to hear such loud praise for someone so many of us revere.
We all loved each other.
This audio commentary is on the Criterion channel if you want to hear it.
Oh great. I'll look at this with fresh eyes. To think I could live my whole life and never realize this.
Now you know that you killed Edgar.
Yeah! You've opened a real can of worms.
