At the age of 71, Robert Altman now bears an uncanny resemblance to Colonel Sanders. He is wearing white linen and a straw hat, which make him look more like Kentucky Fried Chicken on the beach than a world-respected 'auteur' film-maker.
But Altman is the man who wrote and directed Pret A Porter, so he knows his fashion, although he considers it a 'funny, ridiculous world'. So we kick off the interview by discussing the cut of my jacket, and he seems quite put out to move on to his latest film - Kansas City, a trawl through 1930s jazz and corruption starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miranda Richardson and Harry Belafonte. But then again, Robert Altman is not a happy man and he never has been. A former World War II bomber pilot, his career has seen spectacular highs (Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player ) and worse lows (Popeye ) since he made his first film in 1957.
That was almost 40 years ago, and there is not much you can tell Robert Altman, Oscar-nominated director and producer and one-time cocaine addict, about Hollywood or point out anything in it that he likes.
Thus The Player, a searing satire on modern-day Hollywood.
'I really show things just the way it seems to me they are,' he says. 'I don't know how accurate I am. But it's my instinct and my impressions that I go by. It's not fighting against the system, or at least not as much as I would like - I wish I were more courageous - but I see it and I have to comment on it.' And as far as Altman can see, 'the world has got worse, the greed in the world has now been legitimised more; people don't try to pose any longer, they don't try to hide it as much. I think it's quite sad; everything is based on money; it's not what you do, it's how much money you make - that's how you're accepted in society.
'We live in a pretty bad civilisation, it's not going to last very long - literally. It's corrupt, it's become corrupted by greed. Our heroes should be our teachers, the people who do things, the artists, and they're not; our heroes are the thieves and the cleverest, who make the most money'.