HealtH (1980)

Interesting facts

HealtH is a 1980 American ensemble comedy film, the seventeenth feature project from director Robert Altman. It stars Carol Burnett, Glenda Jackson, James Garner, Lauren Bacall, and Paul Dooley, and was written by Altman, Dooley and Frank Barhydt. The film's title is an acronym for "Happiness, Energy, and Longevity through Health".

Production

Under the supervision of Alan Ladd, Jr., head of 20th Century-Fox, director Robert Altman made HealtH for US$6 million through his Lion's Gate Films company (unrelated to the present-day firm based in Vancouver). At the time, Altman had commitments to deliver films for Fox until 1981; HealtH was his fifteenth feature project.

In response to the diminishing box office returns of his last three efforts (A Wedding, Quintet and A Perfect Couple), and in case any delays could put a damper on his financing, Altman rushed HealtH into production. The film was shot in sequence at only one location: the Don CeSar Beach Hotel in St Pete Beach, Florida. Production began on February 20, 1979, and continued for three months.

To capture the authenticity of the convention in the movie, art director Bob Quinn and co-writer Frank Barhydt visited an actual one in Boston, Massachusetts before shooting. Over one hundred health food companies contributed to the set. One of them, Sovex Granola, participated during the shoot; their scenes did not make it into the finished film, but they received end-credit billing.

Robert Altman was known to wear different hats on every new production of his; on the set of HealtH, he wore a straw one. While filming, Altman got into a conflict with members of the local Teamsters branch, and had to pay "outrageous salaries" for certification.

Garner recalled "we had a lot of fun making it... I loved Bob Altman."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.