In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kate Altman lived in Los Angeles, in particular the Laurel Canyon area, an epicenter of art and music and film. One night, while sitting at a bar with a young German filmmaker named Wim Wenders, she was asked if she would like to work on his latest film as the art director. It was to be shot in Texas and Mr. Wenders wanted his art director to have “an American eye.”
Ms. Altman had never worked on a film before and said no, but Mr. Wenders persisted. His offer wasn’t completely out of the blue. Ms. Altman was an interior decorator and the two friends often talked about art and design. And when Mr. Wenders asked what her childhood dream was, Ms. Altman told him she used to sit outside of the Old Globe theatre in San Diego and peek in the side door, entranced by the costume and set designers, wanting to do what they did.
Eventually, Ms. Altman agreed to work on the film, which was called Paris, Texas and would go on to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984.
It was the only film Ms. Altman ever worked on.
But in 2024 she was back at Cannes with Mr. Wenders, for a 40th celebration of the film, and on Oct. 24 she will attend a screening of the movie at the Film Center in Vineyard Haven. She will participate in a discussion after the movie, talking about her role in helping design the look and feel of it.
“I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have been able to work on that film and to make art with them,” Ms. Altman said of the experience during an interview not far from the Film Center, in what will soon be her new needlepoint store on Main street in Vineyard Haven.
Ms. Altman, 72, is both new and old to the Vineyard, having first visited the Island in the 70s and always wishing she could live here. Life took her from Los Angeles, to Brooklyn, to the north fork of Long Island and so the Vineyard became a dream deferred until about a year ago.
“I came here in the ‘70s for the first time and have been trying to get back ever since,” she said.
The store is called NDLWK Shop and will sell sewing and needlework supplies. It will also serve as her studio, where she will make clothes for herself and friends but not on assignment. She admits she was never good at taking orders, preferring to create in her own way. It is a sensibility that led to her decision to only work on just one film and then walk away from the business forever.
But mostly, she said, her decision arose out of the feeling that working with Mr. Wenders and his film crew on this particular movie was perfection. Nothing else could ever compare.
Paris, Texas opens in the desert with Harry Dean Stanton, the legendary character actor in one of his few leading roles, looking disheveled and near death from thirst. It is unclear who he is and what has happened to him, in part because his character does not speak for a long time. The story moves from the Texas desert to Los Angeles and eventually back to Texas. The character had walked out on his life, leaving a wife, son and brother behind. Slowly and artfully, the mystery unfolds.
“The movie is about America,” Ms. Altman said and then corrected herself. “No, I shouldn’t say it’s about America. It’s about a guy and his relationship to people, his family, but it takes place in an America that is full of longing and open space.”
There have been studies done and articles written about the meaning and look of the film.
“I’ve read dissertations on just the color red in the movie,” she said.
When asked what role an art director has in making a movie, Ms. Altman said it encompasses everything you see. But she quickly added that the look wasn’t her vision alone and that the film was a completely collaborative project. Sam Shepard wrote the screenplay, Ry Cooder did the music, Robby Müller was the cinematographer.
“It evolved as it needed to,” she said. “I remember that it was always changing and I was fine with that. Being able to work with a whole group of people and to be able to let a story unfold, I sometimes say it was a little bit like building a sculpture because there was an armature and then we had to kind of make it happen.”
After the success of the movie, Ms. Altman had offers to work on other films.
“David Byrne wanted to hire me for his movie True Stories,” she recalled. “He’s a fantastic artist, and I went to his house and he had the whole movie storyboarded and I thought, well, there’s nothing for me to do here.”
She also worried that the movie business, with all of the uncertainty and moving around from set to set, would not allow for her to start a family and have children. And so she returned to her work as an interior designer, eventually moving from Los Angeles to New York, where she set up a business and started a family.
Eventually, she opened a store in Brooklyn and then, after remarrying, moved to the north fork of Long Island where she continued to do interior design and owned a series of stores.
“I opened a little store that was supposed to be kind of a combination of housewares. I think they call it a lifestyle shop now, which makes me laugh,” she said.
The store was called Altman’s North Fork Home. Later she started a yarn shop in Mattituck on Love Lane called Altman’s Needlearts.
“We had a really sweet life,” Ms. Altman said of her time on Long Island.
Her husband died in 2015, and a few years later, she decided to try dating again, enlisting the help of the internet, but was not happy with the process and almost gave up.
“I was like, I can’t do this to myself,” she said. “But I was so lonely, and then I read this guy’s profile the day before I was done with the whole Match.com thing.”
That guy turned out to be Bruce Kinch, who owned a home on Martha’s Vineyard.
“He has had a house here for 30 years,” she said. “And his wife had died about the same time my husband died.”
She moved to the Vineyard about a year ago, and not long after rented space in Vineyard Haven for her new shop. It is not fully ready for customers but has all the legal paperwork done.
Sitting in a chair in her new store, a ferry whistle echoing in the near distance, Ms. Altman’s story sounds a bit like a movie about longing and wide open spaces, only this time with water instead of a desert landscape — plus a recurring motif of a ferry whistle.
Ms. Altman grew up on Coronado, a small island off the coast of San Diego. She took a ferry to the mainland called the Crown City, which in 1998 found new life as the Governor, plying the waters of the Vineyard Sound.
“I grew up right by the ferry in Coronado, listening to the Crown City ferry whistle blow,” she said. “So this already feels like home to me.”
Paris, Texas screens at the Film Center in Vineyard Haven at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 24. Visit mvfilmsociety.com.
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