An Altman theme park does, in fact, exist. Sweethaven, the set of Altman’s 1980 musical Popeye, lives on in Mellieħa, a village on the island of Malta, where Harry Nilsson’s bizarre soundtrack plays day after day. While Popeye remains a vastly underappreciated work, the film is legendary around these parts, screening regularly on TV, especially after the death of Robin Williams. A generation of Maltese kids has grown up mouthing the words to “Everything Is Food” and “I Yam What I Yam,” regarding these as stock anthems and templates of fun.
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Of all the directors you could choose to build a theme world around, Robert Altman might be the most peculiar and least predictable. The exhibition “World of Tim Burton” continues to make the rounds of international galleries, and Cronenberg-world had a stint at Toronto’s Lightbox in 2013, complete with fleshy machines, insect typewriters, and all the body horror one could wish for. It’s easy to imagine worlds constructed around the aesthetics of, say, Michael Mann, De Palma, and Hitchcock, but what would Altman-world look like? Needless to say, it would be populated by many characters and chattering voices, but how would you convey the effect of those long takes and the feeling of being muffled by sights and sounds?
An Altman theme park does, in fact, exist. Sweethaven, the set of Altman’s 1980 musical Popeye, lives on in Mellieħa, a village on the island of Malta, where Harry Nilsson’s bizarre soundtrack plays day after day. While Popeye remains a vastly underappreciated work, the film is legendary around these parts, screening regularly on TV, especially after the death of Robin Williams. A generation of Maltese kids has grown up mouthing the words to “Everything Is Food” and “I Yam What I Yam,” regarding these as stock anthems and templates of fun.
Our trip to Sweethaven this summer was made partly as a tribute to a director whose presence I miss (the warmth, the way with actors, the gift for screwball and serendipity), perhaps more than any other. It was also a chance to visit places I had imaginatively inhabited as a child. Would these tattered fragments of Altman’s film hold any wonder for an adult?
You enter the village to the sounds of “Sweet Sweethaven … safe from democracy,” that cheerful satire of patriotism, while men dressed as Bluto and Wimpy bob about. The set has retained its motley, patchwork look: no doubt extensive renovations have been required to maintain that worn, weather-beaten feel Altman wanted. The floorboards are sloped and slippery, forcing you into the halting sideways dance all the characters performed.
When you get to the town centre, an enthusiastic young “auteur” darts around with a camera, directing his own homage to Altman. He urges guests to recreate the very specific mannerisms of Shelley Duvall and Robin Williams – in particular, the latter’s walk and near-inaudible mutter. I was quickly drawn into a group of female onlookers – in general, “ladies” are encouraged to pipe up with sky-high voices and make their own version of Altman’s overlapping sounds. The detail is meticulous: by the time we arrived, the director had secured the services of a blond child to play Sweetpea. Everyone gets folded into the flow: it is as if this strangest of films needs only a few prompts to play out, since everyone knows the moves and rhythms, down to the weirdly placed sound cues.
The view from Sweethaven
A strict time-keeper, the director races us from scene to scene, with instructions such as “Say it like you cannot believe!,” “Dynamic, please!,” and “Important your head is close to the spinach.” Characters who are no longer needed are sent “off to the afterlife,” whereupon he turns to the remaining group and asks, “Who is alive?” – a direction Altman no doubt would have approved of.
Walking around the village, you experience the contrast between the thin, rickety sets and the great booming ocean: the fact that one of Altman’s treasured communities remains fragile but magically intact. He must have loved the light here: Malta’s dizzying white sun creates images that are luminous yet fine-grained. Today, the space captures the frail enchantment of the film, without neglecting opportunities for merchandising: “Everything Is Food” plays outside the café area, and I never thought I’d see a Shelley Duvall snow globe.
Olive Oyl as a snow globe
Popeye was judged a career-wrecking failure in its day, yet a country of half a million has found that “wreckage” liveable and archetypal – the fact that every Maltese child knows the lyrics “Safe from democracy / Sweeter than a melon tree” is no small feat. Altman invented eccentric forms that have lasted for decades: Popeye’s tale of misfits has become an eternal narrative, with no shortage of new players waiting to be drafted. I was hoping to score a gig as the town’s resident Olive Oyl – a job I never knew existed, despite being in lifelong rehearsal for it. No such luck: position filled.
Malta’s own Olive Oyl
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All photos courtesy of the author.
