Popeye
Williams portrays Popeye in Robert Altman’s musical comedy live-action realization of the American comic strip character Popeye the Sailor Man. Popeye is a spinach-eating sailor in love with Olive Oil (Shelley Duvall) and at odds with Bluto (Paul L. Smith), his perennial nemesis.
Near the end of the movie . . . the studio had pooled all of the money, so all the special effects people left. It was Ed Wood the last weeks of the movie. Shelley Duvall was in a pond, basically, with an octopus with no internal mechanism, having to drape it over her body like a feather boa. I’m in the water, and I’m kind of like sitting there .. . . . . we’re there on Malta, which is a very small island in between Italy and North Africa, and it was some of the worst weather they had had in 60 years. So it was a pretty crazy experience. But! I got to work with Robert Altman and I’ll never forget that.
Moscow on the Hudson
Williams stars in this comedy-drama directed byPaul Mazursky as Russian saxophone player Vladimir Ivanoff. Vladimir defects to the United States in Blomingdale’s when his circus is on tour in New York City. Maria Conchita Alonso plays Vladimir’s Italian-born girlfriend in New York.
I think it’s my best all around film so far. I worked harder on it than I ever worked on a film. I would prepare for every scene the night before, so that when I came in to do it, I came in ready. I kept very careful track of the whole line of the story, because it was very important to show the daily changes that come over Vladimir when he comes from Russia to America.
