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Robert Altman on his Gambling addiction & his attitude towards Gambling: "The reason I was so keen to do 'California Split' (1974) was that for years I wanted to do a gambling film that had nothing but the ambience of gambling, and then point out it had nothing to do with money." Full Excerpt: "I think gambling is just action, and why not? What is there to hoard? I don’t think I have ever jeopardized anybody’s existence by my gambling. Actually, for the last fifteen years or so I’ve been kind of bored with it, because it doesn’t mean anything — what’s the most I could win? Buying lottery tickets, that isn’t gambling. That’s just throwing your hat in the ring. I don’t think gamblers want to lose. But there are people who are addicted to it. At one time I could stand at a crap table for two days — the feeling is like sex. Compulsive gamblers lie to themselves, to everybody. I think I became embarrassed that maybe I was becoming a compulsive gambler. When I was making Tanner ’88, I bet on every game on every day of the baseball season. There’s a moral blanket over gambling. It’s considered immoral, it’s not what you’re supposed to do. I think the greatest theatrical opening scene ever was in "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," when the guys are tossing coins, and one of them wins every time. The odds are against that, yet they’re not. Every time you throw a coin, the odds are fifty—-fifty. When you say I’ve thrown heads six hundred times in a row, what are the odds of that happening? Well, mathematically they’re tremendous, but to say that now you’re going to bet on tails because the odds are way in your favour — the odds are not in your favour. So you try this guessing game, ‘I’ve got a hunch, I feel it...’ That was the whole point of California Split, when at the end George Segal turned to Elliott Gould and said, “There was no special feeling.’ He never felt it, because he has nothing to feel! The reason I was so keen to do 'California Split' was that for years I wanted to do a gambling film that had nothing but the ambience of gambling, and then point out it had nothing to do with money." ('Altman on Altman', Edited by David Thompson, 2006)