Editing McCabe & Mrs. Miller (section)

=== Leonard Cohen's songs ===
Other than the music occurring in the ordinary life of Presbyterian Church, the only music for the film is from three songs composed and performed by [[Leonard Cohen]], a Canadian poet who had released his first album of songs in 1967. Their importance is emphasized by Scott Tobias, who wrote in 2014 that "The film is unimaginable to me without the Cohen songs, which function as these mournful interstitials that unify the entire movie."<ref>{{cite web |title=McCabe & Mrs. Miller: profound pessimism and Leonard Cohen kindness |first1=Keith |last1=Phipps |first2=Scott |last2=Tobias |work=The Dissolve |url=http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/772-mccabe-mrs-miller-profound-pessimism-and-leonard-c/ |date=September 30, 2014}}</ref>

Altman had liked Cohen's debut album, ''[[Songs of Leonard Cohen]]'' (1967), immensely, buying additional copies of it after wearing out each vinyl record. He had then forgotten about the album. A few years later, Altman visited Paris, just after finishing shooting ''McCabe & Mrs. Miller'', and rediscovered Cohen's album. He had Lou Lombardo, the film's editor, use the music to maintain a rhythm for the film (in effect using it as a "temp" track). He later said, "I think the reason they worked was because those lyrics were etched in my subconscious, so when I shot the scenes I fitted them to the songs, as if they were written for them."<ref name=Altman>{{cite book |title=Altman on Altman |editor1-first=David |editor1-last=Thompson |publisher=Faber and Faber |location=London |date=2006}} Cited in {{cite news |work=The Buffalo Film Seminars |title=Robert Altman: McCabe & Mrs. Miller |date=March 4, 2008 |volume=XVI |issue=8 |last1=Christian |first1=Diane |last2=Jackson |first2=Bruce |url=http://csac.buffalo.edu/mccabe.pdf }}</ref>

Altman didn't expect to be able to procure rights for Cohen's music since ''McCabe'' was a [[Warner Brothers]] film and Cohen's album was released through [[Columbia Records]]. He called Cohen, expecting to trade off his recent success with ''[[M*A*S*H (film)|M*A*S*H]]'', but found that Cohen had no knowledge of it. Instead, Cohen had loved Altman's less popular follow-up film ''[[Brewster McCloud]]''. Cohen arranged for his record company to license the music cheaply, even writing into the contract that sales of that album after the release of ''McCabe'' would turn some of the royalties to Altman (an arrangement which at the time was quite unusual).<ref>{{cite book |title=Robert Altman's Soundtracks: Film, Music, and Sound from M*A*S*H to a Prairie Home Companion |first=Gayle Sherwood |last=Magee |page=61 ff |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=2014 |isbn=9780199915965 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MlBjBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA61}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Cinema of Robert Altman: Hollywood Maverick |first=Robert |last=Niemi |publisher=Columbia University Press |date=2016 |isbn=9780231850865 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wG3lCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT70|page=170}}</ref> The three Cohen songs used in the film were "The Stranger Song", "Sisters of Mercy" and "Winter Lady". They were released together on a 7-inch single in France in 1971, and other European countries during 1972.<ref>{{cite web|last=Ehrenstein |first=David |author-link=David Ehrenstein |title=McCabe and Mrs. Miller, USA 1971 |url=http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/mccabe.html |editor1-first=Jarkko |editor1-last=Arjatsalo |work=The Leonard Cohen Files |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160329150414/http://leonardcohenfiles.com/mccabe.html |archive-date=2016-03-29 |url-status=dead }} Undated review from [[CDNow]] reproduced on a fan website.</ref>