DVD details
Nashville (1975)
/
Nashville
Paramount 88217Color - 160 min
Released 8 August 2000
Available
List Price: $29.99
Keep Case
Aspect Ratio / Regional Information / Disc Details
2.35 : 1
Anamorphic Widescreen /
1 : USA / NTSC /
Closed Captioning: CC
Master format: Film
Sides: 1 (SS-RSDL)
Chapter stops: 17
Sound: / English / Commentary
/
5.1 /
2.0
Subtitles: / English (captions)
SUPPLEMENTS
· Audio commentary by director 'Robert Altman'
· Exclusive interview with director 'Robert Altman'
Movie Review
June 12, 1975
NASHVILLE
By Vincent Canby
Robert Altman's Nashville is the movie sensation that all other American movies this year will be measured against. It's a film that a lot of other directors will wish they'd had the brilliance to make and that dozens of other performers will wish they'd had the great good fortune to be in.
It should salvage Mr. Altman's reputation in Hollywood as a director who makes movies only for the critics, and it could well be the high point in the careers of a number of its performers, who may never again be so ideally presented in roles that utilize their special gifts with such affection. What will Ronee Blakley or Henry Gibson or Lily Tomlin or Barbara Harris do for encores? It's a tough question but not an unhappy one.
Nashville, which opened yesterday at the Baronet and Cinema II Theaters, is a panoramic film with dozens of characters, set against the country-and-western music industry in Nashville. It's a satire, a comedy, a melodrama, a musical. Its music is terrifically important—funny, moving, and almost nonstop. It's what a Tennessee granddaddy might call a real toe-tapper of a picture.
There are so many story lines in Nashville that one is more or less coerced into dealing in abstractions. Nashville is about the quality of a segment of Middle American life. It's about ambition, sentimentality, politics, emotional confusion, empty goals, and very big business in a society whose citizens are firmly convinced that the use of deodorants is next to godliness.
Nashville doesn't make easy fun of these people. It doesn't patronize them. Along with their foolishness, it sees their gallantry. At the beginning of the film when Henry Gibson as Haven Hamilton, Nashville's biggest male star, records "200 Years," a patriotic song in honor of the Bicentennial ("We must be doing something right/To last 200 years"), the movie is amused by the song's maudlin sentiments and rhyme schemes, and by Haven's recording-studio tantrums. But it also appreciates the song's stirring beat and the vast, earnest public for whom it will have meaning.
The film, which has an original screenplay by Joan Tewksbury, who collaborated with Mr. Altman in adapting Thieves Like Us, has a well-defined structure, while individual sequences often burst with the kind of life that seems impossible to plan, though that may be to underrate Miss Tewksbury's contributions and those of the extraordinary cast. I have no idea where the director and the writer leave off and the performers take over.
Whoever is responsible, Nashville comes across as a film of enormous feeling. It's compounded of moments that tingle the spine, as when Lily Tomlin, who makes a spectacular dramatic debut in the film as a gospel singer and the mother of two deaf children, patiently draws forth a story from her twelve-year-old son, in words and sign language, about a swimming test he's just passed.
At the end of the film Barbara Harris, as a perpetually disheveled, very unlikely aspirant to country-and-western stardom, almost tears the screen to bits with a gospel version of a song heard earlier ("It Don't Worry Me") that concludes the narrative in a manner that is almost magical.
Ronee Blakley, a composer-singer who came to Mr. Altman's attention when she attempted to interest him in some of her songs, dominates the film, as much as it can be dominated by any one performer, as Barbara Jean, Nashville's beautiful, fragile, country-and-western princess—a rural girl who's hit it big and throughout the film sinks deeper and deeper into emotional panic.
The stunning effect of her performance has as much to do with Miss Blakley's talents as singer-composer-actress and her particular beauty as with Barbara Jean's role in the events the film records.
Nashville is an immense collaboration, a timely coming together of all sorts of resources, including those of twenty-five-year-old Richard Baskin, who arranged and supervised the music, much of it written by the people who perform it.
In addition to Miss Blakley and Mr. Gibson, this includes Karen Black, who wrote two songs and has a fine sequence as Nashville's No. 2 female star, and Keith Carradine, who plays a cad of a rock singer and who wrote two songs, "I'm Easy" and "It Don't Worry Me," which, with Miss Blakley's "My Idaho Home," are three of the film's best.
Nashville has some weak spots. Geraldine Chaplin turns up as a visiting British Broadcasting Corporation reporter of such gross idiocy she'd probably have trouble getting a job on a shopping guide. A couple of sequences in the middle of the movie just mark time, but usually everything works, to make Nashville the most original, provocative, high-spirited film Mr. Altman has yet given us.
Movie Awards
Academy Awards, USAYear / Result / Award / Category/Recipient(s)
1976 / Won / Oscar / Best Music, Original Song
Keith Carradine
For the song "I'm Easy"
Nominated / Oscar / Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Ronee Blakley
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Lily Tomlin
Best Director
Robert Altman
Best Picture
Robert Altman
Movie Trivia
· Each actor was required to write and perform their own songs for the movie.
· George Segal had a cameo as himself, but it was cut.
· Gary Busey was originally going to play "Tom" and wrote the song "Since You've Gone" used in the film.
· The film was very much improvised by the actors, who used the screenplay only as a guide. They spent a great amount of their time in character, and the movie was shot almost entirely in sequence.
· Original footage was so long, it was almost released as two parallel movies: "Nashville Red" and "Nashville Blue."
· Cameo: [Joan Tewkesbury] [, the film's writer. She is on the phone as Kenny's mother, and as Tom's lover.]
· The role of Linnea Reese was created for and by Louise Fletcher who herself was the daughter of two deaf parents and knew sign language. The role was eventually played by Lily Tomlin. Tomlin concluded that things worked out in the end because Tomlin was offered Nurse Ratched in _One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)_ and turned it down, so in a sense they simply traded roles.
· During the filming of the car crash scene, drivers who were passing by stopped their cars and rushed to the scene of the "accident", carrying first aid kits and blankets.
· All songs were recorded live rather than being prerecorded in a studio.
· The film was created due to an offer Robert Altman turned down. Originally, Altman was offered the chance to direct another script that took place in Nashville. Altman turned the project down cold, but became interested in the setting. So Altman sent his script supervisor, Joan Tewkesbury to Nashville to observe the place and take notes. She wrote a diary and that diary became the basis of her screenplay. From there, several scenes were rewritten or improvised by the performers, a standard practice on Altman projects.
· Robert Duvall was originally offered the role of Haven Hamilton.
· Altman offered the role of Barbara Jean to Susan Anspach, who refused it because she wanted more money. Having already arrived in Nashville to film with the role still not cast, Altman gave it to Ronee Blakley, who was working as a singer in Nashville at the time, and had sold some of her songs to the film. Blakley ended up receiving an Academy Award nomination for her performance.
· During the DVD commentary of the film, Robert Altman pays a tribute to Tommy Thompson, who assisted directed almost all of Altman's films, and had dropped dead on the set of _Dr. T & the Women (2000)_ a week before Altman did the commentary.
· Robert Altman made Gwen Welles take extensive singing lessons to improve her singing. The finished results of those lessons is what Welles sounds like when she sings in the film.
· The character of Barbara Jean is loosely based on Loretta Lynn.
· Altman originally wanted Susan Anspach to play Barbara Jean, but she refused because she wanted more money. Ready to film in Nashville with no one cast in the role, Altman at the last minute offered it to Ronee Blakley, who was working as a back-up singer in Nashville at the time and had contributed some songs to the film. Blakley ended up receiving an Academy Award nomination for her performance.
· After seeing the first footage of her work in the traffic jam scene, Barbara Harris reportedly ran out of the projection room, went home, and asked Altman to meet with her immediately. Unhappy with her performance, Harris offered to put up her own money to have the scene re-shot. Altman told her no.
· All the band musicians used in the film were real musicians working in Nashville at the time.
· Altman had Gwen Welles take singing lessons to sound better. The end result of those extended lessons is what you hear in the film.
· Faced with an impending rainstorm which threatened to ruin filming of Barbara Jean's assassination (with no recourse, as the production's budget had run dry), Robert Altman reportedly screamed at the sky, ordering the rain to stop. The rain did indeed stop, and filming of the scene was completed.
· In the opening sequence, the character played by Henry Gibson demanded that his piano player be replaced by the "Pig". At that time in Nashville, one of the most in demand session players was a blind pianist named Hargus "Pig" Robbins. The man playing the piano in that scene is Richard Baskin, the actual music supervisor on the film.
· In response to those who believed the film was almost totally improvised and had little or no script, screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury insisted that there was a solid script written by Robert Altman and herself that dictated all the actions of all the characters, and that the improvisational elements added by the actors were solely in aspects of the dialogue.
Movie Connections
References
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
"Puppet Playhouse" (1947)
Darling (1965)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Easy Rider (1969)
"Sesame Street" (1969)
MASH (1970)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Viskningar och rop (1972)
Referenced in
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)
A Wedding (1978)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
O.C. and Stiggs (1987)
One on One with Robert Altman (1993) (V)
Prêt-à-Porter (1994)
Ville est tranquille, La (2000)
Waking Life (2001)
A Decade Under the Influence (2003)
Featured in
Precious Images (1986)
100 Years at the Movies (1994)
A Decade Under the Influence (2003)
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs (2004) (TV)
Features
"The Electric Company" (1971)
Movie Soundtrack
· "It Don't Worry Me"
Written and Performed by Keith Carradine
Lions Gate Music Co. / Easy Music (ASCAP)
· "I'm Easy"
Written and Performed by Keith Carradine
Lions Gate Music Co. / Easy Music (ASCAP)
· "Bluebird"
Written by Ronee Blakley
Performed by Timothy Brown
Lions Gate Music Co. / Sawtooth Music (ASCAP)
· "Tapedeck in His Tractor"
Written and Performed by Ronee Blakley
Lions Gate Music Co. / Sawtooth Music (ASCAP)
· "Dues"
Written and Performed by Ronee Blakley
Lions Gate Music Co. / Sawtooth Music (ASCAP)
· "My Idaho Home"
Written and Performed by Ronee Blakley
Lions Gate Music Co. / Sawtooth Music (ASCAP)
· "Keep A-Goin'"
Written by Richard Baskin and Henry Gibson
Performed by Henry Gibson
Lions Gate Music Co. (ASCAP) / Landscape Music Co. (BMI) / Silvery Moon Music (ASCAP) / Plumbago Publishing Co. (BMI)
· "200 Years"
Written by Richard Baskin and Henry Gibson
Performed by Henry Gibson
Lions Gate Music Co. (ASCAP) / Landscape Music Co. (BMI) / Silvery Moon Music (ASCAP) / Plumbago Publishing Co. (BMI)
· "Memphis"
Written and Performed by Karen Black
Lions Gate Music Co. / Matter Music (ASCAP)
· "Rolling Stone"
Written and Performed by Karen Black
Lions Gate Music Co. / Matter Music (ASCAP)
· "For the Sake of the Children"
Written by Richard Baskin and Richard Reicheg
Performed by Henry Gibson
WB Music Corp. (ASCAP)
· "One, I Love You"
Written by Richard Baskin
Performed by Henry Gibson and Ronee Blakley
Lions Gate Music Co. / Silvery Moon Music (ASCAP)
Full Cast and Crew
Directed by Robert Altman
Writing credits
Joan Tewkesbury (written by)
Cast (in credits order) verified as complete
David Arkin .... Norman
Barbara Baxley .... Lady Pearl
Ned Beatty .... Delbert Reese
Karen Black .... Connie White
Ronee Blakley .... Barbara Jean
Timothy Brown .... Tommy Brown
Keith Carradine .... Tom Frank
Geraldine Chaplin .... Opal
Robert DoQui .... Wade Cooley
Shelley Duvall .... L. A. Joan
Allen Garfield .... Barnett
Henry Gibson .... Haven Hamilton
Scott Glenn .... Pfc. Glenn Kelly
Jeff Goldblum .... Tricycle Man
Barbara Harris .... Albuquerque
David Hayward .... Kenny Fraiser
Michael Murphy .... John Triplette
Allan F. Nicholls .... Bill (as Allan Nicholls)
Dave Peel .... Bud Hamilton
Cristina Raines .... Mary
Bert Remsen .... Star
Lily Tomlin .... Linnea Reese
Gwen Welles .... Sueleen Gay
Keenan Wynn .... Mr. Green
James Dan Calvert .... Jimmy Reese
Donna Denton .... Donna Reese
Merle Kilgore .... Trout
Carol McGinnis .... Jewel
Sheila Bailey .... Smokey Mountain Laurel
Patti Bryant .... Smokey Mountain Laurel
Richard Baskin .... Frog
Jonnie Barnett .... Himself