Nashville (1975) ft. Scott Cole

Guest:

• Scott Cole

  • Twitter-X/IG (@colecommascott) movie commentator, and occasional writer/contributor for The Movie Friends podcast.com (@moviefriendspodcast)

Cast:

• Robert Altman, Director

• Joan Tewkesbury, Writer

• Paul Lohmann, Cinematographer

• Richard Baskin, Music

• David Arkin as Norman

• Barbara Baxley as Lady Pearl

• Ned Beatty as Delbert "Del" Reese

• Karen Black as Connie White

• Timothy Brown as Tommy Brown

• Keith Carradine as Tom Frank

• Geraldine Chaplin as Opal

• Robert DoQui as Wade Cooley

• Shelley Duvall as Martha

• Allen Garfield as Barnett

• Henry Gibson as Haven Hamilton

• Scott Glenn as Pfc. Glenn Kelly

• Jeff Goldblum as the silent Tricycle Man

• Barbara Harris as Winifred (or Albuquerque)

• David Hayward as Kenny Frasier

• Michael Murphy as John Triplette

• Allan F. Nicholls as Bill

• Dave Peel as Bud Hamilton

• Cristina Raines as Mary

• Bert Remsen as Star

• Lily Tomlin as Linnea Reese

• Gwen Welles as Sueleen Gay

• Keenan Wynn as Mr. Green

• Thomas Hal Phillips as Hal Phillip Walker

Background:

• Nashville was released on June 11, 1975.

• On a budget of $2.2 million, it would go on to gross $10 million and finish outside the top 25 of the year at the worldwide box office.

• Most of the top critics were effusive in their praise of the film at the time, and Nashville would go on to nominated for 5 Oscars including Best Picture, Director (Altman), Supporting Actress (Tomlin. Ronee Blakley) and it won Best Original Song for "I'm Easy" (Keith Carradine).

• It became the first, and one of the eight (as of 2024) films to win Best Picture from three out of four major U.S. film critics' groups (LA, NBR, NY, NSFC) along with All the President's Men, Terms of Endearment, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, The Hurt Locker, Drive My Car, and TÁR.

• Nashville is regarded in critical circles as Altman's magnum opus, as well as one of the greatest films of all time.

• In 2007, the movie was ranked No. 59 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies - 10th Anniversary Edition list; it did not appear on the original 1998 list.

• The song "I'm Easy" was named the 81st Best Song of All Time by the American Film Institute (AFI).

• In 2013, Entertainment Weekly ranked it the ninth-greatest film in history.

• Nashville ranked 14th in BBC's 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films.

• The February 2020 issue of New York Magazine lists Nashville as among "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars."

• In 1992, Nashville was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

• Nashville currently holds an 89% among critics on RT, a 96 score on Metacritic, and a 4.2/5 on Letterboxd.

Plot Summary: A sprawling mosaic of American life, Nashville follows 24 characters over five days leading up to a political rally in the titular city. Set against the backdrop of country music and political ambition, the film weaves together intersecting stories of musicians, wannabe stars, politicians, and ordinary citizens. Through overlapping dialogue and naturalistic performances, Altman paints a satirical yet poignant portrait of fame, identity, and the uneasy state of the nation during the 1970s. The film crescendos into a shocking act of violence, underscoring its themes of disillusionment and the chaotic intersection of celebrity and politics.

Did You Know:

• The film was very much improvised by the actors and actresses, 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.

• All songs were recorded live rather than being prerecorded in a studio.

• This movie's eleven Golden Globe nominations remains the most for a single film. It also received four nominations in a single acting category, this was and remains unprecedented for major film award shows.

• 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 Music Supervisor on the film.

• The film was created due to an offer Robert Altman turned down. Originally, he was offered the chance to direct another script that took place in Nashville. He turned the project down but became interested in the setting. He 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 re-written or improvised by the performers, a standard practice on Altman projects.

• 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 she was offered the role of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and turned it down, which enabled Fletcher to eventually get it, so in a sense they simply traded roles.

Best Performance: Lily Tomlin (Linnea)/Robert Altman (Director)/Ronee Blakley (Barbara Jean)

Best Secondary Performance: Keith Carradine (Tom)/Henry Gibson (Haven Hamilton)/Cristina Raines (Mary)

Most Charismatic Award: Lily Tomlin (Linnea)/Jeff Goldblum (Tricycle Man)/Geraldine Chaplin (Opal)

Best Scene:

• Recording Studio

• Traffic Jam

• Cookout

• Barbara Jean at Opryland

• Striptease

• I'm Easy

• Parthenon

Favorite Scene: Striptease/Barbara Jean at Opryland/Grand Ole Opry

Most Indelible Moment: Parthenon

In Memorium:

• Loretta Swit, 87, American actress (known for M*A*S*H, Freebie and the Bean, Race with the Devil), 2x Emmy winner (1980, 1982).

• Frances Doel, 83, British screenwriter (known for Big Bad Mama, Deathsport) and film producer (for Starship Troopers) - longtime collaborator with Roger Corman.

• Peter Kwong, 73, American actor (known for roles in Big Trouble in Little China, The Golden Child, and Cooties).

• Alf Clausen, 84, American composer (known for his work on The Simpsons, ALF, Moonlighting), 2x Emmy winner (1997, 1998)

• Renée Victor, 86, American actress (known for roles in the show Weeds, the Pixar movie Coco, and the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)

• James Lowe, 82, American musician (lead singer of The Electric Prunes) and record producer (A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing)

• Valerie Mahaffey, 71, American actress (known for roles in the shows Northern Exposure, Dead to Me, Desperate Housewives and Young Sheldon), Emmy winner (1992)

• Jonathan Joss, 59, American actor (known for his roles in King of the Hill, Ray Donovan, In Plain Sight, and Parks and Recreation)

• Devin Harjes, 41, American actor (known for his roles on Blue Bloods, Orange is the New Black, FBI, Gotham, and Boardwalk Empire)

• Billy Williams, 96, British cinematographer (known for his work on Gandhi, On Golden Pond, and The Exorcist) 2x Oscar winner

Best Lines/Funniest Lines:

Hal Phillip Walker: Who do you think is running Congress? Farmers? Engineers? Teachers? Businessmen? No, my friends. Congress is run by lawyers. A lawyer is trained for two things and two things only. To clarify - that's one. And to confuse - that's the other thing. He does whichever is to his client's advantage. Did you ever ask a lawyer the time of day? He told you how to make a watch, didn't he? Ever ask a lawyer how to get to Mr. Jones' house in the country? You got lost, didn't you? Congress is composed of five hundred and thirty-five individuals. Two hundred and eighty-eight are lawyers. And you wonder what's wrong in Congress? No wonder we often know how to make a watch, but we don't know - the time of day.

Haven Hamilton: Y'all take it easy now. This isn't Dallas, it's Nashville! They can't do this to us here in Nashville! Let's show them what we're made of. Come on everybody, sing! Somebody, sing!

Haven Hamilton: What a surprise. Julie Christie.

Connie White: Who's Julie Christie?

Haven Hamilton: Who's Julie Christie? She's a star. She's won an Academy Award.

Connie White: Oh!

Haven Hamilton: No, I'm not kiddin'. For one of those pictures. I don't know which one. She's done so many.

Connie White: Isn't he a gem? He's got the worst sense of humor.

Haven Hamilton: No, she's lovely.

Connie White: Oh, come on. She can't even comb her hair.

Haven Hamilton: I don't know who you are or what you're doing here, but I will not tolerate rudeness in the presence of a star... [pauses, glances at Eliot Gould] Two stars.

Barbara Jean: I'd like to thank you for comin' out to greet me today. It's great to be home. It's hot as a firecracker. And me and the boys are gonna be out at the Opry this week. And like my granddaddy always used to say, "If you're down to the river, I hope you'll drop in."

Opal: Have you been in Vietnam?

Pfc. Glenn Kelly: Huh?

[Nods]

Opal: Yes, you have. I can tell by your face. Was it awful?

Pfc. Glenn Kelly: It was kinda... hot and wet.

Opal: I need something like this for my documentary. I need it. It's... It's America. Those cars smashing into each other... and all those mangled corpses...

Tom: Hello sarge; kill anybody this week?

Opal: [speaking into a micro recorder as she walks through a school bus parking lot] The buses! The buses are empty and look almost menacing, threatening, as so many yellow dragons watching me with their hollow, vacant eyes. I wonder how many little black and white children have yellow nightmares, their own special brand of fear for the yellow peril... Damn it, it's got to be more... positive. No, more negative! Start again. Yellow is the color of caution. No. Yellow is the color of cowardice. Yellow is the color of sunshine. And yet I see very little sunshine in the lives of all the little black and white children. I see their lives, rather, as a study in grayness, a mixture of black and... Oh, Christ, no. That's fascist. Yellow! Yellow, yellow, yellow. Yellow fever...

Opal: Oh, you've got a Hal Phillip Walker button. No, it's Kennedy. Isn't that rather ancient? Strange. I thought that everybody in the South didn't go for Kennedy.

Lady Pearl: It's John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Well, he, he took the whole South except for Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky. And there's a reason he didn't take Tennessee but he got 481,453 votes and the asshole got 556,577 votes...

Star: You look like a guy I was in the navy with. He wouldn't bathe, so we had to pee in his bed to get him discharged.

Haven Hamilton: What's the piano player's name? Frog? You play like a frog. You get your hair cut. You don't belong in Nashville!

Delbert: I'm sorry, honey. I asked the man if he'd like to come to dinner and he said yes.

The Stanley Rubric:

Legacy: 6.33

Impact/Significance: 7.17

Novelty: 8.5

Classic-ness: 8.67

Rewatchability: 6.17

Audience Score: 7.75 (72% Google, 83% RT)

Total: 44.59

Remaining Questions:

• Does Barbara Jean live?

• Why did Kenny shoot Barbara Jean?