Robert Altman’s NASHVILLE Screens Thursday Night at The Tivoli

“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!”

NASHVILLE screens one time only Thursday, September 24th at The Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar Blvd, St. Louis) at 7pm

In a decade of great films, NASHVILLE is one of the greatest. I saw NASHVILLE during its initial theatrical release and have seen it several times since but it has not played on the big screen (at least in St. Louis) in a long time. In 1974 director Robert Altman was directing films for United Artists and wanted them to produce his film THIEVES LIKE US. They agreed if he would agree to direct a story about country music that they had a script for. He rejected the script and said he would offer them another so he sent writer Joan Tewkesbury, who had been his script supervisor on McCABE AND MRS. MILLER, to Nashville, Tennessee to research. What Tewkesbury came up with juggled almost thirty characters and several intersecting plot lines.

A red hot country superstar (Ronee Blakley) who is plagued by her feeble health condition and the straining relationship with her agent-husband (Allen Garfield), who has to cater to another country diva (Karen Black) who comes to replace his ailing wife for a public concert; a pompous and loudmouth BBC journalist (Geraldine Chaplin) who comes to shoot a documentary about Nashville; an uprising folk trio called Tom, Mary, and Bill (Keith Carradine, Christina Raines, Allan Nicholls) with their chauffeur (David Arkin) while Tom is the sleaze-bag philanderer and the married Mary and Bill undergo some connubial crisis; A housewife and gospel singer (Lily Tomlin) whose husband (Ned Beatty) is an agent who introduces a politician lobbyist (Michael Murphy) to the music moguls in order to get some big names to sing publicly for the presidential candidate and his main target is a honorific but over-the-hill country star (Henry Gibson) with an harsh wife (Barbara Baxley) and an unworldly son (David Peel), and fellow musicians as well

There is also a glut of ordinary people including two young singers-wanna-be. One is a runaway wife (Barbara Harris) seeking for an opportunity to sing in front of a large audience, while another is a southern beauty (Gwen Welles) who optionally chooses to ignore her unmusical voice and insists on carrying her pipe dream at all hazards (a striptease in a local bar is just the beginning for the poor dim gal) albeit the persuasion from her friend (Robert DoQui); two young lads, one is a shy soldier (Scott Glenn) who is obsessed with Blakley, the other one is a self-claimed musician (David Hayward) totes his guitar box where conceals a dangerous weapon will later trigger the heartbreaking finale; the last pair is a local old man (Keenan Wynn) and his vampy niece (Shelly Duvall), who flirts with every young man she meets including a tricycle rider (Jeff Goldblum), never caring too much about her dying auntie in the hospital.

Did I leave anybody out ?!?

NASHVILLE was also nominated for 5 Oscars including Best Picture, screenplay, both Blakly and Tomlin for Supporting Actress, and Best Director. It received 11 Golden Globe nominations including an astounding five actor nominations. it was also nominated and was awarded by the Writers Guild, Directors Guild, National Board of Review, BAFTA, National society of Film Critics and both the L.A. and New York Film Critics Associations. The Blakley role is patterned after country singer Loretta Lynn, Gibson’s on Roy Acuff, Barbara Baxley on Minnie Pearl, Karen Black on Tammy Wynette, Timothy Brown on Charlie Pride and Keith Carradine on Kris Kristofferson. NASHVILLE is show business, country music, politics and a microcosm of America. The actual Nashville country crowd hated the music as not representative of Nashville because of actors doing their own singing to unknown songs, many composed by the actors and Altman, done live in front of camera which they saw as far inferior and amateurish to Nashville standards.

But NASHVILLE is one of the most consistently relevant films to have emerged from the 1970s, and I hope filmgoers will make the effort to rediscover it when it plays at The Tivoli Thursday night.

The Tivoli’s website can be found HERE

http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/st.louis/tivolitheatre.htm